The case attracted some media coverage at the time, because Nigg had formerly worked at the Mezzaluna restaurant in Brentwood, where he had been a friend of Ronald Goldman's. Almost 15 months earlier, Goldman and Nicole Brown Simpson had been found slain at her home near the restaurant, after he had gone there to return her mother's eyeglasses, which had been left behind at Mezzaluna. Simpson's ex-husband, former football star O. J. Simpson, had been charged with the murders, and his highly publicized trial had reached closing arguments.