All-American Murder Page 23

  He ended with a close-up of one of the tattoos Aaron had gotten in Redondo Beach.

  “‘God Forgives,’” Haggen said. “What is he asking God to forgive?”

  According to the DA, Hernandez was asking forgiveness for having shot Bradley, having shot Furtado, having shot de Abreu.

  “‘God Forgives.’ His statements. His words. That is a confession. But this is not a church, this is a courtroom. What matters in this room is the truth. What matters in this room is accountability. What matters in this room is a fair and just verdict based on the evidence, and not based on wild speculation, conjecture, and conspiracy theories. 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…The time for accountability is right now. His time is right now. Speak the truth through your verdicts and find him guilty.”

  Chapter 97

  The jurors deliberated for thirty-seven hours over the course of five and a half days.

  On April 14, they returned to the courtroom.

  Shayanna sniffled as the jurors entered. A few moments earlier, she had been crying.

  Everyone stood. It was so quiet that you could hear the rustle of clothing as people swayed from side to side. One of the courtroom’s pool cameras panned over Aaron, who was wearing a gray suit, a blue shirt, and a blue tie. It lingered on the victims’ families, in the front rows. It found Shayanna, behind them.

  Aaron pursed his lips. A clerk asked the foreperson if the jury had agreed on a verdict.

  The foreperson said that they had.

  “Will the jury and the defendant remain standing please?” the clerk asked. “All others may be seated.”

  The judge took a long moment to review the verdict. Then, with a sigh and a grimace, he set the proceedings in motion:

  “What say you, Madam Foreperson, on Indictment 2014-10417, Offense 001, charging murder in the first degree, victim Daniel de Abreu? Do you find the defendant not guilty, guilty of murder in the first degree, or guilty of murder in the second degree?”

  The foreperson’s voice was firm and even: “Not guilty.”

  For the first time, in all of his hundreds of hours in court, Aaron allowed his feelings to show in his face. His closed his eyes, inhaled deeply.

  The clerk continued: “What say you, Madame Foreperson, on Indictment 2014-10417, Offense 002, charging murder in the first degree, victim Safiro Furtado. Do you find the defendant not guilty, guilty of murder in the first degree, or guilty of murder in the second degree?”

  “Not guilty.”

  Aaron nodded, and continued to nod as the clerk continued to read and the foreperson answered.

  There were eight counts in all. Hernandez was not guilty of witness intimidation. He was not guilty of armed assault and attempt to murder.

  The one charge that Aaron was found guilty of was illegal possession of a firearm.

  Members of the victims’ families broke down in tears. One by one, they rushed out of the courtroom. As they did, Aaron let his mask slip, a bit more. Dennis Hernandez had taught his boy not to cry in front of other men. But now, Aaron did cry. He cried in front of the judge. In front of the jury that had found him innocent—in front of the world that had doubted his innocence—Aaron Hernandez cried tears of joy.

  He looked young, almost boyish. His other conviction was up for appeal.

  With Jose Baez on his team, Aaron was halfway to freedom.

  Coda

  The phones in Souza-Baranowski’s G2 General Housing Unit all looked the same: mounted on columns, they were silver-colored with black handsets. To use them, prisoners punched in the PIN numbers that had been assigned to them on arrival. But prison etiquette had to be followed. By general understanding, each phone was claimed by a different gang. The Latin Kings had their phones. The gangs from Boston and Springfield had theirs.

  Aaron Hernandez used phones that were claimed by the Bloods.

  In the days immediately following his exoneration for the double murders in Boston, he spoke with his lawyers, with family members. He’d stay on the line with his fiancée, Shayanna, until the last possible minute. Then, as nine-thirty neared, a corrections officer would call time.

  “Five minutes to count!” the CO would shout.

