Times Insider

He Told Us About an O.J. Accomplice. Then He Said He’d Lied. What Next?

A source said his brother had been with O.J. Simpson the night of the murders in 1994. But when we refused to pay, he retracted his story.

It was the kind of text message that every reporter dreads receiving: An important source did not want to talk further unless I paid him for the privilege.

“if you’re willing to pay me send me an offer and I’ll think about it,” Sam Ippolito messaged me in June.

A few months prior, Mr. Ippolito had confided to me, on the record, that his deceased brother Joey had been with O.J. Simpson on the night of the 1994 murders for which Mr. Simpson had been charged and acquitted. Sam Ippolito knew this, he said, because the brothers had been staying together in the same West Hollywood, Calif., apartment at the time.

We were discussing a plan to publish his account, along with other details, when I went back to Sam to vet his story a bit more.…