Orenthal James Simpson, better known as OJ Simpson, is still making headlines more than a year after his death. The executor of the former American football star has reached a millionaire agreement for which he will have to pay almost 58 million dollars, the equivalent of 49.9 million euros, to Fred Goldman, father of the lawyer and friend of Simpson’s wife, found dead in her house more than 30 years ago.
The money will come from the estate of OJ Simpson, protagonist of the so-called the trial of the century. In 1995 he was accused of killing his wife Nicole Brown Simpson and her friend Ron Goldman. The trial dragged on for a year and became one of the darkest episodes in the American justice system. OJ Simpson represented the paradigm of the influence of money on judicial decisions.
A year after Simpson was found not guilty, Fred Goldman, who worked in the law world, took the case to civil court. A judge found OJ Simpson responsible for the deaths of Ron Goldman and Nicole Brown and ordered him to pay millions in compensation to the families. Simpson spent the rest of his life dodging money until his death from cancer in April last year. It was recently learned that he had paid only about $130,000 of the more than $33 million he was being asked to pay.
Malcolm LaVergne, the executor of Simpson’s estate, accepted Fred’s request for “the amount of $57,997,858.12, plus interest on the judgment on the approved amount, according to court documents filed this week. The news was reported this Saturday by the online gossip and gossip magazine, TMZ.
The case dates back to mid-June 1994 when television networks around the world broadcast the image of a car speeding away from police on a Los Angeles highway. Simpson was arrested as the prime suspect in the murders of his ex-wife, Nicole Brown, and her alleged lover, a young waiter named Ron Goldman.
The trial became a media circus. It was broadcast on the country’s major television networks because the case attracted the attention of Americans. It had all the ingredients of a soap opera: a sports star as the protagonist, alleged infidelities, jealousy and murder. The trial lasted a year. And the result is that Simpson was found not guilty and was released from prison despite the accumulation of evidence against him.
Simpson’s life has never been the same. He wandered around states until he ended up in prison for a robbery at gunpoint. He intended to obtain highly valuable sporting objects for collectors. After nine years in prison he settled in Las Vegas, where he lived discreetly until the end of his days.
“He died without penance,” Fred Goldman’s lawyer told the magazine People. “He didn’t want to give Fred a cent, ever, anything, ever,” he added. The $58 million award was set during a civil trial review in 2022.
In 2006 Simpson published a memoir, If I did it (What if I didin Spanish) with a hypothetical description of the murder. The book aroused great controversy because it was the alleged confession of a murderer. After its publication, with some adjustments, a judge decided to grant the rights to sell the book to Fred Goldman.
LaVergne, the executor, explained to TMZ that the $58 million settlement will be paid to Fred Goldman when OJ Simpson’s properties, some of which were stolen, are auctioned off. Although he appears cooperative now, Lavergne assured last year, after OJ Simpson’s death, that he would never give a dime to the Goldmans.
