On Thursday, I went over to South Bundy Drive in Brentwood, the place the double homicide occurred. O.J. Simpson was lifeless at 76. And that well-known scene of violence was eerily quiet on a shimmering spring day in Los Angeles.
I had written almost 30 years in the past in regards to the barbaric slayings of Nicole Brown Simpson and her buddy Ron Goldman at Ms. Simpson’s rental, and the notorious trial that drilled into essentially the most delicate elements of the nationwide psyche, exposing conflicting views about race and policing and superstar and authorized equality.
There have been farcical components of O.J. Simpson’s “trial of the century,” from the witness Kato Kaelin, the houseguest with the frosted shag who had starred within the comedy “Seaside Fever,” to Decide Lance Ito, who was such a narcissistic digital camera hog that he grew to become often called Decide Itomaniac.
However I all the time considered it as an excellent American tragedy. It had echoes of “Othello,” essentially the most trenchant work ever written on the deadly flaw of jealousy.
Othello was a hero, a Black man beloved for his exploits on the sector, a person who conquered racial setbacks and beguiled his followers and soared to nice heights.
He was married to a fantastic youthful lady. However, due to Iago — a deputy to the final who was jealous himself as a result of he was handed over for a promotion in favor of one other aide-de-camp — Othello was poisoned with jealousy, unable to deal with the demons in his head.
Desdemona, his spouse, was confused, as a result of Othello was spun up over false data. Her servant, Emilia, defined that jealous folks “are usually not ever jealous for the trigger, However jealous for they’re jealous. It’s a monster, Begot upon itself, born on itself.”
Othello murdered Desdemona, whereas nonetheless loving her.
A yr after O.J.’s homicide trial, I stood in line behind the soccer legend’s lawyer, Johnnie “If the glove don’t match, you could acquit” Cochran, at Invoice Clinton’s second inaugural. Cochran, who acted as if the Simpson case was a civil rights battle akin to Brown v. Board of Training, would quickly have his personal present on CourtTV.
A stream of women and men excitedly approached Cochran, desirous to have their photos taken with the lawyer who acquired O.J. off.
Superstar trumps all. Or nearly all.
O.J. escaped in his prison trial however not in his civil trial, although he by no means paid the penalty or expressed any penance.
He didn’t, nonetheless, escape the opprobrium of many in America who felt that he acquired away with homicide.
In 1995, as an acquitted O.J. plotted to rehabilitate himself, I felt that the victims had gotten misplaced within the circus.
I drove an hour exterior of Los Angeles to the Ascension cemetery in Lake Forest. There have been bougainvillea, carnations, sunflowers and daisies heaped on the plain darkish marble marker at Nicole Brown Simpson’s grave. Individuals had left teddy bears and rosaries.
One little boy wrote a word promising he would by no means be imply to a girl when he grew up. A mom wrote a word assuring Nicole that her two youngsters could be OK: “Your kids’s guardian angels will handle them.”
I talked to a girl named Teresa Myers from Portland who stood staring on the grave for a very long time. “Possibly she’s higher off now as a result of she’s at peace,” Myers advised me. “However possibly she’s not as a result of she is aware of now that no person can contact him.”
After I left South Bundy on Thursday, I stated a little bit prayer for the victims and their households. Fred Goldman, Ron’s father, stated upon listening to of O. J.’s dying, “No nice loss.”
I really feel the identical.
