LAS VEGAS — O.J. Simpson, the decorated football superstar and Hollywood actor who was acquitted of charges he killed his former wife and her friend but later found liable in a separate civil trial, has died. He was 76.
He had seemed to transcend racial barriers as the star Trojans tailback for college football's powerful University of Southern California in the late 1960s, as a rental car ad pitchman rushing through airports in the late 1970s, and as the husband of a blonde and blue-eyed high school homecoming queen in the 1980s.The public was mesmerized by his “trial of the century” on live TV. His case sparked debates on race, gender, domestic abuse, celebrity justice and police misconduct.
“I’ve basically spent a conflict-free life, you know,” Simpson, whose parole ended in late 2021, said. 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.” Orenthal James Simpson was born July 9, 1947, in San Francisco, where he grew up in government-subsidized housing projects.