LAS VEGAS:
O.J. Simpson’s last robust discussion with his longtime lawyer was just before Easter, at the country club home Simpson leased southwest of the Las Vegas Strip.
“He was awake, alert and chilling,” attorney Malcom LaVergne recalled Tuesday. “He’s on the couch ... drinking a beer and watching TV. And so that was the last time we had effective back-and-forth conversations. He’s usually the one who keeps me up on the news ... so we were just catching up on the news then.”
About a week later, on April 5, a doctor said Simpson was “transitioning,” as LaVergne described it. The last time LaVergne visited, last week, Simpson only had strength to ask for water and to choose to watch a TV golf tournament instead of a tennis match.
“Of course he chose golf,” LaVergne told The Associated Press in an interview. “He was an absolute golf fanatic.”
Simpson died April 10, after being diagnosed last year with prostate cancer. He was 76.
A post the following day from Simpson’s family on X, formerly Twitter, said Simpson “succumbed to his battle with cancer” while “surrounded by his children and grandchildren.” However, LaVergne said Tuesday just one person was with Simpson when he died, identified by the attorney only as “a close family member.” He declined to say who it was.
“You have to remember that they’ve shared O.J. with the world their entire lives,” the attorney said of Simpson’s surviving adult children of his first marriage - Arnelle Simpson, now 55, and Jason Simpson, 53 - and the children Simpson had with ex-wife Nicole Brown Simpson before she was killed in 1994: Sydney Simpson, 38, and Justin Simpson, 35. The family social media post asked “during this time of transition” for “privacy and grace.” (AP)