Kato Kaelin recently predicted that O.J. Simpson would die without admitting guilt

"He never will come out and say anything," the former trial witness said on a podcast two months before Simpson's death.

O.J. Simpson died from cancer at 76 without ever confessing to the murders of Nicole Brown Simpson and Ronald Goldman — something his old friend Kato Kaelin predicted in a podcast interview recorded shortly before Simpson's death.

On the Feb. 14 episode of Behind the Velvet Rope, Kaelin told podcast host David Yontef that he did not think Simpson would ever confess to the murders that the former football player and actor was infamously acquitted of in the high-profile criminal trial that lasted from November 1994 to October 1995.

"He never will come out and say anything," Kaelin, who testified at the trial, said in the February interview. "My opinion is, I think he is guilty, but if it's him, he's never gonna go out and say it."

Even when Yontef posed the idea that maybe Simpson would confess on his deathbed, Kaelin said, "No, never. It will never happen."

In 2006, Simpson collaborated on a book containing a supposedly hypothetical confession to the murders called If I Did It. The manuscript was withdrawn from publication after stirring up public outrage, but rights were later awarded to the Goldman family, who chose to publish it with the addition of the subtitle Confessions of the Killer.

Kaelin was staying in Simpson's guest house on June 12, 1994, the night that Brown and Goldman were murdered. He became a witness during the trial, and featured prominently in contemporary media coverage as well as latter-day retellings; he was played by Billy Magnussen in Ryan Murphy's 2016 TV miniseries The People v. O. J. Simpson: American Crime Story, for instance (Simpson was portrayed by Cuba Gooding Jr.).

To this day, Kaelin continues to give interviews and podcast appearances discussing his connection to Simpson and the trial. So when he told Yontef that the story would keep going, he understood those words better than almost anyone.

"There's just so, so much to the story," Kaelin said. "It'll never die, and even when he passes away, it'll live on."

As news of Simpson's death spread Thursday, Kaelin posted an Instagram video in which he paid his respects to Simpson's children and to the Goldman and Brown families.

"Foremost, I'd like to express my condolences to the children, to Sydney and to Justin, to Jason and Arnelle," he said. "They lost their father, and that is never easy."

He added, "I wish to express my love and compassion to the Goldmans, to Fred and to Kim, I hope you find closure. And finally, to the family of the beautiful Nicole Brown Simpson, may we always cherish her memories. Nicole was a beacon of light that burned bright. May we never forget her."

Listen to Kaelin's full Behind the Velvet Rope interview above.

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