Killing of Michael Nigg

Authors Donald Freed and Raymond Briggs claimed in Killing Time (1996), their book about the Simpson case, that an unnamed source told them that while Nigg had lived in Colorado, he was known to law enforcement there to be "involved in the narcotics culture" in Aspen (where another branch of Mezzaluna is located) and Denver. According to journalist Joseph Bosco, who had a reserved seat at the entire trial, Nigg "lived beyond his apparent means", driving a Mercedes and living in a luxury condominium while ostensibly deriving most of his income from waiting tables and occasional low-level acting jobs. Freed and Briggs, among others, have also observed that the circumstances of the killing seem to suggest the assailants' true intent was to kill Nigg rather than rob him. Moreover, Nigg and Goldman were not the only Mezzaluna waiters who had fallen victim to foul play around that time: two others were missing, and a third had his car destroyed by fire in Corona del Mar in 1994.

On the evening of September 8, 1995, Nigg and his girlfriend Julie Long were on their way to another restaurant in his Mercedes. They stopped at a bank branch in Hollywood, so Nigg could withdraw some money from his account. Long stayed in the car, parked in the branch lot, while Nigg went up to the ATM, where he withdrew $40.

While seeking jobs and roles, he worked at restaurants waiting tables to support himself. By 1994, he was working at the Mezzaluna restaurant in Brentwood, on the city's Westside. Among his friends and coworkers there was Ronald Goldman. Nigg worked there until a month before June 1994, when Goldman was murdered along with Nicole Brown Simpson, former wife of football star O. J. Simpson. As Simpson's trial for the killings progressed, Nigg went to work at another restaurant, Sanctuary, located in Hollywood.

Nigg briefly dated Ronald Goldman’s sister, Kim Goldman, in 1992.

Simpson, who has consistently professed his innocence in the Brown and Goldman killings, was acquitted of the murder charges almost a month after Nigg's death. Alternative theories of the murders, supposedly shared by Simpson, have suggested they were related to drug trafficking in the Los Angeles area, and that Nigg's was as well; Nigg apparently lived very well for a waiter, and there were some allegations he, too, had been involved in the drug trade while working at the Mezzaluna branch in Colorado before. Nigg and Goldman, it has also been noted, were not the only waiters at Mezzaluna to be the victims of criminal activity during the mid-1990s.

Michael Nigg (April 28, 1969 – September 8, 1995) was an aspiring actor who worked as a waiter at a Beverly Hills restaurant. He was shot and killed during an apparent robbery attempt in Hollywood. The Los Angeles Police Department later arrested three suspects but soon released them for lack of evidence. No other suspects have ever been identified, and the killing remains unsolved.