OJ Simpson’s life and death: From NFL running back to Bronco chase and the murder trial that brought him infamy

OJ Simpson, the former football star and Hollywood actor whose murder trial for the killing of his ex-wife became a national sensation, died Wednesday at the age of 76 following a short battle with cancer.

Simpson became one of the greatest running backs in the history of college and then professional football.

His career began at the University of Southern California, where he was awarded the Heisman trophy in 1968 after setting the NCAA single-season rushing mark.

He went on to be chosen first in the draft by the Buffalo Bills, for whom he played nine seasons, before wrapping up his career with the San Francisco 49ers.

In 1995, Simpson was cleared by a Los Angeles jury for the murders of his ex-wife and her friend in what was dubbed ‘the trial of the century.’

He avoided prison when he was found not guilty in the 1994 stabbing deaths of former wife Nicole Brown Simpson and her friend Ronald Goldman in Los Angeles. 

He later served nine years in a Nevada prison after being convicted in 2008 on 12 counts of armed robbery and kidnapping two sports memorabilia dealers at gunpoint in a Las Vegas hotel.

Football Star 

OJ Simpson first rose to stardom on the football field as a running back at USC. He overcame childhood infirmity to become an electrifying running back at the Southern California school.

Over two years, he rushed for more than 3,100 years and had 33 total touchdowns.

His collegiate career culminated in 1968 when he was awarded the Heisman Memorial Trophy – given to the country’s top player.

His win was one of the largest blowouts in Heisman voting history, beating the next-highest vote-getter by 1,750 points.

Simpson was drafted as the No. 1 overall pick in the 1969 NFL draft by the Buffalo Bills.

He played nine years for the New York team, with his best season coming in 1973 when he was named MVP. He rushed for 2,003 yards and 12 touchdowns, while also taking home the award as the top offensive football player.

Simpson finished in the top five of NFL MVP voting four times and was a top-five vote-getter for top offensive player during five seasons. He finished his career playing two seasons for the San Francisco 49ers.

Throughout his career, Simpson was named to six Pro Bowls and was a first-team All-Pro player five times.

He was enshrined in the Pro Football Hall of Fame in 1985 – during his first year of eligibility.

Nicknamed ‘The Juice,’ Simpson was one of the best and most popular athletes of the late 1960s and 1970s. 

Simpson parlayed his football stardom into a career as a sportscaster, advertising pitchman and Hollywood actor in films including the ‘Naked Gun’ series.

Throughout his time in the NFL, Simpson was married to his first wife Marguerite Whitley.

The pair had three children together, two daughters and a son. 

Their second daughter, Aeren, tragically died in 1979, just one month shy of her second birthday.

The toddler was found unresponsive by the family’s pool. Paramedics were able to revive her, but she was placed on life support when she reached the hospital and died eight days later.

Simpson and Whitley’s marriage ended the same year their daughter passed. 

Trial of the Century 

Following a successful post-NFL run in Hollywood, Simpson’s life changed when Nicole Brown Simpson and Goldman were found fatally slashed in an incredibly bloody scene outside her Los Angeles home on June 12, 1994.

Simpson, then 46, was arrested and charged with the two murders five days later.

Simpson first met Brown, a beautiful, blonde recent high school graduate, when she was an 18-year-old waitress and he was still married to his first wife. He was more than a dozen years her senior.

The pair married in 1985 and had two children. Over the course of their tumultuous marriage, Brown Simpson called the police on several occasions during her husband’s violent fits of rage.

In 1989, Simpson pleaded no contest to charges of spousal abuse. 

On the evening of July 17, 1994, Simpson led what became perhaps the most famous police chase in the nation’s history.

After failing to turn himself in to authorities, which he’d previously agreed to do, Simpson took off in a white Ford Bronco driven by his former teammate and friend Al Cowlings.

The low-speed chase through Los Angeles lasted for two-hours and was filmed by news choppers hovering overhead in a scene that played live in the homes of some 95million Americans.

The Chase was noted as the first time a police pursuit was televised and watched in a dramatic fashion and led to the ongoing mass interest in the case against Simpson. 

Simpson was eventually captured in his driveway on the Friday night after leading authorities along 60 miles of freeways and city streets.

