O.J. Simpson, the acquitted California homicide defendant, former soccer star and actor, has died, his agent confirmed to CBS Information. He was 76.
A press release posted to social media by Simpson’s household mentioned he died of most cancers Wednesday. Simpson’s agent mentioned he had prostate most cancers.
“On April tenth, our father, Orenthal James Simpson, succumbed to his battle with most cancers. He was surrounded by his youngsters and grandchildren,” the household’s assertion mentioned.
Simpson was famously acquitted within the 1994 slayings of his ex-wife, Nicole Brown Simpson, and her buddy Ronald Goldman, in a case that dominated headlines and TV screens for months. He was later discovered liable for his or her deaths by a jury in a civil trial.
David Prepare dinner, an lawyer who has been looking for since 2008 to gather the civil judgment within the Goldman case, mentioned he spoke with Fred Goldman, father of Ron, on Thursday about Simpson’s loss of life. Prepare dinner declined to say what Fred Goldman mentioned or the place he was.
“He died with out penance,” Prepare dinner mentioned of Simpson. “We do not know what he has, the place it’s or who’s in management. We’ll decide up the place we’re and hold going with it.”
“He had a really sophisticated legacy,” lawyer Carl E. Douglas, who was on Simpson’s authorized group through the homicide trial, informed CBS Information. He mentioned Simpson’s legacy included his accomplishments on the soccer discipline and profitable transfer from athletics to turning into a extremely sought-after pitchman.
“Earlier than Michael Jackson, earlier than Tiger Woods, there was O.J. Simpson operating via airports and highways hawking cereal, automobiles and rental automobile companies,” Douglas mentioned.
Simpson earned fame, fortune and adulation via soccer and present enterprise, however his legacy was ceaselessly modified by the June 1994 knife slayings in Los Angeles.
Proof discovered on the scene appeared overwhelmingly in opposition to Simpson. Blood drops, bloody footprints and a glove had been there. One other glove, smeared with blood, was discovered at his dwelling.
The knife used within the slayings has by no means been discovered. In 2016, Los Angeles police mentioned a retired officer turned in a knife that was allegedly discovered years earlier by a development employee through the demolition of Simpson’s property. Police concluded the knife wasn’t the homicide weapon.
On the night time of the murders, Simpson flew in a single day to Chicago to play in a golf event and checked right into a lodge close to O’Hare airport. Whereas on the lodge, he claimed that he had reduce his hand on a damaged glass.
When he was again in LA, authorities mentioned he reneged on a promise to give up, and stay TV protection of his arrest after a well-known slow-speed chase marked a surprising fall from grace for the sports activities hero.
Jean-Marc Giboux/Getty Photos
He had appeared to transcend racial limitations because the star Trojans tailback for faculty soccer’s highly effective College of Southern California within the late Sixties, as a rental automobile advert pitchman dashing via airports within the late Seventies, and because the husband of a blonde and blue-eyed highschool homecoming queen within the Eighties.
“I am not Black, I am O.J.,” he favored to inform mates.
The general public was mesmerized by his “trial of the century” on stay TV. His case sparked debates on race, gender, home abuse, superstar justice and police misconduct.
The trial‘s prosecutors, protection attorneys and witnesses grew to become family names. Watercooler conversations nationwide targeted on prosecutors Marcia Clark and Christopher Darden, Decide Lance Ito, Simpson’s houseguest Kato Kaelin, murder detective Mark Fuhrman and Simpson’s “dream group” of protection attorneys, together with legendary lawyer Johnnie Cochran.
Simpson did not testify, however the prosecution requested him to strive on the gloves in court docket. He struggled to squeeze them onto his palms and spoke his solely three phrases from the trial: “They’re too small.”
Cochran informed the jurors, “If it would not match, it’s essential to acquit.”
Reuters/Sam Mircovich
The jury discovered him not responsible of homicide in 1995, however a separate civil trial jury discovered him liable in 1997 for the deaths and ordered him to pay $33.5 million to members of the family of Brown and Goldman.
