a-aron hernandez

[sushihorn 3233]

11 minutes ago, yaqdum said:

this is stupid talk.  you should be ashamed.

when i think of people like hernandez i remember the story of deacon jim miller, the wild west era murder-for-hire monster.  i bet his brain was a disaster like herndandez'.  in his case i suspect maybe a horse kicked him as a small child or maybe had a bad fall.  by the time he was eight he had murdered two of his grandparents for pissing him off.  there was clearly something seriously wrong with him, but, like hernandez, sub-human lifeforms found him useful and kept him in business.  only for miller, it was directly his madness that was useful, not something like blocking and catching passes.  miller was cold and professional.  no even matches for him.  blowing his mark off a horse from behind with a shotgun was his trademark.  we all grew up hearing of jesse james and the daltons and such.  we never heard about deacon jim miller because he was so despicable.  and so useful to the wealthy ranchers who kept him out of prison and away from hangman's nooses.

all of you who say aaron hernandez should have waked up some morning and said, "hey, you know, i really shouldn't be killing people," step into the nearest restroom and look into the mirror.  point at yourself and say stupid.  'cause that's what you are.

It's pretty clear you have no case when you start out by employing personal attacks and caricature.  A lot of word to deny the obvious.  Humans make moral choices.  So did Hernandez cease to be human because he was molested?  And why does that not apply to the millions of victims out there?

Edited October 17, 2018 by sushihorn

[yaqdum 182]

2 minutes ago, sushihorn said:

It's pretty clear you have no case when you start out by employing personal attacks and caricature.  A lot of word to deny the obvious.  Humans make moral choices.  So did Hernandez cease to be human because he was molested?  And why does that not apply to the millions of victims out there?

maybe you have shit for a brain.  you keep talking moral choices.  read it again, dope.

[sushihorn 3233]

2 minutes ago, yaqdum said:

maybe you have shit for a brain.  you keep talking moral choices.  read it again, dope.

You don't even address the points, you just dismiss them and act smug and superior.  Really no point talking to a brick wall.

[yaqdum 182]

there is a morality component to this sorry story, of course.  what about the various 'people' along the way who recognized what a danger this guy was.  not even counting those who probably covered for known or highly suspected murder.  all who used this guy for their own benefit and kept quiet are the ones we should point out.  that really is a good versus bad story.

[SHOOTER12 8852]

58 minutes ago, yaqdum said:

i don't know if there's anything more recent on this, but the last i heard the big story on hernandez was his brain damage.  far worse than his years of football should have generated.  my great suspicion is very early brain damage that started him on that slope long before most.

certainly the early molestation was a factor, but that guy may have been an urban meyer special all the way.  i have to wonder if he was a spring trap most of his life, with his father's shocking passage putting him over the edge.

assuming his brain damage was as bad as described, it's ridiculous to expect him to straighten himself out.  my wish is he had played college ball for a true human, but there aren't many in that game.  maybe a real person would have realized how dangerous he was and gotten him into treatment that maybe would have at least kept him from murdering people instead of covering for it.

I'm curious also, now that we know more about his tempestuous relationship with his father, just how much/how many times his father may have hit him in the head from an early age on up.  Especially since the CTE was worse than what his football years alone would/should have generated.

[Lhorn 5024]

Yeah, I agree that head trauma and abuse were probably huge factors in becoming the POS that he became.  I think the same can be said for most POS.  Whether it's sexual abuse, other forms of physical abuse, verbal abuse, mental illness, substance abuse, extreme poverty, there's usually a reason that came be blamed.  I don't think people are saying "his behavior had no root cause."  Likewise I don't the other side is saying "because there were factors in his past which contributed to his behavior, he is blameless."  Ultimately I come down on the side of largely he chose his course in life of his own free will.  That the vast majority of victims of similar abuse go on to live productive lives without killing others is one reason. Another is that he was a high functioning member of society (at least on the surface) or many years.  He was not so crippled by his past that he was unable to function in modern society or didn't know right from wrong.  It's unfortunately that some of us have a much heavier cross to bear than others and it certainly plays a roll in how they choose to live their lives, but I suspect that's little consolation to his victims.  

