AP Photo/Myung ChunCan you believe it's been more than 20 years since you heard the words, "We the jury in the above-entitled action find the defendant, Orenthal James Simpson, not guilty of the crime of murder...a felony, upon Nicole Brown Simpson"?
Or maybe you weren't born yet and you've seen it online, but we'd like to welcome you to Earth if for some reason you were unaware of the case of O.J. Simpson, football hero turned movie and TV star turned most famous murder defendant ever after his ex-wife Nicole and her friend Ronald Goldman were killed on June 12, 1994.
O.J. was acquitted of their murders on Oct. 3, 1995, a moment that will live in pop culture infamy, and the raw emotion that talk of the killings, the investigation, the seven-month-long trial and its aftermath still invoke now, two decades later, proves just how much the case still resonates. A year has not gone by without articles on the subject and the flashbacks are only going to get more intense in 2016 when Ryan Murphy's American Crime Story: The People vs. O.J. Simpson premieres, with Cuba Gooding Jr. playing the titular defendant.
On the morning of Oct. 13, 1995, I was in high school and watched it live like millions of other people on TV, and then I saw the moment replayed on TV that night (and seemingly every night for weeks). And, blast from the past alert, here it is in all its surreal glory:
But boy have things have changed since then... and yet, not.
What's exactly the same: The gavel-to-gavel TV coverage and 24/7 media circus was unprecedented and a precursor of things to come, the police are still being accused (in L.A. and beyond) of racial bias and Brown and Goldman's loved ones never received one speck of justice (because, officially, the case remains unsolved).
But life did have to go on: Some of the major players are no longer with us, some are doing better than ever and some lives were never the same as a direct result of what's been whittled down in the pop-culture nomenclature into, simply, "the O.J. trial."
Here's a quick rundown of what happened to some of the biggest names:
O.J. Simpson: Contrary to some people's advice, he did not disappear and live out his days as privately as possible. Instead, he's currently in a Nevada prison, having been sentenced to 33 years after being found guilty of first-degree kidnapping, robbery, assault with a deadly weapon and other charges for his role in a heist to retrieve some old memorabilia. He's since been paroled on some of the charges but remains behind bars due to others, and he'll be first eligible for parole on those in 2017.
You can practically hear the mournful trombone.
Fred Goldman: The father of Ron Goldman successfully sued Simpson in civil court for wrongful death in 2007 but his family maintains that they never saw a cent of the $33.5 million judgment and, for some reason we still don't understand, Simpson's NFL pension was untouchable. The Goldman family was ultimately awarded the rights to Simpson's book If I Did It, perhaps one of the most inexplicable book ideas of all time, and it was published in 2007 with the "If" in very small letters and with commentary from the Goldmans titled "He Did It."
"The only thing that happens is it becomes a new norm. There isn't a day that goes by that I don't think about my son," Fred told 20/20 this year.
Denise Brown: Nicole's sister testified for the prosecution that O.J. abused Nicole and was a staunch believer in his guilt. She started the Nicole Brown Charitable Organization to aid victims of domestic violence in 1994 and went on to do public speaking and abuse awareness advocacy.
Johnnie Cochran: The head of Simpson's infamous legal "Dream Team" delivered those famous closing-argument words: "If it doesn't fit, you must acquit." The L.A. prosecutor turned criminal defense attorney was known for his grandstanding (he inspired the Jackie Chiles character on Seinfeld) but was also a civil rights champion, coined by Jesse Jackson as the "the people's lawyer." He moved on to other high profile cases but, after defending Sean "Diddy" Combs on a stolen weapons charge (he was acquitted) in 2001, he retired. Cochran died of a brain tumor on March 29, 2005, at the age of 67.
Robert Shapiro: The "Dream Team" attorney co-founded the website Legal Zoom and continues on as a high-profile criminal defense lawyer. In honor of son Brent, who died of a drug overdose in 2005, he founded The Brent Shapiro Foundation, to raise awareness and help those battling substance abuse, and the residential recovery center Pickford Lofts. The Kardashian sisters have raised funds and talked prominently about The Brent Shapiro Foundation, and that's the charity Khloé Kardashian played for when she competed on The Celebrity Apprentice.
