Ep. 105 | How OJ Simpson Got Away With Murder

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• 0:00Speaker 00

  Two people were murdered. A woman who spent years trying to escape the man who claimed to love her, and a man who simply had the misfortune of being in the wrong place at the wrong time. And there was one man at the center of all of it. And that man was O.J. Simpson. NFL superstar, actor, American icon. But what surrounded the mysterious murders of Nicole Brown and Ron Goldman would shape history and spark a national conversation about race, wealth, and justice. This is the story of O.J. Simpson. Crime, conspiracy, cult, serial killers, and murder. All things that I love to consume and I know you do too. You sick, twisted, beautiful, intellectually minded freak.

• 0:43Speaker 00

  And today, we are talking about an infamous case. The case of O.J. Simpson. So without further ado, let's unbuckle our seatbelts, go mock fact down the highway, slam on the brakes, and bust through the windshield into this infamous case together.

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• 2:09Speaker 00

  Orval James Simpson was born on July 9th, 1947 in San Francisco, California. And he grew up in the Porterero Hill neighborhood, a working-class district which by the 1950s was a predominantly African-American neighborhood. And his family was very poor, and things got harder when his father, Jimmy Lee Simpson, left when OJ was still young. And his mother, Eunice, raised four children largely on her own, working hard to keep a roof over their heads and food on the table. And OJ also had something working against him from the start. As a toddler, he contracted rickets, which is a bone disease caused by severe vitamin D deficiency that left his legs badly bowed.

• 2:54Speaker 00

  And his mother made makeshift braces from metal scraps and had him wear them until he was about five years old. And the poor kid would get bullied with kids at school calling him pencil pins. And life didn't really get easier from there, because OJ wasn't a quiet, well-behaved kid. And he would fall in with a group called the Persian Warriors, and the run-ins with law enforcement followed with arrests, juvenile trouble, and time in a detention facility. So his future looked uncertain at best. Then, baseball legend Willie Mays, a San Francisco icon who had come from similar circumstances, sat down with the kid, OJ, and told him directly, "You are wasting something.

• 3:39Speaker 00

  Stop it." Kind of like Michael Jordan, you know? Stop it.

• 3:42Speaker 03

  Stop it. Get some help.

• 3:44Speaker 00

  And OJ would listen, and he channeled everything he had into football instead. And the results were almost immediate, and he attended Galileo High School in San Francisco, where his coaches recognized elite athletic talent right away. He was fast, instinctive, and just built for the game. And the only thing holding him back was his grades, which kept him out of the schools he won most. So he spent two years at City College in San Francisco, where both his academics and his on-field talent found their footing. And eventually, the University of San Francisco. Southern California came calling with a scholarship and OJ packed his bags for Los Angeles. And at USC, he was an immediate fan favorite.

• 4:28Speaker 00

  He was a powerhouse of speed, size, and vision that made his teammates and rivals look slow by comparison. And in 1967 and 1968, he led the Trojans to national recognition and brought in massive viewership. And in 1968, he won the Heisman Trophy, the most prestigious individual award in college football. And he was the unanimous pick. To many, he was simply the best college football player anyone had ever seen at this point. The NFL, obviously, took notice. And in 1969, the Buffalo Bills drafted him first overall. So his early years were solid, if not explosive. But by 1973, the ceiling came off.

• 5:10Speaker 00

  In that season, OJ became the first player in NFL history to rush for more than 2,000 yards in a single season, finishing with 2,003. And he led the league in rushing yards four times across his career and led in rushing touchdowns twice. And he still holds the single-season yard-per-game average record at 143.1. Do I know what that means? Not really. I'm not much of a football fan, but I'm sure people who know what that means are like, "Whoa, that's crazy." I watch more soccer, soccer and hockey, okay? I'm from Canada. And he would be selected to the Pro Bowl five times. So he was just a force of nature and the sports world loved him.

• 5:52Speaker 00

  But football was always just one piece of what OJ wanted to build. And through the late 1970s and into the 1980s, his face was everywhere. He became the face of Hertz rental cars sprinting through airports in one of the most iconic commercials of that era. And he was playing golf with legends like Arnold Palmer. And he appeared in films, most memorably as Detective Nordberg in the Naked Gun franchise, which... If you haven't watched the new Naked Gun, you should watch it. You should watch the old ones because they are hilarious. If you liked like Pink Panther, or Austin Powers, or anything like that. Naked Gun, they're so funny. But in the newest one with Liam

• 6:34Speaker 00

  Neeson, they, they have a little joke about, about OJ Simpson in it, and it is, it's hilarious. I'm not even gonna explain it, but it's hilarious. Highly recommend watching Naked Gun. But, in America, where race was still a volatile and tender subject, OJ Simpson had somehow managed to be universally liked. He was warm, he was approachable, and unthreatening, except for on the football field, he was pretty fucking scary there, but you know, just out and about, he was alright. So he wasn't just a football player anymore, he was a brand. Whatever he touched, turned to gold. And for a long time, it stayed that way. But as with most things, that look perfect on the outside, the cracks were already forming.

