O.J. Simpson, the famous football player who was accused of and later found not guilty of killing his ex-wife and her friend in 1994, has passed away, as announced by his family. He was 76 years old.
“Our father, Orenthal James Simpson, passed away on April 10th after fighting cancer. He was with his children and grandchildren. Right now, the family wants privacy and kindness,” said a statement from his family.
In May 2023, Simpson shared a video on X, which was then called Twitter. In the video, he said he had recently dealt with cancer and had undergone chemotherapy. He mentioned that it seemed like he had overcome it, but didn’t say what type of cancer it was.
In February 2024, a TV station in Las Vegas said Simpson was getting treatment for cancer again, but they didn’t say what kind. Simpson made a video on X, saying he wasn’t in hospice care, but he didn’t say if he was sick or not. Two days later, in another video on X, he thanked people who checked on him and said, “I’m doing okay. I’m dealing with some problems, but I think I’m almost done with them.”
Simpson, who people called “The Juice,” set records as a college and pro football player. He became even more famous and rich as a sportscaster, actor in movies and TV, and by promoting companies, especially Hertz rental cars.
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Everything changed on June 12, 1994. That’s when Simpson’s ex-wife, Nicole Brown Simpson, and her friend, Ron Goldman, were stabbed to death outside her house in Los Angeles. The police quickly said they wanted to arrest Simpson for the murders.
Five days after the murders, 95 million Americans watched on TV as Simpson’s white Ford Bronco drove slowly through Los Angeles. His friend Al Cowlings was driving, and Simpson was in the back seat holding a gun, talking about hurting himself. The police followed them for about two hours.
Simpson eventually gave up to the police and went to trial for the murders. In October 1995, after 11 months from picking the jury to the final decision, Simpson was found not guilty in a trial that was shown on TV every day and got a lot of attention worldwide.
Twelve years later, in September 2007, Simpson got arrested. He went with some guys into a hotel and casino in Las Vegas and used a gun to take sports stuff that he said was his. He got accused of lots of serious crimes, like kidnapping and armed robbery. The next year, he was found guilty and got a sentence of up to 33 years in jail. Simpson got out on parole on Oct. 1, 2017.
Simpson has four children who are still alive: Arnelle and Jason from his first marriage, and Sydney and Justin from his marriage to Nicole Brown Simpson.
Kato Kaelin, who stayed at Simpson’s house around the time of the murder and was an important witness during the trial, said he was sorry for Simpson’s children and sent love and care to the families of Brown Simpson and Goldman. “Nicole was a bright light that will always be remembered,” he said in a video posted on X.
A football hero
Simpson was born on July 9, 1947, and grew up in Potrero Hill, a poor area near San Francisco. His mom, Eunice, worked at a mental hospital, and his dad, Jimmy Lee, was a cook and cleaner at a club. When Simpson was very young, his dad left, so his mom had to take care of him and his three siblings all by herself.
Even though he had leg problems from rickets when he was a baby, Simpson really liked sports when he was growing up. In the spring of 1967, he started going to the University of Southern California in Los Angeles. Around the same time, he got married to his high school sweetheart, Marguerite Whitley. They later had three kids together.
O.J. Simpson #32 of the University of Southern California Trojans looks on from the sidelines during an NCAA college football game circa 1968.
Focus On Sport/Getty Images, FILE
When he played as a running back for USC, Simpson became the best rusher in college football pretty quickly. By the time he finished school, he had broken 13 records in college football and won the 1968 Heisman Trophy.
The popular young athlete’s TV career soared quickly. Right after he won the Heisman Trophy, he signed a deal with ABC Sports. The next year, he was the top pick in the 1969 draft and signed with the Buffalo Bills for $650,000 over five years, a lot of money at the time. In 1973, Simpson made an NFL record by scoring 23 touchdowns in a season. He also set records for the most rushing yards in one game, with 250, and the most rushing yards in a season, with 2,003.
In this Oct. 10, 1976 file photo running back O.J. Simpson #32 of the Buffalo Bills carries the ball against the New York Jets during an NFL football…Show more
Focus On Sport/Getty Images, FILE
Because Simpson was so good at football, he became famous even when he wasn’t playing. In 1975, Hertz hired Simpson for a big national ad campaign, making him the first Black man to do a major corporate ad like that. You might remember those ads where he’s in a suit, smiling, and running through airports to get to his rental car. Those ads did really well, and other companies started asking Simpson to do ads for them too. This made him even richer and more famous.
