Aaron Hernandez

On June 17th 2013, around 5:30 AM in North Attleboro, Massachusetts, a jogger out for his daily run decided to take a quick shortcut through an industrial area on the way home. It was there that he stumbled upon the body of 27 year old Odin Lloyd. Later that day, the news reported that the body had been found about a mile from the home of NFL Star Aaron Hernandez. Within days, Hernandez was in custody and facing murder charges. During the trial, Hernandez’s past was put into the spotlight, including a 2012 double murder in Boston’s south end.

Odin Lloyd

Odin Leonardo Lloyd was born on November 14th, 1985. He was born on the island of St. Croix in the US Virgin Islands. He and his family relocated to the island of Antigua for a few years, before they moved to the North East United States. They settled in the Boston area, specifically in Dorchester. Around this time, Dorchester was a dangerous place to live. It had one of the highest percentages of victims with violence related injuries. This is the same area that Mark Wahlberg is from. If you want a peek into how the neighborhoods were back then, just take a look at Mark Wahlberg’s early life legal issues before he became Marky Mark.

With the dangers of the neighborhood, Odin was constantly looking for a way out or a way to just better himself. One thing that jumped out to him as a “way out” was football. He believed it was his golden ticket and one shot at success. Odin immersed himself in football and became an exceptional player, specifically playing the Linebacker position on defense. That changed when he got to High School though. Odin attended the John D. O’Bryant School of Mathematics and Science High School, where the ratio of male to female students heavily skewed towards females. Odin was a good looking athlete in the school and was popular amongst his female counterparts. He started to focus more on his social life, and his academics suffered greatly. Before graduating, his grades had dropped so much that he lost his chance to play college football.

One of his coaches at the time was Mike Branch. He said of Lloyd, “His talent was off the charts. I could see something special in the kid. If football was something that could get him out of the hood and into college, that was my goal.” Mike was also a probation officer at the time, and he immediately recognized that there was a void in Odin’s life where he was searching for a father figure. Not long after meeting him, Mike became like a big brother to him, since he himself started as an inner city youth, with no real, clear vision for the future.

After High School, Odin did get accepted into Delaware State University. He was all set to go, when the financial aid that he needed fell through. He had to leave the school and get a job. Eventually, Odin got a job with a Massachusetts power company, which would end up sending him to Connecticut. It was in Connecticut that he met Shaneah Jenkins. The two quickly became an item, and Odin had told people that he found the love of his life.

While he was working with the power company, Odin was also playing semi-professional football for the Boston Bandits, in the New England Football League. One of his coaches on the Bandits was his high school coach Mike Branch. Mike had stuck with Odin and followed him, the two shared a great bond.

While Odin and Shaneah were dating, the Jenkins family would have get togethers where everyone would come, eat, and have a good time. It was at one of these family gatherings that Odin met Shaneah’s sister’s fiance, Aaron Hernandez. Odin was an aspiring athlete, so knowing Hernandez could prove to be a huge leg up and opportunity for him. Many people would look at the pair and wonder how they were friends, since they lived such different lives. Odin was walking around in a pair of flip flops that were so worn that he might as well be barefoot. Hernandez lived in a 1.3 million dollar mansion. Despite their lifestyle differences, the pair became fast friends.

Odin’s team mates said that Odin was, “an utterly regular, humble man. He just wanted to feed his family and have a good life. He wasn’t about glamour and glitz. He was just a simple guy.” Omar Phillips, a Bandits team mate said that he knew of Odin and Aaron’s friendship, but Odin rarely, if ever bragged about it. “Odin said that Aaron was a loner. Odin was a loner, too. He was star-struck, but he wasn’t hungry for that lifestyle. That wasn’t his personality.”

Aaron Hernandez was born in Bristol Connecticut in November of 1989. The Hernandez household was… explosive to say the least. Aaron had an older brother, DJ who was three years older than him. His father, Dennis, and mother, Terri, would have several knock down, drag out fights. Terri would kick Dennis out of the house, but they always reconciled. They married in 1986, divorced in 1991, then remarried in 1996.