• 7:16Speaker 00

  But before Nicole, and before the mansion in Brentwood, OJ Simpson was married to his first wife, Marguerite Whitley. And they had met in high school, and married in 1967, when OJ was just 20 years old. And together, they had three children, Arnell, Jason, and Aaron. But the pressures of fame, wealth, and OJ's constant travel wore the relationship down, and they were divorced in 1979. And that same year brought tragedy that never fully left the Simpson family. And their youngest child, Aaron, was two years old when she drowned unsupervised in the family swimming pool. And it was the kind of grief that doesn't

• 7:55Speaker 00

  go away. And on top of the divorce, it left a very big wound that stayed open. But while he was still married to Marguerite, back in 1977, OJ met a woman named Nicole Brown at a club in Beverly Hills. And she was 18 years old and working her shift there. And OJ pursued her immediately, and aggressively. And there was nearly a 12-year age gap between them, and, not to mention, he was still a married man, none of which slowed him down. Nicole was overwhelmed, a famous superhero. Star was pursuing her relentlessly and she was swept up in it. And after his divorce from Marguerite in 1979, OJ continued the relationship and in 1985,

• 8:39Speaker 00

  he and Nicole would marry. And they had two children together, Sydney and Justin, and moved into a magnificent home on Rockingham Avenue in Brentwood. And on the outside, it was a fairy tale. The best restaurants, the best events, one of the most famous men in America has a husband. But from the inside, the story looked completely different. And from early on in the relationship, there were signs. OJ was controlling. He was possessive and friends and family noticed this pattern. And he dictated who Nicole would spend time with and would monitor her movements and raged when she did anything outside of his approval. And people who knew Nicole in those early years described her as someone who calibrated

• 9:24Speaker 00

  herself constantly around his moves, just constantly walking on eggshells. And then on New Year's Day in 1989, it became public. A neighbor called 911 after hearing screaming coming from the Rockingham estate. And when police arrived, they found Nicole with visible injuries on her face and marks across her body. And she was clearly bruised and cut. And OJ was obviously present. And with all that evidence right in front of them, any other person would have been arrested on the spot. But instead, the officers, possibly starstruck, gave him a pass and drove away. And the incident did eventually go to court where OJ pleaded no contest to Spelzold Battery.

• 10:08Speaker 00

  And he was sentenced to community service and counseling, so no jail time. And he would just go right back to his life of fame and fortune within weeks, just, you know, the classic celebrity being able to buy their way out or just be able to star strike officers and whatnot. And Nicole would stay with him for a couple more years before filing for divorce in 1992, citing years of documented abuse. So the marriage was effectively over, but OJ Simpson was not done. With Nicole Brown. And in the years after the divorce, Nicole called the authorities dozens of times, and she kept a diary documenting the ongoing harassment and abuse. And she stored photographs of her injuries and locked away letters from OJ in a safe

• 10:53Speaker 00

  deposit box. And she told her sister Denise exactly where to find it, just in case. And one call from October 1993 stands out. A phone call full of terrified whispering while OJ's voice thunders in the background. And Nicole also told Kris Jenner specifically, quote, "He's going to kill me and he's going to get away with it," unquote. Which just sends shivers all over my body at this point. And years later, Caitlyn Jenner confirmed this directly during an appearance on Big Brother VIP, stating that OJ had told Nicole exactly that. That he would kill her and get away with it because he was OJ Simpson.

• 11:37Speaker 00

  Which, this is classic OJ, we're gonna get into it a lot more near the end, a little bit, but guy basically, he's just, he's, he's not good at being innocent. I mean, this isn't, I mean, there's no spoilers in this, this, this case is, you know, like 30 years old, so I'm not, I'm not spoiling anything. Um, but, uh, yeah, he's not a smart fella. Let's just say that, but we'll get into that after. But Nicole would say this months before her death in 1994. So if that's not foreshadowing, I don't know what is. But before painting the crime scene, it matters to paint a picture of who Nicole Brown Simpson actually was.

• 12:20Speaker 00

  Because she wasn't just a name in a case file, just like all the other victims I cover. Nicole Brown Simpson was born on May 19th, 1959, in Frankfurt, Germany, where her father, Lou Brown, was stationed with the US Army. And the family eventually settled in Garden Grove, California, and Nicole graduated from Dana Hills High School. And by all accounts, she was kind, loyal, and fiercely dedicated to the people she loved. And after the divorce from OJ, she moved into condominium on South Bundy Drive in Brentwood, a place of her own away from OJ. And her children Sydney and Justin were her entire world. And she was just thirty-five years old with a whole life ahead of her. And there was also another person involved that night.

• 13:05Speaker 00

  Ronald Lyle Goldman was born on July 2nd, 1968 in suburban Illinois. And he moved to Los Angeles to pursue modeling and acting. And like so many young people chasing that dream in Hollywood, he was paying the bills by waiting tables. And he worked at a restaurant called Mezzaluna in Brentwood where his colleagues consistently described him as charming, hardworking, and just a genuine joy to be around. So through Mezzaluna, he and Nicole would become friends. And Sunday, June 12th, 1994 began as an ordinary day. It was Nicole's daughter Cindy's dance recital, Dance for Kids, a school performance that put Nicole and OJ in the same room together, along with the rest of Nicole's family.

• 13:48Speaker 00

  And according to witnesses, OJ was visibly cold toward Nicole, barely acknowledging her, irritated by her dress. And she wouldn't invite him to dinner afterward, naturally. And she took her family to Mezzaluna, the same restaurant where she had met Ron. And Ron wasn't working that evening. And after the meal, Nicole's mother, Juditha, realized she'd left her glasses at the restaurant, so she called Mezzaluna and Ron, who was finishing up his shift, and told her he'd hold on to them. So since he and Nicole were good friends, he decided to just drop them off at her place on his way home. And this act of kindness would cost him his life. And OJ, meanwhile, was back at his Rockingham estate with his longtime friend, Brian, or

• 14:33Speaker 00

  Cato Kalin, who was renting the guest house on the property. And the two went to McDonald's for dinner, where Cato noted that OJ seemed in a noticeably irritated mood. And after they returned, they went their separate ways. And Cato to the guest house and OJ into the main home. And at approximately 9:36 PM, Cato Kalin last saw OJ outside the main house. And at 10:02 PM, a call was place from OJ's Bronco to his girlfriend at the time Paula Barbary. But it would go to voicemail. And somewhere between 10:15 and 10:30 PM, Nicole Brown Simpson and Ronald Goldman were killed on the walkway outside her condominium on South Bundy Drive.

