Alawyer who represented O.J. Simpson, who died from cancer last week at 76, said Sunday that the former NFL star’s body will be cremated in the coming days, and there are no plans to have his brain donated to science.
“On at least one occasion, someone has called saying he’s a CTE guy who studies the brain,” said attorney Malcolm LaVergne, referring to chronic traumatic encephalopathy, a degenerative brain disease that has been studied in former football players and is associated with behavioral and cognitive issues related to repeated head injuries.
“That’s a hard no,” LaVergne added. “His entire body, including his brain, will be cremated.”
News of the cremation and the request to study his brain was first reported by the New York Post.
LaVergne, who is now serving as the executor of Simpson’s estate, said there are tentative plans for a “celebration of life” gathering limited to close friends and family. Simpson had three children with his first wife, Marguerite Whitley, and two children with his second wife, Nicole Brown Simpson, whom he divorced in 1992. In 1995, Simpson was famously acquitted in the murder of Brown Simpson and her friend Ronald Goldman.
LaVergne on Sunday also clarified comments made to the Las Vegas Review-Journal on Friday in which he said he didn’t want Goldman’s family to be able to collect any money from Simpson’s estate and it was “my hope that the Goldmans get zero, nothing.”
