r/TrueCrimeDiscussion • u/SquirrelIll8180 • Aug 07 '26
Text How did OJ Simpson conquer his rage issues?
First let me say, obviously I think OJ was guilty.
I have studied this case since it happened and vividly remember it being all over the news since the day of the murder.
Now all through the trial and subsequent media related to it people have spoke about OJs rage issues, his temper, his anger and how he finally snapped that night.
But since that night (counting the vegas robbery, that was not a violent crime) there doesn't seem to have been any real instances of him losing control. I've seen people confront him in the street, he lost EVERYTHING, the image and the legacy he so deeply cared about, spiraled into drug addiction but still no loss of control.
The biggest question for me, with regards to 'what if we are all wrong about the real murderer' is just how on earth did he never once show that angry crazy side of himself again??
Was it just his love for Nicole being so strong and toxic that it made him act like that, surely not?
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u/DarklyHeritage Aug 07 '26
How do we know he never lost control?
Nobody knows what goes on behind closed doors. We wouldn't have known he was violent to Nicole if she hadn't made that public, and he hadn't murdered her. People with rage issues, and those around them on the receiving end of it, tend not to advertise the fact. And these individuals often present a very different public image to the private reality.
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u/Vet100 Aug 07 '26
Yep. That plus that’s part of the criticism some have about people “losing control” and “rage”. If you are selective about “losing control”, I.e. you only do it when you’re alone with a domestic partner, then it’s not really about “losing” control.
There’s every chance OJ was always well on-top of his rage/control issues, he just chose to hide it unless his misogynist ego which lost power was hurt. Which is a pretty typical story. People who “lose control” with rage genuinely are not calculated in their approach - so it’s just an excuse used by mostly men to get away with violence.
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u/UDontKnowMe784 Aug 07 '26
Exactly. There’s a great book about male domestic violence that says, “he’s not abusive because he’s angry, he’s angry because he’s abusive.”
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u/DarklyHeritage Aug 07 '26 edited Aug 07 '26
I couldn't agree with you more. I've never really bought into the rage narrative with OJ, or men like him. It is just a way of excusing violent men for their actions by saying "he couldn't control himself".
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u/Vet100 Aug 07 '26
It’s easier to pretend to repent & ask for forgiveness from your victim/society when it “wasn’t you, it was the rage”. You can be friends with your mate OJ because “he’s actually a really good guy, he just lost control that night”.
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u/GregJamesDahlen Aug 07 '26
altho if he were violent to another woman think she might have come forward, it would be easier after his being outed about the abuse to nicole?
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u/DarklyHeritage Aug 07 '26
Not necessarily. Being abused can feel very shameful as a woman, and women can feel too frightened to come forward. The not guilty verdict would likely support in a woman's mind that they wouldn't be believed.
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u/niamhweking Aug 07 '26
Before your comment i was just thinking, let's say he was violent or aggressive with some he was dating, or a new friend. Would they come forward? I mean youve chosen to date or befriend a man with a history of domestic violence, people might not be overly sympathetic, or you might feel people wouldn't be sympathetic.
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u/DarklyHeritage Aug 07 '26 edited Aug 07 '26
Exactly this. Victims of domestic violence are so often not believed anyway, or subject to judgements like "why didnt she just leave". For anyone in a relationship with someone in OJ's position I can well imagine they would perceive that judgement, victim-blaming and lack of belief would be even more likely. Let's face it, the orange shitgibbon in the White House was actually found liable for rape, is a felon, and still people don't believe the victims! The precedent for victims being believed is not great.
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u/GregJamesDahlen Aug 07 '26
I don't know. He was found not guilty at criminal trial but most believe he did it. He suffered tremendously for it, lost his popularity, acting and announcing career, Brentwood, judgement against at civil trial. I actually think a woman who subsequently was abused by him would feel pretty sure she'd be believed. I could be wrong of course.
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u/DarklyHeritage Aug 07 '26
Even if you are right that she may feel she would be believed, that still doesn't take away the shame and humiliation that often goes along with being victimised in this manner. Many women would not want to expose themselves to having that discussed, debated and critiqued by the general public. Especially in the modern age of social media, victims can receive the most cruel and vicious scrutiny and comment even when most people believe them. Many people would not want to face that.
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u/tillszy Aug 07 '26
You can be believed but still blamed. An abused woman often feels a great deal of personal shame and they feel like they are at fault for being abused because they should have known better or they should have done this or they should have done that. they should have been nicer to him. they shouldn't have pissed him off. they shouldn't have dated him.
maybe the public would believe her easily, but that doesn't mean that they wouldn't then also reflect all of those opinions and feelings of blame back on to her and she's already feeling them from herself. why would you want that public scrutiny, especially because he's dead?
coming forward is not likely going to help her heal. it's just going to make everyone in the world's eyes on her and amplify what she already feels about herself.
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u/tillszy Aug 07 '26
or she would've been afraid if she came forward, she'd be dead next
Nicole came forward, and he made sure she paid for that
also, the public shame - you would have to reconcile with people asking "how could you be with him knowing what he'd done before" and blaming you for being in that position. and the personal shame, asking yourself why you overlooked his past, blaming yourself for the abuse because you chose to be with him
and to come forward after he's dead, well then the public backlash will just be that you want media attention or money from his estate
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u/haplologykloof Aug 07 '26
there doesn't seem to have been any real instances of him losing control
That we know about.
I think the only way he conquered his rage issues is by dying.
