Good.
He murdered his wife in 1994, when I was working at Temple University. Every day, every single goddamned day, I had an hour-long commute each way by bus and subway from my home to the university, and I’d grab a copy of the city tabloid, the Philadelphia Daily News, and read the sordid stories semi-obsessively. I grew to despise OJ. I was freed of that ugly habit when the trial ended in his acquittal — and the only good thing about that decision is that the newspapers and TV stopped being full of trial news. Of course, OJ wasn’t done yet.
The former football star, who later enjoyed a successful acting career until he was charged with brutally murdering his estranged wife and a male friend of hers in 1994. Although Simpson was acquitted of the murder charges, he later served nine years in a Nevada prison for a botched kidnapping and armed robbery in a Las Vegas hotel room.
Unfortunately, another vestige of that era is the Kardashians. I ignore them utterly.
I guess he never did find the real killer.
I guess he must have been a vampire — he couldn’t see his own reflection.
John Douglas, the FBI profiler and inspiration for Jodie Foster’s boss in Silence of the Lambs, discussed the case in one of his books. He wasn’t asked to testify, but in the book he gave his analysis of the facts of the case. This included that the severity of the attack on Nicole indicated the killer knew her personally and was the primary target, that the order of events indicated an inexperienced killer, that the killer was familiar with the layout of the house, etc. He also explained why the glove didn’t fit. As you read the analysis, it is quite clear that the only person who fit the profile was Simpson.
Personally I did everything I could to ignore the trial/media circus when it was on. However someone I knew explained that they thought Simpson got off because the prosecution bungled their case. So it is a shame that John Douglas wasn’t called to testify.
I never really watched TV, but was at a then-girlfriend’s apartment watching the car chase. Kinda surreal at the time, but embarrassing to think I was glued to the screen.
david @ #1
The real killer was himself who used every form of acrobatic style speeches to convince everyone that he wasn’t when he in fact was.
Yeah, if not for the OJ trial we might never have heard of the Kardashians.
Peter Higgs. who is a lot more interesting than an un-convicted murderer, also died a few days ago. I found that out through an ACM TechNews email I receive, as well as the Wikipedia main page. Since the announcement about the un-convicted murderer’s death this morning, I’ve received multiple emails from mainstream media with subject lines about the event. Sensationalism wins over intelligence once again.
Owasso @5: d’oh
South Park had an episode with OJ Simpson, and with wossname, that Democratic congressman which is assumed to have murdered a secretary to cover up their extramarital affair.
(the background was, the parents of Butters thought they had killed him and went to great lengths to conceal this fact)
So is anyone going to watch Capricorn One or Naked Gun in his memory?
Wow James Brolin and Sam Waterston were in the Capricorn One movie.
OJ never got it. Never learned how badly his toxic masculinity fucked him.
I recall The Onion (back when it was in print) had a post-trail headline that said “O.J. vows to find the magical elves that killed his wife.” They would carry in the bit in several other “stories” in that issue.
Sadly, it seems to have gone down the memory hole for some reason because I can’t find it in any of the compilations.
When I heard that oj simpson is dead. My immediate response was ‘oh, so what’ There are so many more important and interesting things to get involved in.
Ron Goldman. That was Nicole’s friend, apparently. No one remembers him.
My friend who lives in California actually met Robert Kardashian. Said he was a really nice, down to Earth type guy. So I blame the family matriarch for cursing us with her vapid spawn.
I remember a friend of mine talking about how he played ‘OJ Roulette’ during all that:
– Drive to work with the radio on
– Whenever someone on the radio mentions OJ, hit the ‘scan’ button to move to the next station so you don’t have to listen to it
– If you’ve looped around the dial and are back to the original station before you get to work, you lose.
He lost a number of times.
Yay, now the 24 hour news cycle has something different to be distracted about until Trump does something again.
The OJ trial coverage was so awful I stopped watching the news entirely. Nothing in the trial bothered me any more than the contents of any other murder trial but the way it completely saturated the news seemed unique then. My solution was to just stop watching the news because the news had become useless.
Several years back a friend showed up at one of our game nights with a pack of OJ trial novelty cards. They were bizarre. People and objects and such from the trial pictured on the card then some text about them.
Trump has pulled the same trick recently with oversaturating the news coverage. Unless he stages another coup or goes to jail for the last one, I frankly don’t need to hear anything about him until November. I actually don’t want Trump to follow suit and kick the bucket just yet. I’m hoping some guity verdicts come down while the guy is still alive so it’s easier to prosecute the next clown.
Another dead arsehole who make me wish for a shotgun and a time machine.
That was my sophomore year in high school. The whole school pretty much dropped everything to hear the verdict. I thought he was guilty, myself, and had no idea how that jury had reached its ecision. I also thought it was ridiculous to bring everything to a halt just to hear what we’d all find out later.
asclepias @19: There’s a lot of stuff said about the verdict, but while OJ’s celebrity status or desires to “stick it to the man” probably played some role in it, the big factor was simply how jaw-droppingly incompetent the investigation was. It was not helped by the fact that the LAPD was notoriously racist and almost certainly did try to frame him- it was known that they routinely did so with black suspects (and probably still do, ACAB).
So this all meant that when looking only at the evidence presented to the jury, there was still considerable room for reasonable doubt, and you’re not supposed to convict off gut feelings.
I blame OJ for my worst haircut ever. The hairdresser was watching the verdict while cutting my hair.
Bill Cosby isn’t dead.
But Henry Kissinger is! FINALLY!
During the daily deluge of “news” updates on the OJ Simpson trial, one of the local radio station would occasionally throw in a “Simpsons update”, where they played ~30 seconds of a Simpsons episode. It was a running gag.
@18. gijoel : “Another dead arsehole who make me wish for a shotgun and a time machine.”
Imagine if OJ had been murdered before he committed those murders. He’d be remembered fondly (if a lot less famously ) as a sportstar, actor and celebrity. OTOH, two other human beings would be alive & who knows what they might’ve subsequently done with their lives.
StevoR @ 25
If I had a time machine and was only allowed to go back 50 years, I would indeed ‘do’ OJ Simpson and Cosby.
After I had done a cerain ayatollah and a has-been film actor who likes to have students shot.
And that awful rapey Brit music personality everyone in BBC knew about.
Remember: Twelve randomly-chosen LA residents all agreed that it was totally plausible that the LAPD planted evidence and lied about it from the witness stand.
birgerjohansson @ 26
Are you referring to Ronald Reagan (“has-been actor”) and Garry Glitter (“rapey Brit music personality”)? Not sure I got all of the references.
A little added perspective:
This is just one additional reminder of how society (especially governance) is a failure:
o.j. still owed $100 million to the Goldman family when the ahole died!
https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/culture-news/o-j-simpson-goldman-family-debt-1235003649/
Back then I had no idea who OJ Simpson was, never being a follower of Sportsball. Didn’t own one of them new-fangled tele-vision gizmos either.
First I remember is somebody on a bus talking about him being chased on his bronco, which I thought interesting that he was getting away on a horse.
The actual story was far more boring.
And what are Kardashians? Some sort of weird sect?