Nicole Brown Simpson and O.J.'s Interracial Relationship 'Was Never an Issue in Our Family' Says Her Sisters (Exclusive)

The murder victim's siblings Denise, Dominique and Tanya Brown reflect on race and the part it played in Nicole and O.J.'s story

Nicole Brown Simpson and O.J. Simpson had an interracial relationship, but her sisters say that wasn't a topic of note until after she was killed.

"Johnnie Cochran just created that. It was part of the performance," Nicole's sister Dominique tells PEOPLE, reflecting on how race became a point of discussion during O.J.'s 1995 trial for the murder of Nicole and friend Ron Goldman.

She adds of Cochran, O.J.'s attorney, "He knew that it was good timing, after Rodney King, to introduce [race] into the court."

The 1992 Rodney King trial resulted in four LAPD officers avoiding charges for the use of excessive force in the violent beating of King, a Black man whose brutal arrest was caught on camera. The controversial verdict flared racial tensions in America and kicked off deadly protests in Los Angeles, where the O.J. Simpson trial took place less than two years later.

Dominique recalls that during the trial following Nicole's murder, "We got all kinds of death threats" because of how the case was being framed along racial lines. But according to her and her family, Nicole and O.J.'s interracial relationship wasn't ever a factor prior to then.

"Race was never an issue in our family," says Dominique.

Adds Tanya, "We come from a very diverse [extended] family, we have Mexican, Black, German, Jewish, family and friends."

Nicole met O.J. when he was a star running back for the Buffalo Bills in the 1970s. "We didn't even know about him or football," Dominique says. "He was just her boyfriend to us."

When Nicole invited her sisters to Upstate New York to watch O.J. play, “he made a touchdown, and he looked up at all of us. I was like, ‘Wow, look at this guy. He’s amazing.'”

But the good time turned bad, as it often did with O.J., says Denise. “All hell broke loose when we came home that night,” as O.J. “flipped out” over seeing Nicole kiss a mutual male friend on the cheek at the game. “He had her upstairs in the bathroom crying. He said, ‘You embarrassed me.’”

The sisters say it was a preview of what would become years of verbal and physical abuse that Nicole suffered at the hands of O.J.. But still, throughout those years, he remained an important part of their family. "I called him Uncle O.J." says Tanya, the youngest Brown sibling. "I never knew they weren't happy."

Thus, the way the relationship and Nicole's murder was depicted through the lens of race during the murder trial has never sat well with Denise.

"I just thought it was really heartbreaking that they would have to go that route to win a case," she says of O.J.'s defense team. "It didn't have to be like that. It was just a game [to them], and it was a really sad game for our country."

O.J. was acquitted of the murders of Nicole and Goldman. However, in 1997, he was found liable for the killings after a civil suit brought by the victims’ families and was subsequently ordered to pay $33 million.

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