Killer Inside: The Mind of Aaron Hernandez (2020) s01e03 Episode Script

I tried as hard as I could to live
a dream life, but I didn't end up--
You didn't try as hard
as you could have, I'll tell you that.
Tell me how
I could've tried harder.
There's not one thing--
- I don't know how you could've.
- I lived for my dream life,
but it just didn't work out.
I hear you. I'm sure along the road
there was something
you could've done different.
I feel the same in here
as I did on the streets,
so it doesn't really matter.
I miss one thing,
you know what I mean?
Your freedom.
My freedom's not
That's not what I miss.
I miss one thing.
Obviously, my daughter.
Same thing I missed
when I was on the streets,
so it's not that big of a deal.
It is what it is.
Mr. Bradley,
I'm gonna play exhibit 287.
Recordings of your voice talking
to police officers at the hospital.
If you decide
that you wanna tell on somebody
so that they don't kill you
the next time
'Cause just so you know,
the reason why I got called
is 'cause
you were supposed to die yesterday.
He's an asshole, whoever did it.
Obviously, I mean,
you got a big-ass hole in your head.
- Fuck yeah, I do.
- So, you know what
Let's try to get a potential killer
off the street,
'cause he is a killer.
But if you don't wanna help,
that's on you.
Did you tell them
who had shot you?
- No.
- Why not?
'Cause I didn't wanna tell.
I had That's not the route
I wanted to take.
What do you mean by that?
I didn't wanna tell on Mr. Hernandez.
I didn't wanna inform them
that he shot me.
What route
did you intend to take?
I wanted revenge.
Alexander Bradley absolutely
was capable of killing Aaron Hernandez.
And Aaron Hernandez knew it.
Bradley had guns. He had a crew.
He bragged about the number of guys
he'd be able to bring to a fight.
Aaron had reason to fear
getting caught
for the 2012 double homicide.
He had reason to fear getting caught
for the shooting of Alexander Bradley
in February.
And he had reason to fear
Alexander Bradley killing him.
The fight
with Alexander Bradley
was the beginning of the end for Aaron.
His whole life
started to unravel at that point.
It's his fear
of Alexander Bradley
that led to Aaron Hernandez putting up
a very extensive surveillance system
in his home.
He went out
and literally bought an armored car.
He started to buy guns to defend himself,
and to give to those
who were defending him.
He started hanging around
Wallace and Ortiz
and have them around him all the time.
Wallace and Ortiz were not
his friends of choice at that time.
They were a means to an end.
Which was, "Protect me."
Hernandez turned
to his agent, Brian Murphy, for help.
He told Murphy someone
was threatening to kill him
if he didn't pay him lots of money.
According to Murphy's
grand jury testimony,
he knew Hernandez's life was in danger
and that Hernandez had been threatened
with extortion.
But at the time, he did not report
any of this to law enforcement.
You should just start
writing a book
about all the dumb shit you've done.
But the funny dumb shit,
not the other dumb shit.
Well, I read a lot.
I love the Harry Potter books.
- You do?
- I love them.
Everyone laughs at me,
but you know I don't give a fuck.
in the game,
second in goal.
It's Hernandez! Touchdown!
Aaron Hernandez saved the drive
and scored the touchdown.
Understand how
one stupid play,
one stupid penalty, one mistake
ends it for all of us.
We found out
that shortly after February of 2013,
Aaron asked Bill Belichick
to be traded to a different team.
He indicated he was in fear
of certain elements.
In response to that,
Coach Belichick said no.
Hernandez was a valuable asset
to a multi-billion dollar corporation.
No one raised a red flag.
No one in the Patriots organization
reported to law enforcement
any of these meetings.
They suggested
that he get another apartment.
Something a little more secure.
It just seemed like
they didn't wanna ask a lot of questions.
They were happy with what he was doing
on the field, and that was enough.
Sometime in April of 2013,
did you know an individual
by the name of Kevin Anderson?
Yes. He worked
for the New England Patriots, and
he helps players with any type of
Anything that they need, um
to make themselves comfortable.
He contacts me if he has players
that need properties.
And the renter
of this apartment was?
Aaron Hernandez.
I was sitting here,
and I saw someone I didn't recognize
walk up to the door with a key.
So, I said,
"Hi, you must be my new neighbor."
He wasn't the least bit friendly.
He just turned and looked at me and
kind of grunted and went in.
He was dressed in a hoodie.
It was a very warm day,
and no one would be wearing
a hooded sweatshirt and sweatpants
unless they didn't want to be recognized.
You know what bothers me, that the NFL
helped him go get an apartment
that was secretive somehow.
Now the guy's got a house,
why does he need another apartment?
And why are you helping him get it?
Did you think he was gonna be painting
Bob Ross pictures over there?
I'm number 11,
and he lived in number 12.
We shared a common wall.
Well, first,
I smelled the air fresheners, and
then, shortly thereafter, I
There was a very unpleasant smell
in the hallway.
Okay. If you could describe
what was that unpleasant smell
that you smelled in the hallway?
To me, it smelled a bit like
It smelled more like skunk
than anything else I could think of.
The double life
of Aaron Hernandez is never clearer
than when you consider
he had a second residence
where he went to chain-smoke marijuana
and escape responsibility
as a Patriot and father and fiancé.
There was never a point where I said,
"He's moving towards a life of crime."
I mean
Yeah, was I nervous about the people
he was associating with? Of course.
