I need to hand it off to the next hour with jose diazbalart who picks up our breaking News Coverage right now. Good morning. We begin with breaking news. Former nfl star o. J. Simpson who was acquitted in one of the most famous murder trials in American History has died at the age of 76. His Family Posting on his x account this morning saying he succumbed to his battle with cancer yesterday. Joining us Now Msnbc Anchor , Chris Jansing. What do we know about this . Well, we dont know a lot. A short statement was put up by his family that he had succumbed to cancer but the announcement o. J. Simpson has died is sure to send ripples through much of america who remember this incredibly gifted Football Hero who became a guest as the guest said in the last hour a bona fide movie star, someone on commercials, someone who was at football games. He was ubiquitous throughout america and crossed all racial lines. The idea that he might murder his wife came as the most incredible shock for anyone what alive at that time. The number of people who followed that trial, the number of people who followed that White Bronco Chase was in the tens of millions. It was an incredible cultural moment for this country and obviously the verdict was as well. You mentioned that i spoke to him in the aftermath of the trial where he was acquitted. Many people remember that line in the trial, if it doesnt fit, you must acquit. He tried to put a glove on that was believed to be used in the murder and it did not seem to fit his hand. He regained custody of his Young Children and the parents of nicole Brown Simpson, his wife that was murdered, wanted custody and there was some question in the California Appellate Court as to whether or not someone accused of murder should rightfully have gotten custody of their children. It caused debate across the country and caused debate on the air here at msnbc. I did a one hour show with a panel of experts, mostly legal experts, talking about that idea and shortly after when i went back into the newsroom i was told o. J. Simpson was on the phone for me and it did, indeed, turn out to be o. J. Simpson. He said his lawyer did not want him to go on television but after conversations with me and some of my producers, he agreed he would go on the air and did his first expensive extensive interview during this period arguing it was right for him to get custody of his kids because he was acquitted and always said he was innocent. One of the things he never really answered was about his statement he made after his acquittal, saying he was going to spend his money and fight as long as he could to find out who the real killer was, but there was never any indication that he did that, that he spent extensive amounts of money, so that was actually the second conversation. I once met o. J. Simpson when he was doing football. Then i met him or spoke with him with that extensive interview on msnbc and i covered the trial that ultimately put them in prison when he was found guilty of 12 counts of Armed Robbery and hotel room in las vegas. What strikes me about the multiple times that i have talked to o. J. Simpson and ive talked to him several times coming out of court during that las vegas trial is the shocking change that i think most americans felt who knew him as a Football Player and a movie star. Most people believed he was, indeed, a murderer. Then he was convicted of Armed Robbery. Then the idea he would never give up the argument he was innocent and the shock it was to him, to the people who stuck by him for many years. This is one of the seminal stories and certainly one of the seminal court cases of the 20th century. O. J. Simpson now dead of cancer and someone whose guilt and innocence continue to be argued for many years and in fact, many decades after his trial was over. Chris, lets continue our conversation but i want to get a look back into the life of o. J. Simpson. Jay gray has prepared this for us. Reporter a Heisman Trophy winner, Nfl Hall Of Fame running back, o. J. Simpson will be remembered most for something he could never run from. Born or saul james simpson, he was raised by a single mom on the rough side of san francisco. His way out . Football. A college star, he was drafted by the Buffalo Bills where he had a recordsetting nfl career including league mvp. He retired as one of the best to ever play the game and for o. J. , the spotlight never dimmed. Nobody does it better. Reporter transitioning into a successful career in tv and movies, he was inducted into the pro football hall of fame in 1985, the same year he married his second wife, nicole brown. The couple had two children and a rocky marriage that included allegations of domestic abuse. Nicole Brown Simpson file for divorce in 1992 and just over two years later, she and a friend, ron goldman, were found murdered in her brentwood home. Five days after the deadly attack driven by a former teammate, simpson led officers on a lowspeed chase across los angeles threatening to take his own life before eventually surrendering to belize. He was charged with murder. The Court Proceedings dubbed the trial of the century. If it doesnt fit, you must acquit. Reporter lasting nine months, every minute. We find the defendant not guilty. Reporter on live tv. Searching for that justice, the Goldman Family won a civil suit. Simpson ordered to pay 33 million. He returned to court multiple times for traffic violations, even pirating cable tv but it was a las vegas robbery in 2008, simpson saying he was taking back stolen personal property that ultimately sent him to prison. Count one, conspiracy to commit a crime, guilty. Reporter sentenced to 33 years, he served 9 before being paroled. Jay gray, nbc news. Chris jansing, thinking of the family owed 33 million, they never got anything near that. No, nothing significant was ever paid in that. The thing that i think struck a lot of people both in this civil case but then