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I'm Not Dancing Anymore
Terri lived with O. J. and Nicole years before their marriage. She witnessed firsthand the power struggles in the couple's intense relationship. She listened upstairs as they engaged in violent arguments. Yet when the murders took place years later, her entire family remained steadfast in its insistence that O. J. was innocent. She'd soon learn that what bound them together was loyalty, not certainty, and in the midst of it all, she was left with her own unanswered questions. Was her uncle really innocent? Or was her family simply blinded by love and loyalty? These were subjects no one in the Simpson family was allowed to discuss.
Now, for the first time, Terri Baker breaks her family's code of silence. She talks honestly and painfully about O. J.'s discomfort with his African American roots and his love affair with wealthy white America. She tells how it felt to live in the shadow of her famous uncle, while the Browns rode on the coattails of his fame. She describes the financial and emotional strains of two trials on her family, as they banded together to support a man who rarely supported them. Most movingly, she talks about her own inner conflicts as the struggle between truth and family loyalty drove her to alcoholism and severe depression.
Now, for the first time, Terri Baker breaks her family's code of silence. She talks honestly and painfully about O. J.'s discomfort with his African American roots and his love affair with wealthy white America. She tells how it felt to live in the shadow of her famous uncle, while the Browns rode on the coattails of his fame. She describes the financial and emotional strains of two trials on her family, as they banded together to support a man who rarely supported them. Most movingly, she talks about her own inner conflicts as the struggle between truth and family loyalty drove her to alcoholism and severe depression.
291 pages, Hardcover
First published October 1, 1997
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July 30, 2026
AN INSIGHTFUL BOOK FROM INSIDE THE SIMPSON FAMILY
Terri Baker is the daughter of O.J. Simpson’s older sister Shirley. She wrote in the first chapter of this 1997 book, “I was in the TV room at Uncle O.J.’s house, and today was the wake for his wife, Nicole Brown Simpson… By now Kato was beginning to stir… ‘Terri… What time do we leave?… Can I ride in the limo with you?’ ‘Sure. I guess,’ I mumbled… When he’d driven me home the night before to pick up my dress for the wake, my father had been immediately suspicious… as if I were thirteen instead of thirty. ‘We don’t know that guy. You shouldn’t be alone with him.’… ‘Can I ride in the limo with you?’ Kato asked me once again, plaintively. His car was parked … in the midst of the media sharks… This time my mother answered Kato’s question for me. ‘Oh no, no, the limo’s just for family.’… ‘Sorry,’ I whispered… he sighed and pushed open the front door… and ran the gauntlet to his little car as the press descended on him like a flock of vultures… Overhead were the helicopters, trailing us like we were escaped criminals… The wake was supposed to be limited to close friends and family. We weren’t quite sure where Kato fit into either category. As far as we were concerned, he was just a friend of Nicole’s.” (Pg. 3-7)
She recalls, “Probably the high point of Grandma’s life in the last 25 years was the time she got to do the TV commercial… showing Uncle O.J. racing through the airport. She got paid $20,000 for doing it, and that was a fortune for our family… I found out later that he kept part of the money himself since he’d made the deal. What did Uncle O.J. need with the extra money?” (Pg. 27-28)
She explains, “Uncle O.J. had set Lou Brown up in business… I couldn’t help but wonder how the Browns had made a living before Nicole moved in with Uncle O.J. … her whole family had apparently ‘moved in’ with her. And… I couldn’t help comparing the situation to Uncle O.J.’s relationship with my family. Until I broke the invisible barrier and invited myself down to stay with him, he’d been disconnected from his own family for years… since Nicole had come into his life… he didn’t need us. The Browns became his new family.” (Pg. 44-45)
She notes, "My parents never said a word about any of it, but for me, it was … uncomfortable … how much we’d been separated from his life… Somehow, around my uncle’s friends, we suddenly looked too ordinary, too heavy---too black. Not glamorous enough for his new family and friends.” (Pg. 53) Later, she adds, “our family had very little contact with Uncle O.J. During the late eighties and early nineties… I couldn’t help noticing, when he published his book ‘I Want to Tell You’ during the trial, that the people he constantly refers to as ‘his family’ are the Browns… Uncle O.J. and Nicole were so highly social, with a large group of friends… Most of the pictures show several dozen people lined up for the camera, most of the faces white. We weren’t included in these occasions.” (Pg. 67-68)
She recounts, “Bob Kardashian came out in front of the cameras at his house and read aloud what he described as Uncle O.J.’s suicide note… Uncle O.J. was thanking all the people who loved and supported him through the hard times… But nowhere in that damned letter… did I hear him mention anyone in his own family… I began to tremble with rage. How dare he… take his own life just five days after his children had lost their mother?… They need you. How can you be so selfish?… he was thanking Paula Barbieri, the woman whose main attraction was that she provided him with ‘incredible sex.’” (Pg. 121-122)