I mean, had it ever hurt him in the past?
You know, not really.
I was at his house with Odin Lloyd
two weeks before the incident.
That's how shocking this is to me
is that everything was fine.
He wasn't as joyful, as happy,
but I attributed that to him
getting back from practice
and being pretty tired,
and wanting to hang out in the sauna
and wanting to beat DJ at pool
a couple times, you know?
And it's not clear,
but at some point along the way,
when they were partying,
did Odin learn something
or was something said?
He told me that I looked good,
and he asked if I could dance with him.
Then I proceeded to dance with him.
I agreed to dance.
All of a sudden, he seemed irritated,
and in the middle of the song,
he just abruptly,
like, just took off.
He walked off back towards the DJ booth.
He was just standing and staring.
- What was he staring at?
- At Odin.
When you say he was staring,
how did he appear to you?
He's just staring angry,
looked like he was upset.
And how about his eyes?
His eyes were just beaming
directly at Odin.
We come out the club, and Odin was running
to try to catch up to him.
At Rumor, witnesses say
Aaron suddenly gets angry at Odin.
But prosecutors
were never able to say why.
The "why" is the story here.
Why Hernandez
would have killed Odin Lloyd.
We can only speculate as to whether
Odin Lloyd knew
about Aaron Hernandez's double murder,
or any of the other secrets
that he had been keeping.
Just two days later,
Aaron texted him and said,
"Let's step out for a little bit."
You took the dog out
sometime late in the evening
and saw Bo and Charley Boy
preparing to leave, correct?
Yes.
And I think you said
they were getting into a silver car?
Correct.
Aaron wants Ernest Wallace
and Carlos Ortiz around him that night.
12:22 a.m., Odin Lloyd
waiting for Hernandez to come pick him up,
texts Aaron and says, "We still on?"
Look at the nature
of this murder.
Car pulls down there.
Nobody's around.
No traffic, it's dark, no eyewitnesses.
This place, a perfect location
to commit a homicide.
Four people in the car.
Odin Lloyd's in the rear passenger seat.
A shot was fired in that car.
Shell casing's under the front seat.
We know Odin Lloyd
began to get out of the car.
This defendant's out of the car.
And he plants his footprint.
The next shot being in his arm.
Then the next shot
through the clavicle and out the back.
And then as he's ducking down,
the one that is shot
from the back of the neck
and runs through down along his spine.
He's now been disabled.
He's laying on the ground.
There's two final shots
that are put into him.
Exactly where the body was
was actually very hard,
almost ledge-like, very hard stone.
I don't think there's trees there anymore,
but there was a lot.
There were mounds of dirt, lots of grass.
And any sources of lighting?
Like, um
street lamps, or anything in the area--
No, no.
- Homes nearby?
- No.
And in that area,
when you got down to the body,
just describe what you saw.
What appeared
to me is, bullet wounds to his chest,
and a bullet wound to his right flank.
Blood around it.
There were flies around it,
and there were flies around his nose also.
- State your full name?
- Ursula Ward.
And are you the mother
of Odin Lloyd?
Yes.
And you understand you're
to be called as a witness in this case.
Yes.
And did we have a conversation
about a picture that I would show you?
Yes.
And do you recall making
an identification of your son's body
at the medical examiner's office
back in June of 2013?
Yes.
When Ursula Ward was called to the stand,
she talked about her son,
and she had been
under strict instructions from the judge
that if you show any emotion,
it could prejudice the jury.
You could just see how
she was trying to control her emotions
as she spoke about what happened.
You recognize that?
- Yes.
- Okay.
- Is that a picture of your son?
- Yes.
And when you saw that,
that was at the medical examiner's office?
Yes.
Thank you, ma'am.
Nothing further, Your Honor.
Hey.
Hey, you.
I don't wanna go back to where
we were, so let's just move forward.
You know, I just get so angry
'cause this should've never happened!
No, it'll be okay.
And listening to all that shit,
it's like, my God!
All of a sudden, one day,
that became big news.
The murder and the fact that the police
were investigating Aaron Hernandez,
and that was when I realized,
"He has a mansion.
He has a girlfriend.
He has a baby. He lives in a mansion."
It showed him on TV
you know, being taken out, arrested.
You know, as a possible murderer.
The Hernandez issue,
impact on the Patriot organization?
Well, it's one of the saddest things
that's happened in my tenure of ownership.
- What did you know about him?
- We've said a lot on the issue,
and he was Everything I ever saw
about him was first-class in the building.
Your Honor, if I could call our
next witness Robert Kraft.
So when Robert Kraft came to testify
at the Odin Lloyd trial,
Aaron Hernandez's worlds collided.
Here was the first time a Patriot
or anyone involved with the organization
stepped foot in the courtroom,
and here comes
the billionaire owner of the team.
The man who made his dreams come true.
He's outside the double doors,
and Hernandez, as soon as he hears that,
he looks over his shoulder six times
before Kraft came in the courtroom.
Kraft was one of the few people
with the Patriots organization
that Hernandez
was known to have contact with
during the period that he was a suspect.
- Just go right there.
- Right this way, sir.
And what do you do for work?
Um
Whatever they ask me to do.
Did you have an opportunity to
have a conversation with the defendant?
I understood there was
an incident that had transpired.
Any player who comes into our system,
I consider part of our extended family,
and I wanted to get him help.
And what did he say
when you had asked him
whether he was involved in this matter?
