Simpson Team Seeks Access to Police File on Unsolved Slaying in Hollywood

In their effort to show that O.J. Simpson is not a killer, his defense lawyers want to look at an unsolved murder that has similarities to the slayings of Nicole Brown Simpson and Ronald Lyle Goldman.

The victim in that case was Brett Cantor, a popular young underground music executive found dead July 30, 1993, at his home in Hollywood with his throat slashed and his body punctured with knife wounds.

Sources familiar with that case said there are also a number of possible links between Cantor and the two people Simpson is accused of killing. Simpson’s ex-wife frequented a nightclub for which Cantor did music promotions and Goldman once worked there part time, the sources said.

Simpson’s lawyers want to look at the so-called “murder book,” or the Los Angeles Police Department investigative file, in the Cantor case.

On Wednesday, Superior Court Judge Lance A. Ito, after listening to the defense lawyers tell him privately why the Cantor case might be relevant, agreed to review the file himself to determine if the defense should be given access.

“Is there a link” between the two cases? said one defense source, after Ito made that decision. “We don’t know. But there could be.”