O.J. Simpson Dead at 76

LAS VEGAS, NV —  O.J. Simpson, whose career in football and entertainment was overshadowed by legal controversies, including his acquittal in a highly publicized murder trial, has passed away at the age of 76 after a battle with prostate cancer.

The family announced on Simpson's official X account that Simpson died Wednesday after battling prostate cancer. Simpson's attorney confirmed 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.

Live coverage of his arrest after a famous slow-speed chase marked a fall from grace for the sportsmen. 

His “trial of the century” on live TV mesmerized the public. His case sparked debates on 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 family members of Brown and Goldman.

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. 

Twelve years later, Rupert Murdoch canceled a planned book by the News Corp-owned HarperCollins in which Simpson offered his hypothetical account of the killings. It was to be titled “If I Did It.”

Goldman’s family, still doggedly pursuing the multimillion-dollar wrongful death judgment, won control of the manuscript. They retitled the book “If I Did It: Confessions of the Killer.”

Less than two months after losing the rights to the book, Simpson was arrested in Las Vegas.

Simpson played 11 NFL seasons, nine of them with the Buffalo Bills, where he became known as “The Juice” on an offensive line known as “The Electric Company.” 

He won four NFL rushing titles, rushed for 11,236 yards in his career, scored 76 touchdowns, and played in five Pro Bowls. His best season was 1973, when he ran for 2,003 yards, the first running back to break the 2,000-yard rushing mark.

Orenthal James Simpson was born July 9, 1947, in San Francisco, where he grew up in government-subsidized housing projects.

After graduating from high school, he enrolled at City College of San Francisco for a year and a half before transferring to the University of Southern California for the spring 1967 semester.

He married his first wife, Marguerite Whitley, on June 24, 1967, and moved her to Los Angeles. 

Simpson won the Heisman Trophy in 1968. He accepted the statue the same day his first child, Arnelle, was born.

He had two sons, Jason and Aaren, with his first wife; one of those boys, Aaren, drowned as a toddler in a swimming pool accident in 1979, the same year he and Whitley divorced.

Simpson and Brown were married in 1985. They had two children, Justin and Sydney, and divorced in 1992. Two years later, Nicole Brown Simpson was found murdered.