[yaqdum 182]

oh, yeah.  there's no doubt that hernandez was a pos.  it's just that anyone who doesn't understand how much brain damage can change a person should listen rather than speak.  how serious his damage was and how much it affected him is a crap shoot, i'm betting.  i also bet the effect was really large.  whether he could have chosen to mitigate it is always a key question, and i'm sure we'll never know that as well.

for that matter, what if he had been small and slow and not treated like a prince by his community his whole life?  how much would that possibly change how he turned out?  dunno.

really, aaron hernandez was a serial killer and was different from others only in the way he was shielded from the consequences for so long.  that he killed and loved it should have put him behind bars with no hope of parole.  it's the talk of expecting better from him that is nutty.

[Funk Doctor Spock 12792]

He sucked more dicks than aggy, and that in itself is an accomplishment I didn't think would ever be broken. 

[Vic Mackey 47303]

Has any other parts been released of this story? All I have read is Part 1.

[Angry Gorilla 1770]

1 minute ago, Vic Mackey said:

Has any other parts been released of this story? All I have read is Part 1.

5/6 parts are out, but behind a paywall.  +Rep to anyone who can post them here.

[Vic Mackey 47303]

1 minute ago, Angry Gorilla said:

5/6 parts are out, but behind a paywall.  +Rep to anyone who can post them here.

Yeah someone pasted the text only version of part 1. I would love to read the rest. But not signing up for Boston Globe to read it.

[Herpa Derpa 6158]

If there’s one thing this story will tell us that we can all agree with, Urban Meyer is a morally bankrupt piece of shit with not an ounce of redeeming value. 

[BlueGreySky 1032]

It is known.

[Vic Mackey 47303]

59 minutes ago, Herpa Derpa said:

If there’s one thing this story will tell us that we can all agree with, Urban Meyer is a morally bankrupt piece of shit with not an ounce of redeeming value. 

Agreed but I don't need this story to tell me that. He has a big track record of being a selfish piece of shit. He will bail on his team the second he thinks he can't win.

[Doc Reeves 6434]

7 hours ago, sushihorn said:

It's pretty clear you have no case when you start out by employing personal attacks and caricature.  A lot of word to deny the obvious.  Humans make moral choices.  So did Hernandez cease to be human because he was molested?  And why does that not apply to the millions of victims out there?

Lol. Welp. You sure got the whole criminal mind thing worked out. Jfc.

[Richter 2292]

I really thought it was unnecessary for part 3 to be all one highly pornagraphic description of a gay orgy between Hernandez, Urban Meyer, Zac Smith and his spider thong cock ring, and Tim Tebow. But I guess if that’s how it all went down at UF, it does help shed light on his mental state.   But really, they could have just mentioned the sex.  I didn’t need the paragraphs of vivid and shuddering descriptions.

[Pam Cummings 9696]

On 10/14/2018 at 11:48 AM, Your Mom said:

Jesus people. The point of the story is that each instance of abuse has many victims far down the line. Nobody is excusing Aaron. The abuse anyone suffers has implications far beyond that one persons life. It’s not an excuse or a justification for anything and nobody in the thread said I’d should be  

Your dismissive attitude toward abuse is far more enabling than the guy who wrote the article and the people who see something significant in it. 

This. Studying cases like this can help identify and curb this kind of behavior, saving lives down the road.

[Guest]

5 hours ago, Thujone said:

Yes. The article was intended as a way to enable murder. Thank you for your valuable insight. 

There are some who would say the past abuse makes his actions understandable.

I disagree, that's all.

 

There's also a significant element in our society who wishes to excuse bad behavior because something bad happened in the past..  I 'strenuously' object.

 

Break the fucking chain of abuse.