He said he was not involved,
that he was innocent
and that he hoped that
the time of the murder incident came out,
because I believe
he said he was in a club.
Robert Kraft was a key witness
for the prosecution
because he recalled
how Aaron Hernandez said to him,
"You know, I can't wait
for the timeline on this to come out
because I was clubbing
when all this was going on."
So, he's lying about his whereabouts,
and the cameras would show that.
And also, he's saying that
he knows what time everything happened.
I remember jurors later on said,
"How could you have known the timeline?"
That really helped
build the case against him.
Um, when you went to leave,
did he say anything else to you?
He hugged and kissed me,
and thanked me for my concern.
His attorneys did,
in closing, allow that Hernandez
was at the scene of the crime.
And the jurors were somewhat surprised.
They had to digest the stunning
180 during defense closing arguments,
putting Hernandez
at the scene of the crime.
He was a 23-year-old kid
who'd witnessed something.
A shocking killing,
committed by somebody he knew.
He really didn't know what to do.
Hernandez's defense was,
"It wasn't me,
it was Ortiz and Wallace,
they were the ones that were dangerous."
Aaron was just caught up in it,
and he was scared of them
because they were so violent.
The prosecution played
a soundless clip
of Hernandez and Carlos Ortiz
and Ernest Wallace the day after.
It was just left to play.
If these guys are murderers,
if you just watched them kill somebody,
and you fear for your own life,
you don't hand them your own baby.
You get in a car
and bail out of there as fast as possible.
There was no remorse,
there was no concern
on Hernandez's face in those images.
For the jury to absorb that scene,
and to know the heartbreak and humiliation
that Odin Lloyd's family went through,
and to contrast that
with the millionaire Patriot
who just went about his life
as if nothing happened,
you know, that made it very real.
That would be consistent
with somebody that didn't see themselves
as attached to what really happened.
And that certainly is one of
the characteristics of a sociopath.
The evidence on that video,
that shows you, what is his intent?
Is he, you know, yelling at somebody
You know, "What did you do?"
Grabbing him, shaking him?
"You just killed my friend"?
There's none of that.
After serving smoothies
and having lunch with them,
and laying around the pool all afternoon
and having them play with your baby,
what is he doing?
Fist-pumps, hugs
Does that appear to be somebody
who's upset about what's happened,
that his friend
is laying out in a field?
As he's breaking
As his skin begins to slip?
Inconsistent!
If you can push away something
that you're responsible for
and find a way to justify it
That's not something
everybody is capable of doing,
and he was very good at it.
I often wondered, "Would there ever be
a point where he would crack
and realize, 'Well, this is it'"?
Well, there's a chance that you,
like, you
Like, they were saying
that there's different types of degrees
that some, like
Or they might convict you of one type
that might be better.
DJ, if I get convicted,
there ain't no fucking
I'm getting life in prison with no parole.
There ain't no
fucking second degree with me.
If they're convicting me,
I'm getting the top of the line.
The jury was out for a week, seven days,
working a full day each time.
And as the old rule goes,
the longer it takes,
the better chance you might have
of getting an acquittal.
Many people have asked me
do I think the state's got a lock
on the case?
Believe it or not, no, I don't.
I believe that
there is a mountain of evidence
showing that Hernandez murdered Lloyd.
he's a sports superstar.
Do I have to say OJ Simpson?
There's never a lock on any case, ever.
I've never been in a room
with more tension,
you know, when a verdict comes in
in a first-degree murder case.
Now you may bring in the jurors.
What is the jury thinking
at this point?
Madam Foreperson,
on indictment 2013-983-A,
charging the defendant Aaron Hernandez
with murder.
What say you, Madam Foreperson?
Is the defendant not guilty?
Guilty of murder in the first degree?
Or guilty of murder in the second degree?
Guilty of murder
in the first degree.
Madam Foreperson,
by which theory or theories,
deliberate pre-meditation
and/or extreme atrocity or cruelty?
Extreme atrocity or cruelty.
Members of the jury,
I want to thank all of you very, very much
for giving your valuable time
to hear and decide this case.
I also understand that it is not easy to
sit in judgment of a fellow human being.
I miss my baby boy Odin so much,
but I know
I'm gonna see him someday again.
And that is giving me the strength
to go on.
I forgive the hands of the people
that had a hand in my son's murder
and I pray and hope that someday,
everyone out there will forgive them also.
I have to commend
Ursula, Odin Lloyd's mother,
because of the power she carried.
Because I know I could never do that.
If that was my son, or my daughter,
I could never do that
because the anger would just
And I remember
seeing her talk a bunch of times,
and just the way she carried
and presented herself was amazing to me.
Convicted killer
Aaron Hernandez
beginning his life sentence in Walpole.
Soon, the former Patriots star
will be transferred to his permanent home,
the Souza-Baranowski Correctional Center
in Shirley, Massachusetts.
As he sits behind bars, Hernandez will be
preparing to face two more murder charges.
I was in Shirley Max
for I think probably six or seven years
for, um, drug trafficking.
The prison's built so if there's an issue,
they can lock the whole place down,
like, instantly.
There's all these major doors,
everything's controlled by computer.
The fences outside are, like, electrified.
I've seen so many, so many fights.
I was telling Aaron how What to expect
when he got up there
and who to hang out with and which side
of the prison to try to go on to.
So, um, I gotta tell you something
before you hear it from anybody else.
