OJ Simpson, the award-winning American football star and Hollywood actor who was acquitted of charges of double murder of his ex-wife and her friend but later found liable in a civil trial, has died. He was 76 years old.
Simpson's attorney confirmed to TMZ that he died Wednesday night in Las Vegas. A message posted Thursday on Simpson's official account on X indicated that he died after a battle with cancer.
“He was surrounded by his children and grandchildren,” the statement mentioned.
Simpson earned fortune and adulation during his career in sports and entertainment, but his legacy was forever altered by the June 1994 double murder of his ex-wife, Nicole Brown Simpson, and her friend Ronald Goldman, in Los Angeles. both stabbed.
Live television coverage of his arrest after a famous slow-speed chase marked a stunning fall from grace for the sporting hero.
He seemed to transcend racial barriers as the Trojans' star running back for college football powerhouse University of Southern California in the late 1960s, as a rental car salesman dashing through airports in the late 1970s, and as the husband of a blonde, blue-eyed woman who was a high school homecoming queen in the 1980s.
“I'm not black, I'm OJ,” he liked to tell his friends.
The public was mesmerized by his “trial of the century” broadcast live on television. His case sparked debates about race, gender, domestic abuse, celebrity justice and police misconduct.
A criminal court jury found him not guilty of murder in 1995, but a separate civil trial jury found him liable in 1997 for the deaths and ordered him to pay $33.5 million to relatives of Brown and Goldman.
A decade later, still overshadowed by California's wrongful death ruling, Simpson led five men he barely knew into a confrontation with two sports memorabilia dealers in a cramped Las Vegas hotel room. Two men with Simpson had weapons. A jury convicted Simpson of armed robbery and other felonies.
Imprisoned at age 61, he served nine years in a remote northern Nevada prison, including a stint as a gym janitor. He was unrepentant when he was released on parole in October 2017. The parole board heard him insist once again that he was just trying to recover sports memorabilia and family heirlooms that were stolen from him after his criminal trial in Los Angeles. .
[Con información de The Associated Press]
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