Ron Goldman was basically a background extra in his own murder.
I realize that “meaningless” is not a good term to use for any innocent victim, but they didn’t contribute to OJ’s notoriety.
In 1906 the architect Stanford White was assassinated by a guy named Harry Thaw. Stanford White was really, really famous at least in the world of architecture. I don’t know if anyone really gives a shit about architecture nowadays, but in the late 1800s architecture was a major deal, it was a time of national prosperity which was reflected in a surge of big architectural projects on the East Coast, most of which still exist. Stanford White was one of the three partners in McKim, Mead, and White, which designed a lot of incredibly beautiful houses in addition to their many public and corporate buildings. They were a HUGE deal. He was almost like the Donald Trump of his time, I guess, except he actually created something useful and he had artistic/engineering ability. But he was known for opulence and decadence.
I don’t know if Harry Thaw was really famous for anything. He was basically a really fucked up guy whose family was extremely rich and bailed him out of trouble throughout his life. In any case, his wife, Evelyn Nesbit, had claimed that White had drugged and raped her during their earlier romantic relationship before her marriage to Thaw - I don’t know if it actually happened or if she made it up, there’s no way of knowing obviously, but Thaw publicly ambushed White in the audience of a play at Madison Square Garden and shot him in the head. His subsequent trial was a HUGE deal, it got an unbelievable amount of press coverage.
It was called the Trial of the Century. It was most definitely the closest historical analogue to the Simpson trial, and like Simpson, he ultimately evaded consequences, being declared “insane” (which he probably was, but he managed to escape from the asylum and then was declared sane and not guilty in a second trial…I’m assuming this was accomplished by paying the right people off.) Also like Simpson, he continued to get into trouble, getting arrested for kidnapping and sexually assaulting a male teenager, and was again declared insane and held in an asylum, but then somehow again was declared to be sane and was allowed to go free, and again I have to assume it’s because he bribed the judge or jurors.
It’s unlike the Simpson case in the sense that the victim was far more famous and important than the killer, even though they inhabited the same social sphere.
Oh, and quite similar to the above, at least in terms of the similarities between the killers, was the murder of Olympic wrestler Dave Schultz by John Du Pont, the very rich guy who had organized and funded the Olympic team. These ambitious young wrestlers flocked to the training camp that Du Pont set up, unaware that 1. he actually knew nothing about wrestling, and 2. he suffered from SEVERE mental issues, which I think were like an extreme form of autism, exacerbated by the heavy use of cocaine and alcohol. Du Pont was actually an accomplished ornithologist and seemingly a pretty cool at one time, but gradually went off the deep end as he got older.
The wrestling team wound up doing very well because it was well-funded and coached by good coaches, despite Du Pont’s increasingly bizarre behavior. Anyway, he seems to have developed a possessive fixation on one of these wrestlers, Dave Schultz - an Olympic gold medalist - which may or may not have had a sexual element (this is a point of debate - a lot of people claim that there was something sexual about Du Pont’s motivations, but I’m not sure that was actually the case.) For reasons that are still unclear, Du Pont ambushed Schultz and shot him; unlike Harry Thaw, Du Pont was incarcerated and died before he could bribe someone to free him. The movie Foxcatcher is about this incident - though I understand it changes some of the facts - and has very good performances by Steve Carell (believe it or not, he nailed this extremely bleak and non-funny role), Channing Tatum (ditto) and Mark Ruffalo. Interesting film.
OJ was very well known, but not an “A-List” star. He was seen as a conservative family man -ish who had pulled himself up by his own bootstraps. For many Americans at the time, the concept of inter-racial marriage was still new and disconcerting.
So, for a modern comparison I would submit Caitlin Jenner killing Kris Kardashian. They have the same “B-List” status but are still very much in the public eye. They are doing TV, but unlikely to have shows with super-high ratings. Same weird sort of “Hey, you’re OK, but many of us are disconcerted by this” social element, same reputation for kind, above-board interactions, same long-ago sports hero element for the older generation, and the same element of total surprise that they are even still involved with each other.
