O.J. Simpson, the football star whose accusations of murder and his nationally televised “Trial of the Century” gripped the nation, died of prostate cancer at age 76 this week.
Simpson’s life took a shocking turn in 1994 when he was accused of fatally stabbing his ex-wife Nicole Brown Simpson and her friend Ronald Goldman.
While he was acquitted of the double murder charges after a trial that gripped America and exposed racial divisions, Simpson was later found liable for the killings in a civil suit.
He died owing the victims’ families over $100 million, which the family is still attempting to collect.
Before his murder arrest, one of the most infamous moments involved Simpson leading police on a 60-mile pursuit in that white Bronco driven by his friend Al Cowlings after Simpson refused to turn himself in.
The low-speed chase transfixed over 95 million TV viewers nationwide — and the Bronco is now housed in a museum in Pigeon’s Forge, Tennessee that is dedicated to infamous crimes and perpetrators.
The vehicle in question, however, did not originally belong to Simpson. It was Cowlings’ 1993 Bronco that Simpson’s agent Mike Gilbert later purchased and ultimately donated to the Alcatraz East Crime Museum in Tennessee after prolonged negotiations.
At the museum, now open since 2016 after relocating from Washington D.C., the Bronco resides alongside other infamous crime artifacts like Bonnie and Clyde’s death car and Ted Bundy’s Volkswagen.
The tense slow-speed chase at 35 mph as police pursued the infamous Bronco down LA freeways while loved ones pleaded with Simpson to surrender peacefully rather than harm himself set television records — and records for pizza delivery.
“It was a record night at the time,” Domino’s Pizza vice president of corporate communications Tim McIntyre revealed. “It was dinner time on the West Coast and 9pm on the East. People were fascinated and didn’t want to miss it. It was as big as a Super Bowl Sunday up to that point.”
While Simpson never admitted guilt, the dramatic Bronco chase came to symbolize his desperate final acts before a legal saga that engulfed and divided the nation over racial tensions, celebrity, and justice.
The pursuit’s stunning imagery cemented the Bronco’s unlikely transformation into an American relic representing one of the most sensational criminal cases in modern history.
The infamous white Bronco that O.J. Simpson fled in is now in a crime museum in Tennessee. pic.twitter.com/k0q8Psucy9
— Mike Sington (@MikeSington) April 12, 2024
Stephen Dietrich is the publisher of the Horn News