In 1995, O.J. Simpson pleaded not guilty to murdering his ex-wife, Nicole Brown Simpson, and her friend Ronald Goldman. He was acquitted by a jury. But a little more than a decade later, he more or less confessed to the crimes.
Mr. Simpson did so in a bizarre 2007 book, titled “If I Did It: Confessions of the Killer,” that was purchased for publication by ReganBooks, an imprint of HarperCollins, run by the magnate Judith Regan.
The parent company for ReganBooks and HarperCollins was News Corp, whose chairman, Rupert Murdoch, had been one of Ms. Regan’s biggest supporters.
Amid a sea of more genteel publishers, she published controversial (and often best-selling) memoirs by authors including the shock jock Howard Stern, the porn star Jenna Jameson, and the steroid-taking baseball player Jose Canseco. (Mr. Canseco’s memoir was called “Juiced: Wild Times, Rampant ’Roids, Smash Hits and How Baseball Got Big.”)
During negotiations for “If I Did It,” Mr. Simpson agreed to conduct one television interview with a journalist in order to promote the book. He would describe, in hypothetical terms, what might have transpired on the night of June 12, 1994, when Ms. Brown Simpson and Mr. Goldman were found outside her home in West Los Angeles, stabbed to death.
Mr. Simpson finished “If I Did It” with the help of a ghostwriter, but after a public outcry, the book was shelved, and the woman who had agreed to publish it lost her job.
