OJ Simpson died without penance, says family of victim
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OJ Simpson died “without penance” after succumbing to cancer at the age of 76, the family of one of his alleged victims has said.
The former American football star and actor, who was catapulted to notoriety when he was charged with killing his ex-wife Nicole Brown and her friend Ronald Goldman in 1994, died in Las Vegas on Thursday.
He was sensationally acquitted of the double murder but later found responsible for their deaths in a civil case, and was ordered to pay $33.5 million to Goldman’s family.
It is possible that Simpson’s estate may be swallowed up by existing liabilities from the case. Fred Goldman, Ronald’s father, recently alleged that he had paid only a fraction of the damages and owed $96 million in interest.
Speaking on Thursday, Mr Goldman told NBC News: “The only thing I have to say is it’s just further reminder of Ron being gone all these years.”
By the time of the murder trial, Simpson had been in the public eye for decades. He rose to fame in the 1970s as a running back in the NFL for the Buffalo Bills, becoming the first player to rush 2,000 yards in a season.
He then moved into acting, starring in the Naked Gun series.
Both careers were overshadowed by the double killing of Brown and Goldman in 1994, which made headlines around the world.
The football star-turned fugitive led officers on a two-hour chase when told to turn himself in over their deaths, resulting in a live TV spectacle watched by an estimated 95 million people.
Hundreds of spectators gathered to cheer him on as his white Ford Bronco drove down a San Diego freeway.
The ensuing court case, known as the “trial of the century”, became one of the most high-profile legal battles of all time.
Simpson’s “dream team” defence, led by Johnnie L Cochran and Robert Kardashian, accused the Los Angeles police of manufacturing evidence against the former athlete.
DNA evidence assembled by the police included blood samples taken from the crime scene that matched Simpson’s – in theory, placing him at the site at the time of the murders.
Blood was also found in his white Ford Bronco, on his driveway, his house and a pair of socks in his bedroom.
The defence argued that the police scientist who collected blood samples from Simpson failed to take them immediately to a laboratory for testing – meaning that they could have been tampered with or contaminated.
“We attacked the way that evidence was gathered and processed,” Simpson’s DNA expert Barry Scheck said in 2014. “We had a 21st-century technology and 19th-century evidence collection methods.”
In one of the defining moments of the trial, Simpson appeared to struggle to pull on a pair of bloodstained gloves the police had found at the crime scene.
“If it doesn’t fit, you must acquit,” Cochran famously told the jury.
The defence also argued that the police’s sloppy handling of DNA evidence – which placed Simpson at the crime scene – meant it could have been contaminated or tampered with.
The case split the US along racial lines. In October 1995, one poll showed that 65 per cent of white Americans believed he was guilty, compared to a mere 18 per cent of black Americans.
In the end, the 11-month trial came down to just four hours of deliberations by the largely African-American jury, before they declared Simpson not guilty.
Simpson’s courtroom success was short-lived. In February 1997, he was found liable in a civil court for the wrongful deaths of Brown and Goldman.
In 2006, Simpson sold a book manuscript titled If I Did It to an imprint of HarperCollins, providing a hypothetical account of the killings he had repeatedly denied committing.
The copies were pulped and the project cancelled following a public outcry, but Goldman’s families eventually secured the rights, to pay off some of Simpson’s liabilities from the civil case.
It was eventually published with a redesigned front cover that reduced the size of the word “If”, so it appears to read I Did It. This was paired with the subtitle, Confessions of the Killer.
Thirteen years to the day after he was acquitted of the murders, Simpson was convicted of armed robbery in Las Vegas.
He insisted that he was trying to retrieve items from sports memorabilia dealers that had been stolen following his criminal trial. He served nine years in a Nevada prison before being released in 2017.
The former athlete was pictured using a cane to walk in January of this year. Rumours surfaced in February that he was undergoing chemotherapy to treat prostate cancer and was in hospice care.
He denied being in a hospice but did not address whether he had been diagnosed with cancer.
A statement issued by the Simpson family on Thursday said he “succumbed to his battle with cancer” and “was surrounded by his children and grandchildren”.
A lawyer acting for Ronald Goldman’s family said Simpson “died without penance”. Fred Goldman said his death was “no great loss to the world”.
Simpson had five children: three with his first wife, Marguerite, and two more with Brown.
He is thought to have maintained a close relationship with his eldest daughter, Arnelle Simpson, who testified on her father’s behalf at his murder trial.
Karine Jean-Pierre, the White House press secretary, said: “Our thoughts are with his families during this difficult time, obviously with his family and loved ones.
“And I’ll say this – I know that they have asked for some privacy and so we’re going to respect that.”
Obituary
American footballer whose trial captivated global audiences