  Every night was the same: The inmates in G2 would shuffle off, grudgingly, to their cells. Hernandez would climb a set of blue stairs to his cell—Cell 57, left of the corrections officers’ desk, located one level below. The CO would flick a switch that caused all the doors in the unit to slam shut and lock for the night. Then the prisoners would stand, facing the window in their cell door, and the CO would walk, slowly, past each cell, eyeballing the prisoners and physically checking to make sure that each door was locked.

  Some COs walked the ground floor first, then climbed the stairs to count the second. Some COs did the opposite.

  It was as much variety as the system allowed for.

  For Aaron Hernandez, this had been the routine for two years. But the past few days had been different. According to an internal prison report, “He was positive and even happily emotional, which was not usual of Hernandez.”

  Aaron told other inmates that he was looking forward to reuniting with his family, and with Shayanna. He was still young—twenty-seven. If Jose Baez could work his magic again, he might have a few years of football left in him.

  “Since Friday’s verdict he had been talking about the NFL and going back to play even if it wasn’t for the Pats,” an inmate would say. “He talked about his daughter and spending time with her.”

  Now, it was the evening of April 18, 2017. The Patriots, who had won the Super Bowl again that year, would be going to the White House the next morning to meet with President Trump. But, once again, Aaron stayed on the line with Shayanna, drawing out the last long minutes of the day.

  Then the CO called time and Hernandez shuffled off to his cell, his dark brown eyes shining with purpose.

  A few hours later, at around one in the morning, Aaron hung part of a bedsheet over the window cut into the door of his cell.

  He jammed the rail the door ran on with ripped-up pieces of cardboard.

  Then he opened his Bible to the Book of John and wrote “John 3:16,” in red ink, on his forehead.

  Slicing into his right middle finger, Aaron used his own blood to mark that same passage in his Bible. He wrote “John 3:16,” in his own blood, on the wall of his cell, and drew a crude pyramid, like the one on the back of a one-dollar bill.

  Beneath it, he wrote the word “Illuminati.”

  Leaving several handwritten notes by the side of the Bible, he made large, stigmata-like marks, in blood, on both of his feet. Then, stripped naked, he poured several bottles of shampoo from the prison canteen all over the floor and picked up another part of the bedsheet, which he had twisted, tightly, into a rope.

  Hernandez tied one end of the twisted sheet to the top of one of the vertical slats on the window across from the door to his cell. But the crossbar was just five feet from the floor. There was a metal desk directly beneath it, a metal chair next to it. Both had been bolted right into the wall.

  What happened next took doing and determination on Aaron’s part.

  First, he rolled up some towels and stuck them through the crossbar, so that the twisted sheet wouldn’t slide down the vertical slat. Then, he tied the other end of the sheet around his neck.

  By the time the guards found him, Aaron Hernandez was cold to the touch.

  Epilogue

  Even in death—especially in death—Aaron Hernandez monopolized the news cycle.

  Why had he done it? Had he even done it?

  Brian Murphy and Jose Baez refused to believe that Aaron had committed suicide. “He was so positive, so excited to come home,” Shayanna said. “He was so, ‘Daddy’s gonna be home, and I can’t wait to sleep in bed with you guys, and I can’t wait to just hold you and love you.’”

  A few days before Aaron’s death, a
Boston reporter had gone on the radio and gabbed about rumors that Aaron had been leading a double life. Before long, tabloids were floating the idea that Kyle Kennedy had been his prison lover.

  Rumor had it that one of the three notes Aaron had left behind was intended for Kennedy. The contents of that note would not be revealed. But a copy of the note Aaron left for Shayanna did make its way into a court filing.

  “Shay,” Aaron had written. “Your character is that of a true angel and the definition of God’s love!”

  Aaron asked his fiancée to tell his story fully, to always remember how much he loved her. His death was God’s plan, he said. In parting, he told her:

  “(YOU’RE RICH)”

  A month later, on May 17, Shayanna Jenkins appeared on Phillip McGraw’s television program. There was no note intended for Kennedy, she assured Dr. Phil.

  “There’s nothing for Kyle Kennedy,” Shayanna said.

