Feb. 21, 2026

True Crime Blueprint - From Football Hero To Fugitive: OJ Simpson

True Crime Blueprint - From Football Hero To Fugitive: OJ Simpson
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WEBVTT

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Hi, it's Joe and what you are about to hear

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is a sample of an episode from a new podcast

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I created called True Crime Blueprint. Now, if you like

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it it vibes with what you're looking for in a

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true crime podcast, go over and subscribe to the new one.

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You can find links if you need them in the

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episode notes of this episode. I'll be releasing weekly episodes there,

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full deep dives, no ten minute restriction. So again, if

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you like this new podcast and you want to hear

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the full episode, it's very important that you search for

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or go to the episode notes of this episode to

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find the links for True Crime Blueprint. On June twelfth,

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nineteen ninety four, two people were brutally murdered outside a

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Brentwood condominium. The ex husband of one of the victims

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was charged, tried, and acquitted in a trial that captivated

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the world. But the acquittal was just the beginning. What

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followed was a complete transformation of the American criminal justice system,

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driven by the mistakes made during the investigation and the

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voices of victims that have been silenced for too long.

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This is true Crime Blueprints. Let me take you back

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to nineteen forty seven to Portrayal Hill in San Francisco.

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This is a rough neighborhood, low income, and into this

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world comes Orenthal James Simpson, and right from the starts,

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life is throwing him curveballs. This kid develops Ricketts as

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a baby, And if you don't know what ricketts is,

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it's a metabolic bone disorder that basically makes your bones

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soft and weak. Little Oj ends up pigeon toed and

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bow legged, and his legs are so messed up that

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he has to wear those heavy metal leg braces until

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he's five years old. You know, the leg braces that

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Forrest Gump wore, same kind of thing. Now his family

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cannot afford surgery to fix him properly. His mom unus

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is working as an orderly at a psychiatric that's the

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main income keeping this family afloat. His father, Jimmy Lee Simpson,

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leaves when Oj is four, and Jimmy was a well

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known figure in the San Francisco drag scene. He later

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came out as gay and eventually died from AIDS related

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complications in nineteen eighty six. You got this little boy

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wearing leg braces like Forrest Gump, getting called names like

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pencil pins by other kids growing up without a father

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in a world that's already tough enough. And when those

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braces finally came off, something inside Ojay shifts. There's this

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drive that forms, this need to prove himself physically, to

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show everyone he's strong. Psychologists who've studied Simpson's life point

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to these early years as the foundation for his obsession

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with being physically dominant and publicly adored. But here's the thing.

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When those braces came off, oj didn't immediately become a

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football star. He became a criminal. By the time he's

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a teenager, Simpson is running with a gay called the

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Persian Warriors. This is serious gang activity in San Francisco.

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He's not some low level member either. He's high ranking,

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and he gets arrested three times. His first wife, Marguerite,

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who knew him in high school, later said he was

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quote a really awful person during this time. That's his

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wife saying that. Now the person who married him later on,

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you have this angry kid with something to prove getting

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locked up at the San Francisco Youth Guidance Center multiple times.

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And that's usually the beginning of a story that goes

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one way and only one way. Prison more crime in

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early death maybe. But then something happens that sounds almost

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too hollywood to be real. After his third arrest, OJ

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Simpson meets Willie Mays, the Willie Mays, the baseball legend.

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He sits down with the kid and tells him that

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he needs to channel all that anger, all that aggression

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into sports, and somehow it works. Oj joins the football

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team at Galileo High School. Then he goes to City

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College of San Francisco and suddenly he's scoring fifty four

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touchdowns in two seasons. Fifty four. That's a bunch. The

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transformation is complete. By nineteen sixty eight, he wins the

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Heisman Trophy when he transfers to USC. He becomes a

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symbol of what people called at the time racial transcendence.

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Here's this black kid from the roughest part of San

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Francisco becoming America's football hero. In nineteen sixty nine, he's

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the number one overall pick in the NFL Draft. The

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Buffalo Bills take him, and he demands a record breaking

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contract and he gets it because by now OJ Simpson

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is a brand. He's in movies, he's doing commercials, he's

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running through airports for hurts rental cars, and America loves him.

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But that kid from the rough side of town, the

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one who wore Forrest Gump leg braces and got beat

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up and joined a gang, he never really went away.

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OJ meets Nicole Brown in nineteen seventy seven. He's still

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married to Marguerite at the time, but that doesn't stop him.