Edited October 18, 2018 by slorch

[Jack Straw 2954]

47 minutes ago, slorch said:

There's also a significant element in our society who wishes to excuse bad behavior because something bad happened in the past.

No, there isn’t.  

[Pam Cummings 9696]

2 hours ago, slorch said:

There are some who would say the past abuse makes his actions understandable.

I disagree, that's all.

 

There's also a significant element in our society who wishes to excuse bad behavior because something bad happened in the past..  I 'strenuously' object.

 

Break the fucking chain of abuse.

Literally nobody here thinks that you maroon.

Edited October 18, 2018 by Pam Cummings

[Guest]

Yeah, I made it up.  This line of thought is never used to defend such actions in a court room.

 

Pro athlete fucks up in life...ohhh but he had such a tough childhood. 

 

It's all over the place.

Edited October 18, 2018 by slorch

[Monty86 60]

part 2, Lost in the Swamp.  NSIAP

 

Spoiler

A baby-faced Aaron Hernandez wore an L.L. Bean backpack when he arrived in Gainesville, Fla., in January 2007 as a frenzy engulfed the University of Florida. The basketball team had won a national championship, and on Hernandez’s first day of classes, the football team won one of its own.

A torrent of students flooded University Avenue, climbing light poles and scaling restaurant roofs as they chanted: “It’s great. To be. A Flori-da Ga-tor.”

Athletes walked like legends among the 52,000 students on this stately red-brick campus dotted with palm trees, live oaks, and tufts of Spanish moss. The bleachers and luxury skyboxes of the football stadium known as The Swamp stretch so high they could seat the entire population of Hernandez’s hometown of Bristol, Conn., and two of its suburbs.

The thunderous adulation of The Swamp would help fuel Hernandez’s rise — he became the college game’s best tight end — but also speed his fall. A Spotlight Team examination of his Florida years found new evidence underscoring how the coldly corporatized world of big-time college football indulged and exacerbated the very traits in Hernandez that would one day destroy his life and end others.

His anger. His recklessness. His fascination with violence and the violent. His admitted immaturity.

 

Hernandez (81) came to the University of Florida as a highly touted recruit from Bristol, Conn. By junior year, he would be the nation’s top tight end. (Tim Casey/GatorCountry.com)

Immaturity, in fact, was all but baked into Florida coach Urban Meyer’s plan for Hernandez. He wanted his best freshman players young, and he wanted them on the field early.

Hernandez had just turned 17 when he arrived on campus. Six months ahead of his high school’s graduation, he was suddenly a college kid, buzzing down Stadium Road on a silver scooter, working out with the team, hanging out at bars, and finding trouble. Hernandez would quickly learn here that consequences and moral norms — even when a human life hung in the balance — did not necessarily apply to football players.

There was no way, except physically, he was ready for this. The young man who came to Gainesville wasn’t academically prepared or emotionally grounded for college life, according to previously undisclosed college records and recordings of phone calls Hernandez later made from jail. He had graduated high school more than a semester early — not because he was a great student but because he was a great football player.

“If I had it to do over again, I would have fought tooth and nail not to let that kid graduate at midyear, not to let him go to Florida at midyear,” said his high school principal, Dennis Siegmann, in his first extended interview about Hernandez. “Had we had a longer time with him, maybe we could have changed things.”

Maybe. But Siegmann succumbed, as many have, to the persuasive powers of Urban Meyer.

The hard-charging coach had traveled to Bristol. Siegmann said they met alone in the principal’s office. He recalled Meyer telling him that Hernandez “has to graduate” six months ahead of the rest of his class.

Meyer was at the forefront of a growing but controversial trend to have elite recruits take summer school classes and finish high school early — a practice that he defended to the Globe in an interview last week. The goal was to start college in January so Hernandez could learn the offense and play spring football.

Siegmann and others at Bristol Central had been worried about Hernandez’s mental state since his father’s sudden death earlier in 2006. But the pressure was intense. Meyer had help from one of his Florida assistants, Steve Addazio, a Connecticut native who had initially recruited Hernandez. The two coaches, Siegmann said, told Hernandez how much they loved his talent and his potential to play in the NFL.

