From NFL all-star to public enemy number one: OJ Simpson’s life after the trial of the century
Until 1994, OJ Simpson was known as an All-American hero – celebrated for his prowess on the American football field and later a successful career on both the big and small screen.
These triumphs earned Simpson a stratospheric rise, which came crashing down after he was accused of killing his ex-wife Nicole Brown Simpson and her friend Ronald Goldman.
With the help of Kardashian family patriarch Robert Kardashian – his lawyer – he was acquitted of murder in 1995, though his glittering public image was irreparably damaged.
Simpson did not help his tarnished reputation, going on to commit a spate of other crimes, including battery, speeding through manatee protection zones in Florida, and a bizarre Las Vegas robbery in which he claimed he was trying to take back some of his own sporting memorabilia and which cost him nearly nine years in prison.
Here’s a look at his life following the trial of the century:
More than 10 years after the conclusion of the infamous trial, Simpson wrote a book titled If I Did It.
The book was ghostwritten by US author Pablo Fenjves and was based on interviews with Simpson. It was published by New York City publishing house Beaufort Books.
In it Simpson hypothesized about how he would have committed the murders – had he done it. The first part provides a detailed description of his marriage to Brown, with the latter part describing the events on the night of 12 June 1994 – and how the murders could have occurred if Simpson had carried them out.
The hypothetical scenario sees Simpson enlist the help of an unwilling accomplice, with whom he shares that he plans to “scare the s***” out of Brown. He goes to Brown’s condo where a confrontation ensues between him and Goldman.
Simpson later loses consciousness and later wakes up with no memory of the actual murder.
About the book, Simpson’s attorney said that there is “only one chapter that deals with their deaths and that chapter, in my understanding, has a disclaimer that it’s complete fiction.”
Public outrage prevented the initial publication of If I Did It in 2006 by Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp-owned HarperCollins. A bankruptcy court subsequently awarded the book’s rights to the Goldman family, who released the work in 2007.
The title was changed by the family to: If I Did It: Confessions of a Killer. The word “if” appears in small writing on the cover.
Simpson’s trial was one of the first major celebrity trials to be broadcast on television. As a result, its contents subsequently spawned multiple TV series, movies, and docuseries by networks around the world.
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