• 15:15Speaker 00

  And at 10:40 PM, limousine driver Alan Park arrived at the Rockingham Estate to pick OJ up for his flight to Chicago. And he rang the intercom, but there was no answer. And OJ's Bronco was also nowhere on the property. And Park kept ringing and kept waiting. And it wasn't until 10:54 PM that OJ would appear at his front door, turning on lights as he came down, telling the driver he'd accidentally overslept. And he grabbed his bags, got into the limousine, and made it to the airport. And the flight departed on schedule to Chicago. And behind him, he left a window of more than an hour where no one had seen him. No witnesses, no alibi.

• 15:57Speaker 00

  And just after midnight on June 13th, a neighbor found Nicole's dog wandering the neighborhood, and the dog's paws were soaked in blood. And it led the neighbor back to the condo on South Bundy Drive. And Nicole Brown Simpson was found on the ground outside her front door. And she had been stabbed over a dozen times, and her throat had been cut so deeply that her head was nearly severed from her body. And she would be 35 years old at the time of her death. And Ron Goldman was found nearby, and his hands and arms showed defensive wounds, and he had fought back. And he had been stabbed in the torso and the neck and the thigh. And near his body was a dark knit cap and blood everywhere.

• 16:42Speaker 00

  And there was also a trail of blood leading away from the scene, blood that didn't belong to either victim. And it was later tested and linked to OJ Simpson's blood type, found along South Bundy Drive and the walkway toward the back alley. Make note. And on top of that, a bloody shoe print in a size 12, the same size OJ wore. And not just any shoe, a ...and expensive Italian brand called Bruno Mogli. The kind only someone with real money would be buying. So OJ Simpson's name went to the top of the list within hours. So when detectives arrived at the crime scene in the early hours of June 13th,

• 17:27Speaker 00

  OJ Simpson was immediately the most obvious name to start with. He was Nicole's ex-husband and he had a documented history of domestic violence against her. And he lived less than a mile away. So, within an hour. Very feasible, very feasible for the unaccounted hour. Detectives Mark Furman and Tom Lang and Philip Van Natter drove to the Rockingham Estate officially to notify OJ of Nicole's death and check on the children. And they arrived at 5:00 AM and noticed something suspicious right away. OJ's white Bronco was sitting in the driveway and on the door was a dark smudge that appeared to be blood.

• 18:09Speaker 00

  Concerned about the possibility of more victims on the property, Detective Furman jumped the fence to gain access. A decision that would heavily be scrutinized later. And what he found while searching the grounds near the guest house was a glove. Still moist and not from water. It was from blood. And the glove was an Ares Isotoner XL, a style that Nicole Brown herself had purchased at Bloomingdale's in New York as a gift for OJ back in 1990. And the store could confirm it through the receipt. And a matching glove had been found at the murder scene. As we go through the evidence, it's just, and, and, and for those of you who don't know the case, this will be crazy. You know what? I'm not going to give anything away.

• 18:54Speaker 00

  I'm just going to keep reading and I'm going to let you decide what's right and wrong. So two gloves, same style, same purchase, same size, and blood connecting both to the crime. And the blood evidence only expanded from there. Cause OJ's blood was found at the murder scene on South Bundy Drive, like we talked about before. And the blood of Nicole Brown Simpson and Ronald Goldman was- Found inside of OJ's Bronco, in his driveway and in his entryway of his home and on a sock in his bedroom. And DNA analysis, a relatively new technology at this time, pointed with scientific certainty

• 19:37Speaker 00

  to OJ Simpson as the source of the blood at the crime scene. And one expert placed the odds of the blood belonging to anyone else at one in 170 million. Those odds aren't good for OJ. But as most of you know, that doesn't matter. He's good at football. But anyway, there was also the shoe print evidence, which was equally as devastating, you would think. And the Bruno Magli shoe had sold fewer than 300 pairs of that specific model in the United States. And at retail, that $160 a pair in the print at the scene was a size 12, which was OJ's size. And that might not sound expensive, but in the 90s, that's really expensive.

• 20:21Speaker 00

  I don't know how much that would be now, probably like 500 bucks or something. I don't even know. Let's look. 341. That's expensive. 341 bucks, that's expensive. And five days after the murders on June 17th, 1994, a warrant was issued for OJ's arrest. And his attorneys negotiated a surrender time, but the time would pass and OJ was nowhere. And then the LAPD received word that he was in the back of his white Ford Bronco, being driven by his longtime friend and former teammate, Al Cowling's, or AC. So OJ was effectively on the run from the police. Sounds innocent to me, you know?

• 21:03Speaker 00

  And what followed is one of the most famous moments in American television history. And millions of people were watching the NBA Finals on NBC when the network split the screen to show a white Ford Bronco crawling down the Los Angeles freeway at around 35 miles per hour, followed by a procession of police cars. And every major news network switched to it. And Cowling's called dispatch and said OJ had a gun to his own head in the backseat. And crowds gathered on an overpass, some of them holding signs that read, "Go OJ."

