Buffalo, N.Y. (WBEN) - As the world remembers O.J. Simpson on and off the football field on Thursday, many are looking back on the infamous murder trial nearly 30 years ago that still sparks conversation and controversy to this day.
Hall-of-Famer Joe DeLamielleure joined the Buffalo Bills in 1973, the year Simpson broke the single season rushing record.
"He was a great player, an unbelievable player," recalled DeLamielleure in an interview with WBEN.
Simpson wasn't the only record breaker DeLamielleure teamed up with over the course of his football career.
"I played with Eric Allen, who broke the national collegiate record two years before that, and I played on that line. Then I went to Buffalo, got to play on the line as O.J. broke the professional record. I said, 'Hey, it's pretty easy,' only to find out that it's rare that it happens, and I was fortunate," DeLamielleure said.
DeLamielleure adds that Simpson was a great competitor on and off the field.
"He hated to lose at anything. Whether it was pool, bowling, racquetball, he always wanted to win no matter what he did," DeLamielleure said.
He also says it was Simpson who taught DeLamielleure and fellow teammates on how to treat the fans.
"Make sure if they came around, you gave them an autograph. If they stick around after practice, stick with it, no matter how long it takes to get it done. And be polite. He was a class guy with the fans," DeLamielleure noted.
In later years, DeLamielleure says he called Simpson about once a year.
WBBZ-TV owner Phil Arno was a photographer for KCAL-TV in Los Angeles in 1994, and covered the Simpson chase.
"It was kind of a chaotic situation," Arno recalled with WBEN. "I used to interview O.J. when he was here as a Buffalo Bill, and I was over to his house in Amherst a couple of times. So I knew the man. Just from past experience, and over the freeway and the white Bronco and the crowds, and all the police cars, it was quite the spectacle."
Arno even wondered himself why he didn't just pull over and surrender to get it over with.
Then in 1995, Arno covered the murder trial surrounding Simpson, and remembers a background story on how the legal process sometimes works.
"The prosecutor guy said he wanted to run for governor, so he got the celebrity and he wanted to throw the book at him. And then Johnnie Cochran came in and said, 'No, you know what, we're not going to plead guilty to this. We need to come to a deal," Arno noted. "Interestingly, the first lawyers that he went to, Bob Shapiro, was a plea bargain attorney, and that tells you something about the whole case."
Arno believed Simpson was dead to rites during the trial, but also had quite the legal team.
"They're holding LAPD to account for some sloppiness that is gonna really cloud the issue. LAPD was used to dealing with suspects that did not have the resources that O.J. had," Arno recalled.
He adds the legal team went over every detail and came up with things that basically lent a little bit of doubt here-and-there. Arno also interviewed jurors after the trial was over, several of whom admitted they weren't going to convict a person of color.
Arno recalled Simpson as a perfect gentleman when he interviewed the football star in their days in Buffalo. That changed after June 1994.
Rick Pfeiffer also covered the trial for Channel 4. He says the media attention was unprecedented.
"The media attention was international, literally," Pfeiffer said in an interview with WBEN. "The public interest in the story got to the point where probably in the summer of 1995, we began to notice that tour buses were coming by and dropping off tourists so they could walk through the media encampment."
The best way Pfeiffer described the trial was surreal.
"Those of us who grew up watching O.J. Simpson on the football field, and then as a commercial spokesperson and a movie star, to square that image of O.J. with the guy who was sitting at the defense table, surrounded by some of the greatest defense lawyers of that era... and trying to imagine the guy that we knew as a football player, a happy-go-lucky kind of guy being involved in something as gruesome as a double murder, just very, very difficult to to reconcile those two," Pfeiffer said.
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In the end, Pfeiffer was not surprised by the verdict.
"I felt that if the jury reached their verdict based on the evidence that was in front of them, it might be a stretch to convict O.J.," Pfeiffer said.
Pfeiffer notes the public knew a lot more about the evidence rather than the jury did, because a lot of the evidence didn't get in for various reasons. He adds the verdict was divisive.
"There were some people who felt that the evidence was overwhelming. The prosecutors talked about this mountain of evidence, and there were other people who said, 'O.J. was framed.' Yeah, I don't think he was framed, but I don't know that there was a mountain of evidence that actually got in front of the jury," Pfieffer believed.
The eyes of the nation were focused on the Simpson trial for 1994 and 1995. Retired State Supreme Court Justice Penny Wolfgang says it was because of the personality of the defendants, and the personalities of the attorneys involved.
"It was like watching Law and Order in real life," said Wolfgang with WBEN on Thursday.
Wolfgang believes those who watched the trial learned a lot about the judicial system, but not necessarily everything good.
"I felt like the whole trial was very much a spectacle and very unprofessional, many parts of it," Wolfgang said. "I think they are more aware of the theatrics involved and untrusting of it, and I think it puts in perspective, what a good lawyer has like Johnnie Cochran, in that case, and a few other lawyers that what they can do and how they can change the nature of criminal proceedings, by their personalities."
For a short time, in many states and many jurisdictions, Wolfgang says cameras were not allowed in court as a consequence of the O.J. trial.
"I think courts and judges were reluctant to have cameras and the media in the courtroom as freely as they did during the O.J. trial, because of the way it turned out and the way it appeared to the public," Wolfgang believed.
It was reported in February that Simpson had been undergoing treatment for prostate cancer. He passed away Wednesday at the age of 76.
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