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If a double murder couldn’t put O.J. behind bars, a cookie could have been the culprit to keep him behind bars longer. Oh, the irony.
O.J. has served almost nine years of his 33 years sentence for a botched armed robbery and kidnapping attempt after stealing his own sports memorabilia from a Vegas casino hotel room. He is scheduled to meet with the Nevada Board of Parole Thursday, where he could be released from prison as soon as October 1.
But that parole hearing was very nearly spoiled for the 70-year-old due to one cookie.
According to Jeffrey Felix, a former correctional officer at Lovelock Correctional Center, an inmate who helped with food preparation stole cookies and brought them back to hand out to fellow inmates, Simpson included. Most of the inmates went back to their cells to eat the cookies, but the privileged Simpson ate his in plain site of correctional officers, USA Today reports.
But, one hard-assed correctional guard was operating by the book and threatened to write Simpson up for a violation. Felix recalled in his book Guarding the Juice:
“Being the loud O.J. he is, the guard in the bubble saw him eating a cookie,’’ Felix told USA TODAY Sports. “And of course she said, ‘Where’d you get the cookie from?’ Well, O.J. doesn’t lie. He got it from a guy, a culinary worker.
“Well, she wrote him up for having contraband. Over a cookie. That’s pretty crazy. So when I came back the next day for work, O.J. came to me and told me what happened. He said, ‘I can’t have a write up because I won’t get my parole.’ ”
“I talked to the lady who wrote him up and she said, ‘I’m not changing my mind. He brought contraband on my tier,’ ” Felix said, adding that he told the woman she would forever be known as the “Cookie Monster” and that the write-up would undermine her reputation in the prison.
“So she tore it up,’’ Felix said.
It’s insane to think that if the officer had written Simpson up for the incident, he likely would have spent the rest of his life in the clink. The man who is largely believed to have killed his former wife and her friend is ultimately defeated by a cookie. Doesn’t justice work in mysterious ways?
[h/t USA Today]