Viral screenshots claiming to show OJ Simpson’s final posts are not real

15 April 2024
What was claimed

OJ Simpson posted “I did it” on social media just before his death.

Our verdict

This screenshot is fake. There’s no evidence he ever posted this. His final post was a video from 11 February in which he spoke about his health.

Screenshots claiming to show OJ Simpson’s final posts on X (formerly Twitter) before his death are circulating online. But these are fake. 

The former American football star, OJ Simpson, died from prostate cancer on 10 April 2024. He was acquitted of the murders of his ex-wife Nicole Brown and her friend Ron Goldman in 1994 in a high-profile criminal trial, but was found liable for their deaths in a civil trial in 1997. He later served nine years for multiple charges including armed robbery, kidnapping and assault following a separate incident in 2008.

The screenshots, which supposedly come from his X account, are claimed to show posts saying “I did it” and another says: “I just want y’all to know, I did that shit. -OJ”. 

These images have been shared widely with captions including “Last deleted tweet from OJ Simpson” and “OJ Simpson in his last tweet before he passed admitting he killed Nicole Brown Simpson and Ronald Goodman [sic]”. One post on X has more than 6,600 shares and says “Breaking OJ Simpson’s final tweet before dying. His family has since deleted it”. 

However, Full Fact could find no evidence that these posts, which appear to be satirical, were ever shared by Mr Simpson’s X account. 

It has been widely reported that Mr Simpson’s final post was a video shared on 11 February 2024. In the clip, he is sitting by a swimming pool and describes his health as “good” and says he is “just about over” the health “issues” he’d been dealing with. 

He shared another video on 9 February denying that he was in a hospice following online rumours. He reportedly never personally revealed his cancer diagnosis publically and media reports before his death cited only ‘sources’.  

On 11 April, a post announcing his death was shared by the account and was signed by his family. 

In 2006, Mr Simpson sold a manuscript titled “If I did it”, which outlined a “hypothetical” account of the murders he’d been trialled for and was supposed to be accompanied by a TV interview. The projects fell through following public criticism but the family of one victim, Mr Goldman, secured the book rights as part of their civil settlement, and published the book in 2007

This is not the first time we’ve seen fake posts being shared as if they’re real, including those supposedly posted by the BBC, Liz Truss, Jeremy Corbyn and Nadine Dorries

Image courtesy of Gerald Johnson

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