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In case you're not picking up already, he's kind of

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a terrible person. Nicole is eighteen years old working as

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a waitress at the Beverly Hills nightclub called The Daisy.

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He's thirty, he's famous, he's charming, and she completely falls

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for him. They get married in nineteen eighty five, after

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his divorce from Marguerite is finalized. And from the outside

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it looks perfect, beautiful house in Rockingham, two kids, Sidney

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and Justin money, fame, the American dream. But inside that

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house something else is happening. See, there's this thing psychologists

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call the power and control cycle in abusive relationships. When

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you add fame and wealth to that cycle, it becomes

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absolutely toxic. Simpson saw Nicole as something he owned, a

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trophy like his heisman trophy, something that belonged to him

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and only to him. The first documented in incident we

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know about happens in nineteen eighty four. There's an argument

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involving baseball bats and the Mercedes. Already, we're seeing violence already,

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there are warning signs, but nothing happens, no arrest, no intervention,

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because in nineteen eighty four, domestic violence is still seen

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as a private family matter. The police really didn't get

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involved unless someone ends up in the hospital or dead.

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Then comes New Year's Day, nineteen eighty nine. This is

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the incident that should have stopped everything before it went

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any further. Police get called to the Rockingham Estates at

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three in the morning on January first, nineteen eighty nine.

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When they arrive, they find Nicole hiding in the bushes.

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She's wearing sweatpants and a bra that's it, and she's

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bruised up, pretty badly bruised, and she's screaming and crying.

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He's going to kill me, He's going to kill me.

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The officers go inside and find Oja Simpson, and here's

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where you see how celebrity and wealth create this protective bubble.

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Simpson is cooperate, he's charming to the officers. He admits

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they had a fight, but he downplays it severely, and

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because he's Oj Simpson, the very famous football hero, the

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movie star, the hurts guy everyone loves, the officers treat

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it differently than they would some other regular guy in

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the regular neighborhood. Nicole eventually files charges. Simpson pleads no

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contests to spousal battery, and his punishment he gets to

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choose his own doctor for counseling. He pays a small fine,

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he gets probation. That's it. There's no jail time, no

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real consequences, and the message this sends to Simpson is clear,

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you can do this and get away with it, so

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he keeps doing it. After they divorce in nineteen ninety two,

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things somehow get worse. Nicole starts documenting everything. She's writing

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in her diary about how he's stalking her. He's showing

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up at her house uninvited, he's peering through the windows.

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She writes that she's terrified and he's going to follow

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through on those threats to kill her. But here's the

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heartbreaking part. She's documenting all of this and it does

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not matter because the system didn't have a way to

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handle this escalating threat. There's no framework for understanding that

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domestic violence is a progressive cycle. There's no lethality assessment.

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The police can't do anything unless he actually hurts her again,

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and by the time he hurts her again, she's dead.

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Now to understand why the oj Simpson trial ended the

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way that it did, you have to understand what was

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happening in Los Angeles in the early nineteen nineties, because

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this trial didn't happen in a vacuum. It happened in

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a city that was still traumatized and divided by the

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Rodney King beating and the riots that followed. March third,

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nineteen ninety one, four LAPD officers pull over Rodney King

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after a high speed chase and they beat him. They

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beat him so badly that he suffers skull fractures, broken bones,

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permanent brain damage, and the whole thing is caught on video.

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This grainy, shocking footage plays on every news channel in America,

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and for the first time, people are seeing proof of

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what black communities in Los Angeles have been saying for decades.

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The LAPD has a brutality problem, the LAPD has a

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racism problem. When those four officers go on trial in

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nineteen ninety two, everyone expects convictions. The evidence is literally

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on video. How could they not be convicted. April twenty ninth,

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nineteen ninety two, the jury, which is majority whites and

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was moved to Semi Valley, acquits all four officers. Los

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Angeles explodes. The riots last six days. Fifty three people die,

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over a billion dollars in damage. Buildings burn, The National

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Guard is called. Then it's the deadliest civil unrest in

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American history. And the aftermath of those riots is this

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The LAPD is no longer seen as a legitimate institution

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by a huge poor of the population. The Christopher Commission

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investigation finds that the department has a siege mentality and

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a culture that tolerates and encourages excessive force against minorities. Okay,

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that's just a sample of what you can hear over

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at True Crime Blueprint. If you liked what you heard,

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you can look in the episode notes right now of

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this episode, or just search for True Crime Blueprint and

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it'll be right there. And thanks for giving it a try.