Christine Prody OJ Simpson NEWS

September 22, 2007 — FOR a guy who owes $33 million, O.J. Simpson ain’t doing that bad. He lives in a five-bedroom ranch with the obligatory in-ground pool surrounded by 12-foot-high hedges on a lush two acres.

The house is in the neighborhood of Kendall, one of Miami’s ritziest.

OK, it’s not his old pad in Brentwood, but the old Juice is hardly living on food stamps.

His girlfriend, Christie Prody, drives him around in an elegant, cream Mitsubishi convertible.

This morning, he put up posters on his driveway palm trees reading: “Private property. No trespassers.”

Life goes on - dinner at the Prime 112, the Forge Steak House and the recently opened DeVito’s in South Beach.

But The Office, promoted by Tommy Pouch, formally of Bensonhurst, Brooklyn, doesn’t lay out the welcome mat for Simpson.

“We don’t let him in this club,” Pouch said.

Like the bad old days in Brentwood, his new place has suddenly become the mecca for every wacko this side of the Mason-Dixon line.

But, again, life goes on.

Thirty-three million clams in the hole, and he lives better than you and I ever will.

Could you imagine owing $33 million to the boys downtown? That would get you a studio apartment in Campbell’s funeral home.

Christine Prody, O.J. Simpson’s girlfriend, right, arrives at the airport in Fort Lauderdale, Fla., Thursday, Sept. 20, 2007.

They sat in their lawn chairs, waiting.

All day. Since first thing in the morning, some said.

Nothing. Nada. Zip. Not a glimpse of The Juice, who arrived at his Kendall home after midnight Thursday following a four-hour flight from Las Vegas.

Sure, there were the rumors. O.J. had checked into the Seminole Hard Rock. He was playing a round of golf. He had slipped out of his house and was having lunch at a Kendall restaurant.

But no O.J. sightings at Simpson’s $1 million Kendall spread — to the chagrin of waiting reporters.

There was, however, the long-time girlfriend. As Christie Prody drove down the driveway — leaving, returning, leaving, returning — she always smiled into the cameras and the lights to let them know O.J. was just fine.

”People need to know that he hasn’t done anything wrong,” Prody added, before someone in the house yelled for the writers and photographers to leave her alone.

Outside O.J.’s home were journalists from Entertainment Tonight, Fox News, Associated Press, local television stations, paparazzi photographers and one high school TV station.

Some said they’d been entrenched since 8 a.m.; all said they didn’t know how long they would stay.

They are there, of course, to cover Simpson, the former football star charged with kidnapping, robbery with use of a deadly weapon, burglary while in possession of a deadly weapon, coercion with use of a deadly weapon, assault with a deadly weapon, conspiracy to commit kidnapping, conspiracy to commit robbery and conspiracy to commit a crime. He has not entered a plea.

The media crush was not fun for neighbors.

On the two-lane road past his house, traffic slowed to a crawl. A pickup truck and a minivan had a fender bender just at rush hour.

Someone posted ”No Trespassing” signs at the driveway’s entrance.

No one left.

O.J. Simpson had just been found not guilty of the murders of his ex-wife, Nicole, and her acquaintance, Ron Goldman, when a 20-year-old tourist from Minnesota stopped to see his home in Brentwood, Calif.

Christie Prody got more than she bargained for that day. She met the former star NFL running back turned actor, and has been with him ever since.

She’s the tall blonde whom many believe looks a lot like Nicole Brown Simpson, NBC’s Kerry Sanders reported for TODAY on Thursday.

Although she now shies away from the cameras and microphones that follow Simpson everywhere, she remains loyal to him. She even showed up in Las Vegas this week to attend a court hearing related to the new kidnapping and conspiracy charges Simpson faces in connection with a confrontation with sports memorabilia dealers in a casino hotel room.

But who is Prody?

“I consider her shy, soft-spoken and kind,” her friend, Linda Townsend, who recently spent time with Prody in Miami, said.

Her uncle, Steve Bellmore, told NBC she was a shy girl from St. Anthony, a small town in Minnesota, who went to the University of Minnesota but dropped out before her senior year and became a cocktail waitress.

“She’s probably got a bad rap because of the situation and the relationship she’s in,” he told NBC.

She’s 32 now — Simpson is 60 — and although there have been ups and downs, police reports and a breakup, she’s still with Simpson. When he was arrested in Las Vegas on multiple counts including armed robbery and kidnapping in connection with a memorabilia deal gone bad, she visited him in jail and told people she was O.J.’s girlfriend.

For the past seven years, Sanders reported, she’s been living with him in a $1.1-million four-bedroom home with an outdoor basketball court and a big in-ground pool in the Kendall section of Miami. Though they’ve never been engaged, they live together as if they were married.

She cooks, does the housework, runs the home and has cared for Simpson’s two children by Nicole, Sydney, 21, and Justin, 19.

Early on in their relationship, Prody seemed to feed off the excitement and attention that came with being Simpson’s girlfriend. But the relationship has been rocky at times.

Four years after they became a couple, she split up with him and sold a story about their life together to “The National Enquirer.” In it, she said that Simpson confessed to her that he did murder Goldman and his ex-wife.

Despite that, they were soon together again, a trail of police reports documenting some of the bumps in the road. Among them is a 1999 call Simpson made to 911 in which he said, “She’s been doing drugs for two days … I’m trying to get her to leave her house to go into rehab right now.”

A year later, police responded to a call about a disturbance at a Miami hotel involving the couple. Simpson said that Prody slapped and kicked him, but he did not press charges. A year later, she accused him of breaking into her home, but she didn’t press charges. And in 2001, a neighbor who had gone to the Simpson residence to help Prody jump-start her car called police to say she attacked him. No charges were filed in that case, either.

