Joseph Perrulli said Nicole Brown Simpson put Sydney and Justin first, even after her split from O.J. Simpson. In a new interview published on Friday, June 19, he described her as a mother who kept her children at the center of every choice.
“She was a hyper-vigilant mother. The children were everything,” Perrulli said. He added that Brown Simpson “wanted her kids to have a good relationship with their father,” a stance that sits next to the pain of a marriage that had already broken apart by the time they dated briefly in 1992.
Sydney in St. Petersburg
Sydney is now 40 years old and lives in St. Petersburg, Florida, rather than Los Angeles. That detail gives the interview a present-day edge: the daughter Brown Simpson once named is now building an adult life far from the city where her mother was found stabbed to death in June 1994, alongside Ron Goldman.
Brown Simpson died when Sydney was 8 years old and Justin was 5. Perrulli said he was struck by how much Brown Simpson was willing to forgive, adding, “I was just blown away with how willing she was to forgive and still love someone who had caused her so much pain.”
Why the name Sydney stayed
Perrulli also recalled Brown Simpson telling him, “I always knew I wanted to name my child Sydney.” He said the name came from a dear friend who was a soap opera actress, whose character was named Sydney. That memory matters because it turns Brown Simpson’s parenting into something specific, not abstract: she had a name ready, a preference in mind, and a direct line from that choice to her daughter’s life today.
O.J. Simpson’s death in April 2024 at age 76 closes one part of the family history, but Perrulli’s recollections reopen another. Brown Simpson wanted her children tied to their father, even as the marriage had already left her deeply hurt; that contradiction is the most revealing part of the interview, and it explains why Sydney’s life in St. Petersburg still carries more than one family story at once.
