O.J. Simpson died yesterday. Simpson's life and times provided some interesting life markers for me, along with the occasional self-revelation. I pass along some of those memories.
Still a sophomore at Penn State, I spent Thanksgiving, 1976 at my paternal grandmother's home, as we usually did. Nana and Great Aunt Esther always served up a massive Thanksgiving spread, very much in keeping with Amish family style dinners. My grandparents weren't Amish, however; they were "Pennsylvania Dutch." Near as I could tell at the time, the difference between the two was 10 or 15 miles in southeastern Pennsylvania.
That Thanksgiving, we watched OJ shred the Detroit Lions defense for 273 yards. Simpson managed a truly historic performance on a huge, televised holiday stage. My Delaware-resident uncle and cousins watched the game with us. No one was an OJ fan, but everyone was suitably impressed. At the time, it stood as the single-game NFL rushing record.
The Science of Murder
My late wife, a physical anthropologist and forensics specialist (a la Bones before it was cool), incorporated some famous cases into her courses. Her reading list already included the Jeffrey MacDonald Fatal Vision book by Joe McGinnis. The MacDonald case had been pre-DNA, and the competing descriptions of what happened depended on blood types and blood distribution. When Nicole Brown Simpson was killed June 12, 1994, the murders provided updated DNA analytic opportunities. My late wife used the case to highlight where science had come since the MacDonald case. Despite the DNA evidence, however, OJ's legal teams won the acquittal.
Here's the odd, self-revelatory aspect of this case. I was driving on an interstate when the OJ verdict was returned. I heard it on the radio and several miles later, I pulled into the next rest stop. What caught me by surprise was my emotional reaction. To that point in time, I had no discernible investment in the outcome; I just assumed OJ would be found guilty. My reaction to the "not guilty" news was a surprising sense of relief. Call it misogyny; call it sociopathy. The fact is, unbeknownst to my executive self, I had been rooting for OJ.
Very strange, but eye-opening. On some level, I evidently felt like Nicole Brown Simpson had overstepped some line regarding rubbing OJ's face in her new relationship. I had no intellectual sympathy for OJ; it was some kind of visceral sympathy. What I learned about myself wasn't pretty or politically correct. But better, I suppose, to have learned it than not.
Palace Station
About 10 years ago, I took a sociology prof friend on a tour of Las Vegas. We visited Palace Station and sought out Room 1203, where OJ attempted a strong-arm hijacking of Simpson memorabilia. The room itself was tucked into the woebegone back corridors of the original Palace Station motel-type setup. From the exterior, tracking down Room 1203 was easy enough if you knew precisely where it was. But hiking to Room 1203 from inside Palace Station itself was a study in how to negotiate a labyrinth of Escher-like switchbacks and wall signage to nowhere. I can understand perfectly how someone dealing in memorabilia of questionable provenance would choose Palace Station Room 1203. I can also understand how someone wanting to execute a strongarm robbery of said memorabilia might choose the same room.
I had regularly stayed in those Palace Station labyrinth rooms since their construction, and decades of staying there had done nothing to improve my cognitive map of the place. One alcove featured top-notch vending, which I always appreciated since I never knew if I could find my way out. And I'm talking stone cold sober. God help anyone trying to manage those corridors after a few drinks.
In any event, OJ wound up in prison for orchestrating a robbery involving memorabilia that may or may not have been his. Yeah, American legal institutions do have their way of getting even when you've initially slipped through the cracks.
Those rooms are now gone, bulldozed to make way for newer, spiffier, more upscale accommodations. And OJ Simpson, The Juice, is also gone. Do I think he killed his wife? I have no blessed idea. What I did learn from OJ is that it's reasonable to suspect that the most gifted and famous among us may have a dark, dark side. And I learned that, whatever I consciously think, emotionally I may have a dark and undomesticated undercurrent, too. These revelations are, as Arnold Palmer famously said to OJ in a 70's Hertz commercial, "Brutal, Juice, brutal."
Amen to that.
Bob Dietz
April 11.2024
