OJ Simpson's body is predicted to be cremated in Las Vegas on Tuesday, together with his family responding to requests from scientists who want to check his brain to search out out whether the previous football star and accused double murderer was affected by chronic trauma “Hard no” denies encephalopathy (CTE) – as he himself suspected.
Several years before his death from cancer last week, Simpson, 76, expressed fears that he was affected by CTE, a degenerative brain disease, from multiple concussions he suffered during his lauded NFL profession.
“I’m worried,” Simpson said in a 2018 interview with the Buffalo News. The running back spent nine of his 11 years within the NFL playing for the Buffalo Bills. “I realize it probably has more of an impact on short-term memory than long-term memory. I know I have days when I can't find the words. I literally can't find the words or the name of anyone I know. This is going to be a little scary.”
While Simpson struggled to recollect some details about an NFL player in the course of the Buffalo News interview, he said, “That's my CTE coming into play.”
Memory loss and confusion are symptoms of CTE, in keeping with the CTE Center at Boston University. There are also mood swings, impulse control problems, depression and aggression. A longtime friend of Simpson's also wondered whether the illness could explain Simpson's alleged involvement within the 1994 murders of his ex-wife Nicole Brown Simpson and her friend Ron Goldman.
“If it turned out he had CTE, that would give us a medical explanation for the violent behavior that was attributed to him after his football career,” described Buffalo businessman Michael R. Militello, one in all Simpson's closest friends , told the Buffalo News in an interview following Simpson's death last Wednesday. “That is, violent behavior that made absolutely no sense to those of us who knew and loved OJ as a gentle, kind and fun-loving person.”
But as much as Militello said he hoped Simpson's family would allow a brain autopsy to verify whether he had CTE – to “truly do something good for his fellow athletes” – that apparently isn't going to occur.
Malcolm LaVergne, Simpson's longtime attorney and estate executor, told the New York Post that on Tuesday he signed all of the paperwork for Simpson's cremation and confirmed that his family didn’t want his brain examined. This position is different from families of other deceased football stars – including Frank Gifford, Mike Webster and Ken Stabler – who agreed to have their brains postmortem examined to verify CTE.
“Everything is wild with OJ, but I get calls from medical centers doing CTE tests asking me about OJ’s brain. . . That’s not happening,” LaVergne told The Post.
“Maybe I’ll consult with the kids about it, but I haven’t heard anything about it, so it’s just not going to happen,” LaVergne said. “OJ wants his entire body cremated.”
People like Militello, who knew Simpson as “gentle” and “fun-loving,” in addition to Americans who saw him as a handsome, charming actor, sportscaster and TV pitcher, were shocked in 1994 when Los Angeles police arrested him involved within the stabbing murders of Nicole Brown Simpson and Ron Goldman, The Buffalo News reported.
During Simpson's trial, the general public also learned that he was an abusive husband. because the Los Angeles Times reported. He was accused of repeatedly abusing his ex-wife, leaving her in fear for her life, and was convicted of spousal abuse after what she described as a “crazy New Year's Eve brawl” in 1989.
Militello, who became one in all Simpson's best friends within the early Nineteen Seventies when he owned a preferred nightclub in Buffalo, said the football star often told him that he suffered from severe headaches after colliding with tacklers during games , the Buffalo News reported. Simpson said the headaches were so bad he could barely function and selected to lie in bed recovering a lot of the day after games, Militello told the Buffalo News.
“Do I know if OJ had CTE? No, I don’t,” Militello told the Buffalo News. “I think it's possible.” Militello had long defended Simpson's innocence within the murders of his ex-wife and Goldman, however the CTE possibility is one in all the explanations he expressed doubts to the Buffalo News.
Boston University's CTE Center will open in 2023 announced that it had diagnosed CTE in 345 former NFL players, out of 376 players the scientists were hired to check. The prevalence of CTE amongst NFL players is unknown because CTE can’t be definitively diagnosed until after death, the middle said. But repeated head injuries seem like the most important risk factor for CTE.
Others around Simpson also wondered whether he had been living with CTE, including a retired guard who worked on the Nevada prison where he was serving a sentence for robbery. reported the New York Post.
“He woke up in the morning wondering what tee time he had for golf, and he’s in jail,” Jeffrey Felix, who worked at Lovelock Correctional Facility in Nevada during Simpson’s time there, told The Post.
Simpson was “very forgetful,” Felix said, adding that the player, generally known as “The Juice,” was often preoccupied with taking his medication and recurrently suffered from headaches.
Norman Pardo, Simpson's former manager, also wondered that CTE was a think about his client's “crazy rants,” The Post said.
“OJ wasn’t right in the head,” Pardo said. “He was talking to himself within the automotive after which he was arguing with himself within the automotive. . . Sometimes he talked like he was talking within the third person.”
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