O.J. Simpson will be cremated and his brain won’t be donated to CTE research.
“His entire body, his brain, everything, his fake hips, his fake knees, everything,” Malcolm LaVergne, the executor to Simpson’s estate, told People. “That all goes into the crematorium.”
Simpson, who was famously acquitted of the murder of his ex-wife in 1994, died Wednesday from prostate cancer. He played professional football for 11 years.
LaVergne said Simpson’s family gave a “hard no” to clinics asking that Simpson’s brain be donated to test whether Simpson had CTE. Chronic traumatic encephalopathy is a brain disorder caused by multiple head injuries, resulting in the death of nerve cells and degeneration. The disease is thought to affect many football players, but it can only be confirmed once the person is dead and their brain is studied during an autopsy.
“With O.J. everything’s wild, but I’ve been getting calls from medical centers that are doing CTE testing asking me for O.J.’s brain ... that is not happening,” LaVergne told the New York Post. LaVergne did not immediately return a request for comment.
Because of Simpson’s known violent outbursts — he was convicted of spousal abuse in 1989 — several people theorized that Simpson might have the brain disorder.
His longtime friend Michael R. Militello told The Buffalo News that Simpson said he suffered many concussions throughout his football career.
Jeffrey Felix, a retired prison guard who worked at Lovelock Correctional Facility during Simpson’s nine-year stay there for armed robbery and kidnapping, told the New York Post that Simpson would often wake up confused about where he was.
Memory loss is also a symptom of CTE, according to the Mayo Clinic.
Dr. Bennet Omalu, who researched CTE in football players, told ABC News in 2016 that Simpson was “more likely than not” suffering from CTE and that he would bet his medical license on it.