All the while, friends and fans of Simpson were concerned the former footballer was on the brink of suicide.

Before fleeing his arrest, Simpson had written a letter proclaiming his innocence and saying goodbye to family and friends, making a last wish to ‘leave my children in peace.’

‘I’ve had a great life, great friends. Please think of the real OJ and not this lost person,’ he wrote.

Robert Shapiro, Simpson’s friend and attorney, said he feared the star was suicidal. 

He hired an expensive team of prominent attorneys who became known as ‘the dream team,’ and eventually successfully argued for his acquittal during the high-profile murder trial.

The lengthy Los Angeles trial was famously televised in its entirety for close to a year, which turned the gruesome murders into a worldwide media sensation.

His October 1995 acquittal divided the nation along primarily racial lines. While black Americans mostly believed Simpson was innocent, white Americans largely felt he was guilty. 

The country’s black population felt Simpson’s successful defense proved there was a significant strain of racism pervading the US justice system, which had worked to frame the former NFL player.

Prior to his trial, Simpson had rarely discussed his race or racism in the US.

In 1976, he told Playboy magazine: ‘I’m happy with being Black and I don’t trip about it.’

The reality of Simpson’s life then was that his wealth, talent, and star-power allowed him access to virtually all social circles, clubs, and environments that he ever might wish to visit.  

His status and wealth mitigated any negative reaction some in the upper echelons of society might have had to his race, and are ultimately what made it possible for him to procure and afford the legal team responsible for his acquittal.

Despite the acquittal, the one-time beloved star was never able to fully regain his commercial success as an actor, advertising star, or sports announcer.

The question of Simpson’s innocence and what really happened the night of June 12, 1995 never really subsided. The case has been the premise of several documentaries, books, podcasts, and fictionalized television shows.

The trial itself had everything: a rich celebrity defendant; a Black man accused of killing his white former wife out of jealousy; a woman slain after divorcing a man who had beaten her; a ‘dream team’ of pricy and charismatic defense lawyers; and a huge gaffe by prosecutors.

Simpson, who at the outset of the case declared himself ‘absolutely 100 percent not guilty,’ waved at the jurors and mouthed the words ‘thank you’ after the predominately Black panel of 10 women and two men acquitted him on Oct. 3, 1995.

Prosecutors argued that Simpson killed Nicole in a jealous fury, and they presented extensive blood, hair and fiber tests linking Simpson to the murders. 

The defense countered that the celebrity defendant was framed by racist white police.

The trial transfixed America. In the White House, President Bill Clinton left the Oval Office and watched the verdict on his secretary’s TV. 

Many black Americans celebrated his acquittal, seeing Simpson as the victim of bigoted police. Many other Americans were appalled by his exoneration in what they thought should have been an obvious win for the prosecution.

The Goldman and Brown families subsequently pursued a wrongful death lawsuit against Simpson in civil court. 

In 1997, a predominately white jury in Santa Monica, California, found Simpson liable for the two deaths and ordered him to pay $33.5 million in damages. 

After the civil case, some of Simpson’s belongings, including memorabilia from his football days, were taken and auctioned off to help pay the damages he owed.

Prison Stint 

In September 2007, nearly 12 years after his acquittal, Simpson was arrested for leading a group of men – some of them armed – into a Vegas hotel room, where they held at gunpoint two men as they robbed them of memorabilia worth thousands of dollars that Simpson said belonged to him.

At the time, Simpson claimed he was merely attempting to recover his own property.

‘I didn’t want to hurt anybody,’ Simpsons said at his sentencing, to which he wore a blue prison jumpsuit and shackles around his legs.

‘I didn’t know I was doing anything wrong.’ 

The next year, on the 13th anniversary of his acquittal, Simpson was convicted by a jury on 10 counts of armed robbery, kidnapping, and conspiracy. 

He was sentenced to 33 years in prison, a sentence that was, to some degree, seen by the public as retribution for his questionable acquittal more than a decade prior.

His team’s appeals of the verdict failed. He served nine years in a Nevada prison for his crimes.

He was released on parole in 2017 and moved to a gated community in Las Vegas. He was then granted early release from parole in 2021 due to good behavior.