Before the 1978 season, the Buffalo Bills traded Simpson to the San Francisco 49ers. Because of this, he moved with his family to the West Coast. But after playing for the 49ers for two seasons, Simpson had some health issues and decided to stop playing professional football. At that time, he was the player who earned the most money in the NFL.
The life and trials of O.J. Simpson
While he was playing pro football, Simpson also did some acting. You might remember seeing him in the TV show “Roots” and movies like “The Towering Inferno” and “Capricorn One.” When he stopped playing football, he started his own company to make movies and shows. He kept acting, like in the “Naked Gun” movies, and he also talked about football on TV.
Meeting Nicole Brown
Even though he was still married to Marguerite, Simpson met Nicole Brown when she was 18 years old. She worked as a waitress at a nightclub in Beverly Hills in 1977. That’s also the year when Simpson and Marguerite had their daughter, Aaren, and they moved into a big house in the Brentwood area of Los Angeles. Sadly, two years later, Aaren died in the swimming pool at their house. Around the same time, Simpson and Marguerite finished their divorce, and Nicole Brown moved in with him.
O.J. Simpson and Nicole Brown Simpson pose at the premiere of the “Naked Gun 33 1/3: The Final Isult” in which O.J. starred on March 16, 1994 in Los Angeles.
Vinnie Zuffante/Getty Images, FILE
Simpson and Brown got married in 1985 and had two kids together. But their marriage had a lot of problems. Simpson hurt his wife, and in 1989, he got arrested for hitting her and threatening to kill her. He admitted he did it and got punished with probation, counseling, and community service. They tried to fix things, but it didn’t work out. Nicole Brown Simpson asked for a divorce, and it was finished in 1992.
‘Trial of the Century’
On the night of June 12, 1994, after Brown Simpson and her family ate at a restaurant they liked in Los Angeles called Mezzaluna, she went back to her apartment on Bundy Drive in the Brentwood area. Later that night, Ron Goldman, who was 25 and worked as a waiter at Mezzaluna, drove to Brown Simpson’s house to give her back some glasses her mom forgot at the restaurant.
Around midnight, they found Brown Simpson and Goldman stabbed to death outside her home.
According to court papers, Simpson was in Los Angeles that evening. He then took a late flight to Chicago that same night. When he came back to Los Angeles the next day, the police talked to him but didn’t arrest him right away.
Five days after the murders, on June 17, 1994, the prosecutors told Simpson to give himself up because they wanted to charge him with Brown Simpson and Goldman’s deaths. Instead, he ran away in the Ford Bronco with Cowlings. They drove slowly while the police followed them. It lasted about two hours, and it was all over the news. Around 95 million people watched it happen on TV.
Motorists wave as police cars pursue the Ford Bronco (white, R) driven by Al Cowlings, carrying fugitive murder suspect O.J. Simpson, on a 90-minute slow-speed car chase June 17, 1…Show more
Jean-Marc Giboux/Getty Images, FILE
Helicopters from the news flew above, recording the chase. People from Los Angeles hurried from their houses and stood along highways and bridges to see what was happening. Simpson finally gave up and got arrested. When he went to court, he said he was “absolutely, positively, 100 percent not guilty” to all the charges against him.
Simpson’s trial in 1995 was on TV and called the “trial of the century.” It was a big deal all around the world. Not only was the trial itself in the news, but also the personal lives of everyone involved, like the witnesses, lawyers, and even the judge. The trial started in November 1994 when the jury was picked, and it went on until October 1995 when they announced the verdict. It caused a lot of arguments and made racial tensions worse.
O. J. Simpson sits in Superior Court in Los Angeles, Dec. 8, 1994.
The lawyers who were on Simpson’s side said he didn’t do the murders. But the ones who were against him said he was a controlling husband who hurt Brown Simpson. They showed that there was blood from the murders in Simpson’s car and house, and that he was missing for more than an hour on the night of the murders.
One big moment in the trial was when the prosecutors asked Simpson to put on a pair of black gloves in front of the jury and everyone watching on TV. They found one glove at the crime scene and the other at Simpson’s house. But the gloves didn’t seem to fit him right. The prosecutors said maybe the gloves got smaller because they got soaked in blood. When Simpson had trouble putting them on, his lawyer, Johnnie Cochran, said something that people still remember: “If the gloves don’t fit, you must acquit.”
O.J. Simpson tries on a leather glove allegedly used in the murders of Nicole Brown Simpson and Ronald Goldman during testimony in Simpson’s murder trial June 15, 1995 in Los Angeles.
