LAS VEGAS — Former football legend O.J. Simpson became a free man Sunday after serving nine years for a botched hotel room heist in Las Vegas that brought the conviction and prison time he avoided in the killings of his ex-wife and her friend after his 1995 acquittal in the « trial of the century » in Los Angeles.
Simpson was released at 12:08 a.m. PDT from Lovelock Correctional Center in northern Nevada, state prisons spokeswoman Brooke Keast told The Associated Press. She said she did not know the driver who met Simpson upon his release and didn’t know where Simpson was immediately headed in his first hours of freedom.
« I don’t have any information on where he’s going, » said Keast, who watched as Simpson signed documents and was let go.
Florida AG doesn’t want O.J. to return to state
Attorney General Pam Bondi sent a letter to Florida Department of Corrections Secretary Julie L. Jones on Friday saying that she should immediately tell Nevada officials that Florida objects to O.J. Simpson serving his parole in Florida.
O.J. Simpson granted release by parole board
O.J. Simpson has been granted parole nine years into a 33-year sentence after being convicted of kidnapping, armed robbery and assault with a deadly weapon while trying to steal sports memorabilia.
The Florida Department of Corrections, however, said officials had not received a transfer request or required documents, and the attorney general said the state didn’t want him.
« The specter of his residing in comfort in Florida should not be an option, » Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi said in a statement on Friday. « Our state should not become a country club for this convicted criminal. »
Simpson lost his home near Miami to foreclosure in 2012. But two of his children, Justin and Sydney, also live in Florida.
He could live at least temporarily in Las Vegas, where a friend let Simpson use his home for five weeks during his robbery trial.
His five years of parole supervision could be reduced with credits for good behavior.
It’s a new chapter for the one-time pop culture phenomenon whose fame was once again on display when the major TV networks carried his parole hearing live.
He told officials that leading a group of men into a 2007 armed confrontation was an error in judgment he would not repeat.
He told the parole board that he led a « conflict-free life, » an assertion that angered many who believe he got away with killing his ex-wife, Nicole Brown Simpson, and her friend, Ronald Goldman in Los Angeles in 1994.
Simpson was once an electrifying running back dubbed « Juice » who won the Heisman Trophy as the nation’s best college football player for USC in 1968 and became one of the NFL’s all-time greats with the Buffalo Bills.
Handsome and charming, he also provided commentary on « Monday Night Football, » became the face of Hertz rental-car commercials and built a movie career with roles in the « Naked Gun » comedies and other films.
Simpson fell from grace when he was arrested in the slayings, after a famous « slow-speed » Ford Bronco chase on California freeways. His subsequent trial became a live-TV sensation that fascinated viewers with its testimony about a bloody glove that didn’t fit and unleashed furious debate over race, police and celebrity justice.
A jury swiftly acquitted him, but two years later, Simpson was found liable in civil court for the killings and ordered to pay $33.5 million to survivors, including his children and Goldman’s family.
He is still on the hook for the judgment, which now amounts to about $65 million, according to a Goldman family lawyer.
On Sept. 16, 2007, he led five men he barely knew to the Palace Station casino in Las Vegas in an effort to retrieve items that Simpson insisted were stolen after his acquittal in the 1994 slayings. Two of the men with Simpson in Las Vegas carried handguns, although Simpson still insists he never knew anyone was armed. He says he only wanted to retrieve personal items, mementoes and family photos.
He went to prison in 2008, receiving a stiff sentence that his lawyers said was unfair.
If the nation’s Simpson obsession waned for a while, it resurged last year with the Emmy-winning FX miniseries, « The People v. O.J. Simpson: American Crime Story, » and the Oscar-winning documentary « O.J.: Made in America. »