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OJ Simpson’s family has one answer for those who want to study the freshly-dead footballer and accused killer‘s brain for injuries: “Hard no.”
In an interview with the New York Post, Malcolm LaVergne, Simpson’s longtime attorney and estate executor, said that following the infamous running back’s death from cancer last week, he’s fielded requests to study his brain for Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy (CTE), the type of cranial injury suffered by athletes that can lead to violent behavioral changes.
According to the attorney, Simpson’s four children — the youngest two of whom, Sydney and Justin, were born from Nicole Brown Simpson, the notorious athlete’s late wife whom he was acquitted of killing alongside her friend Ron Goldman in 1994 — gave a “hard no” to the thought of postmortem brain testing, which is the only way to diagnose CTE definitively.
“I’ve been getting calls from medical centers that are doing CTE testing asking me for OJ’s brain,” LaVergne told the NY Post. “That is not happening.”
Instead of donating any portion of it to science, Simpson’s family plans to have his entire body cremated, although LaVergne noted that all four of his kids had not yet signed off.
Simpson himself had in the past said he was concerned that he may have suffered some sort of brain injury from the concussions he received during his celebrated 11-year career with the NFL, most of which was spent as a running back for the Buffalo Bills.
“I get concerned,” Simpson told the Buffalo News back in 2018. “I do recognize that it probably affects you in short-term memory more than long-term. I know with me, I have days I can’t find words. I literally cannot find words or the name of somebody I know. That gets a little scary.”
At a later point in the same interview, the late athlete joked when he couldn’t remember the name of a fellow player that it was his “CTE kicking in.”
In another interview with the Buffalo News following Simpson’s death last week at the age of 76, the late baller-turned-author’s friend Michael Militello said that an illness like CTE could have helped explain what made the once-beloved star allegedly snap and kill his wife — a crime for which he was held civilly responsible, and for which he had not paid off his debts by the time of his passing.
“If it turned out he did have CTE, that would give us some medical explanation for the violent behavior that was attributed to him after his football career,” Militello told the newspaper. “That is, violent behavior that made absolutely no sense to those of us who knew and loved OJ as a gentle, kind, fun-loving person.”
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