“As a kid growing up in the ghetto one of the things I wanted the most was not money,
it was fame.
I wanted to be known.
I wanted people to say, ‘Hey, there goes OJ.’”
That wish came true for Mr. Orenthal James Simpson, one of the greatest American athletes
that ever lived, and a man who was the accused in one of the grisliest and most controversial
murder cases ever to paint TV screens all around the world.
Was he guilty?
Did he get away with murder?
Was he an egomaniac harboring a dangerous personality disorder?
Or was he the friendly, jovial giant he came across as in the public eye, the victim of
a conspiracy, not the type of guy who would almost hack off the head of the one he professed
to love?
Before we get into that, some of you might not be familiar with this once American idol,
sports icon, and man that divided America, so let’s introduce you to him.
He is better known as OJ Simpson, but to many back in the day he was known as “The Juice.”
Brought up on the wrong side of town to an adoring mother and a drag queen father, OJ
got into trouble as a kid and also suffered from physical disabilities due to having had
rickets.
But what doesn’t kill you, makes you stronger, and this rather large boy started to focus
his efforts on sports.
This is a crime story, not a sports bio, so to cut a long story short we can say that
OJ soon became an excellent American football player.
So good in fact, that he became one of the best college football players in history.
His forte was running, dodging, crashing through and gliding by players as if they were cardboard
cut-outs.
He was destined for a very successful pro career.
That got off to a rocky start, but then OJ the Invincible became the first pro player
to rush more than 2,000 yards in a season.
The year was 1973, and OJ was just 26.
He was a sensation, and it can’t be understated just how much he became a hero not only to
the African American community, but to all athletes and armchair aficionados of sports.
Other players would breach 2,000 yards in the future, but only OJ did it in a 14-game
season.
The others did it in 16 games.
His stardom put his face on TV for more than just sports, with perhaps his lift-off to
celebrity status being a Hertz car rental commercial featuring him running through an
airport.
The other cast of characters would smile and watch him run by, shouting, “Go OJ.”
He was the American dream come true, the black guy from the wrong side of the tracks showing
everyone that anyone could make it in America.
Critics have since said he was used in a way to obfuscate the pervasive racism in America
at the time and his rags to riches tale was far from accessible to most poor, black Americans,
but others hailed his role model status as a veritable U.S. success story.
OJ soon became embedded in a predominantly white, upper class, society.
In interviews some of his former friends have said this was problematic, that OJ abandoned
his roots, that he was merely a token black dude for people who cared little about him.
OJ said he never thought about color, race, and just did what he did.
He settled down and got married and with this first wife he had three children.
One of those would die young from drowning.
At the same time OJ was acting in Hollywood blockbusters.
His dream had come true, people really were saying, “Hey, there goes OJ.”
We must say that at this point his celebrity didn’t encircle the globe as American football
wasn’t very popular outside the U.S., but give him a few years, and OJ would be a household
name from Adelaide to Aberdeen – for all the wrong reasons.
In 1979 he met an 18-year girl called Nicole Brown who was a waitress in a private Beverly
Hills club called Daisy.
He told one of his friends that one day he would marry this incredibly beautiful girl,
and the unstoppable OJ did just that after he had divorced his first wife.
The year was 1985 when OJ married Brown, and the two would have two children of their own
shortly after the marriage.
This was a rocky relationship, and in interviews Brown’s friends have come forward a number
of times to say he was a man with a violent temper.
In fact, in 1989, OJ pleaded no contest to spousal abuse.
The two later divorced in 1992.
You can actually listen to a recording of Brown calling the police at one point saying
she was scared he was going to beat her badly.
The domestic violence that OJ perpetrated has not been denied, not even by most of his
fans, but was The Juice capable of brutally murdering people?
Let’s now take you to the crime scene.
The night of the crime was on June 12, 1994.
We might never know exactly what happened on that night, but Brown and her friend Ron
Goldman were found dead at Brown’s townhouse in Brentwood, LA.
If you have seen the documentaries about this crime, you might have seen the crime scene
photos.
Brown had been hit on the head with a blunt object, slashed multiple times and stabbed.
It is likely she was already dead when the murderer slit her throat so viciously he,
or she, almost decapitated her.
Goldman it seems had struggled with the murderer for some time, but having run into a place
surrounded by bars he had no way out.
He was slashed and stabbed multiple times, too.
It seems one of his major arteries in his leg was cut and he lost a lot of blood quickly.
Bu as one commentator said, the murderer again went into “overkill.”
Goldman was stabbed in the neck at almost the same place multiple times.
No one disagreed, whoever had done this had done so fueled by a monstrous rage.
It’s said that Goldman had been at Brown’s house as he was delivering some lost glasses.
He had put those in an envelope.
Both the glasses and the envelope were both later found at the crime scene.
We will later hear in court that a loud bang was heard at her house in the evening.
Simpson has never had a solid alibi, but has stated that he was at home during the time
of the murders, approximately 10.15 pm.
But we’ll come back to that later.
The first officers on the scene witnessed the carnage, noticing a bloody glove also
just lying around.
