Freed after nine years in jail, now America waits to see what comes next for OJ Simpson
OJ SIMPSON, the former American football star and double murder suspect, was freed on parole in the early hours of yesterday morning after serving nine years in prison for an armed confrontation over sporting memorabilia.
Dressed in prison-issued denim and wearing a baseball cap, he slipped out of Lovelock Correctional Center in Nevada at eight minutes past midnight. As he walked out, he was told by prison staff: “Don’t come back,” to which he replied: “I don’t intend to.”
He was met by a driver. Tom Scotto, a close friend of Simpson who lives in Naples, Florida, later told the Associated Press by text message that he was with Simpson, but gave no further detail on his plans.
Prison officials said the early-hours departure was all part of a plan to avoid unwanted publicity. The US is gripped by feverish speculation about what comes next for a man whose charisma once catapulted him from setting records as a Buffalo Bills running back into Hollywood, before the killing of his ex-wife and her friend put him at the centre of one of the country’s most sensational murder trials.
Simpson, 70, has said he wants to move back to Florida, where he lived before his armed robbery conviction. His lawyer said he planned to get up to speed with new technology – such as buying an iphone – and getting reacquainted with his family.
“He wants to eat seafood, he wants to eat steak,” Mal- colm Lavergne told ABC’S Good Morning America. “He wants to enjoy the very simple pleasures that he hasn’t enjoyed in nine years.”
Mr Scotto said he had invited Simpson to stay at his home in Florida as he adjusted to life on the outside. However, officials in Florida said they had not received the paperwork needed under the terms of Simpson’s parole. The state’s attorney general is opposed to his return, saying Floridians were aware of his “wanton disregard for the lives of others”.
“Our state should not become a country club for this convicted criminal,” said Pam Bondi, in a letter to the state’s corrections system.
Simpson was acquitted of the 1994 killings of his exwife, Nicole Brown Simpson, and her friend Ronald Goldman in Los Angeles.
The televised trial divided America, often along racial lines. He was later found liable for their deaths in a civil case in 1997 and ordered to pay the victims’ families $33.5 million (£25 million). In 2007, he was arrested again after leading five men – two of them carrying handguns – to a Las Vegas casino to retrieve memorabilia he said had been stolen from him.
Simpson said he did not know anyone was armed, but was sentenced to 33 years in prison.