What?
Um
Tanya's going to get a biopsy
on Thursday. Her cancer grew.
Yeah.
It's in her The one in her chest
grew, the one Well, they all grew.
The one in her liver, the one in
her chest and the one in her lungs grew.
Um, what's it called
It's in God's hands, you know?
And God's gonna make her okay.
We just gotta keep the faith
and keep praying and, you know,
they're gonna find
the right course of treatment to help her.
Yeah. Is she nervous?
Yeah, a little bit,
but she's gonna be fine.
In October 2015,
Tanya Singleton passed away
in a bed that was set up
in her living room.
I ain't even trying to think
about all that.
I'm just taking it minute
by minute, you know?
I want you
to be okay, to have a clear head
and not to do anything stupid.
I just want you to know
that I'm here for you,
and I'm always gonna be here for you,
no matter what anybody else is doing.
So I've always been here for you,
and I'll always be here.
I'll always come to visit you,
and I'm always gonna talk to you.
So I just don't want you
to think that you're in this alone
Because I'm always gonna
be here no matter what,
and no matter how long it takes.
I think after
the Odin Lloyd conviction,
he had a little bit of a downward spiral.
He had told me that he got that tattoo,
the "lifetime" tattoo,
on his neck afterwards, and he had just
resorted to surviving in prison
and just saying, you know, "Fuck all this,
I'm here for life." And then,
um, I think Shayanna and Avielle
reinvigorated him,
and he decided he was gonna fight.
After two years of serving
at the Shirley maximum security prison,
Aaron Hernandez is brought back
into the courtroom
under the charges
of two homicides in Boston.
Initially, he did want me
for the Odin Lloyd appeal.
After a few minutes of sitting with him
and finding out that this Boston case
was right around the corner,
I said to him, "Listen, more than happy
to look at your appeal,
but the problem is if you lose this case,
might as well just pack it up and go home
because that appeal means nothing."
It finally hit him,
this is for all the marbles.
The Boston case was now everything.
First week
of his double-murder trial,
only his fiancée showed up to support him.
Mom isn't here, his brother isn't here,
none of his friends are here,
none of his old coaches are here.
He told me
that they came for the first trial,
and he felt that once he got convicted,
that everybody just
disappeared because hope was gone.
There were low stakes
in the second trial.
He's already convicted of life.
People thought
he was going to get convicted again.
There certainly remained a fascination
with Aaron Hernandez in Boston,
but nationally,
once you lose the stakes
of "he could walk out free,"
there's gonna be
less news interest in him.
It has been five years
since Safiro Furtado
and Daniel de Abreu were gunned down
in cold blood.
Their lives matter in this room as well.
Aaron's famous. Aaron's catching
touchdowns in the Super Bowl.
Who are these other guys?
We don't even know.
Nobody knows their names.
Um, they're not from America.
Ma'am, I'm gonna
show you a photograph
and ask you to look at the photograph
and tell us if you recognize
the person in that photograph.
Of course, it's my brother.
I met those families.
The mothers, the brothers, the cousins.
Tight-knit immigrant families, had come
to this country seeking a better life,
and then to have one of their own murdered
in a senseless act,
just a sad, terrible tragedy.
The story is not just
the Aaron Hernandez story.
There's a lot of lives
affected by this guy.
Their whole family was there.
And when I say their whole family,
they took up two, three rows
of people there every day.
How could I convince the jury
to care about Aaron
when his own family doesn't?
The jury selection was extremely hard.
After months and months
of working and build-up,
we were finally getting ready to start.
And just as we walked in,
some woman just blurted out,
"My god, he's gorgeous."
So I thought in there, I said, "You know,
I think we need more women on the jury."
The first time I thought Aaron
Hernandez could gain a not-guilty verdict
was when Jose Baez took the case.
Jose Baez is a tremendous lawyer.
Now Aaron Hernandez
was being represented
by someone who arguably could be called
a celebrity attorney.
Jose Baez, who had very famously
represented Casey Anthony,
a woman who was accused
of murdering her daughter.
To the shock of a lot of people
across the country,
she was acquitted of that.
So the question became
could Jose Baez do the same thing
for Aaron Hernandez?
Our biggest problem going into it
was how do you
convince 12 people
that the convicted murderer
sitting over there didn't do these two?
Sometimes you want
something so badly
that you're willing
to make a deal with the devil.
That is exactly what
the Commonwealth did in this case
when it made a deal with the killer
of Safiro Furtado and Daniel de Abreu,
who is Alexander Bradley.
Alexander Bradley was no angel.
He's a guy who had trouble with drugs,
with guns
He had a past.
That guy is probably
the toughest person I've ever seen,
and I knew he was going to be
a difficult witness to cross-examine.
Mr. Hernandez was upset.
He turned in a manner
in which he was going to make
a confrontation out of the issue.
So upset that he's gonna still
wait another hour to kill some people
- over a spilled drink. Right?
- Yes.
What transpired down in the Cure
Lounge is the foundation of this case.
Well, the truth was with this man,
and it wasn't that hard to find.
There was a photograph of him
that they kept from you.
Did you see Mr. Hernandez
again that night?
- Yes, I did, sir.
- What did you say?
- "Thanks for the picture."
- What did he say?
"No problem, have a good night."
- Did he seem angry?
- Not at all, sir.
- Did he seem upset?
- No.
- Furious?
- No.
- Enraged?
- No, sir.
