Justin Ryan Simpson: The Kid Who Had to Survive His Own Last Name
He was five years old when the police walked through his mother’s house and didn’t wake him up on purpose. Didn’t want him to see. He was asleep in Brentwood while the world was changing forever outside — his mother’s body on the front walkway, the blood already going dark, Ron Goldman crumpled nearby. Five. Years. Old. And everyone else’s tragedy became the only story of his entire life before he could read a chapter book.
That’s where you have to start with Justin Ryan Simpson. Not with the trial. Not with O.J.’s acquittal. With a little kid who woke up the next morning in a world that had already decided what his life meant.
Quick Bio
| Detail | Info |
| Full Name | Justin Ryan Simpson |
| Born | August 6, 1988, Los Angeles, CA |
| Age (2026) | 37 |
| Mother | Nicole Brown Simpson (murdered June 12, 1994) |
| Father | O.J. Simpson (died April 10, 2024) |
| Sister | Sydney Brooke Simpson |
| Education | Gulliver Preparatory School; Florida State University (B.S. Entrepreneurial & Small Business Operations, 2010) |
| Occupation | Real estate agent & investor, DHM Real Estate Group |
| Based | St. Petersburg, Florida (and recently Las Vegas) |
| Partner | Alycia Browne |
| Daughter | Lana Simpson (born May 3, 2022) |
| Current drama | Sued by his father’s estate in January 2025 over a Las Vegas house |
The Night That Made Him
June 12, 1994. Sydney, 8, and Justin, 5, were asleep inside 875 South Bundy Drive while two people were stabbed to death outside. Police found the kids and quietly carried them out through the garage. They literally routed them through a side door so they wouldn’t step over their mother’s body going out.
Think about that. Not as a crime-show detail. as anything that a child experienced. The adults in his life are already making decisions about what he could and couldn’t handle, what he should and shouldn’t see. That dynamic — everyone protecting Justin from something, or failing to — never really stopped.
He was taken to his maternal grandparents. Juditha and Louis Brown. Nice people, by all accounts. Nicole’s family. They spent the next two years taking him to the beach, trying to make things feel normal while the entire planet debated whether his father killed his mother on live television.
Imagine being six, seven years old. Your dad is on TV every single day. Everybody has an opinion. Your teachers have an opinion. The kids at school definitely have an opinion. And nobody asks you.
See also “Elliot Kingsley: The Ghost Child of Rock Royalty Nobody Wanted to Talk About“
The Custody War Nobody Talks About Enough
Here’s the part that gets glossed over: after O.J. was acquitted in October 1995, he immediately went for the kids. The Brown family — Nicole’s parents, her sisters — fought it. Of course they did. From where they were standing, Nicole’s murderer was about to get her children.
The court gave O.J. full custody in 1996. Just handed them over.
Sydney was 11. Justin was 8. They moved to a gated community in South Miami with the man a civil jury would later find liable for their mother’s death by a 33.5 million dollar judgment.
Nicole’s sister Dominique Brown said years later that after the custody transfer, the Brown family essentially lost contact with both kids. Lost touch entirely. This is the part that hollows you out — the idea that Justin didn’t just lose his mother, he lost her whole family. Was separated from the people who’d been keeping him afloat.
And then there were the 911 calls Dominique mentioned publicly. Kids calling 911. “Daddy, stop.” In an interview, she abruptly revealed that information. It got some press, then disappeared. No one has fully substantiated or denied it. It just sits there.
Growing Up Simpson in Florida
O.J. moved the whole operation to Florida partly because Florida law has historically protected certain assets from creditors. The Goldman and Brown families were chasing that $33.5 million civil judgment. O.J. found Florida convenient. Justin grew up in this arrangement — shuffling through South Miami, then eventually the Tampa Bay area — while his dad golfed and gave interviews and tried to rehabilitate a reputation that would never fully rehabilitate.
He went to Gulliver Preparatory School in Pinecrest. Pretty well-regarded private school. Not a rough-it situation, whatever else was going on.
O.J. talked about Justin in a 2004 NBC interview with Katie Couric. Called him “the finest kid I’ve ever known.” Justin played lacrosse, basketball, and football. Said he had a tendency to “turn it inward” when things got hard. That detail — turning it inward — feels like the most honest thing O.J. ever said in an interview. Because that’s exactly what Justin did with his whole adult life. Everything inward. Nothing public. Don’t give them anything.
He went to Florida State. Studied entrepreneurial and small business operations. I graduated in 2010. Which is actually a pretty savvy choice if you think about it — here’s a kid who grew up watching his father lose tens of millions in civil judgments, watching assets get chased and frozen and seized. Of course he studied how to structure a business.
The Quiet Empire
Justin became a real estate agent. Which sounds boring until you look at the numbers. By the mid-2020s, public records showed him associated with at least 11 properties through two holding companies in the Tampa-St. Petersburg market. Around $1.9 million in recorded mortgage exposure. His sister Sydney also went into real estate in the same area, which is either a coincidence or the most logical thing in the world — two people who spent their childhood being yanked between households and courtrooms deciding to put down roots through property.
