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O.J. Simpson has been named as a suspect in a break-in at a Las Vegas casino hotel, putting yet another a bizarre twist on a career that has included being accused - and, notoriously, acquitted - of murdering his ex-wife and her boyfriend.
Las Vegas police said they
suspected Simpson, a one-time American football star, of breaking into a hotel room at the Palace Station Casino and taking some sports memorabilia that he believed to be rightfully his.
Simpson was on Friday taken into questioning, along with several other men described as "associates", and released only after he gave the authorities assurances that he would not attempt to leave town.
"When they [investigators] talked to him, Simpson made the comment that he believed the memorabilia was his," police spokesman Jose Montoya told reporters.
"We're getting conflicting stories from the two sides."
The break-in took place on Thursday night at an ageing, unfashionable casino-hotel off the Las Vegas strip.
Police gave very few details about the incident, and there was no indication of what exactly was taken from whom.
It was also not entirely clear what Simpson, who lives in Florida, was doing in Las Vegas in the first place.
He had been scheduled to give a deposition in Florida yesterday in a bankruptcy case involving his daughter, but he bowed out of that commitment, telling his lawyers he would be out of town.
Simpson has auctioned off some of his sports memorabilia over the years, ostensibly to meet his legal obligations under the terms of a $33.5m settlement he owes to the families of the murder victims.
He was famously, and very publicly acquitted of all criminal charges in the murders in 1996, but was found liable for the deaths in civil court a year later.
He has, however, paid out very little money to the families of Nicole Brown Simpson, his ex-wife, and her lover Ron Goldman.
He has taken advantage of Florida's indulgent laws on shielding assets to prevent the courts from seizing anything of significant size.
Sports memorabilia is one of the very few things he has been forced to give up.
The Las Vegas incident comes on the heels of another bizarre development - the decision by Ron Goldman's family to publish a book originally written under Simpson's name in which he plays with the idea of confessing to the murders.
The book, entitled If I Did It, was originally slated to be published last November by Regan Books, an imprint of Rupert Murdoch's HarperCollins publishing empire.
Murdoch's Fox television network also recorded a two-part interview special with Simpson in a concerted publicity push.
Both the book and the TV special were cancelled at the last minute after they provoked an outcry among bereaved relatives who said Simpson was trading in blood money.
Ten months on, however, Ron Goldman's father, Fred, has obtained the rights to the book and decided to publish it himself.
- INDEPENDENT