“They were pushing pretty hard,” Siegmann said. “To hear that not just from Urban, but from a local guy, Steve Addazio… . It was pretty daunting on Aaron.”

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Meyer and Addazio may not have known all they were getting in Hernandez. The athletic gifts were obvious, but behind them was an angry teenager struggling with an abusive upbringing, a growing dependence on drugs, and questions about his own sexual identity. And this vulnerable young man was entering a realm where the sport had grown into a billion-dollar business that prioritized on-field performance above all else.

The classroom, certainly, was a distant second.

His early high school diploma couldn’t change certain facts: Hernandez wasn’t fully academically ready for college. His verbal SAT score of 420 was below the minimum required at Florida, where the majority of freshmen scored 600 or above, records obtained by the Globe show. While Hernandez’s overall SAT score did barely make the grade, a college administrator wrote in the admission paperwork that he needed “reading [and] writing remediation.”

College administrator recommends remediation for Hernandez (p. 1)

 

View the entire document with DocumentCloud

And he got it. In Gainesville, Hernandez took rudimentary reading and writing courses at a community college, courses that may have helped him but did not count for college credit. Records obtained by the Globe show that many Florida football players who graduated high school early — especially under coach Meyer — took classes their first semester at that same institution, Santa Fe Community College.

Football, of course, was the main event. Hernandez found that his childhood sport had become the equivalent of a full-time job requiring 40 to 60 hours a week. Summer workouts and spring practices keep players on campus almost year-round.

 

Hernandez graduated high school a semester early to jump-start his college football career. In October 2009, he took the field before a game against Louisiana State University. (Gary W. Green/Orlando Sentinel)

“Everything is predicated on football,” said one of Hernandez’s teammates, the speedy kick returner Brandon James. “They say it’s school, but it’s football, football, football.”

Another teammate, Jim Tartt, said that while his scholarship provided a free education, he wanted to study agriculture.

“I got a degree in anthropology,” said Tartt, a 315-pound offensive lineman. “Now if you ever met me and knew what I looked like, I’m not an anthropologist and neither is half of the rest of the football team. But you have to pick a major that is conducive to a schedule with football.”

But Hernandez’s growing prominence in an elite football program also had its perks — perks which, in the end, did him no good at all.

It was a world of entitlement, where coaches enabled him, a football lawyer protected him, and fans adored him. Hernandez played on what many consider the greatest college football team of all time with a lineup stocked with future NFL stars. But there would also be destructive impunity, drugs, and the company of bad actors he met through Florida football. This was the time when he snapped a selfie that later went viral — posing in front a mirror, a raised Glock handgun in his left hand.

 

The first evidence of Hernandez’s fascination with violence emerged in college. Law enforcement collected this selfie, published by TMZ, as evidence. (TMZ)

Hernandez worried about the turmoil he held inside. Years later, he told a college teammate in a taped jail phone call that he arrived in Gainesville brimming with a destructive rage because of the upheaval in his family.

“You know how I used to always be going sick over that shit when I was down there,” Hernandez said. “I was so immature, just reckless.”

He seemed doomed to find trouble. There were two quick traffic tickets after he arrived in Gainesville — improper passing on his scooter near the football stadium and driving a red motorcycle without license plates. The first real warning sign — and Hernandez’s first lesson about the impunity of football players — came the weekend before final exams.

At 1:07 a.m., police responded to The Swamp, a bar with waitresses in skimpy uniforms. The bar manager told police that after a dispute over a $12 tab he had been “sucker punched in the left ear” by “the freshman tight end.”

The “freshman tight end” was Hernandez, who at 17 was too young to legally drink and, in the ordinary course of things, should still have been in Bristol finishing high school. Instead Hernandez was in the Gainesville bar with Tim Tebow, the charismatic quarterback who helped recruit him to Florida.

