Nicole Brown Simpson and Ron Goldman had been stabbed to death outside her Los Angeles condominium on June 12. On June 17 the former football star was formally charged and agreed to turn himself in, but he did not appear at the agreed time. That evening he was spotted riding in the back of a white Bronco driven by his friend Al Cowlings. Networks cut away from Game 5 of the NBA Finals to follow the convoy of police cars across Los Angeles's freeways.
Simpson was one of the best-known men in America, a Heisman Trophy winner and NFL star who had gone on to acting and sports broadcasting. The chase turned the case into a national television event before a trial had even begun. Spectators gathered on freeway overpasses to watch the Bronco pass, and Simpson's friend Robert Kardashian read a letter from him to the press that many took as a suicide note.
The chase ended at Simpson's estate in Brentwood, where he surrendered to police after a standoff in his driveway. Officers found cash, a passport, a gun and a disguise in the Bronco.
The trial that followed, broadcast from start to finish, lasted most of 1995 and ended in Simpson's acquittal that October. In 1997 a civil jury unanimously found him responsible for the two deaths and awarded damages of more than $30 million.
Key people: O. J. Simpson, Al Cowlings, Robert Kardashian