She reports, “on June 22, one of Nicole’s 911 calls was released to the media… I knew Nicole… was always calling the police… It had seemed to me at the time that she was just being melodramatic… I had never seen any evidence that Uncle O.J. had ever hurt her… But listening to that tape for the first time shook me up… the rage, the yelling, the cusswords thundering in the background… It frightened me; HE frightened me… The family, though, had a different perspective, one I gladly embraced… if she was so scared of him… why was she staying there in the house with him?… they reasoned, this was when Nicole was threatening to leave him. What better way to get a good settlement than to set him up… as a wife-beater? It was no secret that Nicole liked the celebrity lifestyle she enjoyed as his wife… This was the beginning of an ongoing process that took over our lives… the process of explaining, rationalizing, and defending every aspect of Uncle O.J.’s behavior… He had to defend his fragile self-image … even from himself. And, for better or worse, we helped him do it.” (Pg.143-144)
She asserts, “The worst one… was Denise Brown… I’d always thought Denise was jealous of Nicole and Uncle O.J. When Nicole and Denise were younger, Denise had been the glamorous one… But when her modeling career ended and her marriage fell apart, she was stuck living in her parents’… house with a young son… And when had Denise become such an expert on abuse?… If Denise were so concerned and knowledgeable, why hadn’t she ever tried to get Nicole away from my uncle?” (Pg. 192)
She notes, “A couple of things bothered me when Allan Park was testifying… about seeing someone who looked like Uncle O.J. crossing the yard… Uncle O.J. had always said, ‘Yeah, it was me. I was outside in my robe.’ … But it raised a question in my mind. Uncle O.J. had said that he was awakened by Alan Park’s phone call. So why was he walking around in his robe after that? Why would he say he was asleep?” (Pg. 200)
During the testimony of DNA expert Gary Sims, “This was the first we had heard of Ron Goldman’s blood being found in the Bronco. How could this have happened? … I couldn’t come up with any innocent explanation… Even if they did carry around a vial of Uncle O.J.’s blood… how would they have planted Ron’s? They didn’t carry his around. It didn’t make sense. At least it didn’t if Uncle O.J. was innocent.” (Pg. 213-214)
She acknowledges, “the fiber evidence … seemed pretty damaging… Where did those fibers come from? It was very likely for the defense that the prosecution had screwed up badly again… or the defense might have had a hard time explaining the fibers away. I asked Uncle O.J. about the fibers later. He didn’t have an answer.” (Pg. 218)
In the civil trial, “Allan Park was called to the stand… At 10:54 he’d seen a black man in dark clothing walk from the driveway to the front door… I’d known from the beginning that the man he’d seen was Uncle O.J. I also knew that the location of the Bronco that night was unusual. It was one of the things that had bothered me at the criminal trial.” (Pg. 276-277)
She observes, “Uncle O.J.’s testimony surprised me in more than one way… First he denied EVER hitting Nicole at all. In light of the pictures of Nicole’s battered face… I didn’t know how he could claim never to have hit her. I was obvious that he had inflicted the bruises on her face and body somehow… I could well believe that Nicole had hit him first. But to claim he’d never touched her in anger?… His testimony had so many holes in it, it was inevitable that people would question his sincerity.” (Pg. 278)
She continues, “[Prosecutor Daniel] Petrocelli… was trying to establish that Paula had called Uncle O.J. and left a message that she was breaking up with him. The prosecution theory was that that message had only added to Uncle O.J.’s anger on the night of the murder: first being pointedly ignored by Nicole after Sydney’s dance recital, and then being dumped by Paula right afterward… when pressed by Petrocelli, [Simpson] conceded that he’d probably made the call but had not heard the full message because Kato had come into the room and distracted him. Uncle O.J. … had lost touch with how incredible this sounded… Didn’t he realize that by not conceding on what appeared to be minor points, he jeopardized his credibility on the more important ones?” (Pg. 279)
She goes on, “Petrocelli moved on… Why did he park on Rockingham instead of Ashford? Uncle O.J. didn’t really have an answer… He asked him about the blood evidence next…. Could he explain how blood consistent with the victims’, and his own, got into his Bronco, his driveway, the foyer of his house, and into his bedroom, within hours of the murders? Uncle O.J. said he had no idea. Could he explain the three cuts and seven abrasions his own physician had photographed … after insisting that he only had one cut when he came back from Chicago?… I was relieved when Uncle O.J. finished testifying. Johnnie [Cochran] had been right not to put him on the stand during the criminal trial. I thought some of his responses had been hard to believe.” (Pg. 281)
She concludes, “As the verdicts were read, the Goldmans wept with joy. The Browns were less demonstrative. We filed out as quietly as we could… a Los Angeles Times photographer took our picture… We all looked defeated… For better or worse, the trials of the century—both of them---were finally over, and we had survived. I guess that’s all any of us can ask.” (Pg. 284, 286)
The perspectives of Simpson’s family were seldom heard during the trials. This book will be of great interest to anyone studying O.J. and the two trials.