Hernandez admitted throwing the punch. He told police he thought a fan had bought the two drinks. Officers did not arrest Hernandez but warned him to expect a criminal complaint. The bar manager suffered a ruptured eardrum, upping the potential charge to a felony — a charge that could derail Hernandez’s football career.

 

Shortly after arriving in Gainesville, Hernandez punched a bar manager at The Swamp Restaurant in April 2007. (Andrew Stanfill for The Boston Globe)

Then in the middle of the night, Tebow and Hernandez did something shrewd and “called Coach Urban Meyer,” police records show. Help arrived quickly.

Like many elite college football programs, the Gators had an unofficial defense lawyer. Police have joked that Huntley Johnson, a graduate of the University of Florida law school, had a better notification system than 911.

He quickly made a difference. The bar manager soon told police he might “request that the charges be dropped” because he had been “contacted by legal staff and coaches with UF and that they are working on an agreement.”

The university has denied that there was any settlement. Regardless, Hernandez never faced charges, and the incident did not become public for years.

The crime was ultimately inconsequential — a single punch in a college bar. But the lesson Hernandez learned was clear: Even the law knows that football comes first.

 

Defense attorney Huntley Johnson has represented dozens of University of Florida athletes, including Hernandez. (Andrew Stanfill)

Huntley Johnson helped keep trouble-prone football players on the field in an era when the Gators had so much contact with the Gainesville police that Meyer once addressed officers at roll call. A running tally of arrests compiled by the Orlando Sentinel during Meyer’s six-year tenure reached at least 31, for offenses ranging from firing an AK-47 in public to throwing food at an employee at a Jimmy John’s sandwich shop.

The father of NFL quarterback Cam Newton — another early high school graduate in Hernandez’s class who left Florida after an arrest for stealing a laptop — once described Johnson as the Gators’ legal MVP.

Another classmate, Chris Rainey, was a suspect in five crimes but faced charges only once, according to an ESPN investigation that found Florida football and basketball players avoided criminal charges much more often than the public.

“If anything happens, we got Huntley,” Rainey told ESPN in 2015.

A mile east of the Gators’ football stadium, Johnson’s law office is cluttered with autographed photos of Tebow and framed newspaper articles. One headline boasts, “His Mission: Save Gators’ Hides.” A 2006 National Champions poster bears the inscription: “Huntley - Thanks for being a part of the Team!” Signed: Coach Urban Meyer.

 

A 2006 national championship poster in attorney Huntley Johnson’s office was signed by coach Urban Meyer. (Andrew Ryan/Globe Staff)

Johnson refused to take questions when a Globe reporter visited his office but read a short statement about Hernandez.

“He was always extremely courteous to me,” Johnson said. “It was a pleasure to represent him.”

Meyer told the Globe that he and his staff tried their best to help Hernandez, who they knew had arrived on campus in emotional turmoil.

Meyer said he did not recall meeting with Hernandez’s high school principal and “never pushed someone” to graduate high school early, although he sees it as a positive jump-start to college for many recruits.

And he minimized his role in bringing Hernandez to Florida, saying it was mostly the work of his assistant coach, Addazio, and that he got involved “in the back half of the recruiting.” Addazio, who is now head coach at Boston College, declined to comment.

Asked what he could have done differently with Hernandez, Meyer paused 20 seconds before responding.

“I really don’t know,” Meyer said. “I saw a distressed person when he came to our place, we tried to surround him with really, really quality people and we monitored him very closely and then he went on to an NFL career. So I’m trying to think . . .

“That’s a tough question.”

 

Coach Urban Meyer led the Gators to two national championships. Fans showed their appreciation at a game in 2007. (Sam Greenwood/Getty Images)

Under Meyer, Florida football soared to new heights, but it came with a cost.

“I was addicted to winning,” he said in a 2014 television interview.

For the billion-dollar business of elite college football, the real addiction may be money. Top programs are so awash in cash that assistant coach salaries can top $1 million. Recruiters crisscross the country in private jets and helicopters. Revenue rules.

