Brett Cantor

Edelson could not bring himself to enter Dragonfly after Cantor's death, and sold his interest shortly afterwards. "Being there felt wrong, and it still does today" he told Los Angeles magazine in 2012.[8] Cliff Cantor took over his brother's share and ran the club afterwards.[10]

Almost a year later, the bodies of Nicole Brown Simpson, former wife of American football player and actor O. J. Simpson, and Ronald Goldman, a waiter, were found dead with similar injuries at Brown's home in Brentwood. O.J. Simpson was arrested and charged with two counts of murder but later acquitted at trial.[11]

In September 1994, Simpson's lawyers moved to have Judge Lance Ito allow them to review the LAPD's file on the Cantor homicide. Like Cantor, Nicole and Goldman had been stabbed predominantly in the upper body, their throats severely cut.[12] Goldman's throat, in particular, had been cut by someone reaching from behind him, starting on the left side and moving upward to the right across the neck, similar to the wound on Cantor. According to the coroner, the killer of Nicole and Goldman had also used a long thin blade, much like the one that had been used on Cantor.[5]

Ito granted the motion three weeks later,[4] ruling that the material was "discoverable under Brady",[6] referring to the 1963 U.S. Supreme Court decision that requires prosecutors to turn over any potentially exculpatory evidence their investigations uncover to the defense.[13] The Simpson defense team also noted that the similarity of the killings themselves was not the only connection between the three murders.[12] Goldman had once worked at Dragonfly as a waiter, where he was seen together with Cantor by other employees, and Nicole had often gone there with her friends to dance, raising the possibility that either or both were acquainted with Cantor.[5][6][14]

After the Simpson-Goldman murders, detectives questioned Steve Edelson about possible connections. Later, a tabloid ran a story suggesting that Edelson was behind all three slayings. He denied the claims, saying "the whole thing was ridiculous ... At the time there were some bad feelings in Hollywood about me."[8]

Simpson's defense, which admitted at the time it requested the files that it was not sure there was a connection, never brought the Cantor killing into evidence. Simpson was subsequently acquitted in October 1995. After the trial, author Joseph Bosco followed up on the Cantor homicide in his book A Problem of Evidence. He reported that the Cantor family had set up a tip hotline for information about Brett's death, but had it directed to them rather than the LAPD, and only shared one tip they received, which did not produce any useful leads. Cantor's family has publicly dismissed any connection between Cantor's death and the Simpson case; privately, Bosco wrote, the wife of Brett's other brother Matt, told him she believed there was a connection between the cases.[6]

The LAPD detectives assigned to the Cantor case at the time Bosco inquired about it also denied any connection.[6] Dallas-based author and private investigator William Dear likewise asserted in his 2014 book O.J. Simpson Is Innocent And I Can Prove It that Cantor was a diversion by the Simpson defense to protect Simpson's son Jason. Bosco stated that Cantor was under investigation by the FBI for possible involvement in the drug trade at the time of his death, and one of Jason's former girlfriends told Bosco that investigators found $130,000 in cash in a safe in Cantor's office after he was killed.[15]