Dennis Hernandez was a tough man. He had some trouble with the law in his past but turned his life around to become a good father and citizen. Dennis pushed both of his sons hard to excel in whatever they did, academics, sports, mowing the yard, eating hot dogs, whatever they did, he wanted them to be the best. His form of motivation wasn’t talking and saying good job. Dennis was oftentimes physically abusive to both of his sons and his wife. One time, Aaron came to school with a black eye, and everyone believed it was from his father. No actions were taken though. In a different incident, Dennis punched one of the boys football coaches after he disagreed with how he was coaching the boys.

In the Netflix docuseries about Aaron Hernandez, one of his high school friends said, “When you went into that house, you knew that Mr. Hernandez was in charge.”

In addition to the physical and mental abuse that they were subject to, DJ has come forward and said that Aaron was also sexually molested as a child. A teenage boy that was at their babysitter’s house would force him to perform oral sex on him beginning when he was six years old, and it continued for several years.

When Aaron was 16, Dennis went into the hospital for hernia surgery. There were complications during the surgery, which resulted in Dennis’ death. Teri would say that Aaron never got over his father’s death, and he began to act out against authority figures as a result. Many of his friends and family later said that they agreed that Aaron never fully dealt with his father’s death and suffered mentally as a result.

After Dennis’ death, Aaron grew apart from his mother. He would eventually move out of her house and in with an older cousin, Tanya Singleton. While there, it came out that Teri had been having an extramarital affair with Tanya’s husband, Jeff Cummings. When it became public, Jeff divorced Tanya and moved in with Teri. It was around this time that Aaron started to become more involved with criminal activity.

While all of this was going on, Aaron was still in high school and playing football. His brother had graduated and moved on to the University of Connecticut where he was playing college football. Aaron played the Tight End position, and after his senior year in high school, he was considered to be the number one tight end recruit in the country. He had set several state records, was named Connecticut’s Gatorade Football Player of the Year, and a US Army All-American. He was really good at sports ball.

The original plan was for Aaron to join his brother DJ at the University of Connecticut and the two would play football together. Urban Meyer, the coach of the Florida Gators decided that he wanted to pursue Hernandez to get him to come from Gainesville. Meyer, along with quarterback Tim Tebow, recruited Hernandez, who eventually decided that he was going to go to the University of Florida instead of UConn to play with his brother.

Aaron was allowed to “graduate” early from high school and attend the Santa Fe Community College to take remedial classes to get ready for Florida. Many of his teammates who were invited to come to Gainesville early were attending the community college as well. The former principal at Aaron’s high school said Aaron was not prepared academically for college, and he should never have let him graduate early.

During his freshman year, Hernandez started three games for the Gators and had a good year. For his sophomore year, he was benched for the season opener for a failed drug test. After that, he started eleven of thirteen games and led the Gators in receiving in the National Championship game which they won. His junior year he led the team in receptions and won the John Mackey award, given out to the best tight end in college football for the year. He was recognized by several outlets as one of the best players in the country.

Off the field, Hernandez had some issues though. In april of 2007, at 17 years old, he was in a restaurant with Tim Tebow, where he had 2 alcoholic drinks. Upon completing their meal, he refused to pay the bill and got escorted from the restaurant by an employee. On the way out, he sucker punched the manager and ruptured his eardrum. The police were called, and Hernandez immediately called head coach Urban Meyer. Meyer then called the team lawyer. The victim told police that he had been contacted by the team and their lawyer and something was being worked out. Although the police recommended charging him with felony battery, the incident was settled out of court.

In September of 2007, there was a shooting at a traffic light after the victims left a nightclub. Earlier, at the club, the victims had exchanged words with Hernandez. A witness who saw the shooting picket Hernandez out of a lineup as the triggerman. Police went to Coach Meyer and asked to speak with Hernandez and two teammates immediately. It took four hours and lots of prodding from detectives to get the coaches to bring the players to the police station.

The players had already spoken to the team’s lawyer, and Hernandez invoked his right to counsel and refused to talk to the police. When police would come into the room to speak with him, they found him head down on the table, sleeping. No charges were filed, and after the trial of Odin Lloyd in 2013, Massachusetes police contacted Florida authorities to see if they wanted to look at Hernandez again for the 2007 shooting, but they concluded that he was not the trigger man. The witness who originally identified him said he looked similar to him, and he saw them have an exchange in the nightclub, so he thought Hernandez was the shooter.

