Riccio

Something is screwy with this O.J. Simpson armed robbery case. This is from the NY Times online.

The two collectors and memorabilia dealers who accused Mr. Simpson and the other men are Alfred Beardsley of Glendale, Calif., and Bruce L. Fromong of North Las Vegas, Nev. They told the police on Thursday night that a group of men, including two with guns, entered Mr. Beardsley’s room at the Palace Station around 8 p.m. and left with items including photographs and books signed by Mr. Simpson, lithographs of the former San Francisco 49ers quarterback Joe Montana, and Mr. Beardsley’s cellphone.

Mr. Beardsley and Mr. Fromong told the police that the group had been directed by Mr. Simpson.

In his interview with The A.P., Mr. Simpson gave a different account. He said that he and some acquaintances left a cocktail party and went to Mr. Beardsley’s room, accompanied by Thomas Riccio, another dealer and auctioneer of sports memorabilia. He said Mr. Riccio had alerted him several weeks ago that Mr. Beardsley and Mr. Fromong were offering to sell items of his, and that Mr. Riccio had set up a meeting with the two men, supposedly on behalf of an interested buyer.

TMZ.Com, the web site that posted the audio recording today, said it was made by Mr. Riccio. It did not say how it obtained the recording. It described Mr. Beardsley as the object of Mr. Simpson’s evident ire.

In a brief interview today Mr. Riccio said TMZ paid him for the recording, but he declined to divulge the price.

So, this guy, Riccio, for some reason, felt compelled to alert O.J. that Beardsley and Fromong had his “stuff”. Why would Riccio feel the need to do this? Did he have some sense of moral obligation because he felt that O.J. was being wronged? That hardly seems likely. Riccio is the guy that was trying to sell the video of Anna Nicole Smith’s breast augmentation surgery; video that was taken without consent. He is a “celebrity memorabilia dealer”.

Why would Riccio set up a bogus meeting between O.J., Beardsley and Fromong and then, make sure that he recorded the whole thing? Who does something like that? I think that alone shows that he was not acting out of the goodness of his heart. Did Riccio have some premonition that the situation was going to blow up? Was he thinking, “O.J. will go in there, take the stuff by force then, get arrested and I will have audio of the whole thing that I can sell to TMZ”?

Is Riccio going through all of this just to be able to sell 38 seconds of audio to TMZ?

I still think that it is a strange coincidence that all of this goes down the night before the Goldmans and Beaufort Publishing released the book.

All of the publicity sells more books. All of the publicity does this as well; it makes O.J. memorabilia more valuable.

Here is one possible scenario. Riccio, knowing that the book is about to be released and knowing that Beardsley and Fromong are in possesion of the memorabilia, tips off O.J. on the premise that he, Riccio, will get a cut from the sale of the items and future memorabilia sales. As for recording the event, Riccio, by the nature of his “profession”, is an opportunist. He may be the kind of guy that keeps the recorder running , especially when a celebrity is involved because, any document may have value later.

All of that, of course, is speculation.

The ironic part is that Fred Goldman, who I have criticized repeatedly, comes out smelling like a rose. Not only is he selling a ton of books, the release of the book is now being treated favorably by the press. O.J.’s arrest seems to have legitimized Goldman’s decision to release it. Also, Simpson’s incarceration may be in some way related to the book release. In other words, the knowledge of the fact that Beardsley and Fromong were in possession of the memorabilia coming to light, Riccio’s interest and profit motive and O.J.’s sociopathic reaction may be a chain of events that was stimulated by the book release.

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Tags: Fred Goldman, O.J. Simpson, Thomas Riccio