The death watch for O.J. Simpson was highly controlled to prevent leaks emerging before Simpson’s death Wednesday at the age of 76, according to a new report.
As Simpson was losing his final battle with prostate cancer, visitors who came to see him at his home were required to sign non-disclosure agreements, according to TMZ.
Phones were banned from the house, TMZ also reported, citing sources it did not name.
The report said that as of Friday, April 5, when Simpson seemed unlikely to recover, friends and family began to make their final calls. TMZ estimated between 30 and 50 people came to see the former football player who starred in one of America’s most famous trials.
TMZ reported that the two children Simpson had with Nicole Brown Simpson — who he was accused of murdering — attended. Sydney is now 38, and Justin is 35. Jason and Arnelle, Simpson’s children with Marguerite Whitley, also came to see him as he was dying. The report said they, as well as medical personnel, were required to sign NDAs.
In death, Simpson was cited as many different things.
Good Riddance #OJSimpson
— Caitlyn Jenner (@Caitlyn_Jenner) April 11, 2024
“He wasn’t a social justice leader, but he represented something for the black community in that moment in that trial, particularly because there were two white people killed,” Ashley Allison, a senior policy adviser to former President Barack Obama and a campaign staffer for the 2020 Joe Biden campaign, said, according to Fox News.
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“[U]until this country is ready to actually have an honest conversation about the racial dynamics from our origin story until today, we will always have moments like O.J. Simpson that manifest. And our country will always be divided if we don’t actually deal with the issue of race,” she said.
In an Op-Ed for the Guardian, Moira Donegan saw in Simpson a domestic abuser who emerged as a winner.
“Simpson died in bed, receiving medical care to make him comfortable, at the end of his natural life. He had reached old age; we can infer that when he took his last breaths, he was surrounded by well wishes and love,” she wrote.
In 1994 Nicole Brown Simpson was brutally murdered. OJ Simpson got to live another 30 years before dying today from cancer at 76. Nobody was ever convicted of killing her but everyone knows who did it!
Rather than focusing exclusively on him, let’s take a second to remember her! pic.twitter.com/g5Q2p99xs1
— Matt Wallace (@MattWallace888) April 11, 2024
“His was a very different death from the one he allegedly inflicted on his former wife, Nicole Brown, and her friend Ron Goldman. They did not die in bed; they probably died screaming. And for Nicole, at least, her death was the culmination of a years-long campaign of terrorism that OJ had waged against her since they met; it was the moment their whole relationship had been leading to,” she wrote.
In an Op-Ed in The Washington Post, Eugene Robinson reached back into the days when there was only football, recalling “the thrill of watching Simpson run.”
“A linebacker would be bearing down on him, inches away, and suddenly he would zigzag left or right, or both in succession, and he was gone. His running was charismatic. When you added the sparkle of his million-dollar smile and the polish of his perfect diction, he was irresistible. Everyone loved O.J,” he wrote.
“In his most famous TV commercial, for Hertz car rental, he ran through airports just like he had run through defensive lines,” he wrote.
After emerging from prison in 2017, Simpson lived “a diminished life, to be sure. He had just a fraction of his one-time wealth and status. His celebrity was of the most tarnished kind. His need for adulation would never again be requited. He was a pariah,” Robinson wrote.
“But O.J. Simpson died a free man. He zigged and zagged all his life — and never quite got caught,” he wrote.
