Across L.A. and around the world people were grappling with the complicated feelings stirred up by the death of former football legend turned accused murderer, Orenthal James Simpson, known as O.J. Simpson.
Simpson was 76 and had been battling cancer. In a post on X, his family said he died on Wednesday surrounded by his children and grandchildren.
An 'operatic' story
LAist's daily news program AirTalk host Larry Mantle opened up the phone lines Thursday and was met with a flood of conflicting reactions, so difficult to tease out, so hard to process fully and fairly. We will be compiling a few of them here.
Mantle gave voice to it at the top of the show, discussing how globally famous the trial became — The Trial Of The Century — and the racial reckoning that followed.
“It’s all so operatic, so huge,” Mantle said. “It's still hard for me to get my head around O.J. Simpson's life and everything that swirled around him.”
What one reporter has to say about her long connection to Simpson
Linda Deutch, a former Associated Press special correspondent who covered some of L.A.’s biggest trials, including every day of Simpson’s, told AirTalk she hadn’t spoken to the former Buffalo Bills running back in about a year.
“The last time I talked to him, he was, he was fine,” she said. “He said he was playing golf every day. He was very happy that he was a grandfather now. His family kept in touch with him and came to visit him and things were very quiet with him, which is [how] he liked it.”
Simpson did start a podcast about football in retirement, which Deutsch said is almost a footnote compared to the high-profile crimes he was accused and acquitted of.
When Simpson later served nine years for stealing merchandise in Las Vegas, Deutsch said it was “kind of unbelievable” that that was what he ended up going to jail for.
“He found it very interesting to get to know all the other prisoners,” she said. “He started a library for them, taught some people to read. He made the most of it … the best that he could while he was in there.”
Deutsch had already covered the Manson family trials, the Menendez brothers trial, and the 1992 Rodney King beating trial — but Simpson’s was televised.
How the trial changed views of the court system
That didn’t affect how she followed the case, but Deutsch said it changed her life in many ways.
“I would watch TV every day, several times a day, because I would come out of [the] courtroom and go down to the lobby of the criminal courts building and all the TV stations would be there to get my pool report,” she said.
Jessica in Pasadena wrote in an email to AirTalk that she was one of the many people who took off work to watch the trial.
“I'll never forget when the verdict came in where I was and the feeling of sickness in my stomach that the jury got it wrong,” Jessica wrote. “Juries can get it wrong, but DNA doesn't lie.”
Deutsch said even the DNA in the case was corrupted, and she would have acquitted him too because they didn’t prove the case.
Listen
Listen to the conversation: The Rise And Fall Of OJ Simpson
After the trial, Simpson wrote a book called If I Did It: Confessions of the Killer. Mantle pointed out that while he maintained his innocence, he wrote a book with a chapter that details how he would have gotten away with it — why?
“For money,” Deutsch said with a laugh. “That's the only thing I can figure, that he got paid for it.”
Deutsch said she believes he later regretted that decision, as Simpson referred to the case as the worst thing that’s ever happened in his life.
An American hero turned pariah
Simpson had been an American hero, Deutsch said, and then suddenly he was a pariah.
“My point was that he was not a likely person to be a symbol of law enforcement abuses against African Americans because he, prior to this, really didn't put himself into a racial category, didn't see that as central to his identity," she said. "But of course, during the trial and the criminal justice system's treatment of African Americans comes front and center, and at that point, his identity as a Black man is very much a part of what's happening in the courtroom and in the public consciousness of the trial."
A Martínez, host of NPR’s Morning Edition who also traveled with the Dodgers for a decade, told AirTalk he’s seen athletes have a private persona that was completely different from how they acted when cameras were around.
“I think that became very obvious when we finally found out about O.J. Simpson and how he treated his wife, Nicole [Simpson],” Martínez said.
Tony in West Hollywood told AirTalk that Simpson may have been acquitted, but he was abusive as a spouse, and we had the evidence of that.
Martínez said that shattered the perception of the fun, friendly guy in the Hertz commercials and Naked Gun movies.
About the low speed chase
Chris in Larchmont Village brought up the low-speed freeway chase of the Ford Bronco and the nationwide “media circus” around it.
Martínez said every possible emotion was brewing as he watched the chase unfold.
“I mean, you couldn't get up to go to the bathroom, you couldn't get up to drink water,” he said. “Every other part of being a human was gone because your eyes were glued to that screen and there was nothing you could do to move you away from it until you saw what was gonna happen.”
Martínez said one word comes to mind for Simpson — wondering. Wondering what really happened the night Ron Goldman and Nicole Brown Simpson were killed, wondering what would have happened if Simpson never tried on the gloves and sparked the phrase, “If the gloves don't fit, we must acquit.”
“Now that O.J. is gone, I think we'll be wondering pretty much for the rest of our lives,” he said.
But Deutsch point out that Simpson always maintained his innocence.
“He always told me the same thing — 'I didn't do it,'” she said. “And he said he didn't know who did it.”