A decade later, nonetheless shadowed by the California wrongful loss of life judgment, Simpson led 5 males he barely knew right into a confrontation with two sports activities memorabilia sellers in a cramped Las Vegas lodge room. Two males with Simpson had weapons. A jury convicted Simpson of armed theft and different felonies.
Imprisoned at age 61, he served 9 years in a distant northern Nevada jail, together with a stint as a health club janitor. He was not contrite when he was launched on parole in October 2017.
The parole board heard him insist but once more that he was solely attempting to retrieve sports activities memorabilia and household heirlooms stolen from him after his prison trial in Los Angeles.
“I’ve principally spent a conflict-free life, you already know,” claimed Simpson, whose parole led to late 2021.
Public fascination with Simpson by no means pale. Many debated if he had been punished in Las Vegas for his acquittal in Los Angeles. In 2016, he was the topic of each an FX miniseries and five-part ESPN documentary.
“I do not assume most of America believes I did it,” Simpson informed The New York Instances in 1995, every week after a jury decided he didn’t kill Brown and Goldman. “I’ve gotten 1000’s of letters and telegrams from individuals supporting me.”
David McNew/Getty Photos
Twelve years later, following an outpouring of public outrage, Rupert Murdoch canceled a deliberate e book by the Information Corp-owned HarperCollins through which Simpson provided his hypothetical account of the killings. It was to be titled, “If I Did It.”
Goldman’s household, nonetheless doggedly pursuing the multimillion-dollar wrongful loss of life judgment, received management of the manuscript. They retitled the e book “If I Did It: Confessions of the Killer.”
“It is all blood cash, and sadly I needed to be a part of the jackals,” Simpson informed The Related Press on the time. He collected $880,000 upfront cash for the e book, paid via a 3rd get together.
“It helped me get out of debt and safe my homestead,” he mentioned.
Lower than two months after dropping the rights to the e book, Simpson was arrested in Las Vegas.
Simpson performed 11 NFL seasons, 9 of them with the Buffalo Payments, the place he grew to become generally known as “The Juice” on an offensive line generally known as “The Electrical Firm.” He received 4 NFL dashing titles, rushed for 11,236 yards in his profession, scored 76 touchdowns and performed in 5 Professional Bowls. His finest season was 1973, when he ran for two,003 yards — the primary operating again to interrupt the two,000-yard dashing mark.
“I used to be a part of the historical past of the sport,” he mentioned years later, recalling that season. “If I did nothing else in my life, I might made my mark.”
After all, Simpson went on to different fame.
One of many artifacts of his homicide trial, the rigorously tailor-made tan go well with he wore when he was acquitted, was later donated and positioned on show on the Newseum in Washington, D.C. Simpson had been informed the go well with could be within the lodge room in Las Vegas, but it surely turned out it wasn’t there.
Orenthal James Simpson was born July 9, 1947, in San Francisco, the place he grew up in government-subsidized housing initiatives.
After graduating from highschool, he enrolled at Metropolis Faculty of San Francisco for a 12 months and a half earlier than transferring to the College of Southern California for the spring 1967 semester.
He married his first spouse, Marguerite Whitley, on June 24, 1967, transferring her to Los Angeles the following day so he may start getting ready for his first season with USC — which, largely due to Simpson, received that 12 months’s nationwide championship.
Simpson received the Heisman Trophy in 1968. He accepted the statue the identical day that his first baby, Arnelle, was born.
He had two sons, Jason and Aaren, together with his first spouse; a type of boys, Aaren, drowned as a toddler in a swimming pool accident in 1979, the identical 12 months he and Whitley divorced.
Simpson and Brown had been married in 1985. That they had two youngsters, Justin and Sydney, and divorced in 1992. Two years later, Nicole Brown Simpson was discovered murdered.
“We do not want to return and relive the worst day of our lives,” he informed the AP 25 years after the double slayings. “The topic of the second is the topic I’ll by no means revisit once more. My household and I’ve moved on to what we name the ‘no damaging zone.’ We concentrate on the positives.”
