Sue Hartigan <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - A lawyer who convinced a civil jury O.J. Simpson was responsible for the murders of his ex-wife and a friend said Tuesday he believes an accomplice of the former football star cleaned up after the killings. In an interview with TV's "Dateline NBC," Daniel Petrocelli said he is certain Simpson was driven into a murderous rage by his ex-wife's alleged affair with another football star. "I got consumed in trying to figure out why did O.J. Simpson kill Nicole?" Petrocelli said in an interview aired by the network Tuesday night. "That just haunted me." He said he asked Simpson's friends why the man would seemingly fly into a rage over his ex-wife Nicole Brown Simpson, murdered in June 1994 along with a friend, Ronald Goldman. Simpson was acquitted of their murders by a criminal jury in October 1995, but he was sued in civil court by the victims' families. A civil trial last year found him responsible for the murders and ordered Simpson to pay millions of dollars in damages. "Every time I spoke to witnesses, especially witnesses close to Simpson, it always came back to Marcus Allen," Petrocelli said in the NBC interview -- his first since the civil trial in which he represented the Goldman family. Allen, a Heisman Trophy-winning running back, like Simpson, at the same school, the University of Southern California, played for the National Football League's Oakland Raiders and recently retired from the Kansas City Chiefs. Asked if his ex-wife's alleged affair with Allen was "the last straw" for Simpson, Petrocelli said: "I believe that that was what made Simpson snap. "A few witnesses told me that Nicole had admitted that she was seeing Marcus again at the very end when she broke up with Simpson right before her murder," said the lawyer, whose book "Triumph of Justice: The Final Judgment on the Simpson Saga" was published Tuesday. In the interview, Petrocelli named three people close to Simpson whom he said he believes might have been accessories after the fact of the murders, but he provided no evidence to implicate them and admitted he did not know if they were. Petrocelli said the alarm system at Simpson's estate was not activated when police arrived the morning after the murders, even though house guest Brian "Kato" Kaelin testified he set it the night before. Also, the lawyer said, there was evidence that someone had done a load of laundry in Simpson's house that morning. Asked by Phillips if he was suggesting someone went to Simpson's house after the murders to clean up, Petrocelli replied: "That's the only way to explain the evidence that we have in the case. "I don't know who did it, but somebody did it." Challenged that this was only speculation, Petrocelli replied: "The evidence speaks for itself." -- Two rules in life: 1. Don't tell people everything you know. 2. Subscribe/Unsubscribe, email: [EMAIL PROTECTED] In the body of the message enter: subscribe/unsubscribe law-issues
