Eunice Simpson, mother of O.J. Simpson

Eunice Simpson, 80, the mother of O.J. Simpson, has died.

Mrs. Simpson, who testified on her son's behalf during his 1995 murder trial, was found dead in her San Francisco home Friday morning by paramedics, according to the city's medical examiner's office.

"She died a natural death in her residence this morning," investigator Richard Vetterli said.

Mrs. Simpson lived in the home — a modest, three-bedroom residence in a predominantly black, lower-income district — that her son had bought for her in the 1970s while he was playing for the San Francisco 49ers.

Her own moment in the spotlight came during her son's criminal trial for the murders of his former wife Nicole Brown Simpson and her friend Ronald Goldman.

When O.J. Simpson's attorneys opened his successful defense, Mrs. Simpson took her turn on the witness stand to provide a contrast to the prosecution's portrayal of O.J. Simpson as an abusive spouse who killed his former wife.

In a dramatic moment, the arthritic Mrs. Simpson, who had weak knees after joint-replacement surgery, left her wheelchair and, with the aid of a cane, hobbled across the courtroom to the witness stand.

Under gentle questioning from O.J. Simpson's attorney Johnnie Cochran Jr. — and with her son beaming at her from the defense table — she told jurors about her hard life, her son's humble beginnings and how he had been distraught over his former wife's death. She said she had joined other family members who gathered with her son at his mansion the night after the killings.

That night, she testified, she and O.J. sat next to each other on the couch in his TV room.

"We were gripping each other," she said. "At first, a hug, and then my hand."

"Did he proceed to hold your hand?" Cochran asked.

"All during the time," she replied.

Prosecutor Christopher Darden declined to cross-examine her.

Mrs. Simpson, a former nurse's aide at San Francisco General Hospital, raised her four children in a housing project overlooking the old shipyards on San Francisco Bay.

She was divorced from O.J. Simpson's father, Jimmy Lee Simpson, a onetime bank custodian, who died in 1986.