O.J. Simpson, whose football legacy was forever tarnished by horrific murder accusations that culminated in the “Trial of the Century,” has died from cancer, his family announced Thursday.
“On April 10th, our father, Orenthal James Simpson, succumbed to his battle with cancer,” Simpson’s family shared in a statement on X. “He was surrounded by his children and grandchildren. During this time of transition, his family asks that you please respect their wishes for privacy and grace.”
Simpson, whose full name was Orenthal James, was 76. He died in Las Vegas. In February, Simpson had denied reports that he was in hospice, insisting, “I don’t know who put that out here,” in a video posted on X.
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“You can’t trust the media,” he said, adding that he’d be “hosting a ton of friends for the Super Bowl.”
The Pro Football Hall of Fame confirmed on Thursday that Simpson had undergone chemotherapy for prostate cancer.
Reaction to O.J.’s death was immediate, with some of the famous figures whose lives and careers were impacted by his notorioius case weighing in on the disgraced athlete’s legacy.
“I knew he was very sick, so I’m upset that he died,” lawyer Alan Dershowitz, who was on Simpson’s so-called legal “Dream Team,” told NBC News. “I got to know him fairly well during the trial. It was one of the most divisive trials in American history along racial lines. He’ll always be remembered for the Bronco chase, for the glove, and for the moment of acquittal.”
The case against Simpson came to symbolize the stark divide between Black and white America. Simpson, who married a white woman after divorcing his first wife, who was Black, was seen by many people of color as innocent, polls showed at the time. On the other hand, whites largely saw Simpson as thoroughly guilty. And while the tale may or not be apocryphal, O.J. himself once said, “I’m not Black. I’m O.J.,” according to the Associated Press.
The former football star grew up alongside a brother and two sisters in public housing in the Potrero Hill section of San Francisco. He contracted rickets at the age of 2, and was forced to wear steel leg braces until he was 5.
At age 13, Simpson joined a local street gang, the Persian Warriors, and landed himself in jail for several days in 1962. He excelled at football at Galileo High School, although his less-than-stellar academic performance threatened to nix any chances of getting into a prestigious collegiate football program.
Simpson instead started out at the City College of San Francisco, showing enough on-field prowess that he gained entry to the University of Southern California, winning the Heisman Trophy in 1968. He was drafted by the Buffalo Bills as a running back and is the only NFL player to rush for more than 2,000 yards in a 14-game season.
When his playing days were over, Simpson, known to his fans as “The Juice,” became a pitchman for Hertz, appearing in commercials for the rent-a-car company that saturated the airwaves for years. He also achieved success in Hollywood, appearing in Leslie Nielsen vehicle The Naked Gun and its numerous spinoffs, as well as a plethora of other films. He worked as a sports analyst for ABC and NBC, and, for a while, appeared to be the epitome of an American success story.
But Simpson’s exploits on the football field and at the box office will forever be overshadowed by the brutal stabbing deaths of Nicole Brown Simpson and her friend Ron Goldman on June 12, 1994.
O.J. married Brown Simpson, his second wife, in 1985, and the pair would eventually have two children before their separation in 1992. Their relationship was a tumultuous one and plagued by abuse allegations, with Brown Simpson once telling cops called to her home in the middle of the night: “He’s going to kill me.” (Simpson’s first wife, Marguerite, called him a “really an awful person.”)
Several years later he was accused of doing just that when Brown Simpson and Goldman were found dead at her Brentwood, California, home. It was a media circus from the start. The day he eventually surrendered on murder charges, Simpson led cops on high-speed chase through Los Angeles in a white Ford Bronco that nearly 100 million people tuned into on television.
His televised prosecution the following year would come to be known as the “Trial of the Century,” with a so-called dream team of attorneys including Johnnie Cochran, F. Lee Bailey, and Robert Kardashian.
The trial was broadcast in its entirety and captivated America. It also generated breathless coverage across the globe and made famous the line, “If it doesn’t fit, you must acquit,” uttered to the jury by Cochran regarding a pair of gloves found at the murder scene and entered into evidence that appeared too small for Simpson’s hands.
Although Simpson was acquitted of the murder charges, the Goldman and Brown families sued him and in 1997, he was found liable for their deaths. A judge ordered Simpson to pay $33.5 million in damages, which he largely avoided and moved to Florida.
About a decade later, Simpson made national headlines again with a book called If I Did It, which he claimed was a “hypothetical” narrative about how he would have murdered his ex and Goldman while continuing to disavow any involvement in the actual crime. The Goldmans ultimately obtained the rights to the book and published it, with new passages that focused the guilt on Simpson.
What finally landed Simpson behind bars had nothing to do with murder. In 2007, he was convicted of raiding a Las Vegas hotel room with a group of armed thieves and stealing hundreds of sports memorabilia pieces from a dealer. He spent nine years behind bars for the robbery, and was released in 2017.
Simpson’s prostate cancer diagnosis was first revealed in February, a little more than three years after his parole officially ended. He moved to a gated community in Sin City and regularly posted updates on his life to social media. The Bay Area native’s final dispatch came that same month and was a video of himself sitting poolside, expressing his support for the San Francisco 49ers in the upcoming Super Bowl.
