Former football legend O.J. Simpson became a free man again Sunday after serving nine years for a botched hotel-room heist in Las Vegas that brought the conviction and prison time he avoided in the killings of his wife and her friend after his 1995 acquittal.
Nevada state prisons spokeswoman Brooke Keast told The Associated Press that Simpson was released at 12:08 a.m. PDT from Lovelock Correctional Center in northern Nevada. She says she didn't know who met Simpson and didn't have any information on where Simpson was headed.
Keast says the dead-of-night release from the prison about 90 miles (145 kilometers) east of Reno, Nevada, was conducted to avoid media attention. "We needed to do this to ensure public safety and to avoid any possible incident," Keast said by phone.
The 70-year-old Simpson told the parole board that he wanted to live in Florida. The Florida Department of Corrections said officials had not received a transfer request or required documents.
Simpson was sent to prison in Nevada for a botched hotel-room heist of sports memorabilia 12 years after he was acquitted of killing his ex-wife, Nicole Brown Simpson, and her friend, Ronald Goldman in Los Angeles.
