OJ Simpson has been cremated, no public memorial planned

LAS VEGAS (AP):

Former football star and celebrity criminal defendant OJ Simpson was cremated Wednesday, the lawyer handling his estate said, following his death last week at home in Las Vegas.

Attorney Malcolm LaVergne told AP he was present, along with unspecified other people, for the morning event at Palm Mortuary in downtown Las Vegas.

“I am able to verify that OJ Simpson was cremated today,” LaVergne said shortly afterwards. “Others were present, but I’m not disclosing who.” He said, declining to provide details of the process.

A telephone message for Palm Mortuary was not immediately returned.

LaVergne is handling Simpson’s trust and estate in Nevada state court. He said Simpson’s cremains will be given to Simpson’s children “to do with as they please, according to the wishes of their father”.

No public memorial was planned, the attorney said.

Visited Simpson just before Easter

Simpson died April 10 after he was diagnosed last year with prostate cancer.

LaVergne said in a Tuesday interview that he visited Simpson just before Easter at the country club home where Simpson leased southwest of the Las Vegas Strip, and described Simpson as “awake, alert and chilling”, sitting on a couch, drinking a beer and “just catching up on the news.”

On April 5, a doctor told LaVergne that Simpson was “transitioning”, as the attorney described it, and by last week Simpson only had strength to ask for water and to choose to watch a TV golf tournament instead of a tennis match.

A post on April 11 from Simpson’s family on X, formerly Twitter, said Simpson “succumbed to his battle with cancer”. It asked on their behalf for “privacy and grace”.

“You have to remember that they’ve (his children) shared OJ with the world their entire lives,” LaVergne said Tuesday of Simpson’s surviving adult children. “And they have the added burden that he is one of the most famous people on the planet, and who is polarising and surrounded by controversy.”

Simpson’s children are the only beneficiaries of his estate, LaVergne said, adding, he is now working to determine the value of Simpson’s assets. He said Tuesday that Simpson did not own a home in states where he had lived – including Nevada, California and Florida.

Simpson was a record-setting football star during 11 years as a running back in the NFL and became a movie actor, sportscaster and television advertising pitchman before he was famously acquitted of criminal charges alleging he stabbed his ex-wife Nicole Brown and her friend, Ronald Goldman, to death in 1994 in Los Angeles. The proceedings in California in 1996 became known as the “trial of the century”.