O.J. Simpson, the football superstar and Hollywood actor who was acquitted of charges he killed his former wife and her friend but later found liable in a civil trial, died of cancer at 76 in Las Vegas, reports the Associated Press. He was 76. Simpson earned fame, fortune and adulation through football and show business, but his legacy was changed by the June 1994 knife slayings of his ex-wife, Nicole Brown Simpson, and her friend Ronald Goldman in Los Angeles. Live TV coverage of his arrest after a slow-speed chase marked a stunning fall from grace for the sports hero. The public was mesmerized by his "trial of the century" on live TV. His case provoked debates on race, gender, domestic abuse, celebrity justice and police misconduct.
A jury found him not guilty of murder in 1995, but a separate civil trial jury found him liable in 1997 for the deaths and ordered him to pay $33.5 million to family members of Brown and Goldman. A decade later, Simpson led five men he barely knew into a confrontation with two sports memorabilia dealers in a Las Vegas hotel room. Two men with Simpson had guns. A jury convicted Simpson of armed robbery and other felonies. He served nine years in a remote northern Nevada prison, including a stint as a gym janitor. He was not contrite when he was released on parole in October 2017.