Robert Kardashian: O.J.'s longtime friend also played on the "Dream Team," but historically he factored more prominently in pretrial matters, such as when O.J. bunked at the lawyer's home after the murders—the location he was low-speeding away from in the white Bronco, with Al Cowlings behind the wheel. It was speculated at the time that Kardashian removed evidence from Simpson's Brentwood home the day after the murders when he was spotted leaving with a garment bag in hand.
In a recent interview for the LMN special The Secret Tapes of the O.J. Case: The Untold Story, Kris Jenner (she and Robert Kardashian divorced in 1991) recalled being in court when the verdict was read.
"I think he was shocked," she said of her ex-husband, who died of cancer in 2003 when he was only 59. "He was definitely stunned. I mean you could look at his face and see it. I've known him my entire life. I know that like he was...he was floored that that was the verdict."
Kris Jenner: The Keeping Up With the Kardashians star and famed momager says to this day she feels guilty about not taking action when longtime friend Nicole would talk about her fears that O.J. would harm her. "The one thing she would tell all of us by the time, you know, it got to that level was, 'He's going to kill me and he's going to get away with it,'" Kris reflected in The Secret Tapes special.
Faye Resnick: Nicole's friend had been staying at her Bundy Drive condo with her up until four days before the murders, when Resnick checked into rehab for substance abuse—a point picked on by the defense, which suggested at one point during the trial that Nicole and Ron could have been murdered by drug dealers. She collaborated on two tabloidy tell-alls about Nicole and the trial, posed nude for Playboy in 1997 and more recently appeared on The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills.
Kato Kaelin: America's favorite house-guest testified for the prosecution (as a hostile witness) about Simpson's movements at his Rockingham Avenue estate on the night of the murders. The aspiring actor later expanded on his 15 minutes with various cameos, some soft-core cable work and reality-TV appearances.
Mark Fuhrman: The LAPD detective who testified about finding one bloody glove at Nicole's house and another matching glove at O.J.'s was torn a new one on the stand by the defense, which accused him of past racist behavior and planted the seed of reasonable doubt that the chain of evidence was untainted. Fuhrman retired from the LAPD and moved to Idaho after the trial. He wrote Murder in Brentwood, about the Simpson case, and went on to author a number of true-crime books. He is currently a regular contributor to Fox News.
Lance Ito: The L.A. Superior Court judge became a household name and he was immortalized by the likes of Mike Myers, who played him in O.J. trial sketches on Saturday Night Live, and by the "Dancing Itos" featured on The Tonight Show With Jay Leno. Now 65, he just retired earlier this year.
Marcia Clark: Aside from Hillary Clinton, perhaps no other woman's on-the-job hairstyle has been scrutinized as much as Clark's was during the O.J. trial. The lead prosecutor was widely credited with losing the case more than the defense was credited with winning it, and she retired from trial law to become a TV legal analyst and author. "I felt like I'd let everyone down. The Goldmans. The Browns. My team. The country," she wrote in her 1997 memoir, Without a Doubt.
Christopher Darden: After serving as second chair, during which he was the one to have Simpson try on the snug glove in court, the veteran prosecutor followed Clark into retirement from the L.A. District Attorney's Office. He moved into teaching at UCLA and Southwestern Law School and then opened his own criminal defense practice.
"I was devastated and decimated by the trial," Darden said on Oprah: Where Are They Now earlier this year. Asked if he was bitter, he said, "I don't think I'm so much as bitter. Now, I think I'm angry. I mean, I couldn't be angry back then. I couldn't be pissed off, because I'm a prosecutor. But now, I'm just Chris Darden. Now I can just be pissed off."
When not serving as the setting for this type of real-life drama, L.A. makes a great movie backdrop—check out the top 9 films set in La La Land