Not as Alexander Bradley told you.
Not when he told you,
"I had to grab him
and take him out of the bar,
'cause he was going to kill him!"
This is Aaron's angry face
and Bradley's all,
"Yeah, he was mad."
That's absurd.
It flies in the face of reality.
It's an absolute lie.
The cross-examination of Alexander Bradley
was really a sight to see.
You had a real battle going on.
And you're threatening
to ruin Aaron's life.
I don't believe I threatened
to ruin his life. I may have.
I knew I had an uphill battle
because he had been powerful.
Let's not lose sight of the fact
he wants this to be
all about Alexander Bradley
and that he was the real killer.
You now know without any doubt
that the murder car was a silver 4Runner
with Rhode Island plates.
Where's that car found?
Is that murder car found
at Alexander Bradley's cousin's house?
No. That murder car is found
stuffed away in the garage of the house
of a relative who he trusts
more than anybody.
The murder weapon
is linked to Aaron Hernandez.
The murder car
is linked to Aaron Hernandez.
There is no link to any of these people
to Alexander Bradley.
I wanna direct your attention, Mr. Nelson,
to late March of 2013.
What tattoos do you recall
providing for Mr. Hernandez that day?
Two front views of
a semi-automatic handgun,
and a spent shell casing
with a little smoke coming out of it.
And a cylinder from a revolver with
five out of the six bullets remaining.
On his arm,
he wanted "God Forgives" backwards.
What is he asking God to forgive?
Right above and below.
The shooting of Alexander Bradley above,
the murders of July 2012 below.
That is a confession.
But this is not a church,
this is a courtroom.
What matters in this room is the truth.
They don't want you
to base your decision on evidence,
they want you to base it on prejudice.
"Look at how he's a bad guy,
look at his tattoos!"
The lies carry you all the way to Florida.
Alexander Bradley is telling
he was shot inside of a car,
and these guys tell you
they hear one shot.
It's loud, it's not muffled.
He didn't get shot inside of a car.
And Aaron was telling us that there
was a drug deal going on, and it went bad.
The blood doesn't lie.
And he was pissed at Aaron
for vouching for these guys.
Mr. Bradley does have a dog in this fight.
It's the deal of a lifetime.
He's either there, or sitting right there,
and that's a big incentive.
And this is the time
you jump off the Bradley bandwagon.
Can you read that final part?
"After I tell the court
the truth about me not recalling anything
about who shot me."
That text where Alexander Bradley
suggests he doesn't quite recall
who shot him in the face
was gold for Jose Baez.
The prosecution tried to explain it away,
but it was just that little bit
that helped see the doubt that maybe
Bradley's not telling the truth here.
Like the first trial,
there's a lack of motive.
Never made much sense.
Why would a guy get so enraged
at a drink getting spilled on him
that he would go out and shoot up a car?
That's a big leap, even when
you're putting on trial a convicted felon.
I hated that motive.
I still hate that motive,
and it's only when you truly understand
who Aaron Hernandez was that
that motive will ever make sense.
I got involved in the Hernandez case
pretty early on.
One of the principal problems
with the case
is that they had a terribly weak motive.
And, so, to try to create a reason,
the government wanted to use the argument
that Aaron was a closeted gay man
who lived in an extraordinarily homophobic
world of sports,
and that that conflict made him
strike out in anger against people.
We became aware of a penpal or a phone-pal
that Mr. Hernandez had where he made
statements about being angry all the time,
and he tied his anger to certain things
that were going on internally.
We had been advised that
the prosecution intended to call someone
who would testify about Aaron's sexuality.
It caused a difficult situation
that Jose dealt with,
which was to sit down and talk to Shay.
I don't know where this came from.
It's embarrassing in a sense.
It's hurtful,
regardless if it's true or not.
It's not something
that I believe, and it's just not him.
So we're hoping
to get the judge to give us
some type of compromise
where we wouldn't necessarily
have to turn this into a salacious trial,
but at least we would have some context,
not about his sexuality, but more of his
own statement that he's angry all the time
because of things
that have happened to him.
As a gay man myself, the next
day I went to the courtroom, and I argued
against this really discredited approach.
They knew they were wrong,
and they tried it,
and ultimately, they backed down.
But probably appropriately so,
the court ruled you I can't do that.
You know, you would either
have to put in everything or nothing.
We did have some conversations
in the holding cell.
One that sticks in my mind the most,
and I felt really sad for the guy,
Aaron asked me if I felt or believed
that someone was born gay.
I said, "I do believe that."
Growing up in our household,
my father was extremely narrow-minded.
Especially when it came to sexuality.
He had his definition of a man,
which can be very intimidating
for a child, you know, when my brother
has all these questions
going on about his sexuality.
- Can I read from the book?
- Sure.
It stood out
because it describes an incident
with a teenage boy
who was at your babysitter's house,
when you guys were younger,
and this is a game of hide and seek.
So you go off and you hide,
and for five, ten, 15 minutes,
"I remained in this dark closet,"
where you were hiding, "annoyed.
I didn't understand
why no one came looking for me.
I found out much later,
when Aaron was in prison,
that the older boy
who had been in this household
had actually forced Aaron into the tent."
Do you think Aaron was sexually abused?
I know he was.
Aaron had a belief
that his abuse as a child
impacted his sexuality.
That was one of the things
that he held onto
as to why he's, in his mind,
has this aberrant behavior.
All rise.
