Orenthal James Simpson died of cancer in Las Vegas at the age of 76. Famous as one of the best players ever in American football, infamous for the murder of his ex-wife and the subsequent trial.
Simpson comes from a family of four children in a San Francisco tenement. His mother works as a night nurse, his father as a janitor and cook. Due to rickets, the boy wears metal leg braces for years. He is in a youth gang, the Persian Warriors, even ends up in jail for a week but recovers.
Tons of money
OJ – he comes up with the nickname himself – gets into the local City College because the coach of their excellent football team wants him as running back. That is the player who has to gain ground by directing the ball end zone or opponent’s goal. The young man proves to be phenomenally strong, lightning fast and difficult to stop. He wins the Heisman Trophy, the Golden Boot of the college players, so to speak.
At the age of 22, Simpson started as a professional with the New York Buffalo Bills. He is doing great there. The Bills are a mid-table team, but the outwardly affable back still became the Football League’s Most Valuable Player and Sportsman of the Year in 1973. He will continue with the team for two more seasons San Francisco 49ers and leaves the league after ten years as a paid player with an annual salary of $800,000.
Then he also leaves the mother of his three children. A second career as a golf professional fails. But Simpson makes a lot of money as a poster boy for car rental company Hertz, his career as an actor takes off and he marries Nicole Brown, a white waiter. The marriage proves problematic. OJ is a womanizer with loose hands. He is convicted of domestic violence and the two separate.
OJ Simpson (76), former American football star and actor, died of cancer
Old stuff
In 1994, Los Angeles police found Brown and her boyfriend Ron Goldman massacred in her home. First suspect: the ex-footballer. When officers go to pick him up, he flees in a friend’s car. TV stations broadcast the highway chase live and via helicopter images. There are cheering fans on overpasses. The police do not dare to crash the car because the legend threatens suicide. Finally, the white Ford Bronco pulls up in Simpson’s driveway. He surrenders in front of 95 million viewers.
Because the judge allows cameras, the trial turns into an even bigger circus. A self-righteous womanizer is on trial for white America. Simpson’s lawyers and black America see a racist conspiracy of bungling police forces. DNA and blood traces, textile fibers, footprints, a bloody glove and 62 recorded incidents involving Brown point to him, but 150 million viewers see the jury acquit Simpson.
Two years later, the surviving relatives initiated purely civil proceedings. And the court finds Simpson responsible for the double murder. He has to pay $33.5 million to the Brown and Goldman families, pays a fraction of that and moves to Florida, where creditors are not allowed to touch his football pension and old film rights – together worth $400,000 a year – nor his real estate. Apart from a fine for sailing too fast and illegal tapping of cable television, the police no longer have him as a customer.
Until 2007. Agents arrest him and four associates for the violent robbery and hostage-taking of two sports memorabilia collectors. Simpson’s explanation: he was just going to recover old stuff he stole from him. He will now be behind bars for nine years and will then be released for good behavior. He spends the rest of his years unemployed but playing golf in Las Vegas. In a rare interview he looks back as murdered innocence. Also at his first trial. ‘That wasn’t about black or white. I’m not even black, I’m OJ