He’s affiliated with DHM Real Estate Group in St. Pete. His LinkedIn has a testimonial calling him “dynamic” with “excellent negotiation skills.” It’s the most normal professional page you’ve ever seen. No mention of the trial. No mention of any of it. Just: here’s a realtor. Here are his listings.
In 2022, Justin’s company Primary Holdings, LLC bought a Las Vegas property — a 2,900 square foot house on Arbour Garden Avenue — for $795,000. Here’s where it gets interesting: O.J. moved in. Lived there until he died.
The arrangement, according to court filings, was a legal strategy. Keeping assets away from creditors by putting them in a company technically owned by the son. Classic Florida-to-Nevada asset protection thinking. O.J. put around $159,000 toward the down payment through intermediaries, kept paying the mortgage, kept living there like he owned it. Because functionally, old habits.
When FX Called and Justin Didn’t
In 2016, the FX series “The People v. O.J. Simpson: American Crime Story” dropped and the whole country went Simpson-crazy again. The show was brilliant. It was also, for Justin and Sydney, a ten-episode excavation of their worst family memories turned into prestige television for other people’s entertainment.
Justin’s response? He talked to the Tampa Bay Times. Once. Briefly. Said he liked St. Pete. Said it was gorgeous there. That was it.
“It’s a great place to live, why not St. Pete?” he said. Not a word about the show. Not a word about Cuba Gooding Jr. playing his dad. Just: I like where I live, now please leave me alone.
It was either the most masterful deflection in recent celebrity-adjacent history or the most sincere one. Maybe both. The man had been practicing this his whole life.
The Father Question
People always want to know: what did Justin think of O.J.?
And the honest answer is we don’t know. We have nothing. Justin kept that completely private. What we have are O.J. ‘s words about Justin — the Katie Couric interview where he sounds almost achingly proud, bragging about the lacrosse, the honor roll, the height. O.J. saying his son is taller than him. There’s something almost unbearable about a father doing a normal dad-brag in that context. Like: sir, sir, we need to talk about some other things first.
But Justin showed up when O.J. died in April 2024. The family statement said O.J. was “surrounded by his children and grandchildren.” Justin was there. After everything — the murders, the trial, the civil judgment, the 2008 Las Vegas robbery conviction that sent O.J. to prison for nine years, the re-entry, the prostate cancer — Justin was in the room.
Make of that what you want. People are complicated. Children love parents who don’t deserve it. Sometimes they don’t. Sometimes they do both at once. Justin never told us which it was, and I genuinely respect that he didn’t.
The Lawsuit That Pulled Him Back In
Here’s the thing about trying to live quietly: sometimes the law finds you anyway.
In January 2025, O.J.’s estate — administered by his former attorney Malcolm LaVergne — sued Justin.filed in Las Vegas’ Clark County District Court. The allegation: Justin moved into his father’s house after O.J. died, claimed ownership through Primary Holdings LLC, refused to pay the estate back for what O.J. invested in the property, and wouldn’t leave.
The estate’s position is that the LLC was just a legal shield — that O.J. always intended the house to be part of his estate, that he paid the bills, that Justin moving in and claiming ownership after death contradicts the will. Justin’s position is basically: we own it on paper, legally, full stop.
His siblings — Arnelle, Jason, Sydney — have not commented publicly. Though the lawsuit specifies that if the estate wins and sells the house, proceeds get split among O.J.’s other children. So there’s that family dinner to look forward to.
In 2025, Justin was photographed at a court hearing in Las Vegas regarding the estate. It’s one of the only recent photographs of him in public, period. He just looked like a guy at a court hearing. A normal-looking 36-year-old man in a suit. The camera doesn’t know what to do with him because he refuses to perform.
The Daughter Nobody Talks About
Justin and his partner Alycia Browne had a daughter, Lana, on May 3, 2022. Justin announced the pregnancy on Facebook — not Instagram, not a publicist, Facebook — writing that they were “extremely excited, scared, nervous and in love.” He used the word “scared.” It’s the most emotionally honest sentence I’ve found attributed to him anywhere.
Scared. He said scared out loud. On the internet. About becoming a dad.
Given everything — given that his own entry into fatherhood came via the most publicly chaotic and violent situation imaginable — “scared” seems like the understatement of the century and also the most human possible response. You raise a daughter with that last name, in that shadow, knowing what you know? Yeah. Scared sounds right.
What It Actually Means to Be Him
Here’s my take, for whatever it’s worth after weeks in this material: Justin Ryan Simpson has been extraordinarily successful at the one thing almost nobody in his position manages — he built an actual life.
Not a reality show. Not a memoir. Not a podcast called “My Truth.” An actual life. A business. A partner. A kid named Lana. Some houses in St. Pete and a complicated Las Vegas situation he’s probably going to sort out in court like an adult.
