Has anybody else heard about this conspiracy
theory that O.J. Simpson had an accomplice?
I only got wind of this on Wednesday when an email from Peacock announced an upcoming documentary called
“O.J.’s Accomplice.”
It turns out that speculation about the possibility that Simpson had an accomplice when he murdered his wife, Nicole
Brown Simpson, and her friend Ron Goldman in 1994 has been around for a while.
Sorry, I meant to write “allegedly murdered.” He was acquitted, remember?
The idea that there was an accomplice in the crime stems from the odd memoir Simpson wrote in 2007, IfI Did It: Confessions of the Killer.
In the extremely controversial book, Simpson laid out a realistic scenario in which he committed the murder, while also emphasizing that the scenario was
fiction.
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In the telling of this tale, Simpson implied that a guy named Charlie was somehow in on it. From this tidbit, a conspiracy theory was
born.
Peacock’s documentary seems to go even further. The press release does not mention a single alleged accomplice named Charlie, but instead implies
that “members [plural] of O.J.’s inner circle may have been there that night.”
Apparently, Peacock and the producers of “O.J’s
Accomplice,” Ample Entertainment, are so certain of the probability that others were there to either witness the crime or participate in it that the press release accuses law enforcement of some
sort of negligence for not considering this possibility.
“Incredibly, law enforcement has never seriously considered the idea that O.J. Simpson may not have
acted alone in the brutal murders,” the Peacock press release says.
Maybe law enforcement never considered it because evidence of an accomplice never
came up in the dozens, if not hundreds, of interviews the investigators must have conducted with anyone and everyone who ever had contact with O.J. Simpson.
“The documentary challenges the dominant narrative around the O.J. Simpson murder saga and offers real evidence suggesting that what we thought we knew about the most obsessed-over
crime story of all time could be all wrong,” Peacock says.
The TV Blog has not seen the documentary. It is scheduled to premiere in December on
a date that has yet to be announced. Perhaps Peacock will provide an opportunity to preview the doc closer to the airdate.
Perhaps some of the evidence is
compelling, or maybe not. My first reaction to the announcement was to roll my eyes. I thought, “Oh, no. Now the conspiracists are taking up the O.J. case. Will there be a grassy
knoll?”
The Simpson murder case was one of the most stunning stories of its era. It peaked on October 3, 1995, a Tuesday, at around midday, when the
verdict in Simpson’s trial was read on live television.
To the surprise of just about everybody, Simpson was acquitted. An estimated 150 million
Americans watched it happen.
Meanwhile, here is another Simpson subject that I had either forgotten or never
heard about in the first place. Nobody tells me anything!
Does anybody else remember that Simpson starred in his own self-styled prank TV show with a title
taken from his football career nickname, The Juice?
Titled “Juiced,” the show was a one-off pay-per-view special seen in 2006. On the show,
Simpson would dress up in various disguises to fool unsuspecting people who he would steer into uncomfortable situations.
The scenes would end with Simpson
revealing himself and then declaring “You’ve been juiced!”
In one of the segments, he
posed as a used car salesman who was trying to sell the white Ford Bronco in which he had tried to escape the law in June 1994.
The subject of this show came
up because I just came across a documentary series about the making of the show that premiered earlier this month on Investigation Discovery.
Titled “O.J. Unseen:
Exploitation of Evil,” the four-part documentary told the story of the development and production of the ill-fated show.
Sounds like a great documentary series. And I would have likely written about it too -- if anybody had bothered telling me about it!