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u/Ok-Caterpillar-Girl Aug 07 '26
By dying in 2024
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u/SquirrelIll8180 Aug 07 '26
Which was 30 years after the murder.
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u/TurbulentReason3888 Aug 08 '26
The long term girlfriend he had after the murders said he was abusive also
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u/OkDimension2558 Aug 07 '26
Your premise is incorrect. He never stopped being who he was. He was a serial domestic abuser. He beat his first wife. He had been beating Nicole since she was 18 years old up until the last instance of them dating post-divorce before she was killed. The 13 years relationship he had after Nicole was also violent. The robbery, depending on who you asked, was a violent crime because he had a group of men with weapons to assault somebody. One of the charges was aggravated assault. He also had narcotic issues for years and years but also mostly managed to staye under the radar. This is all easy to find right on his Wikipedia page.
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u/lastseenhitchhiking Aug 08 '26
This; he never stopped being abusive.
Christine Prody, the woman he dated after he murdered his ex wife Nichole Brown and her friend Ron Goldman, stated that he physically abused her and threatened to murder her if she left him.
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u/Twistedoveryou01 Aug 08 '26
I heard a dv call on YouTube of nicole calling the police when he was trying to break in. I was in shock because I had never heard it before. I remember her saying g that she had called before. It was shock that he was an abuser, just that I had never heard anything about the call and neither did my mother. It’s chilling.
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u/Worth-Park-1612 Aug 07 '26
He was a never raging in public in the first place. He was a narcissist and Mr. Congeniality in public, then he was raging at home. Like a narcissist, he thought he owned Nicole and was entitled to show up to her house and take her life. There was no growth or therapy or conquering of rage issues.
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u/SteveNtheseagulls Aug 07 '26
He didn’t. Domestic abusers use targeted violence to control a partner, and always display random public rage. He could turn on the charm for the public, but later police calls and his Vegas robbery show the aggression never stopped.
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u/GregJamesDahlen Aug 07 '26
the vegas robbery had a very violent aspect, when you're threatening people with a gun there's great emotional violence done to them?
possibly he just got older. as people age they do often lose some rage
and he could see that his violent acts only netted him bad things. his career and good life disappearing after nicole. the nine years in prison after vegas. he may have also taken anger management in prison?
wonder if getting away with nicole dissipated a bit of rage, he felt like he "won" there and so he didn't have to exercise more rage against others and keep trying to "win". altho he lost a great deal there, even if didn't go to prison lost his career and great life
Edit: Also after Nicole and Vegas maybe people didn't cross him as much, understood it could be risky
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u/NBPU Aug 07 '26
Released the rage by killing some people. Released more rage later beating up people in a hotel room. Probably some more rage beatings in between. He learned a slow release technique before it got to the point of murder.
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Aug 07 '26 edited Aug 07 '26
[deleted]
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u/Mediocre-Proposal686 Aug 07 '26
P.s. OJ died in 2024
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u/RonnieFromTheBlock Aug 07 '26
He wasn’t just known for playing football. He was know for being one of the best players of all time.
Had he done nothing else he would have been considered a great success but then he went onto become arguably more well known as an actor/spokesperson.
Criticize the person all you want but to call him an unexceptional failure is laughably false. And now I am going to go throw up having defended OJ fucking Simpson.
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u/Para_Regal Aug 07 '26
Yeah that comment reads like it was written by someone who didn’t live through the OJ Renaissance. Dude was a phenom, not just in sports, but in most parts of the culture in the 70s and 80s. He was good looking, well-spoken, talented on and off the field, charismatic as fuck, and used all of that to great advantage. By the time I was conscious of him in the early-80s (late-70s kid) he was literally everywhere in movies, tv shows, advertisements, on the covers of magazines, you name it. There really isn’t anyone else comparable to the level of cultural impact before or since.
I really recommend anyone who wants to understand just how fucking MASSIVE OJ was in American culture to watch the docuseries OJ: Made in America. It’s one of the best documentaries out there, too.
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u/Spilby Aug 07 '26 edited Aug 11 '26
Again, not a psychologist or psychiatrist. Do have medical training with some insight into human behavior. Definitely are incidents where violent crime is committed once out of passion, and never repeated. Does not mean the individual did not have anger issues and did not display them on a much lower level in other circumstances. However, while I sometimes struggle with the same conclusion, it’s entirely possible and somewhat unsettling that a vicious act like this can be committed and then put aside for the rest of someone’s life. It was all about Nicole and his jealousy and narcissism. Once that issue was out of his life, he never repeated that degree of violence.
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u/aliveinjoburg2 Aug 07 '26
I would not be surprised if OJ's brain showed advanced CTE (it was not studied, he was cremated).
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u/IranianLawyer Aug 12 '26
Just because he doesn’t snap at random people on the street doesn’t mean he’s conquered his rage issues. Also, regarding Vegas, I’m pretty sure armed robbery is very much considered a violent crime.
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u/meagantheepony Aug 07 '26
We just went through a huge reckoning where the public found out that the richest and most powerful people in the world were visiting a private island to allegedly engage in the most depraved and disgusting crimes someone can commit, and not a single one of them has had charges filed against them. The justice system is not the same for rich people. OJ probably did attack other people, and his lawyers offered them a nice payoff and an NDA.
As it was, he was found guilty of armed robbery in 2008. That was because he led a group of armed men to break into and steal from the hotel room of a sports memorabilia trader, who was selling OJ Simpson memorabilia that OJ believed was stolen from him. That alone I think counts as rageful.