Sean Smith - Kim Kardashian

He married Denice in May 1989, just before starting work on the sequel Gone in 60 Seconds 2 . She was to be one of the stars, while he would again write, direct and perform most of the stunts. He had already bought 400 cars to be sacrificed in an orgy of vehicle destruction. He was preparing for a stunt during filming near Buffalo, New York, when a telegraph pole snapped and fell on him, killing him instantly. They had been married for three months.

Denice met Robert Kardashian through mutual Armenian connections, and they helped each other at a difficult time in their personal lives. Her late husband’s considerable fortune was tied up in probate for many years and she went to Robert for legal advice. She wasn’t the super-rich widow many might have assumed she was – at least not then. She had a traditional Christian upbringing and the couple shared a strong religious connection.

While relations had improved a little with his ex-wife, it wasn’t a case of coffee mornings and trips to the beach together. It was awkward, especially if Bruce was around. When Robert went to their house to pick up the children, the two youngest, Khloé and Robert Jr, would be waiting outside. He would then honk the horn, which was the signal for Kourtney and Kim to run out of the house to join them.

The journey back to Encino took no more than 30 minutes. The new house was on Mandalay Drive, in a very quiet neighbourhood with manicured lawns and his and her luxury limousines in the driveway. While it didn’t have the extreme privacy of a gated community, the residents kept to themselves and tended to live in the same house for many years. It was very comfortable, but you were only likely to speak to your neighbours if you met them while you were collecting your letters from the mailbox.

Robert suggested that Kourtney and Kim might like to spend more time at his house, as the peaceful surroundings might be better suited to the serious study he wanted for his daughters. Kourtney was particularly keen, as she was still reluctant to accept Bruce. Kim wanted to stay close to her sister, and both girls enjoyed Denice’s company.

The new house was just a short 10-minute drive from Uncle O. J.’s mansion in Brentwood, but Robert had seen his old friend only twice in two years. O. J. put in an appearance at a surprise fiftieth birthday that Denice had thrown for Robert in February 1994, and gave him an autographed football jersey. They also bumped into each other by accident in Palisades Park in Santa Monica in May, when they were both playing with their children. Robert was throwing a baseball with his son, while O. J. was helping his daughter Sydney practice her basketball skills. The two children knew each other well and were happy to pass the time together while the two men chatted on the grass about their troubles with women.

Their mutual business interests had dwindled, mainly through lack of success. In the 1980s, O. J. had joined Robert in a venture called Concert Cinema, which screened music videos in cinemas before the main feature. It was early days for MTV, but demonstrated how Robert thought ahead. In this case, what was clearly a good idea proved too expensive to run, and after a year they closed the business without making a profit.

The blossoming friendship between Kris and Nicole had made it difficult for the two men to remain buddies. O. J. and Nicole had struggled with marital problems, which culminated in their divorce in 1992, after seven years of marriage and two children together. Nobody knew that their strife included domestic violence.

Since his divorce from Kris, Robert’s social circle had inevitably changed. O. J. was more likely to bump into Bruce Jenner on the celebrity circuit, although, as a football hero and movie star, O. J. was still far more famous than the former Olympic champion. Surprisingly, Robert didn’t even know that Nicole was living in a condo in Bundy Drive, Brentwood.

The morning of 13 June 1994 started like any other for Robert Kardashian. As he always did, he said his prayers and then worked out for 30 minutes before starting work in his large office in the house. He no longer kept any business premises. Just after 10 a.m., the phone rang. It was Shelli Azoff, buzzing with the story that Nicole had been killed. She had just found out about it at the hairdresser’s, so the whole world, except Robert, had heard the bombshell news. He phoned Kris and discovered it was true. His ex-wife had been due to lunch with her friend that very day.

Without being asked, Robert rallied round his friend of 23 years. He invited O. J. to stay in his home to escape the media storm that inevitably exploded around the murder. It transpired that Nicole had suffered horrendous stabbing injuries, including one violent open wound that exposed the larynx and spinal chord. A local waiter and aspiring actor called Ron Goldman was also found dead outside the home on Bundy.

Four days after the murders, Robert had to stop his friend from killing himself, when he found O. J. in the bedroom with a gun. He told him, ‘You can’t. This is my daughter’s bedroom.’ Both Kourtney and Kim were staying in the house, but neither registered the magnitude of what was going on.

A warrant was issued for O. J.’s arrest and his chief lawyer, Robert Shapiro, was told his client needed to turn himself in at a police station. Shapiro had co-opted Robert on to the team, realising that Bobby, as O. J. still called him, had a special relationship with Simpson and would be useful to him. It also meant that they would now be protected by attorney–client privilege. Robert would need to reactivate his law licence, which he had allowed to lapse.

He was still concerned that his friend was going to end his life after O. J. disappeared from his house when he was supposed to be leaving for the station. He had apparently made a run for it in a white Ford Bronco driven by his buddy Al Cowlings. It became the most famous and bizarre slow-speed car chase in history, as a flotilla of police vehicles, with more than 20 helicopters soaring overheard, followed them down Interstate 405 at 35 miles an hour. The police didn’t want to intercept the 4 x 4 because O. J., who was lying low on the back seat, reportedly had a gun and they wanted to avoid a violent end. Thousands lined the route and stood on overpasses to cheer him. Eventually, after 90 minutes, he gave himself up outside his Rockingham home. Millions watched on television, mesmerized by what they were seeing. It was described by one lawyer as ‘the day Los Angeles stopped’.

Meanwhile, Robert was in front of the TV cameras for the very first time, reading a handwritten document that O. J. had left at the house. It was his suicide note to the world. Robert, in his steady deep voice, read the letter in front of more than 100 members of the media: ‘… Don’t feel sorry for me. I’ve had a great life, made great friends. Please think of the real O. J. and not this lost person. Thank you for making my life special …’

This was the exact moment when life changed for the Kardashians. Now the media were shouting out and asking Robert how he spelled his surname. They mostly got it wrong. Kim and her siblings became the children of the famous lawyer Robert Kardashian. He would sit beside O. J. Simpson throughout the ‘trial of the century’. O. J.’s confidante and erstwhile manager, Norman Pardo, observed drily, ‘The Kardashians would be nothing without O. J. Simpson.’

Incredibly, 10 weeks after the grisly killing of Nicole Brown Simpson, Kim’s life was rocked by another violent murder, which affected her just as deeply at the time.

All the Kardashian children grew up with the music of Michael Jackson blaring out from the sound system at the parties and barbecues their parents had. Robert Kardashian liked doo-wop, but this failed to impress his offspring. Kim enjoyed the music of all the Jacksons, but Janet Jackson was definitely her favourite in her youth. It was the next generation of the famous family with whom she came into contact, however, simply by moving in the same circles in Beverly Hills.