Lee Celano/WireImage via Getty Images, FILE
On October 3, 1995, a record-breaking 150 million people watched as Simpson was declared not guilty of the murders. After he was cleared, Simpson said he would spend the rest of his life looking for the real killer or killers.
Even though he was found not guilty, many people stopped being friends with Simpson. The people who used to work with him also stopped supporting him, and he lost a lot of money. By 2000, he had left Los Angeles and moved to Miami, Florida.
Even though he wasn’t found guilty in criminal court, the families of Nicole Brown Simpson and Ron Goldman sued Simpson in civil court. They said he hurt them and caused wrongful death. Unlike the criminal trial, the civil trial wasn’t on TV. It lasted for a bit more than three months and ended in February 1997. The jury decided that Simpson was responsible for what they accused him of.
Fred and Kim Goldman, father and sister of Ronald Goldman, appear in front of the media June 15, 1994 at their home in Agoura Hills, CA, following the murder of Ronald and O.J. Simpson’s ex-wife Nicole Brown Simpson.
Lee Celano/WireImage
Simpson was told to pay $21 million to the Goldman family and $12.5 million to the Brown family, making a total of $33.5 million in damages. But even after trying for years, the families only got a small part of that money from Simpson.
In 2006, a book called “If I Did It” was going to be published. It was supposed to be a made-up confession about the murders, based on interviews with Simpson. There was also going to be a TV show about it. But many people got upset, and they canceled the show. The family of Ron Goldman, who were still trying to get the money Simpson owed them, got the rights to the book. They changed the title to “If I Did It: Confessions of the Killer” and published it themselves.
The Goldman family talked to ABC News and said that Simpson’s death brings up a lot of mixed feelings for them. They said that dealing with grief isn’t straightforward.
Kim Goldman and Fred Goldman, Ron Goldman’s sister and father, said they spent thirty years trying to get justice for Ron and Nicole. Even though they got a court decision and Simpson talked about the murders in a book, they still feel like there’s no real accountability.
They said they will keep speaking up for victims and survivors, making sure their voices are heard. Even though Simpson is gone, they’re not done yet. They thanked everyone for thinking about their family and Ron for the past thirty years.
Conviction for robbery and kidnapping
On September 13, 2007, Simpson went into a hotel room in Las Vegas with some guys, one of them had a gun. He said they were there to get back some sports stuff that had been stolen from him. Three days later, he got arrested and accused of 12 serious crimes, like kidnapping and armed robbery. The trial didn’t take long, less than a month. On October 3, 2008, he was found guilty of everything. It was exactly 13 years after he was declared not guilty in his double murder trial in Los Angeles.
O.J. Simpson stands during sentencing at the Clark County Regional Justice Center, Dec. 5, 2008, in Las Vegas, Nevada.
Pool/Getty Images
The judge, Jackie Glass, said this when she was giving Simpson his punishment in December: “Before, at a hearing to decide if Simpson could get out of jail while waiting for his trial, I told him I wasn’t sure if he was acting cocky or if he just didn’t understand what was going on. But after seeing how he acted during the trial and in court, I got my answer – it was both.”
Simpson got sentenced to spend up to 33 years in prison.
A free man
In July 2017, Simpson got permission to leave prison early. He wanted to make the parole board believe that he would do everything they asked him to.
He said, “I didn’t live a life of crime. I tried to be a good person, but I know I could have been more faithful to my beliefs as a Christian. I promise to change and be a better Christian.”
He also said, “I had some issues with staying faithful in relationships, but I’ve always been someone who got along well with others.”
O.J. Simpson (C) reacts after learning he was granted parole at Lovelock Correctional Center July 20, 2017 in Lovelock, Nev.
Jason Bean-Pool/Getty Images, FILE
On October 1, 2017, at the age of 70, Simpson left the Lovelock Correctional Institute in Nevada and became a free man. He moved from Miami to Las Vegas and started living a life focused on golf, spending time with friends, and posting on social media.
In a letter from 1994 that Simpson’s lawyers shared with the public while he was running from the police during the Bronco chase, Simpson said he was happy with his life up to that point.
“I’ve had a good life. I’m proud of how I lived. My mom taught me to treat others as I would like to be treated,” Simpson wrote, according to his lawyers.
“Don’t feel bad for me,” the letter continued. “I’ve had a wonderful life, great friends. Please remember the real O.J. and not this person who’s lost. … Thank you for making my life special. I hope I made yours better.”