When the bell finally tolled for Orenthal James Simpson – the once mighty athlete felled at 76 by an unseemly cancer – Caitlyn Jenner was adamant in ringing her own judgment. “Good riddance #OJSimpson,” the transgender icon fired off on X (née Twitter), mere moments after the contentious figure’s demise was relayed.
For the Kardashian clan, bound by roots to the Simpson imbroglio, the response could be seen as caustic closure on a dark chapter that lingers still. Jenner, once maritally merged with Kris Kardashian – formerly wed to O.J. attorney Robert Kardashian – has long been trenchant in her views of the disgraced Heisman hero’s culpability.
Indeed, in the sordid looping saga of the “Trial of the Century,” the Kardashian tentacles are innumerable, inescapable. While Simpson beat the criminal rap for the shocking 1994 slayings of his ex-wife Nicole Brown Simpson and her friend Ronald Goldman, Jenner has vouched that her former partner was privy to harrowing harbingers of the horror to come.
On the Australian reality rusticator “Big Brother VIP,” the Olympic decathlete disinterred the gothic claim that the doomed Nicole had divulged to Kris Jenner fears that the raging Simpson would “kill you and get away with it because I’m O.J. Simpson.” A brutal bellwether that proved fatally realized.
Though a Los Angeles jury rebuffed the prosecutorial zeal of Marcia Clark, absolving Simpson of murder most foul, Jenner has remained entrenched in belief of his culpability. In a bone-chilling 2009 interview, she recounted the Kardashian progeny – Kourtney, Kim, Khloe and Rob – trumpeting “I told you he didn’t do it” upon the not guilty decree, only to be coldly countervailed. “I said, ‘Look, just because he got a not guilty verdict doesn’t mean he didn’t do it.'”
While the criminal slate was erased, a 1997 civil trial did see Simpson doled a $33.5 million punishment for the wrongful deaths, the livid families awarded a immense sum he would ultimately never uphold. Further infamy accrued in 2008 when an endeavor to recover his sports memorabilia led to an armed robbery conviction and near-decade prison stint.
Now, with Simpson’s passing from the cancer scourge, his brood has pled only for “privacy and grace” in the “time of transition.” An improbable petition from the perplexing villain whose gloried gridiron feats would be eclipsed by the most controversial killing case of the modern era.
For Jenner, long shackled to the treacherous Simpson vortex through her Kardashian affiliation, the unvarnished “good riddance” may be a mordant chance to cauterize the indelible stain of tragedy. Or merely the brusque coda in Caligulan fall from grace for a superior sportsman ensnared by sin’s unholy malefactions.
