Grease & quiet?

O.J.'s ex sis-in-law: News Corp. tried to buy my silence in failed TV, book deal

The O.J. Simpson book fiasco took another shocking turn yesterday when his former sister-in-law claimed that Rupert Murdoch's deputies offered her family "millions of dollars" in "hush money."

Denise Brown concluded the money was intended to buy her family's silence on Simpson's print and TV deal with Murdoch's News Corp. in which Simpson was to expound on how he would have committed the 1994 slayings of Nicole Brown Simpson and Ron Goldman.

But the offer made to the Brown and Goldman families over the weekend - after criticism erupted over the book and TV deal - amounted to a hollow promise because it was contingent on the book and TV special turning a profit.

With advertisers balking at backing the TV show, stores threatening to keep the book off shelves and millions of dollars in expenses, any profits would have been iffy at best.

Simpson, much to the fury of the Browns and Goldmans, may get the last word on his scandalous tome titled "If I Did It." His attorney Yale Galanter told The News that Simpson is planning to break his silence and do "a couple of major interviews" to react to the book debacle.

Both the Brown and Goldman families turned down the money offer made by senior News Corp. executives, and on Monday, Murdoch pulled the plug on the entire project calling it "ill-considered."

"They wanted to offer us millions of dollars. Millions of dollars for, like, 'Oh, I'm sorry' money. But they were still going to air the show," Brown, 50, told NBC's "Today."

"We just thought, 'Oh my God.' What they're trying to do is trying to keep us quiet, trying to make this like hush money, trying to go around the civil verdict, giving us this money to keep our mouths shut."