Terri Baker is the daughter of O.J. Simpson’s older sister Shirley. She wrote in the first chapter of this 1997 book, “I was in the TV room at Uncle O.J.’s house, and today was the wake for his wife, Nicole Brown Simpson… By now Kato was beginning to stir… ‘Terri… What time do we leave?… Can I ride in the limo with you?’ ‘Sure. I guess,’ I mumbled… When he’d driven me home the night before to pick up my dress for the wake, my father had been immediately suspicious… as if I were thirteen instead of thirty. ‘We don’t know that guy. You shouldn’t be alone with him.’… ‘Can I ride in the limo with you?’ Kato asked me once again, plaintively. His car was parked … in the midst of the media sharks… This time my mother answered Kato’s question for me. ‘Oh no, no, the limo’s just for family.’… ‘Sorry,’ I whispered… he sighed and pushed open the front door… and ran the gauntlet to his little car as the press descended on him like a flock of vultures… Overhead were the helicopters, trailing us like we were escaped criminals… The wake was supposed to be limited to close friends and family. We weren’t quite sure where Kato fit into either category. As far as we were concerned, he was just a friend of Nicole’s.” (Pg. 3-7)
She recalls, “Probably the high point of Grandma’s life in the last 25 years was the time she got to do the TV commercial… showing Uncle O.J. racing through the airport. She got paid $20,000 for doing it, and that was a fortune for our family… I found out later that he kept part of the money himself since he’d made the deal. What did Uncle O.J. need with the extra money?” (Pg. 27-28)
She explains, “Uncle O.J. had set Lou Brown up in business… I couldn’t help but wonder how the Browns had made a living before Nicole moved in with Uncle O.J. … her whole family had apparently ‘moved in’ with her. And… I couldn’t help comparing the situation to Uncle O.J.’s relationship with my family. Until I broke the invisible barrier and invited myself down to stay with him, he’d been disconnected from his own family for years… since Nicole had come into his life… he didn’t need us. The Browns became his new family.” (Pg. 44-45)
She notes, "My parents never said a word about any of it, but for me, it was … uncomfortable … how much we’d been separated from his life… Somehow, around my uncle’s friends, we suddenly looked too ordinary, too heavy---too black. Not glamorous enough for his new family and friends.” (Pg. 53) Later, she adds, “our family had very little contact with Uncle O.J. During the late eighties and early nineties… I couldn’t help noticing, when he published his book ‘I Want to Tell You’ during the trial, that the people he constantly refers to as ‘his family’ are the Browns… Uncle O.J. and Nicole were so highly social, with a large group of friends… Most of the pictures show several dozen people lined up for the camera, most of the faces white. We weren’t included in these occasions.” (Pg. 67-68)
She recounts, “Bob Kardashian came out in front of the cameras at his house and read aloud what he described as Uncle O.J.’s suicide note… Uncle O.J. was thanking all the people who loved and supported him through the hard times… But nowhere in that damned letter… did I hear him mention anyone in his own family… I began to tremble with rage. How dare he… take his own life just five days after his children had lost their mother?… They need you. How can you be so selfish?… he was thanking Paula Barbieri, the woman whose main attraction was that she provided him with ‘incredible sex.’” (Pg. 121-122)
She reports, “on June 22, one of Nicole’s 911 calls was released to the media… I knew Nicole… was always calling the police… It had seemed to me at the time that she was just being melodramatic… I had never seen any evidence that Uncle O.J. had ever hurt her… But listening to that tape for the first time shook me up… the rage, the yelling, the cusswords thundering in the background… It frightened me; HE frightened me… The family, though, had a different perspective, one I gladly embraced… if she was so scared of him… why was she staying there in the house with him?… they reasoned, this was when Nicole was threatening to leave him. What better way to get a good settlement than to set him up… as a wife-beater? It was no secret that Nicole liked the celebrity lifestyle she enjoyed as his wife… This was the beginning of an ongoing process that took over our lives… the process of explaining, rationalizing, and defending every aspect of Uncle O.J.’s behavior… He had to defend his fragile self-image … even from himself. And, for better or worse, we helped him do it.” (Pg.143-144)
She asserts, “The worst one… was Denise Brown… I’d always thought Denise was jealous of Nicole and Uncle O.J. When Nicole and Denise were younger, Denise had been the glamorous one… But when her modeling career ended and her marriage fell apart, she was stuck living in her parents’… house with a young son… And when had Denise become such an expert on abuse?… If Denise were so concerned and knowledgeable, why hadn’t she ever tried to get Nicole away from my uncle?” (Pg. 192)