“It’s really transformed everything,” said Alicia Jessop, a Pepperdine University professor who writes about the business of sports. “Choices are now being made to drive the bottom line.”

The culprit is television. Revenue exploded after a 1984 US Supreme Court antitrust ruling against the NCAA allowed colleges to sell broadcast rights to the highest bidders. To keep pushing for more, elite college football lengthened the season and adopted a playoff system. In the last decade alone, annual revenue doubled to $4.2 billion.

Annual revenue for elite college football

Source: Data collected under the Equity in Athletics Disclosure Act from programs in the NCAA Division I in Football Bowl Subdivision. Revenue adjusted for inflation

Critics lament that all that money has transformed an extracurricular school activity into what is essentially a profit-hungry business that exploits young men. At the elite level, critics argue, college football is broken.

 

Hernandez embraced coach Meyer during his last game in Florida in 2010. (Chris Zuppa/Tampa Bay Times)

“The potential long-term health risk for all players, for me, has been the tipping point,” said Amy P. Perko, head of the Knight Commission on Intercollegiate Athletics, in an interview describing her personal views and not speaking on behalf of the commission. “Clearly the gross revenues from the programs continue to pass unimaginable levels.”

Discuss: Annual revenue for elite college football has more than doubled in the past decade to over $4.2 billion. Should football be treated more like a business, or remain a college extracurricular activity?

Join the discussion

Meyer had come to national notice after leading the Utah Utes to an undefeated 2004 season. Florida beat out Notre Dame and signed him to a seven-year, $14 million contract. In Gainesville, Meyer’s recruiting obsession became so intense he texted top high school athletes from his pew in church and the bleachers of his daughter’s volleyball games.

One of Meyer’s first big recruiting prizes was Tebow, the quarterback whose grit and skill would win him the Heisman Trophy. Tebow became a brand unto himself — an evangelical Christian who wrote the Bible citation John 3:16 in white on his eye black.

 

Quarterback Tim Tebow (left) helped recruit Hernandez to Florida. (Dave Martin/Associated Press)

Tebow helped reel in the following year’s class of recruits. That included hosting a visit by a young Connecticut kid named Aaron Hernandez. When Hernandez enrolled at Florida in January 2007, it was a heady time to be a new Gator.

He posed for a Sports Illustrated photo shoot with Florida’s cohort of eight top recruits who had enrolled in college early: among them Maurkice and Mike Pouncey, who would become such close friends that in prison Hernandez tattooed their initials on his left arm.

Of the eight, seven would take classes through Santa Fe Community College. Only two would earn degrees from Florida. But degrees were not the point. Six of the eight made it to the NFL.

The NCAA began tracking early enrollee data for football in 2008, the year after Hernandez started at Florida. By 2016, the number of early enrollees nationwide had more than doubled, although the practice remains reserved for several hundred of the nation’s most elite high school recruits. An NCAA spokeswoman said that its data show students who graduate high school early are “generally prepared to do college work.”

Urban Meyer ramped up early enrollees as head coach

University of Florida

Ohio State University

No early enrollees

Source: University of Florida, Ohio State University

That doesn’t seem to have been the case in Gainesville. Of the 37 early enrollees recruited during Meyer’s tenure, only 17 would earn degrees from Florida. (Meyer now coaches at Ohio State, where he said nearly three-quarters of early enrollees there have earned degrees.)

Hernandez’s teammates recalled a big-hearted clown they called “Chico,” a nickname he embraced. “He always tried to be the life of the party,” said teammate Ahmad Black.

He wasn’t a terrible student. His Florida transcript, obtained by the Globe, showed introductory- and mid-level courses and others that sound more like fun: bowling, theater appreciation, wildlife issues, and “plants, gardening and you.” He earned mostly Bs his first semester.

Outside the classroom, he partied. Reminiscing in jail phone calls while he awaited trial, Hernandez looked back longingly at his days of dorm-room parties with malt liquor, drunken fights, cigar-sized blunts of marijuana, and daily runs to the drive-in Checkers. During freshman year, Hernandez said, his “cheeks were so fat” that he could “fit a cup of water in my dimples.”

