OJ Case: Is There A Connection To Brett Cantor And Michael Nigg Murders

In the summer of 1993, in Los Angeles, a well-known club promoter and record executive would be found brutally butchered in his apartment, in a crime that some have sought to link with one of the most high-profile murder cases in American history.

Twenty-five-year-old Brett Cantor was originally from New York, but moved with his family to Los Angeles, California when he was only four years old. Brett’s father Paul was an agent for the prestigious William Morris Agency, and later managed several musical performers, including Dionne Warwick.

Brett was well on his way to following in his father’s footsteps. He first worked as an A&R executive for Chrysalis Music Group, famously signing Jane’s Addiction and helping Rage Against the Machine obtain their first record contract. Both bands would go on to become massive stars of the alternative rock scene of the 1990s.

Brett then went into business for himself, organizing successful raves around Los Angeles under the auspices of his own company, Underground Entertainment. Subsequently, he purchased a ten-percent share in the wildly successful Dragonfly nightclub on Santa Monica Boulevard, which was mainly owned by Steve Edelson. Shortly afterward, Brett began dating actress Rose McGowan, who he met at Dragonfly in the spring of 1993.

Life appeared to be on an upward trajectory for Brett Cantor, but then came the early morning of July 30th. Brett was spotted leaving another night spot, Club 434, in the small hours of that morning, but it was the last time he was seen alive.

Later on in the day, the body of Brett Cantor was discovered lying just inside the front door of his home in West Hollywood, which was only a short distance from Dragonfly. He had been stabbed nearly two dozen times in the upper body, and his throat had been slashed so deeply that he was nearly decapitated. Though some sources include the grisly detail that he was also given a Colombian necktie, the official report does not contain a description of this specific wound, and it’s possible this was a later exaggeration.

The inquiry into the murder of Brett Cantor stalled almost before it began, though its notoriety would be given an enormous boost a year later, when Nicole Brown Simpson and Ron Goldman were found slain outside of Nicole’s Brentwood home. When ex-football star O.J. Simpson was later put on trial for the infamous double homicide, his defense team began searching for similar cases in the area that could plausibly be argued might be the work of the same killer. One of these cases was the murder of Brett Cantor.

There were, it must be said, a few tenuous links between the murder of Brett Cantor and those of Brown and Goldman. All three victims had been stabbed multiple times in the upper body. The knife used in all three killings was said to possess a long, thin blade. And Ron Goldman’s throat had been slit in a comparable fashion to Brett Cantor’s.

There were some other connections as well. Ron Goldman had briefly worked part-time as a waiter at Dragonfly, and Nicole Brown Simpson sometimes went there to dance. Though there was no evidence that either one of them was acquainted with Brett Cantor, the link seemed worth exploring.

In the end, though, O.J. Simpson’s defense team never brought Brett Cantor’s murder up at the trial, and of course it didn’t end up mattering, as Simpson was acquitted in October of 1995.

Conspiracy theories about the alleged association between the murders of Brett Cantor, Nicole Brown, and Ron Goldman persist, and were given renewed life in September of 1995, when waiter Michael Nigg was shot and killed during an apparent robbery in Hollywood. Nigg had worked at another restaurant, Mezzaluna, and was friends with Ron Goldman, who also worked there before his death. Some researchers have speculated that the victims of all four homicides were involved in drug trafficking, though there is no compelling evidence to support this hypothesis.

For their part, the Cantor family have gone on record as stating that they do not believe Brett’s murder was connected to the slayings of Nicole Brown and Ronald Goldman. But apart from the dubious claims circulating around the internet, it seems that authorities in Los Angeles are no closer to solving the homicide than they were in 1993.