She notes, “A couple of things bothered me when Allan Park was testifying… about seeing someone who looked like Uncle O.J. crossing the yard… Uncle O.J. had always said, ‘Yeah, it was me. I was outside in my robe.’ … But it raised a question in my mind. Uncle O.J. had said that he was awakened by Alan Park’s phone call. So why was he walking around in his robe after that? Why would he say he was asleep?” (Pg. 200)
During the testimony of DNA expert Gary Sims, “This was the first we had heard of Ron Goldman’s blood being found in the Bronco. How could this have happened? … I couldn’t come up with any innocent explanation… Even if they did carry around a vial of Uncle O.J.’s blood… how would they have planted Ron’s? They didn’t carry his around. It didn’t make sense. At least it didn’t if Uncle O.J. was innocent.” (Pg. 213-214)
She acknowledges, “the fiber evidence … seemed pretty damaging… Where did those fibers come from? It was very likely for the defense that the prosecution had screwed up badly again… or the defense might have had a hard time explaining the fibers away. I asked Uncle O.J. about the fibers later. He didn’t have an answer.” (Pg. 218)
In the civil trial, “Allan Park was called to the stand… At 10:54 he’d seen a black man in dark clothing walk from the driveway to the front door… I’d known from the beginning that the man he’d seen was Uncle O.J. I also knew that the location of the Bronco that night was unusual. It was one of the things that had bothered me at the criminal trial.” (Pg. 276-277)
She observes, “Uncle O.J.’s testimony surprised me in more than one way… First he denied EVER hitting Nicole at all. In light of the pictures of Nicole’s battered face… I didn’t know how he could claim never to have hit her. I was obvious that he had inflicted the bruises on her face and body somehow… I could well believe that Nicole had hit him first. But to claim he’d never touched her in anger?… His testimony had so many holes in it, it was inevitable that people would question his sincerity.” (Pg. 278)
She continues, “[Prosecutor Daniel] Petrocelli… was trying to establish that Paula had called Uncle O.J. and left a message that she was breaking up with him. The prosecution theory was that that message had only added to Uncle O.J.’s anger on the night of the murder: first being pointedly ignored by Nicole after Sydney’s dance recital, and then being dumped by Paula right afterward… when pressed by Petrocelli, [Simpson] conceded that he’d probably made the call but had not heard the full message because Kato had come into the room and distracted him. Uncle O.J. … had lost touch with how incredible this sounded… Didn’t he realize that by not conceding on what appeared to be minor points, he jeopardized his credibility on the more important ones?” (Pg. 279)
She goes on, “Petrocelli moved on… Why did he park on Rockingham instead of Ashford? Uncle O.J. didn’t really have an answer… He asked him about the blood evidence next…. Could he explain how blood consistent with the victims’, and his own, got into his Bronco, his driveway, the foyer of his house, and into his bedroom, within hours of the murders? Uncle O.J. said he had no idea. Could he explain the three cuts and seven abrasions his own physician had photographed … after insisting that he only had one cut when he came back from Chicago?… I was relieved when Uncle O.J. finished testifying. Johnnie [Cochran] had been right not to put him on the stand during the criminal trial. I thought some of his responses had been hard to believe.” (Pg. 281)
She concludes, “As the verdicts were read, the Goldmans wept with joy. The Browns were less demonstrative. We filed out as quietly as we could… a Los Angeles Times photographer took our picture… We all looked defeated… For better or worse, the trials of the century—both of them---were finally over, and we had survived. I guess that’s all any of us can ask.” (Pg. 284, 286)
The perspectives of Simpson’s family were seldom heard during the trials. This book will be of great interest to anyone studying O.J. and the two trials.
February 26, 2023
Wowwww. Wow is what comes to mind. I'm glad she chose to write this book. To tell her side as she remembers it. She isn't one-sided in my opinion. Humans constantly make the decision to believe what they want to believe. People can choose to believe her account or to not to. I hope Terri found the peace she was searching for. As my own personal opinion, I feel she may still struggle with all of this today. She took a big leap when writing this book, she needed to.
July 26, 2019
This was a story I was interested in. Terri shared so much about those trying days, weeks and months in her life. This was en excellent book, in my opinion.
November 1, 2020
I still read the entire book... the overall story is fascinating, which overcomes the poor writing.
March 10, 2021
Got into an O.J. reading kick. Another VP. Felt gossipy, but very fast read. I think I finished it in a few hours!
September 19, 2007
what ever!!!!!!
Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews