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True Crime Blueprint - From Football Hero To Fugitive: OJ Simpson · 10 Minute Murder | Bingeable True Crime Stories

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: Hi, it's Joe and what you are about to hear
• 0:03
  Speaker 1: is a sample of an episode from a new podcast
• 0:05
  Speaker 1: I created called True Crime Blueprint. Now, if you like
• 0:09
  Speaker 1: it it vibes with what you're looking for in a
• 0:11
  Speaker 1: true crime podcast, go over and subscribe to the new one.
• 0:15
  Speaker 1: You can find links if you need them in the
• 0:17
  Speaker 1: episode notes of this episode. I'll be releasing weekly episodes there,
• 0:21
  Speaker 1: full deep dives, no ten minute restriction. So again, if
• 0:25
  Speaker 1: you like this new podcast and you want to hear
• 0:27
  Speaker 1: the full episode, it's very important that you search for
• 0:30
  Speaker 1: or go to the episode notes of this episode to
• 0:32
  Speaker 1: find the links for True Crime Blueprint. On June twelfth,
• 0:37
  Speaker 1: nineteen ninety four, two people were brutally murdered outside a
• 0:41
  Speaker 1: Brentwood condominium. The ex husband of one of the victims
• 0:44
  Speaker 1: was charged, tried, and acquitted in a trial that captivated
• 0:48
  Speaker 1: the world. But the acquittal was just the beginning. What
• 0:51
  Speaker 1: followed was a complete transformation of the American criminal justice system,
• 0:56
  Speaker 1: driven by the mistakes made during the investigation and the
• 0:59
  Speaker 1: voices of victims that have been silenced for too long.
• 1:02
  Speaker 1: This is true Crime Blueprints. Let me take you back
• 1:18
  Speaker 1: to nineteen forty seven to Portrayal Hill in San Francisco.
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  Speaker 1: This is a rough neighborhood, low income, and into this
• 1:25
  Speaker 1: world comes Orenthal James Simpson, and right from the starts,
• 1:29
  Speaker 1: life is throwing him curveballs. This kid develops Ricketts as
• 1:33
  Speaker 1: a baby, And if you don't know what ricketts is,
• 1:36
  Speaker 1: it's a metabolic bone disorder that basically makes your bones
• 1:39
  Speaker 1: soft and weak. Little Oj ends up pigeon toed and
• 1:42
  Speaker 1: bow legged, and his legs are so messed up that
• 1:45
  Speaker 1: he has to wear those heavy metal leg braces until
• 1:47
  Speaker 1: he's five years old. You know, the leg braces that
• 1:50
  Speaker 1: Forrest Gump wore, same kind of thing. Now his family
• 1:54
  Speaker 1: cannot afford surgery to fix him properly. His mom unus
• 1:58
  Speaker 1: is working as an orderly at a psychiatric that's the
• 2:01
  Speaker 1: main income keeping this family afloat. His father, Jimmy Lee Simpson,
• 2:05
  Speaker 1: leaves when Oj is four, and Jimmy was a well
• 2:08
  Speaker 1: known figure in the San Francisco drag scene. He later
• 2:12
  Speaker 1: came out as gay and eventually died from AIDS related
• 2:15
  Speaker 1: complications in nineteen eighty six. You got this little boy
• 2:19
  Speaker 1: wearing leg braces like Forrest Gump, getting called names like
• 2:22
  Speaker 1: pencil pins by other kids growing up without a father
• 2:26
  Speaker 1: in a world that's already tough enough. And when those
• 2:29
  Speaker 1: braces finally came off, something inside Ojay shifts. There's this
• 2:33
  Speaker 1: drive that forms, this need to prove himself physically, to
• 2:37
  Speaker 1: show everyone he's strong. Psychologists who've studied Simpson's life point
• 2:42
  Speaker 1: to these early years as the foundation for his obsession
• 2:45
  Speaker 1: with being physically dominant and publicly adored. But here's the thing.
• 2:50
  Speaker 1: When those braces came off, oj didn't immediately become a
• 2:53
  Speaker 1: football star. He became a criminal. By the time he's
• 2:58
  Speaker 1: a teenager, Simpson is running with a gay called the
• 3:00
  Speaker 1: Persian Warriors. This is serious gang activity in San Francisco.
• 3:05
  Speaker 1: He's not some low level member either. He's high ranking,
• 3:08
  Speaker 1: and he gets arrested three times. His first wife, Marguerite,
• 3:12
  Speaker 1: who knew him in high school, later said he was
• 3:14
  Speaker 1: quote a really awful person during this time. That's his
• 3:18
  Speaker 1: wife saying that. Now the person who married him later on,
• 3:22
  Speaker 1: you have this angry kid with something to prove getting
• 3:24
  Speaker 1: locked up at the San Francisco Youth Guidance Center multiple times.
