True Crime
Tom Scotto’s Ex-Wife Confirms His Death — O.J. Simpson’s Former Friend Was 56 Years Old
After years of defending his best friend O.J. Simpson, Tom Scotto recently revealed the one-time murder suspect had betrayed him. And now, just weeks after that revelation, Tom is dead, as his ex-wife Maria Scotto has revealed. It's another sad outcome for someone in O.J.'s inner circle…
Tom had been suffering health complications in a Florida hospital, RadarOnline.com reports. Nine days before his death, he told Radar he was being moved out of the intensive care unit. Two days later, however, he took a downturn and signed a do-not-resuscitate order. A week after that, he was dead. Charlie Figueroa, an investigator for the Collier County Medical Examiner's Office in Naples, FL, confirmed the news, as did Maria.
"He had pneumonia and then he had some other complications – he just couldn't get better," Maria told Radar. "It's really bad for my kids because he was only 56."
Tom, who had owned a Miami body shop, became O.J.'s friend and golf buddy after meeting him at a boxing match in 2000, as Newsweek reported in 2007. "Nobody really knows O. J.," Scotto told the magazine at the time. "He's a really sweet, really good guy."
In fact, O.J. was in Las Vegas as the best man in Tom's second wedding when the football star participated in the armed robbery that sent him to prison for a decade. Just before the ceremony, though, O.J. had sex with Tom's then-fiancé, Radar reports. "After everything I did for O.J., that was complete betrayal," Tom told the site recently. "I was a brother to him."
And this was a guy who, Radar says, offered to let O.J. live with him in his upscale Naples home upon O.J.'s release on parole in October. "You know, he's my best friend. I love him," he told NBC News. "I lost contracts with my business because I stuck by him. I have to do what's right and that's what I felt in my heart."
A source tells the site O.J. will regret the friendship's end now that Tom is gone. "Tom Scotto died of the broken heart because O.J. slept with the man's wife!" the insider says. "O.J. only cares about himself, but with Scotto's death, he's going to feel like s–t!"
