Would O.J. Simpson live or die? That question kept 95 million Americans locked to their TVs on June 17, 1994, during his infamous car chase.
“People … didn’t know what was going to happen next,” helicopter journalist Zoey Tur, who broadcast the low-speed chase for KCBS-TV, tells Yahoo Entertainment. “They couldn’t take their eyes off of it.”
Former Fox 11 L.A. reporter Jane Wells, who covered the 60-mile pursuit from the ground, likened the can’t-look-away appeal to gladiators of ancient Rome. “You want to come out and see the show. Is he going to die?” she said.
It had been five days since the ex-NFL star’s ex-wife Nicole Brown Simpson and her friend Ron Goldman were slain outside her Brentwood, Los Angeles, home. The morning of the chase, LAPD filed murder charges against O.J. and negotiated his surrender.
That time came and went, and he was declared a fugitive. As the search for O.J. began, his lawyer Robert Kardashian read what sounded like a suicide note from him during a televised press conference. Then the slow-speed chase was on: O.J., with a loaded gun, in the back of Al Cowlings’s white Ford Bronco as the friends traversed two counties tailed by police.
America, newly introduced to reality TV via 1992’s Real World and perhaps imagining a 1991 Thelma & Louise ending, was transfixed as it played out over three hours on live TV. People were so invested in the fate of “the Juice” — by then an NFL commentator, movie actor and commercial star — Game 5 of the NBA Finals was shown in split screen. Drivers on L.A. freeways, following the news on their car radios, pulled over to cheer what may have been O.J.’s final play.
Tur, Wells and NBC 4 L.A.’s Conan Nolan take us back to the unbelievable, unprecedented event that became a cultural touchstone — from the center of the storm.
JANE WELLS: The bodies were discovered June 12, 1994.
CONAN NOLAN: A double homicide in that part of town is extremely rare.
ZOEY TUR: We received a call from a police officer … one of our informants … on the scene [who] told us that Nicole Brown Simpson was found murdered. There was a male [victim, but] they didn't have an I.D. on the body.
WELLS: My first assignment was to go to Nicole's condo … and see what was happening. They just finished washing away the blood.
NOLAN: There was some confusion: How did this happen? Who are these people? How is [O.J.] involved?
TUR: It was a huge news story. Everyone knew who O.J. was. He was always in our living rooms. This Heisman Trophy winner, a man that golfed with presidents.
NOLAN: Millions of Americans thought they knew this guy.
WELLS: Like a lot of people, I [initially] thought: “Oh, poor O.J. This is so sad that this happened to him.”
NOLAN: If you cover murders long enough, you know the first suspect in any case is a relative.
WELLS: All week long, everything was unfolding… Relatively quickly, people became suspicious that he was guilty because there was the cut finger … and the bloody glove.
O.J. misses the deadline to surrender — and the manhunt begins
NOLAN: My assignment [on June 17] was to go to [LAPD headquarters] because we hear [they’re] going to make an announcement. We think maybe he’s in custody.
TUR: I … kept looking at my watch. Finally, an LAPD spokesman … told us that O.J. was in the wind — he was a fugitive from justice. There was an audible gasp.
NOLAN: We were stunned… That's the one scenario we did not expect. We did not expect O.J. to be fleeing from police.
WELLS: Then Robert Kardashian comes on and reads … some kind of suicide letter. We're like: “This is unbelievable.”
TUR: Every law enforcement officer, every member of the media, the public — everybody's looking for O.J. at this point.
Finding O.J.
TUR: Because I was a pilot reporter and had a helicopter … I had an advantage. I remember telling the crew: “Let’s find this guy.”
NOLAN: I was told by my desk: Head towards Orange County, south of Los Angeles … where the Brown family lived [and] Nicole was buried. We had intelligence that he was down there.
WELLS: O.J. went down to … Nicole's grave. So, all hands on deck. We have to find that Bronco.
TUR: When I got to the gravesite, [an] unmarked police unit [was] staking it out. I decided: He's not here. Let me look in the surrounding area… I start doing widening turns around the cemetery, and that gets me near the area of the El Toro Y, a freeway intersection [in Irvine] between the 405 and the I-5 freeways.
NOLAN: We learned [authorities] triangulated a cellphone [used by Cowlings to communicate with police] and figured out that he's on the freeway.
TUR: Talk about dumb luck, I literally looked down below through the chin bubble of the helicopter and there was the freeway. As I moved upward, I saw a white Bronco.