• 3:28
  Speaker 1: And that's usually the beginning of a story that goes
• 3:30
  Speaker 1: one way and only one way. Prison more crime in
• 3:34
  Speaker 1: early death maybe. But then something happens that sounds almost
• 3:39
  Speaker 1: too hollywood to be real. After his third arrest, OJ
• 3:43
  Speaker 1: Simpson meets Willie Mays, the Willie Mays, the baseball legend.
• 3:48
  Speaker 1: He sits down with the kid and tells him that
• 3:50
  Speaker 1: he needs to channel all that anger, all that aggression
• 3:53
  Speaker 1: into sports, and somehow it works. Oj joins the football
• 3:59
  Speaker 1: team at Galileo High School. Then he goes to City
• 4:02
  Speaker 1: College of San Francisco and suddenly he's scoring fifty four
• 4:05
  Speaker 1: touchdowns in two seasons. Fifty four. That's a bunch. The
• 4:09
  Speaker 1: transformation is complete. By nineteen sixty eight, he wins the
• 4:13
  Speaker 1: Heisman Trophy when he transfers to USC. He becomes a
• 4:17
  Speaker 1: symbol of what people called at the time racial transcendence.
• 4:20
  Speaker 1: Here's this black kid from the roughest part of San
• 4:23
  Speaker 1: Francisco becoming America's football hero. In nineteen sixty nine, he's
• 4:28
  Speaker 1: the number one overall pick in the NFL Draft. The
• 4:31
  Speaker 1: Buffalo Bills take him, and he demands a record breaking
• 4:34
  Speaker 1: contract and he gets it because by now OJ Simpson
• 4:38
  Speaker 1: is a brand. He's in movies, he's doing commercials, he's
• 4:42
  Speaker 1: running through airports for hurts rental cars, and America loves him.
• 4:47
  Speaker 1: But that kid from the rough side of town, the
• 4:50
  Speaker 1: one who wore Forrest Gump leg braces and got beat
• 4:52
  Speaker 1: up and joined a gang, he never really went away.
• 4:58
  Speaker 1: OJ meets Nicole Brown in nineteen seventy seven. He's still
• 5:02
  Speaker 1: married to Marguerite at the time, but that doesn't stop him.
• 5:06
  Speaker 1: In case you're not picking up already, he's kind of
• 5:08
  Speaker 1: a terrible person. Nicole is eighteen years old working as
• 5:12
  Speaker 1: a waitress at the Beverly Hills nightclub called The Daisy.
• 5:15
  Speaker 1: He's thirty, he's famous, he's charming, and she completely falls
• 5:19
  Speaker 1: for him. They get married in nineteen eighty five, after
• 5:22
  Speaker 1: his divorce from Marguerite is finalized. And from the outside
• 5:26
  Speaker 1: it looks perfect, beautiful house in Rockingham, two kids, Sidney
• 5:31
  Speaker 1: and Justin money, fame, the American dream. But inside that
• 5:36
  Speaker 1: house something else is happening. See, there's this thing psychologists
• 5:40
  Speaker 1: call the power and control cycle in abusive relationships. When
• 5:45
  Speaker 1: you add fame and wealth to that cycle, it becomes
• 5:48
  Speaker 1: absolutely toxic. Simpson saw Nicole as something he owned, a
• 5:53
  Speaker 1: trophy like his heisman trophy, something that belonged to him
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  Speaker 1: and only to him. The first documented in incident we
• 6:00
  Speaker 1: know about happens in nineteen eighty four. There's an argument
• 6:03
  Speaker 1: involving baseball bats and the Mercedes. Already, we're seeing violence already,
• 6:09
  Speaker 1: there are warning signs, but nothing happens, no arrest, no intervention,
• 6:14
  Speaker 1: because in nineteen eighty four, domestic violence is still seen
• 6:17
  Speaker 1: as a private family matter. The police really didn't get
• 6:20
  Speaker 1: involved unless someone ends up in the hospital or dead.
• 6:25
  Speaker 1: Then comes New Year's Day, nineteen eighty nine. This is
• 6:28
  Speaker 1: the incident that should have stopped everything before it went
• 6:30
  Speaker 1: any further. Police get called to the Rockingham Estates at
• 6:34
  Speaker 1: three in the morning on January first, nineteen eighty nine.
• 6:38
  Speaker 1: When they arrive, they find Nicole hiding in the bushes.
• 6:41
  Speaker 1: She's wearing sweatpants and a bra that's it, and she's
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  Speaker 1: bruised up, pretty badly bruised, and she's screaming and crying.
• 6:48
  Speaker 1: He's going to kill me, He's going to kill me.