• 21:43Speaker 00

  And the public didn't know at this point, you know, the public didn't know at this point that that that there was just mountains of evidence against him. So 95 million Americans were watching this medium speed chase. And just before 8:00 PM, the Bronco pulled into the Rockingham estate and after an hour of negotiations, OJ Simpson stepped out and surrendered. And inside the Bronco, investigators found a passport, a disguise kit, a fake mustache and beard, a loaded revolver, a large amount of cash, and a framed photograph of Nicole. I just, I, I just pictured the mustache and hat just being like, like a top hat. And like,

• 22:27Speaker 00

  what are those mustaches that go up to like here, like past your ears? And he's like, he's just like this super tall, completely recognizable man with just this ostentatious hat. Maybe a monocle. Definitely innocent though, definitely innocent, sounding really innocent right now to me. But three days later, at his arraignment, OJ stood before the judge and said, in response to charges of double murder,

• 22:50Speaker 04

  Absolutely 100% not guilty.

• 22:53Speaker 00

  And investigators also noted a significant cut on his middle finger. And OJ would obviously give multiple explanations for it that contradicted each other. In one version, he cut it on glass in his Chicago hotel room after learning of Nicole's death. And in another, it happened before he ever even left Los Angeles. And the smear of blood on the Bronco's door lined up with someone who had a cut on their hand. And the blood from that cut matched the samples at the crime scene. So he was the primo suspect, regardless of his claims. And what would come next would consume the nation for the better part of a year. So to understand why

• 23:33Speaker 00

  the OJ Simpson trial became a national obsession, you have to understand the political climate of Los Angeles in 1994. Because the wounds from another event were still raw. And in 1991, an African American man named Rodney King was pulled over by police and beaten savagely. On the ground by officers and the entire thing was caught on video. Despite the footage in 1992, the officers were acquitted, which is horrible. And Los Angeles naturally erupted and the riots lasted six days and left over a billion dollars in damage and 63 people dead.

• 24:14Speaker 00

  So the LAPD's relationship with the African American community was shattered, basically. So when a wealthy, famous African American man was accused of murdering two white people and the people collecting the evidence against him were the same institution that had beaten Rodney King and walked away clean, many people weren't prepared to just take the evidence at face value, even though it was very damning. Because the system had shown them what it was willing to do. And OJ Simpson knew exactly what kind of moment he was standing in. So he assembled what became known as the Dream Team, led by counsel Johnny Cochrane,

• 24:58Speaker 00

  a courtroom orator with deep roots in the African American community. And Robert Shapiro, a high-profile attorney who led the early defense strategy before Cochrane took over. And F. Lee Bailey, a legendary defense attorney known for dismantling witnesses under cross-examination. And Barry Scheck, a DNA specialist brought in specifically to tear apart the prosecution's forensic evidence. And Robert Kardashian, yes, the father of Kim, Khloe, and Kourtney, one of OJ's closest personal friends, who came out of retirement just to support him. And the team cost OJ an estimated $6 million. And with the evidence stacked against him, he intended to get every cent's worth.

• 25:43Speaker 00

  And the prosecution on the other side was led by Marcia Clark, a seasoned deputy district attorney alongside Christopher Darden, who was brought in partly for his expertise in navigating the racial dimensions of the case. And the presiding judge was Lance Ito, and he made one decision that changed everything. He allowed a camera in the courtroom. So what was supposed to be a serious legal proceeding became in many ways a television series. And the trial lasted 134 days. And at its peak, an estimated 150 million Americans were tuned in for the verdict. And nothing like it had happened before in American media.

• 26:26Speaker 00

  And the jury was sequestered for 265 days, the longest sequestered jury in United States history, at a cost of nearly $2 million. And for those of you who don't know what sequester means or sequestering a jury, that's basically isolating them so they don't know what's happening in the media or the public or anything, so they can't get any other opinions. That is wild that they were essentially isolated for that long. So the prosecution's case was built on physical evidence. And there was a lot of it, as we know. OJ's blood, as we know, was found at the murder scene on South Bundy Drive. The blood of Nicole Brown Simpson and Ron Goldman were found on his Bronco and in his driveway

• 27:11Speaker 00

  and inside his home and on his sock on his bedroom floor. Okay? And DNA analysis with its one in 170 million odds of the blood belonging to anyone other than OJ was the backbone of this case. And one Eris Isotoner glove was recovered at the murder scene. And the matching glove was found on OJ's Rockingham property. And DNA from both gloves connected them to the crime. And a receipt from Bloomingdale's confirmed Nicole had purchased that exact style as a gift for OJ in 1990. And the Bruno Magli shoe print in a size 12 placed a shoe sold to fewer than 300 people in the country directly at the scene of the murders. And on top of the physical evidence,

• 27:56Speaker 00

  the prosecution introduced Nicole's documented history of abuse and fear. And this included OJ's 1989 Spelzle battery conviction and the 1993 911 call where Nicole could be heard whispering while OJ raged in the background. 62 documented incidents of abuse on record and the diaries, photographs and letters Nicole had hidden away in a safe deposit box, written in her own hand, describing what her life with OJ had looked like. And the prosecution believed they had a hook and sinker case. The evidence was pointing at one person from every direction. And the defense team knew this. And by many accounts, even they understood what the evidence said. So the

• 28:40Speaker 00

  defense's approach by contrast was direct. Because they couldn't prove OJ innocent, so they were going to make the prosecution impossible to trust. Because if the jury couldn't believe the people who collected the evidence, they couldn't trust the evidence itself. And in Los Angeles in 1994, given what the LAPD was known for, that was not a hard sell. And Detective Mark Furman was their primary target. Because he was the detective who had jumped the fence at Rockingham and found the bloody glove, which the defense could frame as an illegal search. And they set out to destroy his credibility. And during

• 29:22Speaker 00

  cross-examination, F. Lee Bailey asked Furman directly if he had used the N-word in the past 10 years. And Furman said no, under oath. And the defense then played a recorded interview with a screenwriter in which Furman used the word 41 times.