What say you, Madam Foreperson?
Charging murder in the first degree,
victim Daniel de Abreu.
You find the defendant not guilty,
guilty of murder in the first degree,
or guilty of murder in the second degree?
Not guilty.
Charging murder in the
first degree, victim Safiro Furtado.
You find the defendant not guilty,
guilty of murder in the first degree,
or guilty of murder in the second degree?
Not guilty.
I don't know whether
he was reacting
just from the pressure of it all ending,
or that somebody finally believed him.
He'd gone a lot of years
without any victories.
He had gone a lot of years without
anybody cheering him or believing him.
Later on that day,
Aaron called me and we
We rejoiced together,
and he was so excited, so happy,
so looking forward to his future.
And he was talking
about things he wants to do,
talking about getting out one day,
talking about his appeal
And he was ready. He was ready to go.
This rumor,
this Aaron Hernandez rumor
It is big.
In the context of the trials, we never
described Aaron Hernandez's sexuality.
They were just rumors at that point
and, you know, you don't out somebody
for the sake of outing them. Just because
it's salacious and interesting
is not enough
to do something like that to somebody.
But what ended up happening
was that another reporter did out him,
and also tried
to connect it to Odin Lloyd.
Michele, knows the
real motive for the murder of Odin Lloyd.
And let's just say that Odin Lloyd
caught Aaron Hernandez
in a compromising position, yes.
Let's just say
that Aaron Hernandez
was a former tight end before
he was kicked off the Patriots. Yes.
- On and off the field?
- Yes.
And then
he became a wide receiver?
My sources, what I've been told,
is that there is absolutely no evidence
that that's why Odin Lloyd died.
But we also wanted to show that the way
that this had come out was problematic.
That, you know, a man's sexuality
being discussed on the radio
in pretty crude terms was insensitive,
no matter who the person was
and what they might have done,
this is something that, you know, um,
is just a big no-no in media.
At the time,
I was living at my father's house.
I woke up in the morning to screaming,
and it was my father screaming,
and he opened the door and said,
"Aaron just hung himself."
And some news just breaking
as we come on the air, former NFL star
Aaron Hernandez found dead
in his prison cell overnight.
Apparently, he killed himself.
Medical personnel attempted
to perform life-saving techniques.
They transported Hernandez to the hospital
where he was pronounced dead
just after 4:00 a.m. this morning.
I was as shocked as anyone, and because
I had just spoken to him hours earlier,
and he was so happy and so ecstatic.
He was an eternal optimist.
It's very hard for me to accept the fact
that he may have committed suicide.
- We are keeping an open mind.
- It doesn't sound like him?
Not the Aaron that I know.
Hernandez's death
comes the same day
the Patriots head to the White House.
A spokesperson for the Patriots
said they would not be commenting today
on Hernandez's death.
So he spoke to Shayanna
Jenkins, his fiancée, that evening
before he went into his cell.
There was your traditional "lights out."
She didn't notice
anything different in his tone.
The protocol
at the prison requires
correction officers to make
hourly rounds at the facility.
And while there was no video
inside the cell itself,
in the general area of the block,
detectives will be able to see
what was going on in the hours
leading up to discovering Hernandez.
I know Aaron was into the K2.
It's like a synthetic marijuana.
Sources said
Hernandez was smoking synthetic marijuana
the night before he committed suicide.
These are the photos
of the Bible investigators found
in Aaron Hernandez's cell.
Officials say he was found
with the Bible verse John 3:16,
a reference to eternal life through Jesus,
written across his forehead.
Some brothers
were even saying like
"Hey, I feel sorry for the dude."
And that's when
I started looking at it like, yo,
at the end of the day, he's human, too.
We all make mistakes.
Will I always have resentment for the man?
Hell yes. Hell yes.
My heart goes out to his family,
his four-year-old daughter, his mom,
his loved ones.
But it especially goes out
to the Odin Lloyd family
because they don't get to see him anymore.
I'm just going to make it
very, very clear:
Aaron Hernandez gets no sympathy from me.
He had his mind set up.
I think when we saw him in the courthouse,
you know,
just looking at his daughter that way,
it was like the saddest thing
I've seen in a long time.
And I know a lot of people don't like him.
I know a lot of people think he's
a murderer and everything else, but
that breaks your heart.
He knew that that was the last time
he'd be seeing her.
I mean, he didn't show any emotion at all
when they said,
"You're going away forever."
But when he gets off
Either that or I was thinking,
"Jesus, I should've hired Baez
for the first trial."
But that's the only two things I can think
of that were going through his head.
You started to wonder
why would he have taken his own life?
One thing we learned that there were
three letters that he left behind.
A letter left to his fiancée,
one to his daughter and one to his lawyer.
The suicide note to Shayanna
says, "You're rich," and it's underlined.
Some thorny
legal questions remain.
Another inmate told
investigators Hernandez mentioned
that if you die in prison
and you have an open case,
your case gets thrown out.
Previously, the most
famous inmate at Shirley Max
was a Catholic priest
who had been convicted
of sexually assaulting children.
And he was murdered
before his appeal went through,
and because of abatement,
he was technically found not guilty.
So, inmates in that prison
knew about abatement.
There was a really archaic law
in the State of Massachusetts
called the abatement,
that if, in fact, you die
while a murder case is under appeal,
which was the case here, that if you die,
that means you can't participate
in the appeal,
and therefore, the conviction
would be erased from the record.