His mother was murdered when he was five. His father was probably her killer — I’m saying probably because the civil jury said it and I believe civil juries — and then he went home with that father and lived with him for a decade. He grew up in that house. He watched that man get older and sicker and finally die surrounded by family in April 2024 and he was in the room.
The man contains multitudes, as they say. Most of them are very deliberately unpublished.
The internet periodically rediscovers Justin Simpson and writes headlines like “Where Is Justin Simpson Now?” as if he’s somehow missing. He’s not missing. He’s in St. Petersburg, Florida. He’s selling real estate. He’s raising his daughter. He’s living a life that by any reasonable standard represents a triumph of ordinary human resilience over extraordinary circumstances.
He just won’t give you the quote about it. And god, after everything, I think he’s earned that.
Final Words
There’s a photo from March 1994 — three months before the murders — of O.J. Nicole and Sydney and Justin at a movie premiere. Naked Gun 33⅓. Justin’s what, five and a half? He’s got this gap-toothed kid grin. Everybody’s dressed up. His mom is alive and beautiful. His dad is famous there. It looks like a normal rich-family photo.
And then June comes.
He’s 37 now. He has a daughter. He’s going to have to figure out someday what he tells Lana about her grandfather. About her grandmother who died before she was born. About the trial and the civil judgment and the Las Vegas house and all of it.
My guess? He’ll do what he’s always done. He’ll find a way to tell her what matters and protect her from what doesn’t. He’ll turn things inward until the timing is right. He’ll build something stable and quiet and real.
He’s been practicing that skill since he was five years old.
FAQs
1. What does Justin Ryan Simpson do for a living?
He’s a licensed real estate agent working with DHM Real Estate Group in St. Petersburg, Florida, and also an investor who holds residential properties through holding companies. He’s built a small but real portfolio — at least 11 properties documented in public records as of mid-2026.
2. Did Justin inherit money from O.J. Simpson?
O.J.’s estate was largely tied up in creditor claims from the $33.5 million civil judgment owed to the Brown and Goldman families. The Goldman family in particular has spent decades trying to collect. Whether Justin inherits meaningful assets depends on how the estate litigation resolves, including the Las Vegas house lawsuit filed in January 2025.
3. Does Justin Simpson ever talk about his mother Nicole?
Almost never publicly. He has maintained near-total silence on the subject. His one known interview in 2016 — to the Tampa Bay Times — carefully avoided all discussion of the murders, the trial, or his parents.
4. Was Justin in the house when Nicole Brown Simpson was murdered?
Yes. Both he and Sydney were asleep in their bedrooms. Police removed them through the garage specifically to avoid them seeing the crime scene. This has been confirmed in multiple documentaries and court records.
5. What is the Las Vegas house lawsuit about?
Justin’s company Primary Holdings LLC bought a Las Vegas home in 2022, which O.J. lived in until his death. After O.J. died, Justin moved in. The estate’s administrator argues the house should be part of O.J.’s estate — that Justin effectively used the LLC as a shield, with O.J. making payments and functioning as the real owner. Justin is contesting this in Clark County District Court.
6. Does Justin Simpson have a good relationship with Nicole’s family?
Unclear, and probably strained. After O.J. won custody in 1996, Nicole’s family largely lost contact with the kids, according to Nicole’s sisters. Her sister Dominique mentioned 911 calls from the Florida home and described the custody as a “chaos” period. Whether adult Justin has reconnected with the Brown family has not been publicly disclosed.
7. What was Justin like as a kid, according to his father?
O.J. called him “the finest kid I’ve ever known” in a 2004 interview, praising his athleticism (lacrosse, basketball, football), his height, his popularity, and his honor roll grades. He also said Justin had a tendency to “turn things inward” when stressed — which turned out to be an accurate personality preview.
8. Is Justin Ryan Simpson on social media?
He has or had a Facebook account and a LinkedIn. No public Instagram that’s been confirmed. His social media presence is minimal and carefully controlled — exactly what you’d expect.
9. Where does Justin Simpson live now?
He’s been based in St. Petersburg, Florida since around 2016. His LinkedIn lists Las Vegas as a current location as of recent updates, which may reflect the situation involving his father’s Las Vegas house.
10. What’s Justin’s relationship with his siblings?
He’s reportedly close with his sister Sydney, who also lives in St. Petersburg and also works in real estate — they essentially built parallel quiet lives in the same city. His half-siblings from O.J.’s first marriage (Arnelle, Jason) are more distant. None of them have commented publicly on the estate lawsuit.
11. How did Justin respond to his father’s death in April 2024?
He was reportedly present at O.J.’s bedside when he died. The family statement — posted to O.J.’s social media — said he was “surrounded by his children and grandchildren.” Justin has made no further public statement.
12. Will Justin Simpson ever write a memoir or tell his story publicly?
Nothing suggests he ever will. He has spent his entire adult life constructing a private existence. The few journalists who have reached him get one-sentence responses about how much he likes St. Pete. If he ever talks, it’ll be on his terms, on his timeline. Until then: respect the wall.
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