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But the good times did not mean he was happy. Hernandez wanted to leave Florida. That first semester, Hernandez also showed up unannounced at the Connecticut home of his high school principal. Bristol Central was having a graduation party in the cafeteria and Hernandez wanted to attend.

“I said, ‘No. You’ve gone. You’re in college,’” recalled the principal, Siegmann. “That was my scariest thought of him going to the University of Florida as a 17-year-old. Did he have the maturity to be off on his own?”

In a word, no.

There was so much swirling inside. Few people knew then that he had been molested as a boy or that he had suffered beatings at the hands of his father. Or that his mother had enraged her son by dating his cousin’s husband.

Or that Hernandez struggled with his sexual orientation and that he had had relationships with young women and young men. Football has long bred a hyper-macho, intolerant locker room culture. When Hernandez played, there had never been an active NFL player who was openly gay. How would Hernandez, in his ambivalence, fit in with that intolerant culture?

 

Hernandez (left) developed lifelong friendships with Florida teammates Mike (center) and Maurkice Pouncey. Later in jail, Hernandez tattooed the twins’ initials on his arm. (Phelan M. Ebenhack/Associated Press)

Homophobia and misogyny permeated Hernandez’s world. Take teammate Mike Pouncey, who spent so much time with Hernandez in college that he once reminisced they “never left each other’s side.” Pouncey later played a key role in a bullying scandal on the Miami Dolphins in which Pouncey and others subjected a teammate to such withering homophobic taunts that the victim, a 300-pound lineman, ultimately left the NFL.

Hernandez on family upheaval affecting his college years

When Pouncey later spoke to Hernandez in jail, the phone conversations were punctuated with the same sort of obscene talk, according to recordings of the calls listened to by Globe reporters. In many instances, the vitriol emanated from Hernandez, a way perhaps to conceal his real self from scrutiny. The same pattern appeared in Hernandez’s text messages, in which he would tell male friends that he loved them, then add a blunt caveat, “no homo.”

That fall, in his second semester at Florida, Hernandez’s off-the-field life took a startling turn, a foretaste, it seemed, of the future.

On Sept. 30, 2007, he was briefly — and it appears wrongly — implicated as the gunman in a double shooting. It was an incident that said something about him, surely, but much more about the skewed priorities of Florida’s coaches.

After the game, the Gators had lost for the first time since winning the national championship. Hernandez stood on the sidelines near Meyer and Addazio as a last-second 43-yard Auburn field goal split the uprights.

Hours later, Hernandez and other Gators walked into a downtown club. He was still only 17, but football players had privileges. At one point in the evening, Hernandez got upset when a guy in a gray tank top snatched a gold chain off Mike Pouncey’s neck. A Florida alum and NFL rookie named Reggie Nelson interceded.

“I was telling Aaron and them to stay away,” Nelson later told police. “We don’t need no commotion.”

Nelson defused an argument. Everyone drove away. Moments later, gunfire pierced the night.

The guy in the gray tank top had climbed in the back seat of a Crown Victoria. When the Crown Vic stopped at a light, a gunman on foot fired five shots. One hit the driver in the arm. Another bullet burrowed into the skull of the front seat passenger, Corey Smith.

 

A high school football portrait of Hernandez was used in a photo lineup by Gainesville police investigating a double shooting. He was later dropped as a suspect. (Gainesville Police)

The guy in the gray tank top told police he saw who did it: Florida football players. The gunman, as he described him, matched the description of Aaron Hernandez.

Gainesville police Detective Patty Nixon called coach Meyer’s personal assistant and asked for a picture of Hernandez. The witness picked Hernandez out of a photo lineup. Police used his Bristol Central High School portrait, the star dressed in his white and maroon jersey.

Nixon told Meyer’s personal assistant that detectives needed to speak immediately with Hernandez and the Pouncey twins. The victim, Corey Smith, was undergoing emergency surgery.

