MIAMI (AP) - O.J. Simpson slipped back into familiar territory early Thursday - not just the sunny climate of South Florida, but into the center of a media cavalcade fixated on a robbery case that could send him to prison for years.

At the Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood airport, Simpson refused to answer reporters' questions about the case, though girlfriend Christine Prody answered a question about how he was doing with: ``He's fine.''

The former football star left in an SUV, tailed by a pack of cameras and reporters.

Police allege Simpson led an armed holdup of sports memorabilia collectors; Simpson has insisted he was merely retrieving items that had been stolen from him.

Legal experts say the prosecution's case could be clouded by issues including who had rightful ownership of the goods and the reputation of witnesses in the sometimes less-than-reputable world of memorabilia trading.

At his arraignment Thursday, Simpson furrowed his brow as the judge read the list of charges against him. Gone was the slight smirk he flashed when arrested.

He answered quietly in a hoarse voice and nodded as the judge laid out restrictions for his release, including surrendering his passport to his attorney and having no contact with co-defendants or potential witnesses. Simpson did not enter a plea, and bail was set at $125,000.

As Simpson flew home to the Miami area, US Airways emptied a plane so he could board first with his attorney, Yale Galanter, and Prody.

Simpson sat in an aisle seat in economy class. Passengers who boarded behind him took pictures with cell phones and cameras. He nodded and smiled as they passed, then slept from Las Vegas to South Florida.

Simpson was arrested Sunday after a collector reported a group of armed men charged into a hotel room at the Palace Station casino and took several items. He spent three nights in jail after being charged with kidnapping, robbery with use of a deadly weapon, burglary while in possession of a deadly weapon, coercion with use of a deadly weapon, assault with a deadly weapon, conspiracy to commit kidnapping, conspiracy to commit robbery and conspiracy to commit a crime.

Police arrested a fifth suspect in the case Wednesday. Charles Howard Cashmore, 40, surrendered to police and was scheduled to appear in court Thursday. Cashmore brought in items that are believed to have been taken, police said without elaborating.

Authorities allege that the men went to the room Sept. 13 on the pretext of brokering a deal with two longtime collectors, Alfred Beardsley and Bruce Fromong. The meeting was set up by memorabilia dealer Tom Riccio.

According to police reports, the collectors were ordered at gunpoint to hand over several items valued at as much as $100,000, including football game balls signed by Simpson, Joe Montana lithographs, baseballs autographed by Pete Rose and Duke Snider and framed awards and plaques.

Beardsley told police he had expected that the collection would earn $35,000 at the meeting from a ``client'' he had never met. Instead, he said, one of the men with Simpson brandished a pistol, frisked him and impersonated a police officer, and another man pointed a gun at Fromong.

Authorities said Beardsley, of Burbank, Calif., was paroled in March 2006 after serving 11 months of a two-year sentence for stalking a woman in Riverside County.

He was arrested at his room at the Luxor hotel Wednesday for violating parole. A California corrections spokesman said Beardsley was required to get written approval before traveling more than 50 miles from home or leaving home for more than 24 hours. In a Las Vegas court Thursday, Beardsley waived extradition, but it was not clear when he would return to California.

Riccio also has a criminal record, including grand larceny in Florida in 1984, when he received three years of probation; and felony arson in 1995, in California, for which he was sentenced to two years.

Riccio, who recorded an audiotape of the confrontation later released by the celebrity Web site TMZ, said he was not concerned with how his past might affect his credibility ``because everything's on tape. That's why it's on tape.''

But Beardsley told NBC's ``Today'' show before Simpson's hearing that he didn't think the audiotape was accurate.

Riccio also said he had been promised some form of immunity by prosecutors.

Two other defendants, Walter Alexander, 46, and Clarence Stewart, 53, were arrested and released pending court appearances. Stewart turned in some of the missing goods and Alexander agreed to cooperate with prosecutors, authorities said. Suspect Michael McClinton, 49, of Las Vegas, surrendered to police Tuesday. Jailers were unable to say whether Cashmore or McClinton had retained a lawyer. Police have not identified the remaining suspect they are seeking.

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Associated Press writers Ryan Nakashima, Ken Ritter, Kathleen Hennessey and Chelsea J. Carter in Las Vegas, and APTN videographer Richard Matthews in Miami contributed to this report. His children have grown up, his knees have given out, his fame has turned to notoriety. He can be seen golfing with the guys or partying with playmates -- at bars, or behind them. In the 12 years since O.J. Simpson was acquitted of murder, the everyday life of the former football star has swung wildly between the ordinary and the outrageous.

Simpson's arrest this week on felony charges stemming from the alleged armed robbery of sports memorabilia dealers in a Las Vegas hotel room came after years of sporadic brushes with the law in Florida, where he moved with his two children after the controversial 1995 jury verdict that found him not guilty in the stabbing deaths of Nicole Brown Simpson, his estranged wife, and waiter Ron Goldman, her friend.

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"We think he lives the life of a very comfortable person," said David Cook, the San Francisco lawyer hired by Goldman's father, Fred, to track Simpson's assets and try to collect the $33.5 million civil judgment a California court ordered Simpson to pay under a wrongful death suit. "He drives nice cars, he golfs in the morning, he lives in a house worth about $1.1 million."