WELLS: Then we hear O.J. is coming back [headed north toward L.A].
NOLAN: We … get off [the freeway and] back on going in the opposite direction, [parked] to the side of the road. It didn't take long before I looked into the rearview mirror and saw a sight I'll never forget: The white Ford Bronco and a phalanx of … police units, lights and sirens behind him. I pulled in front of [the Bronco] — and that's where we [were] for … the rest of the chase.
TUR: This was a slow-speed chase. It was really Cowlings slowing the situation down. He believed that O.J. was in a very bad state.
WELLS: We're a little ways back. I'm driving while the camerawoman's hanging out trying to get a shot.
TUR: By the time I was 35 minutes into the chase, [there were] 10 [other] helicopters [in the pursuit. Eventually there were] 18 [and] two airplanes. It looked like something out of Apocalypse Now.
NOLAN: I stay in front of him while the photographer was taking pictures. The one thing I didn't want to do was to pull up next to him. I didn't want him to take his own life — and I [especially] didn't want him to do it when we're taking a picture of him.
TUR: The chase could have gone in many different directions.
‘Carnival atmosphere’
TUR: Then I saw something that really was surreal. People are standing on overpasses waving at “the Juice.”
WELLS: People have parked on the other side of the freeway, in the emergency lane, and are sitting on the barrier in the middle of the 405 freeway. If you don't know what the 405 freeway is, this is suicidal. They’re [holding] signs, “Run, O.J, Run.”
NOLAN: I remember thinking: How is it possible they had time, not just to get there, but … to make a sign?
TUR: It was almost like a carnival atmosphere, which was completely shocking because … two people were dead — viciously, savagely butchered.
NOLAN: He's in the backseat of the Bronco with a gun.
WELLS: And … it's the biggest party L.A. has ever seen… It was like Mardi Gras. I don't know where these people came from. Families. I remember a father with his young daughter on his shoulders. “What's going to happen? Is this the death of O.J. Simpson?” Insanity.
NOLAN: People were out of their cars on the lanes we were driving [in]. We were seeing cars collide … as they tried to get into position to somehow be part of this.
TUR: That was one of the strangest things I've seen in Los Angeles covering breaking news.
O.J. is taken into custody at his Rockingham estate
NOLAN: Before [they] took the off ramp to Rockingham … we pulled off. It was frankly too dangerous. I didn't want to get in an accident.
WELLS: I didn't get to the house because the streets were all blocked off. I got … about two blocks away. He's in the car for a very long time in front of his house. Mind you, I'm not seeing this because I'm in a news van … trying to find out what's going to happen. “Is O.J. going to kill himself? Is LAPD going to kill O.J.? How is this all going to end?”
TUR: We were there from the beginning of the pursuit all the way to its termination over Rockingham when O.J. … was taken into custody… The vast majority of television sets in the United States were tuned to this because at any moment, O.J. Simpson could find himself on the wrong side of a sniper's rifle. And that is why they watched. And don't delude yourself — that's what it's about.
NOLAN: I don't think we'll ever know exactly what was in O.J.’s mind at the time he ended up a fugitive from justice.
Being part of breaking the story
NOLAN: In retrospect, I don't think anything good came from this. It was a depressing period. But did he want the attention? That's clear. O.J. loved the attention.
TUR: I think the pursuit really gave birth to the 20th century's fascination with reality television. A little bit with my help, which is a dismal thing to say if you're a reporter, because … [it ruined] what we consider television news these days.
WELLS: I think when people look at that chase, they think it's funny. That was not funny. There was a man contemplating suicide … and his best friend was frantically trying to figure out what to do. I think people forget that. And I think too often in this story they forget about Ron and Nicole. Somebody butchered those two people and no one has ever been convicted.
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O.J. was famously exonerated of the murders in the 1995 “trial of the century,” which exposed his history of violence against his ex-wife. The Brown and Goldman families sued him for wrongful death and he was found liable in 1997.
O.J. later served nine years in prison in Nevada for armed robbery and was paroled in 2017. He died from prostate cancer on April 10 at age 76.
After his death, the owners of Cowlings’s 1993 Bronco — not to be confused with O.J.’s own white Bronco, which he drove the night of the killings — announced they’re selling it, hoping to make $1.5 million.
Photo illustration: Alex Cochran for Yahoo News; photos: Jean-Marc Giboux/Liaison, REED SAXON/POOL/AFP via Getty Images, Kypros/Getty Images
