Folks, its ’90s Day on THG and we’re celebrating by remembering the heyday of the Simpsons.
No, not Homer and Marge — OJ and Jessica! Hear us out:
Earlier today we reported that Jessica Simpson is feuding with Natalie Portman. As if!
Now, it’s time to dig out your Doc Martens and tie a flannel shirt around your waist, because yet another Clinton era beef is making headlines. Boo ya!
This one concerns two figures who loomed large in the 90s — one largely forgotten, and one still very much a part of the public consciousness.
We’re talking, of course, O.J. Simpson and Lyle Menendez.
Along with his brother Erik, Menendez was imprisoned for the shotgun murder of his parents in 1994.
The brothers were locked up throughout their lengthy trial, so by the time O.J. arrived on the cellblock in June of 1994, the Menendezes were already veterans of the California penal system.
According to a new book by Robert Rand entitled The Menendez Murders, Lyle took O.J. under his wing, and the two of them quickly developed a close friendship.
In fact, according to an excerpt from the book published today by Radar Online, O.J. confessed to killing his wife in one of his first conversations with Lyle.
Rand claims that while Lyle and O.J. were both waiting for their lawyers in the prison’s "attorney room," a tearful Simpson admitted to killing Nicole Brown Simpson and Ronald Goldman after he “snapped in the heat of passion.”
“Lyle advised O.J. he should consider taking a plea deal,” Rand tells Radar.
“O.J. briefly considered that option – according to Lyle – but later told Menendez he couldn’t do that because it would ruin his reputation and he would never work again.”
In his book, Rand writes of Lyle’s recollection of O.J.’s early days behind bars:
“The first night was rough. I didn’t see him cry but I believe he was,” Erik recalled, according to Rand.
“I could hear him moaning.”
Sounds like O.J. wasn’t cut out for life behind bars, so it’s a good thing (for him and absolutely no one else) that Simpson was acquitted, despite having very obviously committed double murder.
Of course, a few years later, he was tossed in the clink for unrelated crimes and spent nearly a decade in prison.
Lyle, now 50, has been in jail since the late George H.W. Bush was in office.
So justice was served in one case … and, like, sort of served in another.
We wouldn’t call it a happy ending, but it’s an ending.
Now let us never speak of ’90s Day again.