The 1968 Heisman Trophy winner, once agile on the football field, is now a pudgy pensioner with arthritic knees on the public links of Miami, where his upscale suburban life is funded by four pensions that, on his 2003 tax returns, totaled $400,000 annually. He frequents chain restaurants and shopping malls, amiably pausing to sign autographs, which according to the Los Angeles Times sometimes bear the salutation "Peace and Love."

The pensions and his home are exempt from seizure under the civil judgment, which Cook said has netted $1,932 "and change" so far -- all from royalties from "The Naked Gun" movies, in which Simpson, before his ex-wife's murder, starred as a bumbling detective. Fred Goldman told The Washington Post in an interview earlier this month that he has collected "less than $10,000, all told."

Royalties from Simpson's newly released book, "If I Did It," will also go to Goldman, who won the rights to the book after a public outcry and threatened bookseller boycotts forced Simpson's publisher, HarperCollins, to ditch it. Simpson, 60, told the Associated Press that he had agreed to the ghostwritten book to earn "blood money" for his children. The book includes what he refers to as a fictionalized account of what may have happened in Nicole's courtyard that night.

Simpson's moneymaking efforts also turned macabre when he made an appearance at a horror movie convention in Los Angeles a day before the 10th anniversary of his acquittal in the Brentwood slayings. "I don't keep these dates in my head," Simpson told reporters as he signed sports memorabilia for collectors who had paid in advance for his signature at a private affair.

Ron Goldman's mother, Sharon Rufo, once put a swift stop to a similar autograph-signing gig in St. Louis by sending the sheriff to Simpson's hotel room with a writ claiming any money earned. Simpson, who has publicly declared that he will never pay the Goldmans a dime because he did not kill their son, canceled the Missouri appearance.

Simpson attempted something of an acting comeback recently with an Internet/mail-order-only DVD titled "Juiced," which promises "adult language, nudity, sexual situations, gross humor and is intended for mature audiences only!!" Among the milder "pranks" are Simpson posing as a homeless man selling oranges at an intersection and Simpson posing as a used-car salesman trying to unload a white Bronco with the pitch, "It was good for me. It helped me get away."

Videos may be all Simpson is watching on his own TV these days. A federal judge ordered him to pay $25,000 in damages two years ago for pirating satellite signals from DirecTV after government agents seized illegal devices known as "bootloaders" from his home in the Miami suburb of Kendall.

Simpson is also no stranger to local police, who have responded to domestic disputes involving altercations with a girlfriend half his age, and to a tearful 911 call a few years ago by his daughter Sydney, then 17, who told dispatchers her father "doesn't [expletive] love me or any of his kids!"

Last year, Sydney, now a 21-year-old student at Boston College, was sentenced to 50 hours of community service after pleading guilty to disorderly conduct and resisting arrest -- charges that sprang from a fight outside a prep school basketball game. She and her younger brother, Justin, 19, both attended the tony Gulliver Academy, where tuition costs up to $22,000 a year and the alumni roster includes Julio Iglesias and the offspring of former Florida governor Jeb Bush.

Simpson's longtime on-again, off-again girlfriend, cocktail waitress Christie Prody, began dating him shortly after his acquittal. At 32, she is younger than Simpson's oldest daughter and bears a high-cheekboned, blond resemblance to Nicole Brown Simpson. Despite police intervention in quarrels in which Simpson claimed Prody had attacked him and she claimed he had burglarized her home, neither has ever pressed charges against the other, and Prody was in the courtroom offering tearful support during Simpson's arraignment in Las Vegas.
After his arraignment Wednesday in a Las Vegas courtroom on multiple felony charges including kidnapping, O.J. Simpson has returned to his home in Miami.

Story
The Woman Behind O.J. Simpson Sticks With HimSimpson was released from jail after posting bail and surrendering his passport. Simpson, who is free to travel in the continental United States, boarded a commercial airline flight and sat in coach, where he signed autographs for passengers.

Video obtained exclusively by ABC News shows the former football star fiddling with his headphones to watch the movie "Ocean's 13" and at one point placing his puppy on his lap.

His longtime girlfriend, Christie Prody, sat beside him and read the book "You've Been Warned."

"He was like an average passenger on this flight," said ABC producer Tarana Harris, who was on board the plane. "He had a sandwich and chatted with his girlfriend and attorney. He showed no visible signs of strain from the three days spent in jail."

Courtroom Drama

Just a few hours earlier, a humble-looking Simpson, dressed in a blue inmate jumpsuit, listened as the judge explained the charges against him.

As the judge explained to Simpson he was to have no contact with any of the other co-defendants, even through third parties, familiar faces watched.

His oldest daughter, Arnelle, sat behind him and Prody did, too. Even the Marcia Clark, the prosecutor in his 1995 murder case, in which he was acquitted, appeared, watching his every gesture.

Meanwhile, Simpson's defense attorney Yale Galanter said he was outraged that such serious charges had been brought against his client for a minor incident involving sports memorabilia.

Photos
PHOTOS: Simpson Case Key Players
But he said he believed the hearing went well.

"Everybody was extremely worried and, you know, it went well today," Galanter said. "We're relieved."

The arraignment and Simpson's subsequent release fueled all-cable news channels, as they documented his release and followed his chauffeured car along the highway.

Excessive Charges?
Simpson will head back to Las Vegas in October and his lawyers said he will plead not guilty. They believe he has a better chance of acquittal in Las Vegas than he did in Los