particularly in that second case in las vegas was that for a lot of folks, that was considered to be something of a petty crime, something that maybe happened in las vegas frequently and a lot of the conversation around that trial was would this jury judge him for what he had been acquitted of . Could they separate themselves from the widespread belief that o. J. Simpson had gotten away with murder . Much was made of the fact it was 13 our deliberation on the 13th day of the trial when you are in las vegas but more than that, so much of o. J. Simpsons life all of it playing out in public was so dramatic and even then before going to trial, i remember vividly it was a friday night. The jury came back. It was very late. They announced the guilty verdict, guilty on all 13 counts. His sister let out a cry that pierced the courtroom and then the lights went out and it turned out the lights in the courthouse were actually on an Automatic Timer that went off at 11 00. Everybody at that moment gasped. Many people thought that would be the end, that would be a Life Sentence for him. As you heard in jay grays package, it would not be, but a lot of what o. J. Simpson worried about in his lifetime is what his obituary would be and of course, his obituary would always be he was this famous person accused and acquitted and by many peoples standards unfairly acquitted of murder, and someone who became largely a pariah after having spent much of his young life and adult life as a superstar. Chris, stay with us. I want to bring in one of the journalists who filmed the incident with the bronco chase. She is also a friend of katy tur. I want to take you back to june 16th, 1994. Something witnessed by millions of people thanks in no small part to your efforts. Reporter wow. It is crazy to think that was 30 years ago. I remember so clearly a spokesperson for lapd to say that o. J. Simpson turned himself in, yet no, o. J. Simpson is in the wind, so we thought oh, my god, where could he possibly be . We ended up in a Helicopter Thinking maybe he would have gone to where Nicole Simpson was buried and low and behold, there he was on the freeway. Within seconds, there were police cars following him and within 10, 15 minutes, helicopters overhead and a crazy slow speed pursuit started. Marika, take us back. In hindsight now a lot of people can no or feel they know a lot of things, but back then at that moment, things were surprising in so many ways. I mean, this was someone who was in that bronco and, you know, threatening to take his own life. Take us back to what we knew back then. Reporter well, first of all, most people had no idea that he had any kind of volatile relationship with his wife. He was this heroic Football Player turned actor and this was back before people knew about that. He kept it hidden, that they had gone to his house numerous times. We happened to know because we had a friend in the lapd, so for the most part it was, oh, my god, o. J. Simpson murdered his wife . And o. J. Simpson is in a car being pursued on the freeway . The attitude of the public, people were cheering him from the bridges. It was just astonishing. Yeah. I mean, we have some pictures to speak to on that chase and those bridges and the signs over the freeways. People were stopped many times on the other side of traffic, stopped and were taking their time to wave at o. J. Simpson. How long did this last . How did this particular aspect or page in this infamous history end . Reporter well, he was traveling along the 405 freeway. People were able to come out and talk at it. He ended up in rockingham and the pursuit itself was probably about an hour maybe . When he got to rockingham, it was at least another hour where he refused to get out of the vehicle. Refused to get out of the car. It was getting dark and i had a camera on my shoulder trying to get a picture of him getting out of the car and im listening to the lapd s. W. A. T. Team on the Police Scanner saying, dont worry, weve got him in our sights because they thought he had a gun and they didnt know what would happen. All of a sudden they say he is getting out of the car. Dont shoot. Hes got two Picture Frames in his hands. He went into the house. They escorted him into the house. I always thought they had given him orange juice, which i thought was a funny little tag to the story, o. J. In the house about to be taken to jail asking for some o. J. It was almost anticlimactic in the end because everyone was expecting the end we saw in lapd pursuits all the time with a crash or something happen but it was very anticlimactic at that point. When we look back so many years ago, what happened in the trial, the outcome of the trial and him going to prison for those 13 charges reporter right and that just started the Media Obsession with the whole o. J. Trial. Yeah. What do you think reporter people now are used to live, seeing things live. Back then it was in the same. The media landscape wasnt the same. It was the start of everything live and 24 7 covering a story. Can i just say that it is extraordinary to listen to marika talking because i was in local news at the time and that was unlike anything any of us had ever seen before. Yep. Yep. First of all, lets just say how extraordinary their work was, but the commentary, the way it was described, the idea that o. J. Simpson was fleeing, that he might take his own life, its hard to overstate what a star he was and how highly he was held in regard to so many people. I think in my three encounters with him if you could count that, he was working and he was not just kind to anyone who came up to him but he was inviting it. He was someone who loved the limelight. He loved being the person o. J. Simpson was before nicole Brown Simpson and ron goldman were murdered. He loved that person and until the end he was trying to fight to get that Reputation Back which was never going to be reclaimed after the trial. Much