Case File: O.J. Simpson

O.J. Simpson, born in 1947 and raised in the housing projects of San Francisco, had rickets as a young child and wore leg braces for part of his childhood. His father—a gay drag performer who died of AIDS in 1986—left home when Simpson was four.

As a teenager, Simpson was arrested three times for minor infractions; he later said a brief encounter with baseball legend Willie Mays turned his life around. By 1967, Simpson, who was a star athlete in high school, was playing football for the University of Southern California Trojans. He also married his first wife, Marguerite, in 1967; they eventually had three children.

By the time he won the Heisman Trophy in 1968, Simpson seemed destined for a stellar career in the National Football League. Signing with the Buffalo Bills in 1969, he demanded—and got—the biggest rookie contract in sports history at the time, earning $650,000 over five years. He was later traded to the San Francisco 49ers.

Throughout his 11-year football career, Simpson—now known simply as O.J. or “the Juice”—broke many sports records. In 1973, he was the first NFL player to rush for 2,000 or more yards in a single season; that year he was also named NFL Player of the Year. And in 1985, Simpson was inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame.

Always a mediagenic performer and on-camera personality, Simpson parlayed his athletic success into a promising acting career. He began with performances in small television roles in the late 1960s, and by the 1970s, he was appearing in movies and TV shows such as The Towering Inferno, The Klansman, Roots and The Naked Gun trilogy.

Simpson also worked as an NFL sports commentator in the 1970s and 1980s, and promoted brands like Hertz, Honey Baked Ham, Pioneer Chicken, TreeSweet Orange Juice and Wilson Sporting Goods in commercials and via endorsement deals. By 1992, his O.J. Simpson Enterprises business had about $10 million in assets and more than $1 million in annual income.

Simpson began dating Nicole Brown soon after meeting her in 1977, even though he was still married. He and Marguerite officially divorced in 1979, and he married Brown in 1985. They had two children, but from the beginning, their relationship was rocky, and police were sent to their house repeatedly for domestic violence calls.

In 1989, on New Year’s Day, Simpson was arrested for spousal battery; Nicole had a black eye, a split lip and her husband's handprint still visible on her neck. Nicole reportedly begged police to arrest him because—despite Simpson’s history of domestic violence—no previous action had been taken.

Simpson pleaded no contest to spousal abuse and was given two years probation and 120 hours of community service. By 1992, the couple divorced and Nicole had moved into a condo in the Brentwood neighborhood of Los Angeles. The following year—after an attempt at reconciliation—Nicole once again called police to intervene when Simpson became violent with her.

On the evening of June 12, 1994, Nicole and her family dined at Mezzaluna, a local restaurant where her friend, Ron Goldman, worked. Later that night, Goldman went to Nicole’s condo to return a pair of eyeglasses that Nicole’s mother had left at the restaurant. 

Shortly after midnight, Nicole and Goldman were found brutally stabbed to death in a bloody scene in the courtyard of her condo. Simpson had been in Los Angeles that evening but took a late-night flight to Chicago. Upon his return, police questioned Simpson as a person of interest and later issued a warrant for his arrest.

When required to turn himself in to police on the morning of June 17, Simpson failed to show. Later that day, Simpson—with a loaded gun to his head—led police on a low-speed chase on Los Angeles freeways in a white Ford Bronco driven by his friend and former teammate Al Cowlings.

The freeway chase was televised nationally; even the NBA finals were interrupted to show the dramatic scene unfolding. Driven to his Brentwood estate, Simpson eventually turned himself in.

The ensuing 11-month murder trial became a televised three-ring media circus, with reporters worldwide delving into every aspect of the case, from DNA testing to police handling—and mishandling—of domestic abuse cases. In the shadow of the 1991 Rodney King beating and the riots that followed, race relations in the United States once again came under scrutiny, especially when glaring examples of LAPD racism were presented to the jury.

In one episode from the trial, Simpson was asked to don a bloodstained glove that was found at the scene of the murders (police found the matching glove in Simpson’s home). When Simpson struggled to put on the glove, his attorney Johnnie Cochran famously declaimed, “If the glove don't fit, you must acquit.”

Due in part to police bungling the evidence, including mislabeling photos and improper storage of DNA samples, Simpson was found not guilty of the two murders on October 3, 1995, with almost 100 million people watching the verdict announcement on live television. But the legal battle continued when the Brown and Goldman families filed a civil suit against Simpson.

No television cameras were allowed in the civil trial, which started in October 1996, and in February 1997, a jury found that Simpson was liable for the deaths of Nicole Brown and Ron Goldman. As a result, he was required to pay more than $33 million in damages.

In 2006, facing a barrage of financial difficulties, Simpson tried to publish a book titled If I Did It, which detailed how he would have killed Brown and Goldman. Following a flurry of legal maneuvers, the Goldman family was awarded the publishing rights in order to compensate them for Simpson’s unpaid funds from the civil case. The book was finally published in 2007 with the title If I Did It: Confessions of the Killer.

In September 2007, Simpson and a group of men entered a Las Vegas hotel room where a sports memorabilia dealer was trying to sell collectibles, including some O.J. Simpson memorabilia. Holding the sellers at gunpoint, Simpson—who claimed the items had been stolen from him—and his accomplices stuffed the memorabilia into pillowcases and left.

Within a few days, Simpson and his accomplices were arrested and charged with several crimes, including burglary while in possession of a deadly weapon. The one-month trial ended with Simpson being found guilty of all 12 charges against him.  He was sentenced to 33 years in prison with the possibility of parole in nine years.

Simpson served his prison sentence in Lovelock Correctional Center in Nevada until his release on parole in 2017 after almost nine years of imprisonment.

Given his numerous legal problems, Simpson’s star power was considerably diminished following his murder trials. He struggled to make ends meet with only his NFL and other pensions as income.

 In 2023, Simpson announced he was undergoing treatment for prostate cancer, and in April 2024, he died of the disease. A leading expert in chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE)—a common condition among athletes who suffer from repeated concussions—suggested that Simpson may have had the condition, though no diagnosis was ever confirmed. Simpson himself once stated that he could have CTE, since he sometimes had difficulty remembering names and speaking.

Simpson left behind a complicated legacy. A Black man who grew up in public housing projects, then became a superstar athlete and a famous actor, could have been an inspirational role model to other young Black Americans. But Simpson was "never seen as a staunch proponent of the African American community," Darnell Hunt, a professor of sociology and African American studies at UCLA, told NPR in 2024.

Nonetheless, his rare ability to mount a successful legal defense against murder charges at a time when Black people were often victims of a racist legal and judicial system—as demonstrated during the Rodney King trial—highlighted the inequities that remain a part of American society.

Simpson’s life and the legal dramas that engulfed him have been portrayed in several television programs. The 2000 television documentary O.J. Simpson: The Untold Story claims to reveal evidence that sheds light on the murders.

A documentary from 2016, O.J.: Made in America, won an Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature. In the 2016 television miniseries The People v. O.J. Simpson: American Crime Story, Simpson is portrayed by Cuba Gooding Jr., and Boris Kodjoe portrayed Simpson in a satirical thriller titled The Juice.