  When Dr. Phil asked her if Aaron was gay, Shayanna assured him that Aaron was not. “He was very much a man to me,” she said.

  On May 24, DJ Hernandez released a statement—his first public comment since Aaron’s death.

  “From the bottom of my heart,” DJ had written, “I want to thank everyone who has supported my mother and me during such difficult times. My younger brother Aaron was far from perfect, but I will always love him. Many stories about my brother’s life have been shared with the public—except the story Aaron was brave enough to share with our mother and me. It’s the one story he wanted us to share with the world. It is Aaron’s truth.”

  But the statement was followed by months of silence on DJ’s part. As of this writing, the story that DJ hinted at remains untold.

  What did Aaron mean, when he told Shayanna, “You’re rich”?

  One inmate told prison officials that Aaron mentioned a rumor that had been going around the prison: If an inmate had an open appeal, and died in prison, he would be acquitted of that charge and rendered innocent.

  Incredibly, that rumor turned out to be true: According to a principle known as Abatement ab initio (“from the beginning”) the moment of Aaron’s last breath was also the moment in which his conviction for Odin Lloyd’s murder was rendered void. And if Aaron was free and clear of every murder he’d been accused of, didn’t it stand to reason that the Patriots—who had voided Aaron’s contract guarantees after his arrest for the murder of Odin Lloyd—owed Shayanna and Avielle the millions they had refused to pay Aaron?

  As of this writing, lawsuits filed by Jose Baez and several other lawyers are ongoing.

  As the summer drew to its close, Aaron Hernandez made headlines again.

  On September 21, researchers at Boston University announced the startling results of their thorough examination of Hernandez’s brain: not only did the brain exhibit symptoms of CTE, it showed signs of Stage III CTE—the worst case ever seen in a player as young as Hernandez.

  Aaron’s brain was “totally mangled,” one of the researchers would say.

  No medical diagnosis could explain all of Aaron’s decisions, in life or in death. Many professional athletes suffer from CTE. Very few commit murder.

  There is no way to establish how badly Aaron’s brain was damaged at the time that he committed his various crimes. No single explanation exists for any of his actions.

  Like all lives, Aaron’s life was more complicated than that.

  What we do know is that Aaron Hernandez was an escape artist. On the football field, no one could catch him. In Florida, he was a few steps removed from a terrible shooting that no one had answered for. In Boston, he almost certainly committed a double murder that he got away with.

  And when Aaron was caught, and convicted, for Odin Lloyd’s murder, he continued to find new ways to escape. By killing himself, he escaped a long life behind bars. He escaped his sole remaining murder conviction, while finding a way to provide for Shayanna and Avielle.

  In the end, he escaped understanding.

  Photos

  Terri Hernandez, yearbook photo, 1977

  Dennis Hernandez, yearbook photo, 1975

  Aaron Hernandez’s childhood home on Greystone Avenue (Getty Images)

  Hernandez in 2005 (AP)

  Playing in the Battle for the Bell (Mike Orazzi)

  Aaron and DJ Hernandez (Mike Orazzi)

  Tim Tebow (Mark Seliger)

  Hernandez playing against the New York Jets, 2011 (Getty Images)

  Hernandez in 2012 (Getty Images)

  Odin Lloyd (Getty Images)

  The clearing where Odin Lloyd’s body was discovered (Bristol County Clerk’s Office)

  Aerial photograph of the crime scene, introduced into evidence in the Odin Lloyd murder trial (Bristol County Clerk’s Office)

  Hernandez’s home in North Attleboro (CBS News)

  Surveillance footage of Hernandez holding a gun (Bristol County Clerk’s Office)

  Surveillance video of Shayanna Jenkins removing a box from her home (Bristol County Clerk’s Office)

  Hernandez placed under arrest (George Rizer/Boston Globe)

  Prosecutor William McCauley questions Detective Mike Elliott during the Odin Lloyd murder trial. (AP Photo/Dominick Reuter, Pool)

  Carlos Ortiz (AP)

