O.J. Simpson, football legend acquitted of notorious killings, dies at 76
AILSA CHANG, HOST:
O.J. Simpson has died. The football and Hollywood star's fame turned to infamy when he was accused and then acquitted of murdering his ex-wife and her friend. He was 76 years old. Simpson's family announced his death on social media today, and NPR's Becky Sullivan has this lookback.
BECKY SULLIVAN, BYLINE: He was born Orenthal James Simpson in San Francisco in 1947. But soon enough, he was known simply as O.J. or The Juice.
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UNIDENTIFIED ANNOUNCER: They won't get him. He's being (inaudible) right in - 80 yards for O.J. Simpson.
SULLIVAN: As a running back for the University of Southern California Trojans, Simpson dazzled. He won the Heisman his senior year. Then, the Buffalo Bills drafted him first overall. He made the Pro Bowl five times and was named the NFL's most valuable player in 1973. Simpson's fame grew bigger than football. Soon, he was starring in national ad campaigns.
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O J SIMPSON: Nobody has more of what it takes to get you into a new LTD or other fine car faster.
UNIDENTIFIED MUSICAL ARTIST: (Singing) Hertz, the superstar.
SULLIVAN: By the time he retired from football in 1979, he was such a beloved celebrity, he made a seamless transition to a career in TV and film.
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SIMPSON: You know, I can't tell you how long it's been that I've been trying to host "Saturday Night Live."
SULLIVAN: He hosted "SNL" and guest-starred on TV shows, often as police characters. His biggest role was as Detective Nordberg in the "Naked Gun" comedies.
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SIMPSON: (As Detective Nordberg) Police - throw down your guns.
SULLIVAN: But all of that - the Heisman, the Pro Bowls, the TV appearances, the film career - it all was eclipsed by what happened on June 12, 1994.
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UNIDENTIFIED REPORTER: Los Angeles County coroner's office said the two victims died of sharp-force injuries and multiple stab wounds.
SULLIVAN: Outside a condo in LA's ritzy Brentwood neighborhood, police found the bodies of Simpson's ex-wife, Nicole Brown, and her friend, Ronald Goldman. A single glove was next to them. Soon, LA police found a second glove, bloodstained, at O.J.'s home. It was a match. He was soon charged with two counts of first-degree murder, recalls Laurie Levenson, a professor at Loyola Law School in Los Angeles who watched the trial.
LAURIE LEVENSON: I don't think people believed it, I mean, 'cause they thought they knew O.J. He was a Heisman Trophy winner. He had been in movies, the Hertz commercials. And all of a sudden, you have this so-called, you know, celebrity hero who's being charged with a double homicide.
SULLIVAN: But when it came time to turn himself in, O.J. didn't show up, leading to one of the most iconic and memorable moments of all of the 1990s.
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UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #1: O.J. Simpson is still traveling very slowly northbound along the 5 Freeway, coming up, again, towards the 91...
LEVENSON: And then the case starts out in a very weird way, with O.J., instead of turning himself in, getting in a Bronco. And some people call it the Bronco chase. It was almost a parade as people followed and cheered for The Juice.
SULLIVAN: For the trial, Simpson hired a who's who of defense lawyers to represent him, including Johnnie Cochran and Robert Kardashian - yes, that Kardashian. The courtroom was open to the media. Hundreds of reporters flocked there every day to watch as prosecutors laid out the case on national television.
LEVENSON: They established, as a motive, the fact that he and his ex-wife had a lot of problems. The LAPD had been called in for domestic violence calls. They had witnesses who talked about his whereabouts. But they had physical evidence. They even had what we would call early DNA evidence. But none of that was enough.
SULLIVAN: The most famous moment of the monthslong trial was when a prosecutor asked O.J. to try on the gloves, and Simpson struggled to pull them on.
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UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #2: All right. He appears to have pulled the gloves on, counsel. All right. Will you show that to the jury, Mr. Simpson, in that manner? Thank you.
SULLIVAN: Defense lawyer Johnnie Cochran seized on this, delivering the most famous line of the whole spectacle in his closing arguments.
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JOHNNIE COCHRAN: It makes no sense. It doesn't fit. If it doesn't fit, you must acquit.
SULLIVAN: And acquit they did. When the mixed-race jury announced they had found Simpson not guilty, the public reactions were dramatic - and different based on who was watching. Camille Charles, then a sociology grad student at UCLA, recalled the TV news coverage of the verdict.
CAMILLE CHARLES: What I remember is that they showed a room full of Black people, and then you saw a room full of white people - and just the difference in the reaction...
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CHARLES: ...Because the Black people celebrated, and the white people were really just appalled.
SULLIVAN: Those TV clips didn't tell the full story, says Charles, who's now a professor of Africana studies at the University of Pennsylvania. It wasn't that Black Americans all thought he was innocent, she says.
CHARLES: Black folks had had such a bad experience with the criminal justice system that they rooted for him as a Black man who actually had the resources to mount a proper defense.
SULLIVAN: After the verdict, Simpson was a free man. He defended himself in TV interviews, always insisting his innocence.
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SIMPSON: I love my kids. I loved Nicole. I could not have killed anyone.
SULLIVAN: The family of Ron Goldman filed a civil suit afterward. In that case, Simpson was found liable for the deaths and ordered to pay more than $30 million to the Goldman family. But his legal troubles weren't over. In 2007, Simpson was charged in connection with an armed robbery from a sports memorabilia dealer who was trying to sell a bunch of Simpson's items from his football days. Simpson was found guilty, sentenced to prison and served nine years. O.J. Simpson died Wednesday of cancer, his family says, surrounded by his children and grandchildren.
Becky Sullivan, NPR News.
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