Her friends and family say that’s all in the past, and Prody now is a homebody.

Why Simpson?
As to why anyone would want to get involved with a notorious person like Simpson, Dr. Drew Pinsky, a relationship expert and host of the “Loveline” radio show, told TODAY co-host Meredith Vieira that it usually goes back to childhood and mirrors a problematic relationship with a parent.

“The reality is these things get wired into us early,” he said. The more difficult the relationship becomes, the more attached the person becomes, he added.

Clint Van Zandt, a former FBI profiler and hostage negotiator, said women can be attracted to “bad boys” because such people are exciting.

“They’re high-energy, they’re self-confident, they demand respect and they get it,” he said of such men. “When she first started dating him at 20 years old, this was exciting, this was Superman.”

As the years have gone by and Simpson has aged, the relationship has changed, Van Zandt told Vieira. “This is someone now who is almost like a caretaker of O.J.,” he observed.

Whatever people think of Simpson, they shouldn’t judge Prody harshly, said Bellmore, her uncle.

“Christie’s a good kid,” he said. “I mean, what does she have to gain from this? She doesn’t look for the fame, she isn’t in the spotlight and obviously there isn’t a lot of money there, I would assume.

“She’s not married to the guy, so I mean what is the motive?” Bellmore said. “You tell me.”

Lawyers for the family of Ron Goldman, one of OJ Simpson’s alleged victims, has announced that they are investigating claims that the disgraced sports star has hidden assets in offshore bank accounts to stop the Goldmans from accessing the money.

The inquiries follow allegations by one of the men allegedly robbed at gunpoint by Simpson in Las Vegas last week that he once helped the former American footballer set up offshore bank accounts.

Bruce Fromong, one of the two memorabilia collectors Simpson is accused of stealing from, rants in an audiotape recording reportedly made one hour after the incident: “Nobody puts a gun in my face. I stood up for [him] while he was in jail. I stood up for him in the press. I stood up for him… on the stand. I helped him set up his offshore accounts.”

The recording was released by TMZ.com, an entertainment news website.

Tom Riccio, the memorabilia dealer said to have set up the meeting between Simpson and the men, has also claimed that Mr Fromong told police investigating the theft that he helped Simpson hide his money in the Caribbean.

A spokesman for Las Vegas police, who arrested Simpson on Sunday, refused to comment on the investigation.

Mr Fromong suffered a serious heart attack after the incident and is recovering in a Los Angeles hospital.

The Goldman family has been unsuccessfully trying to access the former star’s assets since a judge ordered him to pay $33.5 million in a wrongful death case.

They have already launched an attempt to claim the items of sport memorabilia Simpson allegedly stole in last week’s incident to help satisfy the judgment.

The haul is estimated to have been worth $80,000 to $100,000. A judge has so far agreed the family can collect one of the items, Simpson’s gold Rolex Submariner watch, valued between $5,000 and $10,000.

There was no comment from Simpson who has been released on bail and has returned to his home in Florida.

Last November, Yale Galanter, his lawyer, robustly denied claims that his client had moved money offshore.

As O.J. Simpson dealt with the fallout from his arrest on multiple charges as he traveled back to his Miami home Wednesday, his longtime girlfriend remained committed to him and by his side.

An ABC producer on the flight with Simpson says girlfriend Christie Prody sat alongside him as he flew back to Florida, reading the book “You’ve Been Warned,” a murder mystery by James Patterson and Howard Roughan. Simpson smiled as passengers took pictures; he slept during most of the flight.

Prody’s profile has risen in light of Simpson’s arrest. She was an emotional presence in the Las Vegas courtroom Wednesday, where Simpson was arraigned, alternately smiling and appearing to fight back tears.

The Couple’s Beginnings

Prody is an integral part of Simpson’s inner circle.

“Christie is an extremely important part of O.J.’s life,” said Simpson’s defense attorney Yale Galanter.

The two met in 1995, after his acquittal on murder charges. At the time Prody was a 19-year-old cocktail waitress; the former beautician is said by many to bear a striking resemblance to Simpson’s slain ex-wife, Nicole Brown Simpson.

In the past, Prody often has defended Simpson’s reputation.

“Marcia Clark is completely wrong about her two sides of this man because there [are] no two O.J. Simpsons,” Prody said during an “Inside Edition” interview in 2000. “The people that know him, know that there is one guy, one good guy.”

Roller-Coaster Relationship

Despite Prody’s support of Simpson, their relationship has not always been smooth during their more than decade-long relationship.

In October 1999, a 911 phone call documented one of their well-publicized blows, when Simpson called from Prody’s Miami apartment saying a girl needed help.

“We have a problem here. I’m trying to get a girl to go to rehab,” Simpson told a 911 operator. “She’s been doing drugs for two days … ”

Though Simpson later denied the girl he was talking about was his girlfriend, many suspected differently.

Another rift reportedly emerged when Prody sold an interview to the National Enquirer purportedly for $50,000. In the interview, she said that Simpson had confessed to the murders of his ex-wife and her friend Ron Goldman.

Despite the fact that they never lived together, the couple have had several domestic disturbances.

One incident included a violent argument at a Miami hotel. Police reports said Prody allegedly slapped and kicked Simpson.

“The security person came with police,” Simpson said during a TV interview. “They asked me, ‘Mr. Simpson were you attacked or something?’ [I said,] ‘No, the girl was frustrated, but look I’m not making any report. I’m not making any complaint.’”

In another incident, Prody accused Simpson of breaking into her home and erasing a message on her answering machine. In total, police were called four times, but no charges were filed.

Average Couple

Despite the couple’s well-documented ups and downs, Prody’s uncle said the two are a good couple.

“[They are] just like any other couple, except for the fame that he draws to the situation,” said Steve Bellmore.