Why O.J. Simpson’s Family ‘Don’t Want’ Late Football Player’s Brain Tested for CTE

After their deaths, some NFL players donate their brains to science to study the impact of the sport on their health. Not O.J. Simpson, who died at 76 on April 10 following a storied football career — and an infamous murder trial. “That’s not happening,” Malcolm LaVergne, his executor, told one news outlet, adding that O.J. would be cremated. “His entire body, his brain, everything, his fake hips, his fake knees, everything.”

An insider exclusively tells In Touch that the football legend, who was acquitted of the brutal 1994 murder of his ex-wife, Nicole Brown, and her friend Ron Goldman, didn’t want his brain to be part of any study of CTE, or chronic traumatic encephalopathy, a disease connected to repeated brain trauma that has been linked to impulsive behavior, irritability and aggression, among other symptoms.

And his survivors weren’t pushing for it. “Some people think that’s a shame, given that the families of other NFL players have donated to help science understand this disease,” says the insider. “But O.J.’s relatives don’t want to go that route. It could dredge up the past and give credence to the theory that he had brain damage that made him violent. They want O.J. to rest in peace.”