Kim Kardashian Opens up About Having To Testify at Her Ex-Boyfriend’s Mother’s Murder Trial

Kim Kardashian remembered testifying in the 1998 murder trial of Dee Dee Jackson, the mother of her then-boyfriend TJ Jackson. The 42-year-old star of The Kardashians called her teenage years "hectic" because her late father, Robert Kardashian Sr., was embroiled in several high-profile legal cases, such as OJ Simpson, and because she supported T.J. after his mother was discovered dead in the pool of her boyfriend Don Bohana's Ladera Heights house in California, per PEOPLE.

“My dad was going through all those trials, and it was pretty intense in my life,” she told Vogue Italia. “My boyfriend’s mother, whom I was close with, was murdered in 1994, and I had to be part of that trial.”

The television star, who has become active in the push for criminal justice reform, responded when asked how she was involved in the trial, “I had to testify and was there every day with my boyfriend. I was just 14, you know.” Bohana was convicted of second-degree murder in the killing of Dee Dee in 2002, four years after she was killed, and was given a 15-year to life sentence. He has been imprisoned in California for 19 years.

“To have that experience at such a young age was insane,” she explained. “And it was also back-to-back with the O.J. [Simpson] trial; there was just a lot of layers there.”

The reality star spoke candidly with David Letterman on his Netflix chat show My Next Guest Needs No Introduction in 2020 about her memories of the Simpson trial, which took place in 1994 and pitted parents Robert and Kris Jenner against one another. "It was dinner time, and we were all sitting down, and I answered the phone. It was a call from jail, and it was O.J., and I handed my mom the phone because he wanted to speak to her," said Kim. "And I just remember them getting into it."

During Simpson's murder trial for the savage killings of ex-wife Nicole Brown Simpson and her friend Ron Goldman, the late Robert Sr. was Simpson's defense counsel and friend. On the other hand, Kris Jenner had a close relationship with both Simpson and Brown. Despite being cleared of the double murders in October 1995, Simpson was found responsible for the two violent deaths in a 1997 civil lawsuit launched by the families of the two victims.

At the time of the initial trial, Kim—who was around 14 years old—said it was challenging to manage the contention between her separated parents. "My mom was extremely vocal on her feelings — she believed that her friend was murdered by him, and that was traumatizing for her," she shared. "And then we'd go to my dad's house, and it was a whole other situation there. We didn't know what to believe or whose side to take as kids because we didn't want to hurt one of our parents' feelings," she continued.