Getting away with murder ON THE BOX
IT seems like the wider American public discovered that OJ Simpson passed away when ESPN announced the breaking news — via a family statement on social media – last Thursday.
It was fitting, in a way. Not because Simpson was one of the greatest running backs in American football history. That part of his life has long since been erased by the NFL and wasn’t even mentioned by the anchor. No, it’s because of the television gold that the sports broadcaster has mined from his life.
After all, it was ESPN that produced OJ: Made in America, Ezra Edelman’s incredible eight-hour documentary series that has been universally acclaimed as a masterpiece. If you haven’t watched this marvellous piece of television — part investigative journalism, part meditation on how a famous person got away with murder — now is a good time to seek it out.
There was another remarkable documentary that ESPN’s 30 for
30 made about Simpson that also deserves to be revisited. Brett Morgen is an American filmmaker, better known for chronicling the lives of Kurt Cobain and David Bowie. But back in the first run of
30 of 30, Morgen spliced together the events of one June afternoon in 1994 in a wonderful work: June 17 1994.
What was so special about that date? There was a lot happening in US sport. It was the day Arnold Palmer, golf’s monarch, played his last ever round at the US Open, the day that Diana Ross hit that awful penalty in Soldier Field as the first World Cup in the States kicked off — 24 hours later, Paul McGrath gave a performance for the ages in Giants Stadium.
It didn’t mean as much on this side of the world but it was also the day that the New York Rangers went on a ticker-tape parade through the Big Apple to celebegins brate winning the Stanley Cup, the day that the New York Knicks played Game Five of the NBA finals against the Houston Rockets and the day that Ken Griffey Junior equalled a home run record set by Babe Ruth.
But to most of the world, it was the day that OJ Simpson was charged with the double homicide of his ex-wife Nicole Brown Simpson and her friend, Ron Goldman and fled through the streets of Los Angeles in a white Ford Bronco, chased by the LAPD and television cameras.
It’s believed that over 100 million people watched that car chase live in the US alone — ESPN even did a split screen with Game Five of the Knicks v Rockets. Across the globe, everyone was glued. I remember watching with friends in Donegal, all of us largely knowing OJ as Nordberg from
The Naked Gunseries of films. Anyone who says they weren’t enthralled was lying.
Morgen has that filmmaking gift of giving a little and telling us a lot.
June 1994 with Simpson’s speech as he is inducted into the NFL Hall of Fame in 1985 where he thanked his new wife Nicole for helping him to adjust to life after football. And as is made clear in OJ: Made in America, it was as a football star that the States knew Simpson. He was the first running back to rush for more than 2,000 yards in the NFL — although when Christian McCaffrey broke that particular record last year, there was no reference to Simpson. He was a regular figure hawking various products on American television, most famously Hertz, and a regular pundit on NBC’S Monday Night Football. And that’s the context for both documentaries. Just how big a star Simpson was in America and how his reputation appeared untainted by accusations against him. Here’s a little thing that wasn’t widely reported last week: Nicole Brown Simpson made a 911 call on New Year’s Day 1989. When police arrived at the couple’s house, Brown Simpson ran out of the bushes, yelling: ‘He’s going to kill me! He’s going to kill me!’ She told police that they had been called to her house on eight other occasions after her husband had beaten her. OJ had complained about the frequency of the calls. He eventually pleaded no contest to spousal abuse and kept his job as an NFL pundit, starred in films and kept being the face of dozens of commercial endorsements, After he was arrested for murder, there were rumours that certain media publications darkened Simpson’s mug shot — and his race, not his fame or affluence, became the central theme of what was coined ‘the trial of the century’. Three years before Brown Simpson and Goldman were murdered, Rodney King was brutally beaten by Los Angeles police officers which led to riots in that city.
Simpson was no longer a former athlete who killed his ex-wife. Instead, the trial was framed in the prism of LAPD and racism. The DNA evidence was attacked, detective Mark Fuhrman was shown to be of suspect character. The trial developed into something more than two young lives tragically cut short in a brutal murder. It suddenly became about America and race. And was polarised along those lines. As one juror suggested in OJ: Made
In America, most of the jury viewed the verdict as payback for Rodney King.
THE Goldman family did chase Simpson through the civil courts and he was found liable for $33.5 million in that case in 1997 — and also responsible for the deaths of Brown Simpson and Goldman. He fled to Florida and died still owing that money. Not that he cared.
OJ eventually did do time for his part in a botched memorabilia robbery in 2007, when he led a gang to a cheap motel room in Vegas and took what he said was his own property at gunpoint.
‘I’m OJ Simpson. How am I going to think that I’m going to rob somebody and get away with it?’ he said after the crime, but he ended up spending nine years in the clink for it, anyway.
He got out on parole in 2017 and spent his final years playing golf in Florida, passing away aged 76 last week from prostate cancer.
Nicole Brown Simpson would be turning 65 next month while Ron Goldman would be 56 in July. But neither got to enjoy middle age or a long life. In this strange episode of Americana, that remains the most salient point.