Tag: o.j. simpson

John Oliver briefly recapped the Alex Murdaugh murder trial in Sunday’s (March 5) episode of Last Week Tonight With John Oliver. But the host wasn’t the only one to offer his commentary – former football player O.J. Simpson had his own thoughts on how the trial could go down.

“Of all the ill-advised pieces of commentary concerning this blockbuster trial, perhaps no one was less welcome than this,” Oliver said of Simpson’s thoughts.

He played a video that Simpson had posted to Twitter last week, which the disgraced NFL star and accused murderer captioned, “People keep asking me my opinion of the Alex Murdaugh trial.”

In it, Simpson can be seen saying, “A whole lot of people are asking me what I think about this Alex Murdaugh trial. I don’t know why they think I’m an expert on it.” 

Oliver cut in with a rather gleeful, “Oh, I do!” He continued, “I do, O.J., because there are exactly two things that you have expertise on in this life: football and murdering wives. And no one’s asking you for your take on Alex Murdaugh’s rushing average so I’m guessing it’s the second one, then.”

Murdaugh was found guilty on Thursday for murdering his wife, Maggie, and their son, Paul, in June 2021 on their hunting estate in South Carolina. After a six-week-long trial and two documentaries premiering on Netflix and HBO, there are a number of shocking takeaways in this case. 

Simpson shared his thoughts in his Twitter video just hours before the verdict was announced.

“I am not qualified to really say if the guy did it or he didn’t do it,” he acknowledged, but added, “from what I’ve seen, do I think it’s more likely that he did it? Yes. But ‘more likely’ equals reasonable doubt.” 

In 1994, the former football star was charged with killing his wife, Nicole Brown Simpson, and her friend, Ron Goldman. He was acquitted of the charges in 1995 but a civil suit filed in 1996 by the victims’ families found him responsible for their deaths. Simpson later spent nine years in prison on separate charges of armed robbery and kidnapping until he was released on parole in 2017.

While we now know that Murdaugh was convicted of these two murders, Simpson remarked in the video at the time, “It wouldn’t surprise me in the least if this guy beats this case.”

Murdaugh and his family have also been tied to at least two other deaths in their town of Hampton, South Carolina.

The Murdaughs come from a long line of affluent lawyers, which locals speculate granted them considerable power over the local police. Paul Murdaugh’s involvement in the death of 19-year-old Mallory Beach is what ultimately uncovered Alex Murdaugh’s string of financial crimes.