Name at birth: Orenthal James Simpson

Former football star O.J. Simpson was acquitted of murder after a sensational 1995 trial, then convicted of armed robbery in a separate incident 13 years later. Nicknamed The Juice during his playing years, O.J. Simpson won the Heisman Trophy in 1968 as a running back for USC. Simpson starred professionally for the Buffalo Bills and then the San Francisco 49ers until his retirement in 1979. Handsome and charismatic, Simpson then found work as a sports announcer and sometime actor, and he was a familiar face on television as the spokesman for Hertz rental cars. On 12 June 1994, Simpsons ex-wife Nicole Brown Simpson was found brutally murdered at her home along with an acquaintance, Ronald Goldman. Suspicion immediately fell on O.J. Simpson, and he was arrested a few days later after fleeing his house in a car driven by his friend Al Cowlings. (His capture came after a strange low-speed chase by police on LA freeways, broadcast on live TV from helicopter cameras, with Simpson and Cowlings in a white Ford Bronco.) The resulting murder trial, also televised live, lasted nine months and made household names of peripheral characters like Simpson houseguest Kato Kaelin, defense lawyer Johnnie Cochran, and Judge Lance Ito. Simpson was acquitted of two counts of murder on 3 October 1995. (However, in 1997 he was held liable in civil court for both deaths.) No one else has ever been charged with the deaths of Nicole Simpson or Ron Goldman.

The publisher ReganBooks announced in 2006 that it would publish a book by Simpson titled If I Did It, in which he would hypothetically describe how the murders would have been committed. Public outcry caused the book to be canceled, along with a proposed TV show. The next year, in an unrelated incident, Simpson was arrested in Las Vegas after he and other men entered a room at the Palace Station Hotel and attempted to seize Simpson-related sports memorabilia. Simpson was found guilty on 12 counts including conspiracy, kidnapping and armed