After his junior year, Coach Meyer told Hernandez that he should leave the school and enter the upcoming NFL Draft, because he wouldn’t be welcomed back to the school. Hernandez did and was drafted in the 4th round (out of 7) of the 2010 NFL Draft by the New England Patriots. It is widely thought that he would have been drafted sooner if he didn’t have off the field issues. New England was probably the single worst place he could have gone as far as teams go. In Florida, he was far from a saint and had several run-ins with the coaches in which they would say they were going to kick him off the team, but back up north, he was back with the people he was hanging out with before college. He quickly fell into old habits and criminal behavior.

On the field, Hernandez shined. He was thought of as one of the best tight ends in the league. He wore number 85 until an veteran player who usually wore that number joined the team. Hernandez told him he would sell him the number for $75K, and the player countered with $50K which Hernandez accepted. This is a common practice in the NFL. If a player who has been in the league for a while joins a new team and someone is using the number they usually wear, they “buy” the number from them. Sometimes, instead of taking the money, the player “selling” will just ask the other to donate to a charity, but in Hernandez’s case the money was used for something else. Hernandez gave the money to a cousin’s husband, who then used it to purchase a wholesale amount of marijuana. When it came time to pay back the debt, he paid $120k back, making $70K profit.

In 2012, Hernandez earned a new contract and signed a 5 year, $39.5 million dollar deal. The contract included a signing bonus of 12.5 million. Of that bonus, Hernandez donated 50K to charity. He missed several games in the 2012 season due to injury. On January 20th, 2013, the Patriots played the Baltimore Ravens in the AFC Championship game. This would be Hernandez’s last appearance in the NFL.

More Legal Troubles!

At some point during his NFL career Odin met Hernandez, and the two grew close. They would hang out in the basement of Aaron’s mansion watching movies, playing video games, and smoking weed.

In 2011 however, Hernandez was renting a townhouse in Plainville. One night, he and a highschool friend were at a club. Hernandez had too much to drink so he let the friend drive him home…. The friend had also had too much to drink though. He was weaving in and out of traffic going around 120 MPH in a 55 zone. When they were pulled over by a Massachusetts State Trooper, he recognized Hernandez in the passenger seat and didn’t make an arrest. Later that night, the police were called to the town house he rented because of a fight in the front yard, and again, upon recognizing Hernandez, they told them to go inside.

In 2012, there was a double homicide in Boston near the Cure Lounge. Daniel Jorge Correia de Abreu and Safiro Teixeira Furtado were both gunned down as shots were fired into their vehicle. Witnesses claimed that they say Hernandez’s silver SUB pull up next to the victims and someone yelled racial slurs at them. Then, 5 shots rang out from the SUV. When looking over the security footage from the club, police immediately recognized Hernandez but thought it was just a coincidence that he was there.

January 2013, Hernandez is with his “assistant” Alexander Bradley. Bradley was actually his drug dealer and “yes man.” Whatever Aaron wanted, Bradley got for him, be it guns, drugs, whatever. After leaving the club… the same club from the double homicide, Bradley was driving 105 mph when he was pulled over. Hernandez tried to play the “do you know who i am card,” but the troopers actually arrested Bradley for drunk driving. How dare they!?!? Hernandez reportedly told the trooper, “I am Aaron Hernandez. It’s okay.”

In February of 2013, Hernandez, Bradley, and several friends were down in Florida. They went out one night and visited a strip club. While there, Hernandez began to worry about two men sitting across from them, and told Bradley he thought they were plain clothes police officers from Boston watching them. Bradley said they were probably following them because of the double homicide. On Feb 13th, Bradley claimed that during the trip, he was asleep in the car and was woken up by Hernandez pointing a gun at his face. The next day, the police found Bradley lying in a parking lot and bleeding. There was a bullet hole between his eyes. He survived but lost his right eye.

Also in 2013, Hernandez traveled to California with his fiance and their daughter for a surgery. While there, the police were called twice by Shayanna Jenkins, his fiance. She told them each time that Hernandez was drunk and violent. The police determined that Jenkins and the child weren’t in danger and never searched the house. There were drugs and guns all over the house. One night, DJ claimed he found Aaron on the roof, distraught, rubbing his temple with the barrel of a pistol.

