BCN #27 O.J. Simpson, Athlete Whose Trial Riveted the Nation, Dies at 76

BCN #27
O.J. Simpson, Athlete Whose Trial Riveted the Nation, Dies at 76

According to the New York Times
He ran to football fame on the field and made fortunes in movies. Then a trial in which he was charged with killing his former wife and her friend changed everything.

, made fortunes as a Black all-American in movies, advertising and television, and was acquitted of killing his former wife and her friend in a 1995 trial in Los Angeles that mesmerized the nation, died on Wednesday at his home in Las Vegas. He was 76.

The cause was cancer, his family announced on social media.

The jury in the murder trial cleared him, but the case, which had held up a cracked mirror to Black and white America, ruined his world. In 1997, a civil suit by the victims’ families found him liable for the deaths of Nicole Brown Simpson and Ronald L. Goldman, and ordered him to pay $33.5 million in damages. He paid little of the debt, moved to Florida and struggled to remake his life, raise his children and stay out of trouble.