OJ Simpson was chilling with a beer on a couch before Easter, lawyer says
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.”
“At first they shared good O. J. But still he was famous,” Lavergne said. “And then, in 1994 on, they kind of had to share bad boy O.J. with the world. But at the end of the day, these children just lost a father. And they have the added burden that he is one of the most famous people on the planet, and who is polarizing and who is surrounded by controversy.”
Lavergne, who is handling Simpson’s estate, shared details of his final meetings with the former football hero, movie actor, sportscaster, television pitchman and celebrity murder defendant who he has represented since 2009.
He deflected a question about any possible deathbed confession by Simpson as an attempt to steer “from somber to the sensationalism and the amusement.” He said Simpson’s body won’t be studied for the effects of chronic brain trauma from possible effects of blows to the head during his 11 years as a running back in the NFL.
“Mr. Simpson, to my understanding, had expressed his wishes to his children,” Lavergne said. “And so they are going to act upon those wishes.”
Simpson wanted to be cremated, the attorney said, and — pending a decision from his family — there was no immediate plan for a public memorial.
“There’s only been tentative discussions of a celebration of life (or) ceremony,” Lavergne said.