Odin Lloyd’s Death and Some Trials

June 14th, 2013 – Odin and Aaron are out at Rumor Nightclub in Boston. No one knows exactly what happened between the two at the club, but a witness reported that Aaron appeared to be upset at Odin and stormed out of the club. During the trial later, the prosecution would suggest that he was upset because Odin was talking to friends of the victims of the 2012 double homicide. Another theory was that Odin Lloyd had learned that Hernandez was bi-sexual, and Hernandez decided to kill him before he could tell anyone. Unfortunately, the only two people who actually know what happened between them that night are deceased.

Two days later, on the 16th around 9:30 PM, Aaron reached out to some friends from back home in Attleboro and asked them to make the drive to Bristol, Connecticut. Ernest Wallace and Carlos Ortiz were old friends of Hernandez who made the trip together. Hours later, at 2:33 AM on June 17th, surveillance footage showed Odin Lloyd leave his home and get into a silver Nissan Altima with Hernandez, Wallace, and Ortiz.

From 3:07 AM to 3:23 AM, Odin sent text messages to his sister. From the messages, it’s clear that Odin wanted to make sure that someone knew who he was with at the time.

“U saw who i’m with?”
“Hello?”
“NFL” — Indicating that he was with NFL player Aaron Hernandez.
“Just so you know.”

At 3:25 AM surveillance footage showed the vehicle driving to a secluded gravel pit in an industrial area. Four minutes later, the car is seen driving away. Police said that Odin Lloyd was shot and left in that four minute gap. Around 5:30 PM that afternoon, the jogger discovered Odin’s body and called the authorities. Odin had been shot several times in the back and chest.

It didn’t take long for police to identify Odin and link him to Hernandez. The vehicle they were in that night was a rental car, rented in Aaron’s name. When he went to return the car, there were empty shell casings still in it. Once the police identified the car as a rental and saw that it was rented by Hernandez, they didn’t waste any time. On June 18th, they served him with a search warrant and searched his house for anything to tie him to the murder of Lloyd. They took footage from his surveillance cameras and requested his cell phone. They were given the phone broken into several pieces. Aaron had also destroyed footage from the surveillance system and hired a team of cleaners to come clean his home the day Odin was killed.

On June 26th, they arrested Hernandez and charged him with first degree murder, carrying a firearm without a license, two counts of possessing a large capacity firearm, and two counts of possessing a firearm without a firearm identification car.

On June 27th and 28th, Carlos Ortiz and Ernest Wallace were arrested. They are each charged with accessory to murder. During his interrogation, Carlos Ortiz told the authorities about a secret apartment that Hernandez had a few towns over. Police got the address and executed a search warrant. When they were there, they found ammunition and clothing that the police believed could be evidence in the murder case against him.

Hernandez’s fiance, Shayanna Jenkins, and his cousin, Tanya Cummings, were both charged as accessories when police suspected that they helped Hernandez, Ortiz, and Wallace after the murder took place. These charges would eventually be dropped during the trial. Tanya Cummings refused to testify against Hernandez during the trial and was sentenced to two years of probation, including one year of home confinement with an ankle bracelet for criminal contempt of court.

90 minutes after his arrest, before charges were filed, the New England Patriots released Hernandez and nullified his contract for “conduct detrimental to the team or organization.” This meant that none of the money from his contract would be paid out, and the Patriots would seek to reclaim a portion of the $12.5 million signing bonus that had been paid to Hernandez. The Patriots offered any fan who owned a Hernandez jersey the opportunity to come to the stadium and swap their jersey with a new one of a different player. They were distancing themselves quickly.

During the trial, security footage was shown from inside the Hernandez home. It was terrible quality and pretty much everything we hate about security footage, but in the footage, you could see the three men come into the foyer and go down to the basement. In Hernandez’s left hand, there is what appears to be a hand gun. The prosecution also provided Hernandez’s DNA which was found at the crime scene.

When it came time for closing statements, the defense knew they were facing a mountain of evidence against their client, so they admitted that Hernandez was at the crime scene. They said, “He was a 23-year-old kid who witnessed something. A shocking killing, committed by someone he knew. He really didn’t know what to do. So he just put one foot in front of the other.”

