LAST UPDATE | 11 Apr

OJ SIMPSON, THE former professional American football player whose murder trial gripped and divided the United States, has died at the age of 76.

A statement posted by his family on social media said he had “succumbed to his battle with cancer”.

The star NFL football player’s 1995 acquittal in the so-called “trial of the century” for the brutal murders of his ex-wife Nicole Brown Simpson and her friend Ronald Goldman.

Simpson was famously acquitted in 1995 by a Los Angeles jury in a case decried by many as a media circus that became known as the ‘Trial of the Century’, with a cast of larger-than-life lawyers and drama over whether or not a glove found at the scene would fit him.

The verdict was greeted with disbelief by many Americans, with opinion on the black athlete’s guilt divided sharply along racial lines.

File photo dated 11-05-1996 of OJ Simpson, who has died of cancer at the age of 76

The case was turned into the Emmy-winning television series, The People vs OJ Simpson: American Crime Story, which aired in 2016.

However, Simpson was later found liable in a civil trial in 1997 for the double killings.

He always maintained his innocence and later authored a book entitled If I Did It, which proffered a hypothetical description of the murders. 

In his sports career, progress in his first couple of seasons at the Buffalo Bills was slow, but his impact grew.

He went on to become one of the most successful operators in his position, winning the NFL’s most valuable player in 1973 and being inducted into the hall of fame in 1985.

Simpson became the game’s highest paid player and lucrative commercial deals also followed as companies looked to leverage his charisma and popularity.

He later set his sights on Hollywood and appeared in several films, including The Towering Inferno and The Naked Gun series alongside Leslie Nielsen.