Given the connections between the Kardashian family and O.J., that would be an ironic scenario indeed.
I feel like Shaq would be pretty accurate based on what you guys are saying. Shaq killing someone would rock my world, for sure.
Let’s see…in the modern day, as an equivalent cause du jour to the racial aspect, as Omar Little noted, we might have to update the defendant to get the same amount of sensationalism. Say, a transperson—so, maybe Chas Bono or one of the Wachowskis murdering someone.
As Mahaloth noted, the car chase itself also was iconic enough to burn the case into the public consciousness, but as they say, “it’s been done.” So, will need to be updated as well.
I’d say…either upgrade to a much fancier car (maybe an electric one, so the commenters can put a decently accurate estimate of the thing’s remaining range onscreen, live, complete with countdown clock?), or change the vehicle entirely. Say, to a helicopter or private aircraft. So, maybe…Harrison Ford murders someone then tries to flee in a Geebee?
Oh! That one’d be even better if Peter Mayhew was the getaway pilot.
It wasn’t so much that it was a car chase; it was that it aired live to millions of people who did not know what the outcome would be. So the obvious equivalent today would be that some element of the crime or its aftermath would be shown live on the Internet. The ultimate viral video, that could end up engaging viewers worldwide.
I feel like the recent(-ish) murder of Reeva Steenkamp by Oscar Pistorius in South Africa is probably in a similar category of soap-operishness. The case was fascinating and gruesome in its own right, contained a high amount of drama from the accused, and the accused was interesting enough in his own right to make ongoing developments winning headlines. And yet I don’t think that Pistorius was all that famous outside his own specialised circle prior to the murder.
So… my formula for an OJ-like case would be - high-achieving murderer with a nice lifestyle and ‘everything going for him’, but not necessarily famous. Dramatic behaviour in the accused a must, to keep the news cycle filled up.
Maybe if Bill Cosby killed someone…
Oh yeah,I had forgotten that the chase took place during an NBA finals game, so lots of people were watching anyway. I remember the game and the chase being aired picture in picture.
Those aren’t comparable at all. All your victims are famous; Nicole Brown and Ron Goldman were not.
There is never, ever going to be another popular crime story quite the same. Simpson was very famous, but was not the 250th biggest celebrity in America and his victims weren’t famous at all; there was more to the case than that. The racial angle in that time and place was a huge, huge deal, every bit as huge as it would be today. It was still early in the history of cable news, and the case just kept taking absolutely bizarre turns; you could not have scripted it better to draw attention, from the Bronco chase to the Hollywood-twisty trial, the wild cross examinations, All-Star defense team, you name it.
Popular crime stories often capture the imagination. The Black Dahlia case still fascinates people today, even though there’s really nothing especially noteworthy about it and there have been hundreds of murders just like it. Some murders of children and teens are weird enough to capture the imagination (Jonbenet Ramsey, Natalee Holloway) and some come and go. Men kill their wives all the time and it rarely hits the national news; Scott Peterson, for whatever reason, got famous. In each case there’s some odd angle that caused the case, more than others, to fascinate people.
In the case of the OJ case, almost every factor that makes a popular crime case interesting came up. It was the perfect storm.
Chris Benoit was quite popular at the time this story happened- of course, his own suicide prevented much media exposure afterward (no trial to cover, etc).
Not the only sporting even that day. There is an ESPN 30 for 30 documentary about all of the sporting events that coincided with the Bronco chase.
There’s another reason why there will never be another story like OJ: the technology of the time.
In 1994, as RickJay said, the case was the perfect storm. It all came together----because television was still a single technology which united everybody in the country.
Prime time was hugely important; everybody watched the same programs at the same time, and then talked about them at work the next day.
Today we are fragmented on the internet.
For me, personally—If something is big enough to “go viral”, I won’t even know that it happened, unless one of the few websites I choose to visit daily puts it in a big font: “look what’s gone viral!”
And even then, I assume it’s just clickbait and not worth reading…