• 29:43Speaker 00

  What are you doing, man? So, he had lied under oath in a murder trial. And it was devastating. And not just to Furman, it gave the defense everything they needed. A racist detective who lied under oath was absolutely capable of planting a glove at a crime scene, which...

• 30:05Speaker 00

  It looks really bad, like, and Furman, horrible for saying all of that. So it's, it's just a recipe for disaster. It's a recipe for disaster for the prosecution. And to be honest, Furman should have been honest. But when Furman was later asked directly whether he had planted or manufactured any evidence against OJ Simpson, he invoked the Fifth Amendment. And Barry Scheck then went to work on the blood evidence. And by the way, the Fifth Amendment is that he doesn't have to say anything. So that sounds really bad. Systematically dismantling the crime lab's chain of custody. And he raised questions about the timing of when certain blood samples were logged,

• 30:45Speaker 00

  argued that collection procedures were sloppy, and suggested that evidence had been contaminated or tampered with. And then came the moment everyone remembers, in what became the prosecution's single biggest mistake of the entire trial. They asked OJ to put on the glove found at the crime scene and at Rockingham. And he stood in front of the courtroom and struggled visibly to get them over his hands. And the gloves didn't fit, likely because they had been soaked in blood and then frozen in an evidence locker, which causes leather to shrink.

• 31:24Speaker 00

  But by the time any rational explanation could be offered, the damage was done. And Johnny Cochrane delivered the line that would be quoted for decades afterward.

• 31:36Speaker 03

  If it doesn't fit, you must acquit.

• 31:39Speaker 00

  Oh, goodness gracious, great balls of fire. But the image of those gloves in front of the entire jury made the prosecution look foolish. And in his closing argument, Cochrane didn't try to prove OJ was innocent. He made the prosecution just look guilty. And as long as the jury believed the LAPD had acted with racial pious and that the investigators were dirty, the verdict was going to go one way. Just. So messy and fucked up. So messed up. The evidence is so obvious, even without the stuff that they're saying.

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• 33:19Speaker 00

  So the jury began deliberating on October 2nd, 1995. And after just under four hours, which is extremely quick in a case this big, they had a verdict. And a trial that had lasted 134 days, produced over 150 witnesses, and generated thousands of pages of evidence, was resolved in less than a single workday of deliberation. And a straw poll in the jury room reportedly came back 10 to 2 for acquittal almost immediately. And one juror later admitted that the adrenaline of finally having control over something after 265 days of sequestration was a genuine factor in how quickly they moved, which is terrible.

• 34:03Speaker 00

  But the next morning, on October 3rd, 1995, the verdict was read, while an estimated 150 million people watched and listened live.

• 34:12Speaker 07

  We, the jury in the above entitled action, find the defendant Orenthal James Simpson not guilty of the crime of...

• 34:18Speaker 00

  Not guilty on both counts. The reaction split the country right down the middle. The majority of African Americans cheered and wept with relief. Cameras showed people jumping for joy. And juror Lionel Cryer, a former Black Panther, gave OJ a raised fist salute as the verdict was announced. And Caucasian Americans in overwhelming numbers were in disbelief. And polls in the days after showed roughly 78% of African Americans approved of the verdict, while close to 2/3 of Caucasian Americans believed OJ was guilty and that justice had failed.

• 35:02Speaker 00

  Both reactions made complete sense, given the context, made complete sense. Like at the time, given everything that they were given and, you know, us looking back now, it's like, is that right? I don't blame either sides. Like, I understand both sides. Because for many, the verdict was about the LAPD and about Rodney King and about an institution with a documented history of racial brutality finally being held accountable for something, right? Something. And for others, it looked like an insurmountable stack of evidence just being discarded. Two entirely different relationships with the same system playing out in real time on national television.

• 35:47Speaker 00

  The prosecution fell apart because of the racial conduct of their own detective, a catastrophic gamble on the gloves, and a jury that had been methodically worked over by the best defense money could buy. And despite the evidence, OJ Simpson would walk free. So OJ walked out of that courthouse a free man with the entire nation watching. Legally, he was untouchable. But the industries that had made him a star were done with him. No more endorsements, no more film roles, no more celebrity invitations. And the majority of Caucasian Americans had turned their backs. And he returned to his rocking ...estate to find that very little of his old life was waiting for him.

• 36:32Speaker 00

  And then came the civil trial, which began in October of 1996 and concluded in February of 1997. And unlike the criminal case, this trial was not about guilt or innocence, it was about liability for wrongful deaths, decided purely on evidence. The jury found him liable and ordered him to pay $33.5 million in damages, and $8.5 million in compensatory damages, and $25 million in punitive. And OJ would never pay the vast majority of it. And his Heisman Trophy was eventually seized and auctioned off, selling for $255,500 to

• 37:16Speaker 00

  an anonymous buyer, with the proceeds going to the Goldman family, who later said they received only about 1% of the total civil judgment across everything OJ was ordered to pay. And by the time of his death, with compounding interest, he owed an estimated $60 million or more. So knowing the financial and social heat on his back, OJ, we just, we just relocate, guys. You just go to Florida, as you do, you know, where state law shielded certain assets, including his NFL pension from collection efforts. I can't believe this is a thing. It's crazy. Giant loophole, the size of Pluto.

• 38:01Speaker 00

  But he would buy a home inside a gated community in Miami-Dade County, about 20 miles south of the city. And he returned to golf, and he kept an entourage. But by most accounts, he seemed completely unbothered by what the rest of the world thought, or was deeply committed to making it look that way. And his children, Sidney and Justin, continued to live with him after the trial and stayed almost entirely out of the public eye. And Arnell Simpson, his oldest granddaughter from his first marriage, remained publicly supportive of her father throughout his life. But whatever goodwill had survived the criminal trial was largely gone after the civil verdict made headlines, because the civil verdict basically said, "He's guilty," but, you know.

