O.J. Simpson, acquitted murder defendant and football star, dies at age 76

O.J. Simpson, the acquitted California homicide defendant, former soccer star and actor, has died, his agent confirmed to CBS Information. He was 76.

An announcement 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 kids and grandchildren,” the household’s assertion mentioned.

Simpson was famously acquitted within the 1994 slayings of his ex-wife, Nicole Brown Simpson, and her pal 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 Cook 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 demise. Cook dinner declined to say what Fred Goldman mentioned or the place he was.

“He died with out penance,” Cook dinner mentioned of Simpson. “We do not know what he has, the place it’s or who’s in management. We’ll choose up the place we’re and preserve going with it.”

Simpson earned fame, fortune and adulation by way of soccer and present enterprise, however his legacy was eternally modified by the June 1994 knife slayings in Los Angeles.

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 minimize 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 shocking fall from grace for the sports activities hero. He had appeared to transcend racial obstacles because the star Trojans tailback for school soccer’s highly effective College of Southern California within the late Nineteen Sixties, as a rental automobile advert pitchman speeding by way of airports within the late Nineteen 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 pals.

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.

A 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 demise 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 making an attempt to retrieve sports activities memorabilia and household heirlooms stolen from him after his legal trial in Los Angeles. 

“I’ve mainly spent a conflict-free life, you recognize,” 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 instructed The New York Instances in 1995, per week after a jury decided he didn’t kill Brown and Goldman. “I’ve gotten 1000’s of letters and telegrams from folks supporting me.”

Twelve years later, following an outpouring of public outrage, Rupert Murdoch canceled a deliberate guide by the Information Corp-owned HarperCollins during which Simpson supplied 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 demise judgment, gained management of the manuscript. They retitled the guide “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 instructed The Related Press on the time. He collected $880,000 upfront cash for the guide, paid by way of a 3rd occasion.

“It helped me get out of debt and safe my homestead,” he mentioned.

Lower than two months after dropping the rights to the guide, Simpson was arrested in Las Vegas.

Simpson performed 11 NFL seasons, 9 of them with the Buffalo Payments, the place he turned referred to as “The Juice” on an offensive line referred to as “The Electrical Firm.” He gained 4 NFL speeding 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 speeding 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 fastidiously tailor-made tan swimsuit he wore when he was acquitted, was later donated and positioned on show on the Newseum in Washington, D.C. Simpson had been instructed the swimsuit can 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 tasks.

After graduating from highschool, he enrolled at Metropolis School of San Francisco for a yr 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, shifting her to Los Angeles the following day so he might start getting ready for his first season with USC — which, largely due to Simpson, gained that yr’s nationwide championship.

Simpson gained the Heisman Trophy in 1968. He accepted the statue the identical day that his first little one, 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 yr he and Whitley divorced.

Simpson and Brown had been married in 1985. That they had two kids, 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 instructed 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 adverse zone.’ We deal with the positives.”

Extra from CBS Information