Posted on: April 11, 2024, 11:03h.
Last updated on: April 11, 2024, 11:07h.
O.J. Simpson, the disgraced former NFL hall-of-famer and suspected double murderer whose name came to be associated with Las Vegas casinos in the worst way possible, died in Las Vegas on Wednesday following a cancer battle. He was 76.
“On April 10th, our father, Orenthal James Simpson, succumbed to his battle with cancer,” read a statement posted to Simpson’s Twitter account by his family.
According to TMZ, Simpson had been battling prostate cancer and landed in hospice care several months ago. Last year, Simpson posted on X/Twitter that he had “caught” some type of cancer, but had beaten it.
Farthest Fall From Grace
As a football player, Simpson scored a record 23 touchdowns, set the most rushing yards in a single game with 250, and broke the record for the most rushing yards in a season with 2,003.
However, he will primarily be remembered for a fall from grace farther than any other celebrity in the history of pop culture — with the arguable exception of Bill Cosby.
Riding his football fame, Simpson achieved A-list Hollywood status, starring in blockbuster movies such as “The Naked Gun” and on ubiquitous commercials for the car-rental company Hertz.
That all ended after the brutal fatal stabbings of Simpson’s ex-wife, Nicole Brown Simpson, and waiter Ron Goldman, in 1994.
After what was deemed “the trial of the century,” featuring the best defense attorneys money could buy, Simpson was acquitted of both murders the following year.
However, he was never acquitted in the court of public opinion — nor in civil court, where he was successfully sued by the families of his victims for their wrongful deaths. Simpson was ordered to pay tens of millions in damages.
Casino Raiders
What finally put Simpson behind bars was a crime he was convicted of committing 13 years after his infamous acquittal, a crime that, to this day, causes tourists to stop and ogle when they first view the signage for the Palace Station casino resort in Las Vegas.
According to prosecutors, with whom a jury unanimously agreed, Simpson broke Room 1203 in the Palace Station’s courtyard complex on the night of Sept. 13, 2007, armed goons in tow. His intention was to recover sports memorabilia he believed had been stolen from him.
Simpson was convicted and sentenced by a Las Vegas judge to 9-33 years for kidnapping, armed robbery, and assault with a deadly weapon.
Simpson served the minimum time before being released on parole in 2017.
As a free man, Simpson settled in Las Vegas, where he lived out a relatively quiet but awkward retirement in the tony suburb of Summerlin, punctuated by rambling videos he posted to social media conveying his thoughts about sports, politics, and other topics that interested him.
In 2019, Simpson sued The Cosmopolitan of Las Vegas, claiming that the casino resort damaged his reputation when it banned him in November 2017 for being “drunk and disruptive” — which would have violated his parole. According to court documents, the two parties settled the case in 2020 for an undisclosed sum.
Simpson’s final tweet was a video of himself, seated in the backyard of a home and looking unwell, declaring his support for his former team, the San Francisco 49ers, in Super Bowl LVIII.
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