• 38:44Speaker 00

  He doesn't have to pay anything and he can play golf, it's fine. You know, he can go to Florida and still get his pension, it's fine. Because people were watching a man order to pay over thirty-three million dollars for deaths the evidence said he caused, and he was golfing in Miami. And the public perception of OJ as quote-unquote "the man who got away with it" solidified quickly and didn't soften. And the harassment followed him everywhere. And he couldn't walk into a restaurant or onto a golf course without being recognized. And people did not hesitate to confront him. And he was heckled, called a murderer to his face in public on multiple occasions. And one story that circulated had someone walking up to him and saying, I've never personally shaken hands with a murderer.

• 39:28Speaker 00

  The bomber dude shouldn't have killed those people. And OJ would just smirk and keep moving. He was just always performing the role of a man with nothing to hide. And in 2016, FX aired a limited series called "The People vs. OJ Simpson: American Crime Story", bringing the trial back to a generation that had been too young to follow it the first time. And that same year, ESPN released a documentary called "OJ: Made in America", which laid out the case that the acquittal wasn't really about justice, it was about racial revenge against an institution that had earned exactly that. Because they did, they really did earn that, like... They fucked up.

• 40:09Speaker 00

  And by the mid-two thousands, a majority of African-Americans had also come to believe OJ was guilty. It's something like, like ninety-eight percent of people believe that OJ was guilty now. But some form of karma slash justice would catch up to old OJ and he would be arrested. But not for the murder of two people, but for something else entirely. And on September thirteenth, two thousand and seven specifically, OJ led a group of men into a room at the Palace Station Hotel in Las Vegas, where a sports memorabilia dealer named Alfred Beardsley was staying. And the men who walked in with OJ were armed.

• 40:52Speaker 00

  And OJ's position was that the memorabilia inside that room was actually his, items that had been stolen from him years earlier. And that he was simply reclaiming what belonged to him, you know? With weapons, as you do. And shockingly, the law didn't see it that way. And he was charged with 12 counts, including armed robbery, assault with a deadly weapon, and kidnapping. Because yeah, he did that, so...

• 41:23Speaker 00

  Old innocent OJ did that. And audio recordings captured during the incident made the trial move pretty quickly.

• 41:37Speaker 00

  And on October 3rd, 2008, 13 years to the day after his criminal acquittal for the murders of Nicole Brown Simpson and Ronald Goldman, he was found guilty on all 12 counts. Kind of poetic justice. And the judge denied having scheduled the date intentionally, but... I feel like the cheeky little bastard said, "I'm okay with it." And honestly, nobody believed her either. And I, I, I kind of say like, "Slay." And on December 5th, 2008, he was sentenced to a minimum of nine years and a maximum of 30 years in a Nevada state prison. And he served his time at the Love Law Correctional Center, where, by all accounts, he was a model inmate,

• 42:20Speaker 00

  sociable and popular among other prisoners who knew exactly who he was. And he was denied parole at his first hearing in 2013, but granted parole in July 2017, and walked out on October 1st, 2017, after nine years. And after his release from prison in 2017, OJ would create a Twitter account and gain over 800,000 followers by the time of his death. And he posted cheerful takes on football, golf, and current events. And he joined TikTok. And he carried himself like a man who had absolutely nothing to feel bad about.

• 42:56Speaker 03

  I've had ups and I've had downs, but all in all, I've been a fortunate guy. God has been good to me.

• 43:02Speaker 00

  And the comment section's filled up daily with people telling him otherwise, naturally. Because like I said, majority of people know he's guilty. I mean, he's clearly, he's guilty of at least kidnapping and armed robbery.

• 43:18Speaker 00

  But other than that, he seems like a pretty nice guy, you know? I'm joking. Anyway, he ignored them, obviously, because he's got some sort of narcissistic, psychopathic tendency like that, and just turned off the comments. But the Goldman family kept the pressure on throughout all of it. And Fred Goldman continued doing interviews and pursuing legal action for decades, as he should, still owed nearly everything he'd been awarded. His daughter, Kim Goldman, channeled her grief into victim advocacy work that spanned 30 years, which is incredibly admirable. And she co-founded the Ron Goldman Foundation for Justice. And she served 16 years as executive director of the Santa Clarita Valley Youth Project,

• 44:00Speaker 00

  providing free mental health counseling and crisis support to teenagers dealing with depression, trauma, and abuse. Just literally an angel. And she became co-chair of the National Center for Victims of Crime, pushing for policy reform and making sure victims had real access to the resources they were promised. And she spoke at Department of Justice trainings, FBI National Academy events, and National Crime Victims Rights Week gatherings across the country. And she authored multiple books, including the New York Times bestseller, His Name Is Ron, written with her father, Fred, followed by Can't Forgive and Media Circus. And in 2019, she hosted a podcast calling, quote-unquote, "confronting O.J. Simpson",

• 44:43Speaker 00

  sitting down with prosecutors, investigators, and witnesses who never got a full say the first time. So everything she did was in her brother's name. Ron Goldman didn't get a voice, and she made sure he never stopped having one. And while the Goldmans were doing all of that, O.J. was working on a project of his own. And this is a doozy, I tell you what. So in November of 2006, 11 years after the acquittal, a publisher named Judith Reagan announced she had a book, written by O.J. Simpson, titled, wait for it, "If I Did It: Confessions of a Killer." Just gonna let you sit on that for a second.

• 45:27Speaker 00

  He wrote a book that talks about, if he metaphorically did it, how he would do it.