One detective, Mark Fuhrman, then went around to OJ’s house fearing he might also be one
of the victims and if not, to tell OJ what had happened at his former wife’s house.
OJ’s house and Brown’s place were only a matter of minutes away by car, and it was
well known to police about OJ and Brown’s marriage and divorce.
At OJ’s house another bloody glove was found, and it matched the glove found at Brown’s
house.
More blood was seen leading from Simpson’s parked car.
It was later discovered that the victims’ blood was on both gloves, which gave police
probable cause to arrest Simpson.
The thing was, Simpson has flown to Chicago on the night of the murders.
He had been taken to the airport by a Mr. Park, in his limousine.
It’s thought this happened sometime after the murders probably happened.
Mr. Park would testify that when he went to pick Simpson up, his white Ford Bronco was
not parked in the street.
Simpson seemed to be out, and so he drove around waiting.
Mr. Park would testify that it wasn’t until 10.56 pm that he would see a large, strong-looking
African American man walk into Simpson’s house.
He went to the door, and OJ finally appeared saying he was sorry he was late.
Off they went to the airport.
So, police are looking for Simpson, and they would get their chance to talk to him.
After being told about the murders, Simpson flies back to LA.
Police now have a search warrant for Simpson’s house and more blood is found.
When OJ gets home he is handcuffed and questioned for over three hours.
The line of questioning has since been criticized.
Cops go easy on him.
A few days later and he goes to the funeral of his ex-wife, and a day after that he is
charged with two counts of murder.
He is asked to surrender, but he doesn’t give himself up.
Instead what happens is one of the biggest media moments of the late 20th century as
Simpson is followed by helicopters and a stream of police cars down the highway.
It is what’s called a media circus, and has America and most of the world glued to
their TV screens.
It’s reported that he has a gun and might kill himself.
People all over America believe there has been a set-up; they shout “Go OJ.”
The cars following make it look more like a president’s motorcade than a police chase.
This will become one of the most iconic moments in news history.
Massive crowds are waiting on highway bridges, standing in the streets, holding signs that
read, “Free OJ.”
They are chanting, “OJ, OJ, OJ, OJ.”
It’s as if The Juice is back on the field, on one of his epic runs, and the world doesn’t
want him to stop.
His car finally arrives at his house.
SWAT teams are out.
People are running around.
Helicopters are overhead; it is chaos.
OJ waits in his car, his gun is said to be close to his chin.
If he steps out with the gun in his hand, he will most likely be shot.
He doesn’t do that, and is talked out of the car.
The negotiator years later will say that while in OJ’s house he noticed only pictures,
paintings, photos, of the star.
None of anyone else, not even family.
And so, to lure him out of the car he appealed to OJ’s ego, his greatness.
It worked.
People interviewed in the streets are saying it’s a conspiracy, more oppression and human
rights abuses by a police force known to be corrupt, sometimes racist, sometimes unnecessarily
violent.
The case of Rodney King still stings among the African American community, who for good
reason have doubts about the ethics of the LAPD.
The police are well aware of the tension and the destruction of the LA riots of ’92.
They move as if tenterhooks.
Other men may have perhaps been treated with less trepidation.
A court date is made.
One prosecutor later said to the media, “I don’t think I’d ever seen so much evidence
in one case.”
It did look cut and dried, but to OJ’s fans something was rotten in the state of California.
If anyone could find where that stink was coming from, it was the civil rights lawyer
John Cochrane.
He was a hero to many people in the African American community.
Already some people had forgotten about the two hacked bodies and were concentrating their
emotions on a race case.
Cochrane had done commendable work over the years and had fought for the downtrodden,
and OJ had the money to hire him as well as a bevy of other top lawyers.
“Boy was I set up!”
OJ would soon say, and his words echoed throughout black communities all over the USA.
Surveys showed that only 10 percent of African Americans in the US thought he was guilty.
The final jury, many of the them black Americans, were also later said to have been somewhat
blinded or moved by the race issue.
OJ even said to his lawyer, joking, “If this jury says I did it, maybe I did do it!”
It wasn’t cheap, though, the trial, and it’s said OJ would make around $3 million
dollars just by signing items with autographs as he sat in jail.
He was still adored by many, regardless of what he might have done.
It was the trial of the century, and within a trial was another kind of trial.
That’s because the policeman that found the glove at OJ’s house would be found to
have said some very racist things in the past.
On top of that, it was also found, with good evidence, that he had bragged about police
brutality.
The case became as much about this bad cop as it did the murders.
Yet again, another giant FAIL for the LAPD.
The glove must have been planted by him, shouted OJ fans, it’s just another case of police
racism.
There was blood of the victims all over the place, from OJ’s house to his car, it was
open and shut in terms of DNA evidence.
But those crafty lawyers proved that the crime scene had been contaminated and that possibly
there had been a set up.
They weren’t trying to prove that cops had something against OJ, only that possibly they
had planted evidence for an easier arrest.
Even though OJ had been cut himself that night, and his blood was mixed with the victims’,
the lawyers managed to convince a jury that something was wrong.
And indeed, the police had mishandled evidence.