On April 15th, 2015, Hernandez was convicted of first degree murder and all the weapons charges. Massachusetts doesn’t have the death penalty, so he was sentenced to live withouth the possibility of parole. Immediately after the sentencing, Hernandez was transferred to Mass. Correctional Institution – Cedar Junction, a maximum security facility to begin serving his sentence. This prison was about a mile away from Gillette Stadium, where he played for the Patriots.

Wallace and Ortiz were both convicted of being an accessory after the fact and sentenced to four and a half to seven years each.

In 2015, after being convicted of murdering Odin Lloyd, Hernandez was put on trial for the 2012 double murder in Boston. For this trial, he hired lawyer Jose Baez. That name sound familiar? He was the defense lawyer in the Casey Anthony trial. This trial resulted in a not guilty verdict. Baez wrote in a book later that after that not guilty verdict, Hernandez asked him to start working on his appeal for the Odin Lloyd trial. Baez felt strongly that he would be able to get the original ruling overturned, and Hernandez would be free.

While he was in prison, many people say that he seemed “strangely content.” He adapted to his new “home” very quickly and thrived in the structure that prison provided. He reconciled with his mother after years of estrangement, and told her, “”I’ve been the most relaxed and less stressed in jail than I have out of jail.” Hernandez was disciplined dozens of times in prison, and his lawyers would claim that he was relentlessly taunted by the guards and inmates alike. He continued to work out though and anticipated a comeback in the NFL when he was released.

On April 17th 2017 though, reporter Michele McPhee appeared on a local sports talk show in Boston. While on the show, she and the hosts used heavy innuendo and implied that Hernandez was gay. Two days later, he was dead. Some theorize that he committed suicide because of the claims that were made publicly by McPhee on the show.

On April 19th, at 3:05 AM, correction officers found Hernandez hanging with bed sheets from the window of his cell. He was taken to a local hospital and pronounced dead at 4:07 AM. Upon an initial inspection of the cell, no suicide note was found, but later three sealed letters were found by a bible that was opened to John 3:16; John 3:16 was also written across his forehead in red ink.

The letters were addressed to his lawyer, one to his daughter, and one to his fiance. The letter to his lawyer thanked him for all his help and asked him to pass along thanks to musicians that had helped him mentally along the way. The other two letters have been described as disjointed and having an “ominous” tone.

With his death, a bizarre law on the books kicked in. Abatement ab initio was a common law doctrine that stated if any defendant died while their conviction was being appealed, that conviction would be vacated. So, the guilty verdict was vacated and technically, Hernandez wasn’t convicted of murder. This was significant because if he was never technically convicted, then the New England Patriots cant void his contract and keep the money from his family. Hernandez’s fiance was prepared to go to the courts to get the money from them. If that had happened, the Patriots would have spent millions of dollars in legal fees just to keep it from happening. In March of 2019 however, the state appealed the decision to vacate Hernandez’s conviction and won. The conviction was back on the record, and the doctrine is no longer used in the state of Massachusetts.

After his death, Hernandez’s family gave his brain to Boston University to have it checked for CTE. CTE is essentially brain damage caused by repeated blows to the head. Many football players are diagnosed after their deaths. After examining his brain, the researchers concluded that he suffered from stage 3 (of 4) of CTE. Although Hernandez only had two concussions in his medical file from football, he undoubtedly had many more that went unreported. During one high school game, he was hit so hard on the field that he was knocked unconscious and had to be taken off the field by an ambulance.

The researchers said that his level of CTE would result in poor judgement, lack of impulse control, aggression, anger, paranoia, emotional volatility, and rage behaviors. They stated, “”It’s impossible for me to look at the severity of CTE and Mr. Hernandez’s brain and not think that that had a profound effect on his behavior.” CTE is so common amongst NFL players that some former players commit suicide and leave their brains to organizations to be studied. Junior Seau, a hall of fame linebacker, shot himself in the chest with a shotgun to preserve his brain to be studied.

We may never know the real reason that Aaron Hernandez decided to violently end the life of Odin Lloyd. Was it retaliation for a perceived sleight, or a pre-emptive action to stop Odin from revealing a personal secret? The only two people who know what happened that night, Wallace and Ortiz, haven’t spoken about it, and they don’t seem like they will any time soon.