LAS VEGAS (AP) — O.J. Simpson, the decorated football superstar and Hollywood actor who was acquitted of charges he killed his former wife and her friend but was found liable in a separate civil trial, has died. He was 76.
The family announced on Simpson’s official X account that Simpson died Wednesday after battling prostate cancer. Simpson’s attorney confirmed to TMZ that he died in Las Vegas.
Simpson earned fame, fortune and adulation through football and show business, but his legacy was forever changed by the June 1994 knife slayings of his ex-wife, Nicole Brown Simpson, and her friend Ronald Goldman in Los Angeles.
There’s a lot that impacted the times of the 1990’s. The OJ Simpson acquittal verdict was a hallmark of justice considered from that decade. Naturally, the public will reflect on the far reaching influence of OJ Simpson both pre-verdict and post-verdict and any meaning in his death.
Football was what he was known for. Then he launched a career film & TV. His infamy peaked with the deaths of Nicole Brown Simpson and Ron Goldman. Sadly enough, Simpson landed in prison much later for the strange crime of breaking and entering a Las Vegas Hotel Suite to recon his own Heisman trophy.
Here are a few examples of how his influence rippled into this writer’s life.
I watched the verdict with my Mass Communications class in college with other budding news and PR professionals.
Paula Barbieri, the woman made infamous for dating Simpson post-verdict, is from one of my hometowns in Florida.
I worked for ‘10 minutes’ at the Johnny Cochrane firm with one of the defense attorneys on OJ Simpson’s defense team. It was one of the most abusive workplaces I have ever been in.
Where were you when the OJ Simpson verdict was read? How does his death impact you? How do you think it impacts his surviving family?
His death leaves no mark on me whatsoever. As a Christian I should pray for him, but just don’t honestly believe I could do it in good faith. I still think he murdered Nicole and his slimy lawyers pulled a quick one.
His death leaves no mark on me whatsoever. As a Christian I should pray for him, but just don’t honestly believe I could do it in good faith. I still think he murdered Nicole and his slimy lawyers pulled a quick one.