Here's Why People Are Talking About This Parole Board Member's Tie at the OJ Simpson Hearing
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O.J. Simpson had his parole hearing in Nevada on Thursday, and one parole board member is prompting a lot of discussion over his choice of attire. Simpson appeared before the parole board via video from a Carson City correctional facility, where he's been held for nine years because of a 2008 robbery conviction.
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The board granted him parole, but a tie worn by one board member made observers wonder whether his parole was in jeopardy. Simpson, an iconic football player for the Buffalo Bills and San Francisco 49ers in the 1970s, became an infamous household name again in the 1990s after being controversially acquitted of murdering his wife Nicole Brown Simpson and her friend Ronald Goldman.
That parole board Commissioner Adam Endel, who wore a Kansas City Chief's tie to the hearing, made many wonder whether a subliminal message was being sent.
People on Twitter thought the tie was a reference to Marcus Allen, a legendary former Kansas City Chiefs player who used to be one of Simpson's best friends.
The Kansas City Star reported that Endel went to college at the University of Central Missouri, located in the home state of the Chiefs.
Who is Marcus Allen?
Of course Endel could just be a big Chiefs fan with a strange sense of professional decorum, but the subliminal message theory is plausible. Allen and Simpson were both highly successful running backs at the University of Southern California, with Allen coming to the school years after Simpson.
“I could remember watching ’SC in ’67 and ’68 when Juice [O.J. Simpson] was there,” Allen told The Washington Post in 1981. “They were always my favorite team and he [Simpson] was kind of my role model.” Allen went on to have a successful NFL career with the Los Angeles Raiders and the Kansas City Chiefs in the 80s and 90s, and Simpson and Allen were close friends.
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However, during the 1995 murder trial and subsequent civil trial brought against Simpson by the Brown and Goldman families, the friendship ended. Simpson made public statements that Allen had previously had sex with his wife. However, in 1996 Allen testified in the civil case that he never had sex with Nicole Brown Simpson after her divorce from O.J. and that Simpson asked him to lie about it, according to CNN, apparently to show that he was not a jealous ex-husband. In a deposition, Allen said that Simpson called him from jail and asked him to go along with the story that he had slept with his wife. Allen said he refused and ended his relationship with the troubled Heisman winner instead.
Why would the parole board member want to troll Simpson?
There are many people who believe Simpson got away with murdering his wife and her friend. However, at the time of the trial, there were accusations of racial bias in the investigation that the defense turned into a "not guilty" verdict. Simpson also lent his name to a controversial book, "If I Did It," that described in detail how he would have killed his ex-wife "if" he had done it.
