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o.j. simpson
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O.J. Simpson’s Cause Of Death Determined Weeks After His Passing At 76
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Owen Wilson Reportedly Turned Down $12 Million To Star In A Movie That Depicted O.J. Simpson As Being Innocent Of Murder: “You’ve Got To Be Kidding Me”
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Jon Stewart Criticizes Media For Covering Donald Trump’s Hush Money Case Like It’s O.J. Simpson’s Murder Trial: “What The F*** Are We Doing?”
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Conan O’Brien Defends Norm Macdonald’s “Brilliant” O.J. Simpson Jokes On ‘SNL’ (Even Though They Got Norm Fired From NBC)
O.J. Simpson has died. The infamous athlete passed after a cancer battle. He was 76.
Simpson’s death was reported by TMZ, who shared that he died Wednesday (April 10) in Las Vegas. According to the outlet, Simpson had been diagnosed with prostate cancer, “and his health took a turn for the worse of late — with him landing in hospice care within the past few months.”
His family confirmed his death in a statement posted to X.
“On April 10th, our father, Orenthal James Simpson, succumbed to his battle with cancer. He was surrounded by his children and grandchildren. During this time of transition, his family asks that you please respect their wishes for privacy and grace,” they shared.
Simpson’s cancer diagnosis was first reported in February, when the news outlet Local 10 shared that he was receiving chemotherapy treatment in Las Vegas.
While his legacy was marred in controversy, Simpson’s early years as a public figure were dominated by his impressive football career. Simpson, who played the sport at the University of Southern California, won the 1968 Heisman Trophy and was chosed by the Buffalo Bills as the No. 1 overall pick in the 1969 NFL draft, per the Pro Football Hall of Fame.
Simpson also dabbled in Hollywood, appearing in multiple Naked Gun films, the Roots miniseries, and The Towering Inferno, among others.
O.J. Simpson, the sports star turned movie star turned accused murder turned convicted felon, has died at the age of 76. From the Decider archives:
- O.J. Simpson dead at 76; read our obituary.
- The View reacts to the death of O.J. Simpson: “The tragedy was the injustice”
- O.J. Simpson: A Problematic Man With An Idiosyncratic Filmography
- The O.J. Simpson Filmography: Where to stream the documentaries, dramatizations, and movies about and/or starring the NFL Hall of Famer turned convict.
- O.J. Simpson tried to kill himself in Kim Kardashian’s bedroom, an incident that was dramatized in Ryan Murphy’s American Crime Story: The People vs. OJ Simpson.
- O.J. Simpson says “I remember I grabbed the knife” in the infamous Fox special, O.J.: The Lost Confession.
- What O.J. whispered: Robert Shapiro comes clean to Megyn Kelly.
- O.J. Made In America won the Oscar for Best Documentary in 2017. It is currently available to stream on ESPN+, or you can rent or buy the series on Prime Video, YouTube, and more.
However, his celebrity was forever altered after he was accused of murdering his wife, Nicole Brown Simpson, and her friend, Ron Goldman, in 1994. O.J. — whose murder charges spawned what became the Trial of the Century — was eventually acquitted; he was later found guilty of wrongful death in the murders through a civil trial and ordered to pay $33.5 million in damages to Brown and Goldman’s families.
Prior to his trial, O.J.’s infamous Ford Bronco car chase was one of the biggest moments in TV history. In footage that was televised across the country, police followed his car on the Los Angeles freeway when he was wanted for questioning in the murders.
When the trial wrapped, it continued to transfix the country for years after. One year after the murders, FOX released a TV movie titled The O. J. Simpson Story, which was followed by the 2000 TV film American Tragedy. Ten years after, in 2014, Investigation Discovery premiered both OJ: Trial of the Century and O.J. Simpson Trial: The Real Story. Two of the more recent and well-known works based on O.J.’s trial are the 2016 Ryan Murphy series The People v. O.J. Simpson: American Crime Story and ESPN’s 2018 docuseries O.J.: Made in America.
While O.J. was acquitted in the murders, he was later sentenced to time in prison for another criminal case in 2008, when he was convicted of 12 counts of armed robbery and kidnapping. He was released from prison in 2017 and later granted early release from parole in 2021.
O.J. lived his final years in Las Vegas, where he “lived a relatively private and peaceful life out of the public eye,” per TMZ. His final post on Twitter was made Feb. 11, when he gave a shout-out to the San Francisco 49ers ahead of the Super Bowl.