In light
of this legal principle,
do the Patriots owe him any money?
You realize,
"If I'm in jail for life
and my wife and daughter
gotta see me through this glass,
and if, um, somebody whispered
in my ear that,
'Dude, if you bite the bullet on this one
and take your life,
your kids will be straight,
your wife will be straight
for the rest of their lives'"?
It's no choice.
It's the type of shit a father would do,
so if you asked me
if a father would kill himself
for his fucking daughter and wife
to be set for life? Fuck, yes. I would.
Abatement remains the law
in this Commonwealth,
and this court is compelled
to follow binding precedent.
In the interest of justice,
the court has no choice
but to abate the proceedings of initio
by vacating Hernandez's convictions
and dismissing the charges
against him and his appeal.
In our book, he's guilty,
and he's gonna always be guilty.
The Patriots are not
just gonna cut a check.
They will fight that thing in court
till the last drop,
and it will cost more money in legal fees
to get that than they could ever get.
Did he think that far ahead on that?
I don't know.
For Aaron to do that, he was hurting.
He was hurting tremendously,
to an extreme that no one knew.
Since the news broke on Wednesday morning,
rumors have been swirling
about the death of Aaron Hernandez.
The latest reports suggest
he may have had a jailhouse lover.
Kyle Kennedy thinks
he was probably
the last fellow inmate
to see Aaron Hernandez alive.
And when the news broke
that, "My gosh, the gay lover"
I mean, the first reaction
my dad had was
I mean, I remember
he looked at me, and he said, "What?
Aaron's not gay. Are you kidding me?
This is bullshit, this is fake."
Like, he got, like, offended
by them even doing that.
And I think the words I used was,
"Mr. Hernandez was rolling over
in his grave right now."
Little did he know
that I was a part of it, so, um
It was very hard, man, it took me months.
Um, Aaron had killed himself,
and it wasn't something that I could
just come clean on months, months later.
I broke the news.
But once he told me,
it was going to be
an extended conversation,
and we talked it out and said, "Hey, man,
I'm glad you told me," and "Gee, whiz,
let's start getting you
feeling better about yourself."
Yes. It didn't matter to me
whether he was with a man or a woman.
So, that didn't matter to me.
I wanted him to have someone.
I stand here today
proud to say that
being bisexual has no difference
in being an athlete
or just being yourself.
He wasn't ashamed of who he was.
Aaron was proud of his sexuality,
it was just,
he couldn't say anything at the time.
There was no one in the NFL
that ever broke this news.
I saw a lot of
the news reports about Aaron, um,
the rumors, the other guy in prison
and the extremes
he went through to stay closeted.
You know, I had six shoulder surgeries,
I've got two torn knees,
I've had countless concussions,
back is messed up to this day,
I'm missing a groin, and, you know,
but I didn't think twice
about the injuries and what it was doing
in the long run 'cause I didn't plan
on living in the long-term.
My plan was play football
as long as possible.
As long as I have that cover.
And then I planned on killing myself
'cause I thought
no one would ever accept me.
So, I started talking with a psychologist
that the NFL has used before.
Months went by.
I was at the end of my rope, and
I think her first thing she said
after I told her was,
you know, that I wasn't the first player
to tell her that I was gay,
and that
I wasn't the second player either.
She, you know, told me that, you know, if
you're just going to kill yourself anyway,
you might as well sit down
and talk with these people
that you're afraid will disown you.
I get to my parents' house, and, you know,
I told my mom that, you know,
there was something that's been
bothering me for a long time
that, you know,
I need to talk to you about, and
So we're just three of us
sitting in the living room,
and I finally get the words
out of my mouth
and tell them I'm gay
and my mom just stands up
and gives me a hug, and she
she thought I was gonna tell them
that I was terminally ill, so in a sense,
she was relieved
that nothing was wrong with me.
So when I came out publicly
years later and Mr. Kraft,
he called me personally on my cell phone.
I picked up, and it was him.
Told me he was proud of me and, you know,
proud that I was finally being honest
and putting myself out there
to help other players
that may be in a position like,
you know, I was.
I think the whole story about Aaron
is really unfortunate because,
you know, you don't know
what drove him to do these things.
You know, if he was able
to be himself and, you know,
have some of these negative things
not in his life, you know, what kind
of difference would that have made?
I didn't know
why he did what he did,
and I didn't know
any of the circumstances surrounding it,
but I knew at that moment in time
that we've gotta get that brain.
Terri and DJ came back into the fold
because we needed their consent
for the donation of his brain.
And to their credit,
they came together for him.
The family of Aaron Hernandez
has decided to donate Aaron's brain
to the study,
so that we could possibly
shed light on this case.
It's the latest
in a string of NFL player suicides.
The family is having his brain studied.
They want to know
if the suicide was associated to
a history of concussion-related injuries.
Dr. McKee's research
at Boston University was instrumental.
What I really admire is that she didn't
ever plan to be involved with this.
She was an Alzheimer's expert,
and the brains just showed up in her lab.
She's studied more brains
of former contact athletes
than anyone in the world,
so she's doing tremendous work.
My job,
I look at the brains after death,
but the whole reason I do it
is so we can understand this disease
and learn how to diagnose it during life.
We know this is a problem,
and we just want to find solutions.
We want to bring hope and care
to the people
that are suffering this disorder.
I kind of thought maybe it was just
a publicity stunt of some sort,
but I could not have been more wrong
when I saw the results of his CTE.