• 45:36Speaker 00

  If that's not an admission to guilt, I don't know what is, guys. I don't know what is. Who does that? So, as I was saying, the framing was that it was hypothetical. Not an admission of guilt, no, no, but a walkthrough of how he would have committed the murders, right? If he had committed them, right? If. A news corporation, which owned the publisher and Fox News, announced a two-part television interview to accompany the release. And the public reaction was immediate. And Fred Goldman called it a slap in the face to Nicole and Ron's families. Which, of course, it is.

• 46:17Speaker 00

  What kind of human being writes a book after being claimed innocent about how he would have killed these people he supposedly loved, at least Nicole, he didn't really know Ron, but... Psychotic, evil. Ah, I can't even, like, fathom it. I can't believe it's real. I cannot believe it's real. It's, like, so ridiculous, I don't even know. Anyway, advertisers threatened to pull their support from Fox entirely, naturally. And within 10 days of the announcement, News Corporation canceled both the book and the television special. And in August 2007, a Florida bankruptcy court awarded the rights to the book to the

• 46:58Speaker 00

  Goldman family as a partial settlement toward the civil judgment. Which, good on them. And this is awesome. Okay? They chose to publish it through Buford Books with one small but deliberate change to the cover design. The word "if" was made so tiny, it was nearly invisible. So, that at a glance, the title just read, "I Did It." Which, talk about poetic justice again. Like, that is beautiful. That's amazing. And, the cherry on top is that the interview footage was buried for years until March

• 47:39Speaker 00

  2018, when Fox aired it under the title "OJ Simpson: The Last Confession?", question mark? And in the footage, OJ describes the hypothetical scenario in the first person.

• 47:53Speaker 03

  Uh, in hypothetical, I put on crapping gloves.

• 47:56Speaker 00

  And he describes arriving at Nicole's condo with a companion he calls...

• 48:02Speaker 00

  Charlie.

• 48:03Speaker 03

  This guy Charlie shows up, a guy we had recently become friends with.

• 48:06Speaker 00

  And investigators and prosecutors who analyzed the interview believe Charlie was likely a narrative device, a fictional character OJ inserted to create distance from what he was describing. And he literally walks through a confrontation that escalates, starts describing a knife, and then stops himself and slips and says, "I don't remember. It was like I blacked out." And he keeps slipping up through the interview. He's like, you know, and then I, and then I, you know, picked up the knife and, you know, stabbed her. I mean hypothetically, hypothetically did that, you know, but to me, and to literally anyone that watched this interview are not the words of someone describing a hypothetical. And

• 48:51Speaker 00

  he repeats similar language throughout, saying he can't recall certain details, that things are blurry, as if he did them, but it was just so long ago that he just can't remember. Like, it's, you can't, this is as close to a confession that isn't a confession that is a confession. Does that make sense? Not really. Anyway, but you don't typically have memory gaps in a scenario you invented. You know what I'm saying? And there's also a moment in the interview that is genuinely disturbing, because OJ, apparently finding himself funny, because he's messed up like that, decides to play what he described as a little prank on the interviewer Judith Reagan, and mime's stabbing her to death,

• 49:36Speaker 00

  and he's laughing while he's, while he's doing it.

• 49:41Speaker 00

  So he was never charged for the murders, but here he was demonstrating exactly how he would have done it, calling it a joke. He's talking about the ex-wife he loved so much that wanted all this control over, about killing her and laughing about it. What is this world? Like, at what point is a hypothetical no longer a hypothetical, you know? But he wouldn't face any consequences for this book, besides having the rights moved over to the Goldman family. But my God, I highly recommend going to watch that full interview, if, if you can stomach it. But it's like equally disturbing as it is. I don't want to say hilarious, but it's so ridiculous that it's just like,

• 50:27Speaker 00

  what is happening, you know? But you know, strip away everything else for a moment. Remove the glove demonstration, which I want to stop on the glove because he does interviews wearing those exact same gloves like months before this happened and you can see it like pictures of him wearing the glove. That's, you know, it's besides the point. And remove Mark Fuhrman and all the theatrics. What you're left with is physical evidence tested by independent experts using DNA analysis, right? OJ's blood was at the murder scene. That could not be refuted. The only thing that was refuted was that the prosecution and maybe the police placed this evidence, but they would have had to take OJ's blood.

• 51:12Speaker 00

  It just, it was refuted. Like there was no way that that was tampered with, with the blood. So there was that. The victim's blood was in his car, in his driveway and inside his home. And the odds of that being a coincidence are, by experts' analysis, statistically impossible. And the defense's contamination theory that the LAPD planted blood to frame OJ Simpson, like I said before, required believing that a department under the most intense public scrutiny in the country, following Rodney King, had somehow pulled off an elaborate, perfectly coordinated evidence fabrication without a single person coming forward and within a small, tiny, tiny window of time.

• 51:58Speaker 00

  And that theory was always about sowing doubt, not presenting a credible alternative. And the Bruno Magli shoes were perhaps the most damaging physical evidence in the case, especially when the blood argument was in play. And at the civil trial, OJ looked at photos of the shoes and denied ever owning a pair, calling them ugly ass shoes. Oh, he thinks they're ugly? Case closed, let him walk. Then 30 photographs surfaced, including images from a 1993 Buffalo Bills game show.

• 52:32Speaker 00

  OJ wearing that exact model. So he had lied about the shoes, just like he had lied about the gloves as well. Which means his word, already shaky by the way, could not be trusted on literally anything. And then there's the timeline. OJ had a 78 minute window with no witnesses and no alibi. No one who could account for his whereabouts during the period when the medical examiner placed the time of death and his own explanation shifted and contradicted each other. And his history with Nicole wasn't incidental, it was documented pattern. 62 recorded incidents, a 1989 conviction, calls to police that spanned years.

