Ultimatum to OJ: Confess and it won't cost you a cent

Reigniting the OJ Simpson drama just as it was dropping off the nation's front pages, the father of murdered waiter Ronald Goldman offered to drop all financial claims against Simpson yesterday in exchange for a public confession.

"All I ever wanted was justice," said Fred Goldman, who, together with his ex-wife, won $21m (pounds 13m) damages against Simpson in a civil law suit which concluded earlier this week. "It's never been an issue about money," Mr Goldman said yesterday as he insisted he did not want to "play games".

Mr Goldman's extraordinary offer promised to raise the public pressure on Simpson since a jury unanimously found him liable in the killings of his ex-wife, Nicole Brown Simpson, and of Ron Goldman. Almost all the jurors, in interviews since the trial, have said they considered Simpson not just technically responsible for the killings, but "100 per cent" guilty of murder, with the evidence against him far beyond a "reasonable doubt".

"Finding OJ Simpson liable of the murders and acting with oppression and malice was one of the easiest decisions I have ever had to make," said juror Laura Fast-Khazaee, 27, after the trial. The jurors' comments only added to the widespread public perception that Simpson got away with a grisly double murder. He has been filmed joking and laughing on the golf course this week, and reportedly watched the final verdicts in a club bar with his golfing buddies. His lawyers did not return calls for comment yesterday.

"If he wanted to sign a confession with all the details of his crime and broadcast it all over the country and publish it all over the nation," Mr Goldman said, "I would drop the judgment."

Mr Goldman, the driving force behind the civil suit against Simpson, and his most vociferous public accuser, raised the idea in an interview with a Dallas-based Christian radio station. He said he had borrowed it from a talk show in Los Angeles, where the right-wing radio hosts have aimed a barrage of attacks on Simpson. Asked if it was likely to happen, he said, "easy to say, easy to do, never going to happen. This person hasn't taken responsibility for any of his actions through his lifetime".