BUFFALO, N.Y. — Where were you 25-years ago today when a white Ford Bronco slowly led police on LA’s suburban freeways while the nation watched on television?
I was at work, here at Channel-2.
It was a Friday. Days earlier was the discovery of two people brutally murdered. The victim’s OJ Simpson’s ex-wife, Nicole Brown-Simpson and her friend, Ronald Goldman.
Simpson quickly became a suspect and that day he was supposed to turn himself in to be charged with the killings. He didn’t. Instead, he rode in the back of the white Broncos with friend Al Cowlings behind the wheel.
I was assigned to find people watching the now-televised chase and collect their thoughts on all of it. The spot to find people was easy enough. At the time, Bills’ quarterback Jim Kelly had a popular restaurant and nightclub downtown. It had lots of TV’s. Everyone was watching.
No one wanted to believe a guy like Simpson was capable of this horrific crime. He was very approachable. I had done a number of interviews with him (some at Kelly’s restaurant), he seemingly always had a minute for a reporter with a mic.
Looking back today on the stories we did that day and the days that followed, reaction mirrored sentiment heard around the nation. Responses from whites, while not wanting to believe the worst, were largely inclined to believe Simpson was responsible.
One woman said, “It’s hard to believe somebody, a star of his magnitude, this could happen to.”
We got a response from a white man who had already transitioned into speaking about Simpson in the past tense, “He was my hero for everybody in western New York. He was their hero. So, it’s a shame.”
African-Americans we spoke with answered differently. They were much more inclined to doubt law enforcement’s version of the murders, one black woman said, ”He set a good example for African-Americans. And I hope he’s found not guilty.”
A black teen went further, ”I think he ran away because they were going so hard on him. They can’t put him in jail. He didn’t do it.”
The trial played out on television and the following year, I saw a similar division between white and black journalists watching the jury announce Simpson was not guilty.
In 1996, the NFL Hall of Famer was found responsible for the killings and ordered to pay $12-million to the victims’ families.
All of it was the biggest local story not going on in Western New York.
Back then one woman likened it all to a movie, and then changed her mind saying, “A script couldn’t be written this way.”
I could not agree more.