After leading a tumultuous life of fame and being in the headlines for all the wrong reasons, O.J. Simpson has passed away. The once-famous football star, actor, and TV presenter was 76.
As shared by his family on social media, Simpson’s cause of death was cancer. In his final moments, the Juiced star was surrounded by his family members.
Simpson first shared his cancer diagnosis back in 2023, wherein he revealed he had undergone chemotherapy — but left the cancer unspecified — and was confident that he had “beat it.” But in 2024, reports cropped up that he was undergoing treatment for prostate cancer and was in hospice care. While the Hall of Fame running back came forward to refute the second half of the claim, he didn’t address the rumors about his health.
Had the 76-year-old been silently battling cancer for the last year and a half? He never shared details about it. But unlike these last few years of his life, the rest of Simpson’s history is unfortunately renowned — a football wonder, actor, and sportscaster whose star rapidly and consistently spiraled downwards after 1994, when he was charged with the double murder of his wife, Nicole Brown Simpson, and her friend, Ron Goldman.
Though he was acquitted of the two counts of murder during a massively publicized trial, three years later he was later found liable for their deaths in a civil lawsuit. But this was hardly the end of Simpson’s legal troubles.
Between the late 1990s and early 2000s, he was arrested more than twice and sued to pay heavy fines. This streak of Simpson’s reached a shocking conclusion in 2007 in the wake of the infamous Las Vegas Robbery case where the former football great led a group of men to rob a Las Vegas hotel and casino at gunpoint. He was found guilty and sentenced to 33 years in prison, though he was released on parole in 2017 after serving nine years in prison.