We might also say that DNA evidence was kind of new to everyone, not just the jury.
Nowadays we can read things such as this, “It is reported that the DNA evidence showed
that the chance that some of the blood found near the bodies came from anyone but Simpson
was 1 in 170 million.
The chance that blood found on Simpson’s sock could be from someone other than Nicole
Brown was 1 in 21 billion.”
But back then the jurors didn’t trust DNA.
They also believed the defense in that there had been some kind of set up and OJ’s blood
had been taken and just thrown everywhere, from the crime scene to his car to his house
to his clothes.
The gloves were tried on in court, and famously OJ donned latex gloves first and then somewhat
dramatically proved his hands were too big for the leather ones.
Another bad move from the prosecution.
His blood and the victims’ were on these gloves, but it didn’t matter.
As Cochrane told the jury, “If the glove doesn’t fit, acquit.”
Hair from an African American was also found at the scene and on Ron Goldman’s shirt,
while shoes matching Simpson’s size had made footprints in the blood.
After the trial, evidence would be found of Simpson owning the exact shoes that were worn
by the killer, but it was too late then.
The sock we just mentioned was also found at Simpson’s home, and that too had blood
of the victims on it.
But as we said, some finagling by very clever lawyers persuaded the jury not that cops had
colluded to set OJ up, but that there was chance that evidence had been mishandled.
Photos of Brown’s bruised face were shown to the jury, from a time Simpson had beat
her in the past and he’d been arrested.
It didn’t matter.
There was a racist cop involved with that evidence, and that meant something.
LAPD criminalists had done a poor job, and that meant something too.
Cochrane orated a summation fitting of a wartime speech, and even though it was completely
over the top by most people’s standards, it meant something as wel.
So, even with so much evidence, the case of the prosecution was doomed.
And as one of the former jurors said in a documentary interview, she was never going
to find him guilty.
This was payback for Rodney King.
She said 90 percent of the other jurors thought the same, although in the same documentary
another former juror said she had no bones about King relating to this case, but the
prosecution had pretty much failed and let a guilty man go free.
Lots of evidence was not presented by the defense, such as Brown calling a woman’s
shelter days before her death saying she feared her ex-husband was stalking her.
Or the fact that a shop owner had said Simpson had bought a 15-inch knife from him that might
have matched the kind of knife in the murders.
The prosecution couldn’t use that because the man who sold it to Simpson sold his story
to the media.
Police did search for a knife but couldn’t find one.
The media also reports that a knife was found during the demolition of Simpson’s house
some years later, but it was kept as a memento by an LAPD officer.
Another person said she saw Simpson’s Ford Bronco driving wildly that night, but she
also sold that story to the media and so the prosecution didn’t use her testimony.
Civil rights activists called it a victory for black America, and no shortage of people
jubilantly shouted from the streets that justice had been served.
What most people failed to realize is that OJ had admitted that he would have lost without
doubt had he not have had his expensive team of lawyers.
In terms of human rights, was this justice not justice bought with money?
Did the color of the money hold more sway than the color of the skin.
No one seemed to ask…Black, white or brown, if you are poor, you are having a harder time
in court than if you are rich.
Had justice really prevailed?
It was hard to call it a victory, and in this case might have meant two people being slaughtered
like cattle by a man who thought he was untouchable.
Simpson did lose a civil case to Ron Goldman’s family and a jury found OJ guilty of causing
wrongful death.
This meant that Simpson was ordered in total to pay both families of the deceased $33.5
million in compensatory and punitive damages.
But how much they got was nothing close to that.
They hounded Simpson for years, or at least the Goldman’s did, but OJ had a way of protecting
what little money he had left.
OJ did end up going to prison after a few years acting like a gangster and making music
videos and some TV shows.
He was apparently trying to get some of his memorabilia back, but a failed hotel heist
in Las Vegas got him 9 years.
He was released in 2017 and it’s said he now lives a quiet life as a retiree somewhere
in Las Vegas.
Apparently he still loves golf, but we might imagine his juice glass these days is half
empty.
His former manager is now reportedly making a new documentary, and has stated that Simpson
did the murders but did not act alone.
There is also a very strange television interview come to light in which Simpson gives a “hypothetical”
version of events on the night of the murders.
What’s strange is that Simpson basically retraces the steps of himself that night and
how he hypothetically commits the murders.
He says this in the third person, such as, “He took the Bronco to her home with his
friend, brought a knife and put a hat and gloves on for dramatic effect.”
He even added, “It was horrible.
It was absolutely horrible.”
Simpson then says Goldman tried some karate move with him and he asked him if he thought
he could kick his backside.
He said he then blacked out, but came around and there was stuff all around him.
He was talking about blood.
If you watch this, you might just wonder the heck you have just seen.
The video was not published for many years because it was such a sensitive case and there
could be legal issues.
The tapes were reportedly only recently found.
So, after hearing all this, are you in the “Go OJ” camp or do you think he was guilty?
What do you think about him, the investigation, his diehard fans?
Tell us in the comments.
Also, be sure to check out our other video Americas Most Evil Serial Killer - Ted Bundy.
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