What Happened to Aaron Hernandez? The Story Is Grim

In 2013, a jogger found Odin Lloyd, a semiprofessional football player dating Hernandez's fiancée's sister, dead with multiple gunshot wounds at a North Attleboro, MA, park. Days after the body's discovery, Hernandez was arrested and charged with first-degree murder on June 26. In 2015, Hernandez was convicted of first-degree murder and sentenced to life without the possibility of parole for his friend's death.

During the proceedings of the Lloyd case, police also linked Hernandez to several other investigations. They connected him to the drive-by shooting that killed cleaners Daniel de Abreu and Safiro Furtado in Boston in July 2012. In a lawsuit for damages, Alexander Bradley alleged that Hernandez shot him in the face after he confronted the football player about the murders and that the shooting left permanent damage in his eye. In 2016, he and Hernandez reached a settlement.

Represented by celebrity attorney Jose Baez, Hernandez was, however, eventually acquitted from the double murder in 2017. Baez criticized the police in court and argued that Hernandez was targeted as an NFL player. That wasn't the end of the legal proceedings — Hernandez had still been trying to appeal his 2015 conviction.

Besides the double homicide, Hernandez also briefly became linked to a 2007 shooting case in Gainesville, FL, that wounded two men. Detective Tom Mullins wrote in a report that Hernandez had been in the club where the shooting occurred along with the victims and witnesses, but there wasn't any evidence that suggested he participated in the shooting. The only person to say that he saw Hernandez later recanted his statement.

Later in 2019, Hernandez's former cellmate also claimed that Hernandez joked about a fourth victim. Apparently, Hernandez had hired a crew of associates that shot a person by accident, mistaking him for Lloyd. In his book about Hernandez, Dylan Howard said he believes that person may be Jordan Miller, who died at Boston's Hyde Park in an unsolved shooting case.

Days after his acquittal for the de Abreu and Furtado case, the former football player's troubled life came to an end. Hernandez, 27, was found dead in his cell at 3:05 a.m. on April 19, 2017.

But even after his death, there was yet another layer to him that was uncovered. After Hernandez's death, his family donated his brain to science. A scan of his brain after his death revealed that he had severe CTE (chronic traumatic encephalopathy), which is commonly linked to repeated blows to the head. Studies have shown that football players are more prone to this kind of condition, which is linked to increased aggression, poor impulse control, eventual dementia, and other mental health issues.

Hernandez left three notes when he was found in his cell. The letters were addressed to his lawyer Jose Baez, his fiancée Shayanna Jenkins, and his daughter Avielle. Now published in Baez's 2018 book about the former tight end, the letters took on different tones. The letter for Jose was upbeat and highlighted Hernandez's appreciation for his lawyer. The ones addressed to Jenkins and his daughter, on the other hand, were more foreboding. Hernandez talked about God's love, as well as entering a "timeless realm." In Jenkin's note, he cited John 3:16, which he also had written on his forehead.