of peoples original impressions were formed as they were watching that bronco chase about o. J. Simpson and watching The Trial Go On And on, but that is the reason why i think when i did a program on whether or not he should have custody of his kids, when he called me, it was clear and i should say i was in my first month at msnbc. I was not a known quantity by any stretch of imagination and he called me because it was eating at him. I could tell from our private conversation and later on the air it was eating at him people thought he was an unfit parent. He said, and i remember this quote, to commit murder is an unfit thing. Im innocent. I didnt do it. For o. J. Simpson, the rest of his life after the moment even after the acquittal knowing that people didnt believe that he deserved to be acquitted was something he lived with for the rest of his life and ultimately, of course, went to prison for a crime that for many people, they look at it as some small measure of perhaps a mens that they didnt get from the first trial. Yeah, it is really remarkable in 2024 to think back on how the reality was for many in 1994. I remember i was at the time on that day, june 17th, 1994 working for nbc 6. We carried the different, you know, live shots from the helicopters. You are doing your job that day. We carried that flow chase as if it were a local story for us in south florida. When you look back, what do you think you remember the most about him . Reporter just the idea that someone can follow so far from grace so quickly. He was just such an iconic figure in the community and he lived not far from where i lived and he was just part of the team, part of the starstudded team in brentwood, in los angeles. Who would have ever thought this would happen . For me, im in the helicopter and im thinking part of my career is covering things that happened to stars. Suddenly the other half is doing crime. Both of these parts of my career are together in this one moment where a superstar is in a chase on the freeway. How what an l. A. Story. What a strange thing to happen. What a strange thing, indeed , and it was just the beginning of so many more strange things that occurred around o. J. Simpson. Chris jansing, thinking about the interview you had with him in the fact he would call you because he wanted to speak out about this i remember seeing him when he lived in south florida. I think it may have been 2000 or 2001 and i was at a restaurant and it was like the moment you bumped into him. He came in and he was, indeed, treated by many as a celebrity and he clearly looked forward to the interaction with people at that restaurant who he very much it seemed wanted to. There is a certain level of celebrity that never goes away, right . The young o. J. Simpson was very handsome, extremely charming. His charisma was extraordinary. I think because so many people had seen him, he wasnt just and i dont mean it in that way but he wasnt just a Football Player. He had the other part of his celebrity, which was on television and in movies. His commercials were ubiquitous. Everywhere you looked, there seemed to be o. J. Simpson commentating on nfl games. He was someone who really crossed gender lines, crossed racial lines, crossed age lines. He was simply o. J. And that person was hard and perhaps impossible for him to give up because there were reports later about how he had places he would go for exactly the reason you talked about, which is, jose, places he knew he would find a friendly crowd, places he would still get reinforcements, places he could perhaps for a moment forget he was a pariah throughout much of america and arguably throughout much of the world. Indeed. Chris, stay with us. I want to thank marika gerrard, one of the people who filmed history in the making. Marika , thank you for being with us and always my love to katy tur, who we love and admire. Marika, thank you. I want to bring in george lewis who covered the o. J. Simpson trial. George, always great speaking with you. From that slow speed chase and the evolution towards the trial many called the trial of the century, it was such an odd thing but this trial was one of the ones that captivated as marika i mean as chris was saying not just the united states, but the world. It did. I think the o. J. Simpson story had it all. It had sex, fame, fortune, race, you know, violence, true crime. The True Crime Story to end all True Crime Stories and thinking back on that day of the slow speed chase i am married to julie on abc who won an emmy for her coverage of this chase and both of us have vivid memories of what that trial held and the fact it showed a deep Racial Division in not only los angeles but the entire country. When that verdict came in and people in the black community were cheering o. J. Simpsons acquittal and people were in shock about it, i think it really vividly illustrates whats going on in our country around the race issue and the fact o. J. Simpsons defense was able to use that to literally put the lapd on trial because in l. A. , we have been through the whole Rodney King Beating and the resulting uprising that took place when those policemen were acquitted, then the simpson case happened a year or so later, there was a lot of racial turmoil in los angeles and i think the o. J. Simpson defense was able to utilize that in making him sort of a symbol of the lapd. The prosecution said they had a mountain of defense against o. J. , but his defense team demolished that and said, no, they were faking it. They planted evidence. It was a racist cover up by the lapd. It really became a huge mirror on our racial problems in this country. Yeah, the Legal Dream Team shows what, you know, you can accomplish if you are able to get together with a team of probably the most highly paid, most successful attorneys in the world at the time, but george, the impact this trial had on us as a country is, as you say, has so many ramifi