OJ Simpson dies at the age of 76

OJ Simpson, a decorated football star and Hollywood actor who was acquitted of killing his ex-wife and her friend but later found guilty in a separate civil trial, has died. He was 76 years old.

Simpson’s attorney confirmed to TMZ that he died Wednesday night in Las Vegas. The message posted Thursday on Simpson’s official X account – formerly Twitter – he said he died after a fight with cancer.

“He was surrounded by his children and grandchildren,” the statement read.

Simpson gained fame, fortune and adoration through football and show business, but his legacy was without end modified knife murders in June 1994 his ex-wife Nicole Brown Simpson and her friend Ronald Goldman in Los Angeles.

Live television coverage of his arrest after the famous slow chase marked as stunning fall from grace for a sports hero.

He looked as if it would transcend racial barriers as the Trojans star challenged the mighty University of Southern California for faculty football in the late Sixties, as a automotive rental advertiser speeding through airports in the late Nineteen Seventies, and as the husband of a blonde, blue-eyed highschool prom queen in the Eighties

“I’m not Black, I’m OJ,” he liked to inform friends.

The audience was mesmerized his “trial of the century” on live TV. His case gained publicity debates about race, sex, Violence in the family, justice of the stars and police misconduct.

A criminal court jury found him innocent murder in 1995, but a separate jury in a civil trial found him liable in 1997 for the death and ordered him to pay Brown’s members of the family $33.5 million and Goldman.

Ten years later, still in the shadow of a wrongful death conviction in California, Simpson led five men he barely knew right into a confrontation with two sports memorabilia sellers in a cramped hotel room in Las Vegas. Two of the men with Simpson had guns. A jury convicted Simpson of armed robbery and other crimes.

Imprisoned at the age of 61, he served nine years in a distant prison in northern Nevada, including working as a gym janitor. He showed no remorse when he was released on parole in October 2017 the parole board heard him once more emphasize that he was only attempting to recuperate sports memorabilia and family heirlooms stolen from him after his criminal trial in Los Angeles.

(*76*) – Simpson, whose parole ended at the end of 2021, he said.

Public fascination with Simpson it never faded. Many wondered if he was being punished in Las Vegas for his acquittal in Los Angeles. In 2016, he was the subject of an FX i miniseries five-part ESPN documentary.

“I don’t think most of America believes I did it,” Simpson said in 1995, per week after a jury found that he didn’t kill Brown and Goldman. “I received thousands of letters and telegrams from people who supported me.”

Twelve years later, in response to a wave of public outrage, Rupert Murdoch canceled a planned book from HarperCollins, a News Corp publisher, through which Simpson presented his hypothetical account of the killings. It was speculated to be called “If I Did It.”

The Goldman family, still he strives stubbornly a multi-million-dollar wrongful death verdict, he gained control of the manuscript. They modified the title of the book to “If I Did It: Confessions of the Killer.”

“It’s all blood money and unfortunately I had to join the jackals,” Simpson told The Associated Press at the time. He raised an $880,000 advance for the book, paid through a 3rd party.

“It helped me get out of debt and secure my household,” he said.

Less than two months after losing the rights to the book, Simpson was arrested in Las Vegas.

Simpson played 11 seasons in the NFL, including nine with the Buffalo Bills, where he became often called “The Juice” on an offensive line often called “The Electric Company.” During his profession, he won 4 NFL rushing honors, rushed for 11,236 yards, scored 76 touchdowns and played in five Pro Bowls. His best season was in 1973, when he rushed for two,003 yards – the first running back to surpass the 2,000-yard mark in rushing.

“I was part of the history of this sport,” he said years later, recalling that season. “If I had done nothing else in my life, I would have made a mark.”

Of course, Simpson achieved other fame.

One of the artifacts from his murder trial, the rigorously tailored brown suit he wore at the time of his acquittal, was later donated and displayed at the Newseum in Washington. DC Simpson was told the suit could be in a Las Vegas hotel room, nevertheless it turned out it was not there.

Orenthal James Simpson was born on July 9, 1947 in San Francisco, where he grew up in government-subsidized housing projects.

After highschool, he enrolled at City College of San Francisco for a yr and a half before transferring to the University of Southern California for the spring semester of 1967.

He married his first wife, Marguerite Whitley, on June 24, 1967, moving her to Los Angeles the next day so he could begin preparing for his first season at USC, which won that yr’s national championship thanks largely to Simpson.

Simpson won the Heisman Trophy in 1968. He accepted the statuette on the same day that his first child, Arnelle, was born.

With his first wife he had two sons, Jason and Aaren; one of these boys, Aaren, drowned as a toddler in a swimming pool accident in 1979, the same yr he and Whitley divorced.

Simpson and Brown married in 1985. They had two children: Justin and Sydney, and divorced in 1992. Two years later, Nicole Brown Simpson was found dead. “We don’t have to go back and relive the worst day of our lives,” he said. he told the AP 25 years after the double killings. “The topic of this moment is a topic I will never return to again. My family and I have moved into what is called the “no negative zone.” We concentrate on the positives.”