OJ Simpson’s remains are cremated in Las Vegas with no public memorial is planned for former football star after his cancer death aged 76
Former football star and celebrity defendant OJ Simpson was cremated on Wednesday, the lawyer who managed his estate said after his death last week at home in Las Vegas at the age of 76.
Attorney Malcolm LaVergne said he, along with unspecified other people, attended the morning event at Palm Mortuary in downtown Las Vegas.
“I can verify that OJ Simpson was cremated today,” LaVergne said shortly afterward. “There were others present, but I will not reveal who.”
He declined to provide details of the trial.
LaVergne is handling Simpson’s trust and estate in Nevada state court. He said Simpson’s cremains will be given to Simpson’s children “to do with as they wish, according to their father’s wishes.”
OJ Simpson sits at his arraignment in Superior Court in Los Angeles on July 22, 1994
No public memorial was planned, the lawyer said.
Simpson died on April 10 after being diagnosed with prostate cancer last year.
LaVergne said in an interview on Tuesday that he visited Simpson just before Easter at the country clubhouse where Simpson rented southwest of the Las Vegas Strip, and described Simpson as “awake, alert and shivering” as he sat on a couch, drinking a beer and ‘just catching up on the news.’
On April 5, a doctor told LaVergne that Simpson was in transition, as the lawyer described it, and last week all Simpson had the strength to ask for water and choose to watch a TV golf tournament instead of a tennis match.
An April 11 post from Simpson’s family on X, formerly Twitter, said Simpson had “succumbed to his battle with cancer.” It asked for “privacy and grace” on their behalf.
“You have to remember that their whole lives they shared OJ with the world,” LaVergne said Tuesday of Simpson’s surviving adult children from his first marriage — Arnelle Simpson, now 55, and Jason Simpson, 53 — and the children Simpson had with ex-wife Nicole Brown Simpson before she was murdered in 1994: Sydney Simpson, 38, and Justin Simpson, 35.
“And they have the added burden of being one of the most famous people on the planet, polarizing and surrounded by controversy.”
Simpson’s children are the sole beneficiaries of his estate, LaVergne said, adding that he is now working to determine the value of Simpson’s assets.
He said Tuesday that Simpson did not own a home in the states where he had lived, including Nevada, California and Florida.
OJ Simpson sits during a break on the second day of an evidentiary hearing in Clark County District Court in Las Vegas
A record-setting football star as a running back in the NFL for 11 years, Simpson became a film actor, sportscaster, and television commercial pitcher before famously being acquitted of criminal charges for stabbing his ex-wife and her boyfriend, Ronald Goldman, to death in 1994 in Los Angeles. The 1996 proceedings in California became known as the ‘trial of the century’.
Simpson was found liable for the deaths by a separate California civil court jury in 1997 and ordered to pay the families of Simpson’s murdered ex-wife and Goldman $33.5 million in damages. LaVergne acknowledged that Simpson died without paying most of that judgment.
In Las Vegas, Simpson went to prison for nine years in 2008 after being found guilty of armed robbery during a 2007 encounter at a casino hotel with two collectibles dealers.
He was released from prison in October 2017 and lived a golf and country club lifestyle in Las Vegas, sometimes posting on social media about sports and golf. His last post was on February 11, when the NFL’s Super Bowl championship was being played in Las Vegas. He was not present at the match.
Attorney David Cook, who represents the Goldman family, said Tuesday that he believed the civil judgment owed today, including unpaid interest, is more than $114 million.
LaVergne, he believed the amount was more than $200 million, and that Simpson’s assets will not amount to that.
LaVergne said he plans to invite representatives of the Goldman and Brown families to “review my homework” with the Simpson estate, “with the caveat that if they think there is something different … they will have to use their own attorneys . , their own resources, to try to chase that pot of gold.”