Attorney reveals what was going through Hernandez's mind right before suicide
Aaron Hernandez made his own sentencing decision for the murder of Odin Lloyd when he committed suicide in prison in April 2017 rather than serve the life sentence without possibility of parole that was handed down by the Massachusetts criminal courts.
Now, Hernandez’s lawyer, Jose Baez, is revealing to the world what went through the mind of the embattled former New England Patriots tight end in the final days of his life.
On Saturday, Oxygen Media is airing the first part of a docu-series called “Aaron Hernandez Uncovered.” The series features interviews with former teammates, detectives and Shayanna Jenkins, the mother of Hernandez’s child.
“After his death, I can tell you it really disturbed me how many people were throwing out stories and saying certain things that were not only factually inaccurate, but just outright abusive,” Baez told Fox News.
“I thought and I felt, and I still do to this day, that the real story has to get out there,” he added. “No one has ever captured the true Aaron Hernandez. It’s been bothersome to me and that’s why I decided to take part of it.”
Hernandez was acquitted in a separate double murder that occurred in 2012, although it did not change the fact that by virtue of his conviction in the Lloyd case, he was doomed to rot in jail for the rest of his days.
“Aaron’s final days were happy days. He was excited by the fact that he got acquitted. He was looking forward to the future,” Baez said of Hernandez’s reaction to the acquittal. “The best way I could describe it is through his own words. He said, ‘I feel like a kid again.’ He was so excited and happy.”
From a certain point of view, Hernandez is himself a victim of violence. After he died at age 27, doctors determined that his years of playing football had caused him to contract the most severe case of chronic traumatic encephalopathy they had ever seen in a man his age.
The Washington Post reported in November that scientists at Boston University’s world-renowned CTE research center gave Hernandez that dubious honor after doing a proper autopsy on the ex-Patriot’s brain.
Ann McKee, the head of the CTE center, said Hernandez’s brain was “one of the most significant contributions to our work.”
Hernandez’s Stage 3 CTE had never previously been seen in anyone younger than 46.
“When you have that type of a brain disease, it doesn’t control logic, Baez said. “That’s what people have a hard time understanding. If the brain is destroyed, and it was, then that’s what makes us go. Our thoughts, our decisions … our whole existence flows from that.”
“If the brain is destroyed.” It makes Hernandez sound less like a violent man capable of premeditated murder and more like a zombie from a horror film, driven by primal instinct and robbed of its humanity.
Now, this may be faint comfort if you’re the family of Odin Lloyd. All the sympathy in the world won’t bring him back from the dead.
But as Baez himself pointed out, the decline of Aaron Hernandez did not occur in a vacuum.
“It was a complete and total shock to me,” Baez said. “And unfortunately, CTE is not something that can be diagnosed in the living. So until that happens, we’ll never know who is walking around with this silent killer.”
The documentary, when it airs, will be another black mark on the NFL. Even if every player stands for the national anthem and waves the American flag while they do so, the league will still have an image problem.
And in the meantime, Baez’s point about silent killers cannot be ignored. How soon before we get another Aaron Hernandez — a man who may not have been a murderer before playing football sent him out of control of his own restraint?
Any chances for answers died in that prison cell. That’s going to have to be enough.
Truth and Accuracy
We are committed to truth and accuracy in all of our journalism. Read our editorial standards.
Advertise with The Western Journal and reach millions of highly engaged readers, while supporting our work. Advertise Today.