  Ernest Wallace (Bristol County Clerk’s Office)

  Tanya Singleton (AP)

  Defense attorney James Sultan during the Odin Lloyd murder trial (AP Photo/Boston Globe, John Tlumacki, Pool)

  William McCauley questions Patriots owner Robert Kraft. (AP/Boston Globe, John Tlumacki, Pool)

  Shayanna Jenkins testifies. (CJ Gunther/AP)

  Jennifer Fortier takes the stand. (AP)

  Terri Hernandez and Shayanna Jenkins break down as the verdict is read. (Trial footage)

  Shaneah Jenkins consoles Ursula Ward. (Dominick Reuter/AP)

  Souza-Baranowski Correctional Center (Sandy Hill/AP)

  Hernandez and Jose Baez (Chris Christo/AP)

  An evidence photograph of Hernandez’s tattoos, including a smoking muzzle and a spent shell (AP)

  Hernandez’s “Lifetime Loyalty” prison tattoo (AP)

  Alexander Bradley testifies. (Steven Senne/AP)

  Shayanna Jenkins and Avielle Hernandez in court (Keith Bedford/Boston Globe via AP)

  Hernandez blows kisses to his daughter, Avielle. (AP)

  Kyle Kennedy (AP)

  Hernandez cries as the jury delivers its verdict in his second trial. (AP)

  A cell identical to Hernandez’s cell at Souza-Baranowski (David L. Ryan/Boston Globe via Getty Images)

  Cross sections of Hernandez’s brain (Anne McKee, MD/CTE Center, Boston University)

  About the Authors

  James Patterson received the Literarian Award for Outstanding Service to the American Literary Community from the National Book Foundation. He holds the Guinness World Record for the most #1 New York Times bestsellers, and his books have sold more than 365 million copies worldwide. A tireless champion of the power of books and reading, Patterson created a new children’s book imprint, JIMMY Patterson, whose mission is simple: “We want every kid who finishes a JIMMY Book to say, ‘PLEASE GIVE ME ANOTHER BOOK.’” He has donated more than one million books to students and soldiers and funds over four hundred Teacher Education Scholarships at twenty-four colleges and universities. He has also donated millions of dollars to independent bookstores and school libraries. Patterson invests proceeds from the sales of JIMMY Patterson Books in pro-reading initiatives.

  Alex Abramovich is the author of Bullies: A Friendship. He writes for the London Review of Books and teaches at Columbia University.

  Mike Harvkey is the author of the novel In the Course of Human Events. He has written for Esquire, Salon, Poets & Writers, and other publications.

  Books by James Patterson

  Featuring Alex Cross

  The People vs. Alex Cross • Cross the Line • Cross Justice • Hope to Die • Cross My Heart • Alex Cross, Run • Merry Christmas, Alex Cross • Kill Alex C
ross • Cross Fire • I, Alex Cross • Alex Cross’s Trial (with Richard DiLallo) • Cross Country • Double Cross • Cross (also published as Alex Cross) • Mary, Mary • London Bridges • The Big Bad Wolf • Four Blind Mice • Violets Are Blue • Roses Are Red • Pop Goes the Weasel • Cat & Mouse • Jack & Jill • Kiss the Girls • Along Came a Spider

  The Women’s Murder Club

  16th Seduction (with Maxine Paetro) • 15th Affair (with Maxine Paetro) • 14th Deadly Sin (with Maxine Paetro) • Unlucky 13 (with Maxine Paetro) • 12th of Never (with Maxine Paetro) • 11th Hour (with Maxine Paetro) • 10th Anniversary (with Maxine Paetro) • The 9th Judgment (with Maxine Paetro) • The 8th Confession (with Maxine Paetro) • 7th Heaven (with Maxine Paetro) • The 6th Target (with Maxine Paetro) • The 5th Horseman (with Maxine Paetro) • 4th of July (with Maxine Paetro) • 3rd Degree (with Andrew Gross) • 2nd Chance (with Andrew Gross) • First to Die