The most significant
That this for an individual
who was only 27 at the time that he died,
he had a very advanced disease.
And not only was it
advanced microscopically,
especially in the frontal lobes,
which are very important for
decision making, judgment and cognition.
This is the first case we've ever seen
of that kind of damage
in such a young individual.
I didn't know
too, too much about CTE,
but I started to look at the signs
and symptoms or the effects of CTE.
Impulsiveness, you know, rash decisions,
sometimes propensity to be violent.
I mean, it was Aaron Hernandez.
And if you look at everything
that this young man had going on,
not only physically,
but mentally, emotionally, um,
from what happened to him as a child
and what he'd been dealing with
in his own life, and then on top of it,
you add the CTE,
it all made sense that this tragedy,
you know, had probably begun
or the seeds of this tragedy
had started many, many years earlier.
I can say that this is substantial damage
that undoubtedly took years to develop.
This is not something
that's developed acutely
or in just in the last several years.
I imagine these changes have been evolving
over Maybe even as long as a decade.
I think CTE could have, in fact,
been a contributing factor
to what happened
because I know Aaron's had concussions,
I know I've probably given him
personally one or two myself.
He's told me about one I gave to him
after the game celebrating,
just smacking his head.
I knew Aaron Hernandez
from Bristol, Connecticut,
an All-American.
And to think that this is a game
that we encourage young people to play,
and the end result was that
I'm conflicted. I really am.
I wasn't really shocked
because Junior Seau,
the same thing had happened with him.
Having CTE be the kind of thing
that both of them shared
is eye-opening to athletes and to
everybody in the football world.
I don't know if they're trying to pass
the cup of sympathy and empathy around,
but when it comes to him, I have none.
My thoughts that people
who think that CTE was somehow involved,
I think that's an absolute cop-out.
There are thousands
of former NFL players out there
that might have dealt with concussions.
I've dealt with them.
So to use that as a cop-out, I'm not
No, no. Come on.
We're smarter than that, people.
I don't think
you can blame it all on football
because lots of people play football.
We've never seen an NFL guy
in the middle of his success
go out and start murdering people.
So, I don't think
you can put it all on football.
But would Aaron Hernandez
be in this situation
if he was a concert pianist? Probably not.
If you look at the symptoms of concussion,
ringing in the ears,
imbalance, many others,
I'd experience that on a weekly basis.
Then I really began
to question my role in the NFL.
Ultimately, I decided
that it was brain health first.
I quit after one year.
The NFL is reeling
as a promising young rookie
announces his retirement
citing concerns over head trauma.
An uncommon move by Chris Borland.
This has got to worry the NFL.
Our game has never been more exciting,
has never been more competitive,
and I don't think it's ever been safer.
In my minimal interaction
with folks high in the NFL,
I think
there's a certain degree of hubris.
You know, they own a day of the week,
football's a religion,
and no matter whether or not
they're throwing a flag
or claiming concussions are down
or taking players into the blue tent,
the reason football's the most
popular sport is because it's violent.
So, they're not in the health business,
they're in the violence business.
You know, players joke
that Dracula runs the blood bank.
I'm very pleased with what
we're doing in the area of equipment,
what we're doing with medical attention.
And my sons and grandsons played,
I played,
and I'd recommend
to every mother out there
who wants her young man
to grow up special that they play, too.
It's all about
the business of football,
whether it's on the collegiate level
or whether it's on the professional level,
and very little to do
with what ultimately become
an expended asset of the business,
which are these players in the end.
I believe that if someone
had made football less important,
and Aaron's life and his behavior
more important,
the outcomes may have been different.
I was not prepared for this.
A murder conviction.
Ursula Ward
choking back tears
A murder conviction
will not bring my Odin back,
but it will offer me some peace.
begging lawmakers
to change a centuries-old law
that cleared her son's killer's name.
Why are you fighting
as hard as you are?
Because I'm fighting
for the other Odins out there
that doesn't have a voice, and I wanted
to make sure that my voice heard for them.
The law that has been on
the books in Massachusetts for decades.
But this morning,
the State Supreme Judicial Court said
that rule was outdated
and did not fit with contemporary life.
Aaron Hernandez
is a convicted murderer once again.
The family of Odin Lloyd
is extremely pleased
that the Supreme Judicial Court
of Massachusetts
has determined to reinstate
the conviction against Aaron Hernandez.
I think we all want to be
apologetic.
Anyone that was close to Aaron,
you know, we wanna say,
"This is why. This is why."
But at the end of the day,
he made these decisions.
You know, we can't sit here and say,
"This is why he made these decisions,"
or "this is why." We can paint a picture
of the things he was going through,
but he made these decisions.
The decisions lie with him,
the consequence lies with him.
You had talked about,
after the conviction,
you talked about forgiveness.
Do you still feel forgiveness?
I do. I do. And I pray to God
that his soul is at peace.
I pray to God that he find comfort,
and God will forgive him
of whatever happened.
Avielle! You going ni-night?
Avielle, say bye bye to Daddy.
Never bye bye, it's see you later.
There's no bye byes,
it's see you later.
She don't know that yet.
Say bye bye!
Nah, no, never bye bye.
Daddy's never going bye bye.
She's blowing her nose.
I'll talk to you later.
All right. I love you.
I'll talk to you later.
Okay, I love you. Bye.
The person you called
has hung up.