Las Vegas – A sports memorabilia collector who accused O.J. Simpson of armed robbery said Saturday that he was “on O.J.’s side” and wants the case dropped.
“I want this thing to go away. I have health problems,” said Alfred Beardsley, the collector who told police Thursday that Simpson and several other men stormed a Las Vegas hotel room and stole memorabilia at gunpoint.
Beardsley, of Burbank, Calif., told The Associated Press that he is not interested in pursuing the case.
“I have no desire to fly back and forth to Las Vegas to testify,” he said.
Beardsley said that he called police only because the items were valuable and that if he had not reported them as stolen, he would be “held accountable for all the stuff.”
Beardsley said Friday that Simpson had called him to apologize.
Lt. Clint Nichols said later Saturday that Beardsley had not formally withdrawn his complaint and that another collector in the room, Bruce Fromong, had not indicated that he wants to drop the complaint.
Earlier, Las Vegas police said they were questioning one of the three or four men who were thought to have accompanied Simpson to the hotel room. No arrests had been made, and police were still trying to determine what took place before Simpson left the room with memorabilia he says was stolen from him, Nichols said. Police think a weapon was involved and want to review hotel surveillance tapes.
Simpson told The Associated Press on Saturday that he did he did not even consider calling the police to help reclaim personal items he believed were stolen from him because he has found the police unresponsive when he needed help ever since his ex-wife, Nicole Brown Simpson, and her friend Ron Goldman were murdered in 1994.
“The police, since my trouble, have not worked out for me,” he said, noting that whenever he has called the police, “it just becomes a story about O.J.”
Simpson, 60, said he was just trying to retrieve memorabilia, particularly photos of his wife and children. There were no guns and no break-in, he said.
As police try to determine what happened in the hotel room, they must unravel the contorted relationships between the erstwhile athlete and a cadre of collectors that has profited from his infamy since the slayings of his ex-wife and Goldman. He was acquitted of murder in 1995 but was found liable for their deaths in a civil case.