• 53:14Speaker 00

  Nicole herself told people close to her that she was afraid for her life and that he would get away with her murder. And years after the verdict, jurors began to speak publicly. And juror Carrie Best, speaking on camera for the 2016 ESPN documentary, OJ Made in America, estimated that roughly 90% of the jury voted to acquit as payback for what happened to Rodney King. And she said she felt that way herself. And Marcia Clark confirmed as much in a Dateline NBC interview, saying some jurors came in with the explicit purpose of sending a message. Which I get sending a message, what happened to Rodney King is horrible, deplorable, disgusting.

• 53:57Speaker 06

  At the end of the day, we really, there was no way to reach that jury. There was no way to make them believe, there really wasn't.

• 54:03Speaker 00

  And juror Lionel Cryer, the same juror who gave OJ the raised fist salute, said in 2017 that in retrospect, he would have rendered a guilty verdict, which is huge. That's crazy, it's just wild. And juror Anise Ashenbach, who initially voted guilty before changing her vote, said she regrets it and points to the fact that OJ never went looking for the real killer as he had promised. And several jurors co-authored a book called Madame Foreman in early 1996, in which they described believing OJ was probably guilty, but that the prosecution had failed to prove it beyond a reasonable doubt. Which is what they're supposed to do, right?

• 54:45Speaker 00

  Though, one co-author wrote that she believed the blood at the crime scene belonged to OJ's children rather than him, which is interesting. And the jury never gave the evidence a fair evaluation. And by the accounts of its own members, many of them went in already knowing what they were going to decide. That's rough. So in 2023, OJ Simpson was diagnosed with prostate cancer and began chemotherapy. And by early 2024, his former manager told reporters he could barely complete half of a round of golf. Aww, I'm sorry, I just, he's, uh, sounds like a terrible person, you know? By April, his family announced he was receiving hospice care at home.

• 55:26Speaker 00

  And he would die on April 10th, 2024, at the age of 76, in his home in Las Vegas. And his family released a statement saying, quote, "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 asked that you please respect their wishes for privacy and grace," unquote. And Fred Goldman issued a statement of his own. And he said plainly that OJ had died without paying the civil judgment and without acknowledging what the evidence said he had done. And one more of the interesting details surrounding his death was the NDA situation.

• 56:07Speaker 00

  Because somewhere between 30 and 50 people came to say their goodbyes in his final days, including his four children. And every single one of them, family, friends, and medical staff, was required to sign a non-disclosure agreement. No cell phones were allowed inside. Why would someone on their deathbed need everyone in the room to sign an NDA? You're gonna die. What could have needed protecting? And TMZ reportedly asked the family whether OJ had said anything about the murders in his final days. And someone close to him, someone who had signed an NDA, said that nothing about "the LA thing" came up. The LA thing? Two innocent people were slaughtered?

• 56:55Speaker 00

  The LA thing, that's one way to describe two people who were just murdered in cold blood. Whatever was or wasn't said behind those closed doors, we almost certainly will never know. And there was also, in the years after the trial, an alternative theory floated by private investigator William Dear, who spent nearly two decades building a case and published a book in 2012 called "OJ is Innocent and I Can Prove It." And Dear's theory was that OJ's son, Jason Simpson, committed the murders, and that OJ arrived afterward and covered it up, which would explain why OJ's blood was present. And Dear pointed to alleged diary entries about Jason's psychiatric history and claimed

• 57:39Speaker 00

  to have found a knife engraved with the initials "JS" in an unpaid storage locker. But almost no serious analysts found the theory credible at all. And the leap from someone with anger issues to murdering his father's ex-wife and a stranger takes a lot more than just circumstance. And the evidence at the scene doesn't support it at all either. So it's the kind of theory that was built to offer an alternative not to withstand scrutiny. And years later, people who look at the evidence without the political charge of 1994 and 1995 tend to land in the same place. And the general consensus today is that a man with extraordinary resources, money,

• 58:24Speaker 00

  fame, and access to the best legal team money could buy, walked free despite a mountain of evidence pointing directly at him. And the LAPD had destroyed their own credibility long before OJ Simpson was ever arrested. And no matter what evidence they collected, maybe besides like a video of him literally doing it, a significant portion of the jury was never going to accept it from them. And the case was never lost because of a lack of evidence, it was lost because of how the evidence was gathered and who gathered it. And by the standards of the modern forensic investigation, most analysts agree the case would have been airtight. But the contamination arguments, the Furman recordings, and the 30 years of documented

• 59:07Speaker 00

  racial misconduct by the LAPD gave the defense team everything that they needed. And the not guilty verdict was, as multiple jurors eventually confirmed themselves, largely just about payback for Rodney King and what he represented. But all of the evidence... Obviously pointed to OJ Simpson, but the institution presenting that evidence had forfeited the right to be believed. But that is that for the OJ Simpson case. What do you guys think? I'm really curious. Let me know down below. It's a tough case. I mean, that time, that 1994 to 1996, that is polarizing, very polarizing time. I can understand both sides, you know, hindsight's 2020, looking back, it's like, it's right there.

• 59:51Speaker 00

  It's obvious, but you know, it's interesting. I would love to see discussions down below about this case and what you guys think. Definitely go watch the interviews. Take a look at the book. It's crazy. My heart goes out to the Goldman family and to the Brown family. They are the real victims in all of this. And also Rodney King, that story is absolutely horrendous. But that is that for the OJ Simpson case. So let me know what other cases you want me to dive into down below. I always read the comments. And until next time, I will see your beautiful face. Please stay safe out there. All right. Bye.

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