New England Patriots tight end Aaron Hernandez fulfilled a childhood dream by scoring a touchdown in Super Bowl XLVI in 2012. A year later, he was arrested for murder. What followed was one of the most high-profile and mysterious crimes of the last decade, which Ryan Murphy will dramatize in the FX limited series “The FX.” American sports history: Aaron Hernandez.
Although the sportsman never spoke about his motives for the murder of his friend, former football player Odin Lloyd, he reported The Boston Globe and Netflix’s three-part documentary, Killer Inside: The Ghost of Aaron Hernandez, portrayed Hernandez as a figure plagued by unimaginable problems. Throughout his life, Hernandez faced child abuse, drug problems, fear of the world finding out about his sexuality, and a posthumous diagnosis that doctors called one of the worst cases of CTE in an athlete who was only 27 years old.
Since Hernandez’s conviction and shocking suicide, his story has been pulled in all directions. The press has called him a “monster” (and worse). His story has penetrated the world of homophobic locker room culture, the lack of support from his team’s personnel and even the dangers of football to the brain. In the new series created by Murphy, executive producer Stu Zicherman told the Los Angeles Times that he considered Hernandez’s story “a Shakespearean tragedy.” Instead of trying to solve why Hernandez killed his friend, the series tried to American crime history Formula by “taking a crime or an event and turning it into something much bigger in the fabric of America.”
Of course, this includes dramatized depictions of Hernandez’s life growing up in an abusive household, his difficulties in professional sports programs, and the murder of his friend. To separate fact from fiction in the upcoming FX series — the first two episodes of which premiere Tuesday, Sept. 17 — read the true story below.
Aaron Hernandez on the field for Super Bowl XLVI.
Who was Aaron Hernandez?
Aaron Hernandez was born on November 6, 1989, in Bristol, Connecticut. His father, Dennis Hernandez, was a former star high school football player for Bristol Central. Dennis often got into physical altercations with his mother, Terri Valentine-Hernandez, a public school administrative assistant who reportedly ran an accounting business on the side. Both parents were arrested multiple times during his childhood, between countless breakups and reunions. His father was abusive to Aaron and his older brother DJ and was reportedly homophobic.
However, Aaron continued to seek his father’s approval and played football at Bristol Central High School. He was named Gatorade’s football player of the year in his home state and began dating his future fiancée, Shayanna Jenkins. Hernandez then went to the University of Florida after head coach Urban Meyer convinced his high school principal to allow the star football player to graduate a semester early.
“He had graduated from high school more than a semester early – not because he was a good student, but because he was a great football player,” The Boston Globe reported after Hernandez’s death. “The athletic talents were obvious, but behind it was an angry teenager struggling with an abusive upbringing, a growing drug addiction and questions about his own sexual identity.”
Josh Andrés Rivera as Aaron Hernandez in American sports history: Aaron Hernandez.
The prognosis was largely correct. Chronic drug use and partying almost got Hernandez kicked out of the team, as the athlete later told globe that he was “high every time I was on the field.” If he hadn’t been drafted into the NFL, his days with Florida’s football team would have been over. Then the New England Patriots selected Hernandez in the fourth round of the 2010 NFL Draft, right behind tight end Rob Gronkowski.
American sports history Hernandez’s relationship with Patriots coach Bill Belichick is portrayed as fragile. The six-time Super Bowl winner threatened to cut losses if Hernandez proved too difficult. But Hernandez developed into a reliable offensive player alongside Gronkowski and star quarterback Tom Brady. The Patriots reached the Super Bowl in 2012, where they lost to the underdog New York Giants. Hernandez even scored a touchdown. Alongside Brady, he was arguably the most effective player on the field that day and secured a contract extension for five years and $40 million. Then the problems began.
Who did Aaron Hernandez murder?
On June 18, 2013, authorities found the body of Hernandez’s friend Odin Lloyd with numerous gunshot wounds a mile from the Patriots star’s home. Lloyd was a good friend of Hernandez’s who was dating his fiancée’s sister at the time. All signs pointed to Hernandez as the first suspect. Police later found bullet casings in a car Hernandez had rented before the murder, as well as surveillance footage that showed him disassembling his cellphone in his lawyer’s car the day after the murder. Hernandez pleaded not guilty and was sentenced to life in prison in 2015.
Before Lloyd’s murder, Hernandez had already had a bewildering collection of violent altercations. In 2007, he drunkenly refused to pay a bar bill in Gainesville, Florida, and punched the manager on the side of his head so hard that his eardrum burst. Then, in 2013, he allegedly shot Alexander Bradley, his marijuana supplier, through the eye. Although Bradley survived, he refused to name Hernandez as the shooter until 2016. They later settled out of court in a civil suit. According to the globeHernandez also had a second apartment where he stored drugs and illegal weapons and hid them from his fiancée.
Hernandez in court on August 22, 2013, just two months after the murder of Odin Lloyd.
Why did Aaron Hernandez kill Odin Lloyd?
At the time, police reported that it was possible that the athlete was acting out his sexuality after Lloyd discovered his sexuality. Hernandez’s motive may have been a previous double murder in Boston, but that theory was never proven either. Just a year before Lloyd’s murder, Hernandez was under investigation for the deaths of two men named Daniel Jorge Correia de Abreu and Safiro Teixeira Furtado. They were killed in a drive-by shooting that was not made public until after Lloyd’s death.
While searching Hernandez’s cousin’s home, police found a vehicle wanted in connection with the double murder. In addition, testimony from another of Hernandez’s victims, Alexander Bradley, showed that Hernandez had come into direct confrontation with the two men at a nightclub that same day. The professional athlete was tried for the two murders in 2017 but was acquitted after blaming Bradley for the shooting. Just five days later, Hernandez hanged himself in his prison cell.
American sports history will likely try to make sense of the madness. If early reviews are any indication, the series dramatizes the paranoia of Hernandez’s sexuality becoming public, coupled with his trauma and the pressure to perform as a professional athlete. In reality, Hernandez’s motives were never proven.