• 6:51
  Speaker 1: The officers go inside and find Oja Simpson, and here's
• 6:54
  Speaker 1: where you see how celebrity and wealth create this protective bubble.
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  Speaker 1: Simpson is cooperate, he's charming to the officers. He admits
• 7:02
  Speaker 1: they had a fight, but he downplays it severely, and
• 7:05
  Speaker 1: because he's Oj Simpson, the very famous football hero, the
• 7:09
  Speaker 1: movie star, the hurts guy everyone loves, the officers treat
• 7:13
  Speaker 1: it differently than they would some other regular guy in
• 7:16
  Speaker 1: the regular neighborhood. Nicole eventually files charges. Simpson pleads no
• 7:21
  Speaker 1: contests to spousal battery, and his punishment he gets to
• 7:25
  Speaker 1: choose his own doctor for counseling. He pays a small fine,
• 7:29
  Speaker 1: he gets probation. That's it. There's no jail time, no
• 7:33
  Speaker 1: real consequences, and the message this sends to Simpson is clear,
• 7:38
  Speaker 1: you can do this and get away with it, so
• 7:41
  Speaker 1: he keeps doing it. After they divorce in nineteen ninety two,
• 7:44
  Speaker 1: things somehow get worse. Nicole starts documenting everything. She's writing
• 7:49
  Speaker 1: in her diary about how he's stalking her. He's showing
• 7:53
  Speaker 1: up at her house uninvited, he's peering through the windows.
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  Speaker 1: She writes that she's terrified and he's going to follow
• 8:00
  Speaker 1: through on those threats to kill her. But here's the
• 8:03
  Speaker 1: heartbreaking part. She's documenting all of this and it does
• 8:06
  Speaker 1: not matter because the system didn't have a way to
• 8:10
  Speaker 1: handle this escalating threat. There's no framework for understanding that
• 8:14
  Speaker 1: domestic violence is a progressive cycle. There's no lethality assessment.
• 8:19
  Speaker 1: The police can't do anything unless he actually hurts her again,
• 8:23
  Speaker 1: and by the time he hurts her again, she's dead.
• 8:27
  Speaker 1: Now to understand why the oj Simpson trial ended the
• 8:30
  Speaker 1: way that it did, you have to understand what was
• 8:32
  Speaker 1: happening in Los Angeles in the early nineteen nineties, because
• 8:35
  Speaker 1: this trial didn't happen in a vacuum. It happened in
• 8:38
  Speaker 1: a city that was still traumatized and divided by the
• 8:42
  Speaker 1: Rodney King beating and the riots that followed. March third,
• 8:46
  Speaker 1: nineteen ninety one, four LAPD officers pull over Rodney King
• 8:50
  Speaker 1: after a high speed chase and they beat him. They
• 8:54
  Speaker 1: beat him so badly that he suffers skull fractures, broken bones,
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  Speaker 1: permanent brain damage, and the whole thing is caught on video.
• 9:01
  Speaker 1: This grainy, shocking footage plays on every news channel in America,
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  Speaker 1: and for the first time, people are seeing proof of
• 9:08
  Speaker 1: what black communities in Los Angeles have been saying for decades.
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  Speaker 1: The LAPD has a brutality problem, the LAPD has a
• 9:16
  Speaker 1: racism problem. When those four officers go on trial in
• 9:20
  Speaker 1: nineteen ninety two, everyone expects convictions. The evidence is literally
• 9:25
  Speaker 1: on video. How could they not be convicted. April twenty ninth,
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  Speaker 1: nineteen ninety two, the jury, which is majority whites and
• 9:34
  Speaker 1: was moved to Semi Valley, acquits all four officers. Los
• 9:38
  Speaker 1: Angeles explodes. The riots last six days. Fifty three people die,
• 9:44
  Speaker 1: over a billion dollars in damage. Buildings burn, The National
• 9:48
  Speaker 1: Guard is called. Then it's the deadliest civil unrest in
• 9:51
  Speaker 1: American history. And the aftermath of those riots is this
• 9:55
  Speaker 1: The LAPD is no longer seen as a legitimate institution
• 9:59
  Speaker 1: by a huge poor of the population. The Christopher Commission
• 10:02
  Speaker 1: investigation finds that the department has a siege mentality and
• 10:07
  Speaker 1: a culture that tolerates and encourages excessive force against minorities. Okay,
• 10:12
  Speaker 1: that's just a sample of what you can hear over
• 10:15
  Speaker 1: at True Crime Blueprint. If you liked what you heard,
• 10:18
  Speaker 1: you can look in the episode notes right now of
• 10:20
  Speaker 1: this episode, or just search for True Crime Blueprint and
• 10:23
  Speaker 1: it'll be right there. And thanks for giving it a try.