“When I got there, they had done one surgery, I guess to save his life,” said Smith’s mother, Sandra Hines. “But he died on the table three times.”

 

Sandra Hines, whose son barely survived a 2007 shooting, said Florida coaches prioritized protecting football players above the investigation for the gunman. (Andrew Stanfill for The Boston Globe)

Detective Nixon kept pushing coaches to produce Hernandez and the Pouncey twins, but they didn’t arrive for nearly four hours.

“I see in my own report how frustrated I am that there wasn’t a quicker response,” said Nixon, who is now retired. “It’s hard for me to wrap my head around the fact that there is something so serious and it took them so long to produce these young men.”

Nixon would soon learn why it took so long: The players had taken time, Nixon said, to see the Gators’ unofficial lawyer — Huntley Johnson, the attorney whom Meyer once thanked for being “part of the team.” (Johnson told the Globe he did not recall advising the players that night, but records show he had represented them in other matters before and after the shooting.)

Detective Nixon contacted Meyer’s personal assistant (p. 2)

 

View the entire document with DocumentCloud

The Pouncey twins cooperated but denied any involvement in the shooting. So did Nelson, who continued talking after police read him his rights. Detectives saved Hernandez for last. When Nixon opened the door to a small interrogation room, Hernandez had his head down, dozing.

“When you’re in a police station in the middle of an attempted homicide investigation, you don’t expect to walk in on somebody sleeping,” Nixon said, noting his youth. “I would expect a little stress out of him at that point, but didn’t get that at all.”

Nixon woke Hernandez. Then she read him his rights. That stopped the interview cold — Hernandez invoked his right to an attorney and refused to answer questions.

Ultimately, the guy in the gray tank top recanted. He admitted that he did not see the gunman but assumed it had been Hernandez because of the confrontation moments before at the club. Several other witnesses described a different shooter. Police never made an arrest.

The victim, Corey Smith, survived, but he had to learn to walk and talk again and still struggles. In an interview, Smith said he believes that Hernandez did not pull the trigger but that Hernandez could have helped police find the gunman. Smith’s mother blamed Florida coaches.

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“I love football, but I just couldn’t watch them. I couldn’t watch Meyer be on that field with these kids … whether they were the shooter or not,” Hines said. “If my son had been one of them, I would have taken him to the police station [and made him] tell them what they need to know.”

Hernandez never told police that he had a friend visiting that night from Bristol, a detail his mother later shared with the Orlando Sentinel. The Pouncey twins also never mentioned the visitor from Connecticut, Nixon said. But knowing what police now know about the role Hernandez’s friends played in other shootings, a visitor from Bristol would have been, “of interest, for sure,” Nixon said.

Six days after Hernandez walked out of that Gainesville interrogation room, Smith remained hospitalized. But in Tiger Stadium in Baton Rouge, where the Gators took on top-ranked Louisiana State University, Hernandez appeared ready to go. On third down, coaches gave him the nod. Hernandez ran onto the field to play.

 

Hernandez, shown here in a 2008, displayed his deft hands and athleticism that made him a dangerous receiver. (Doug Benc/Getty Images)

On the gridiron, Hernandez began to shine. After Hernandez excelled in a game against Florida Atlantic, coach Meyer told reporters, “Get used to that name.”

Despite high expectations for Hernandez’s sophomore year, Meyer benched him in the season opener, a laugher against Hawaii that Florida won 56 to 10. Meyer told reporters Hernandez did not get himself ready to play.

“That was the code for failed a drug test,” said Pat Dooley, a longtime Gainesville Sun columnist.

The coach later acknowledged that Hernandez did, in fact, fail a single drug test. For the first offense, Florida’s penalty was a one-game suspension and additional testing. A second failure would have cost him six games. After a third, Hernandez would be gone for a year.

It was no surprise Hernandez failed one test, but how did he not fail more? Hernandez smoked so much marijuana he later told his lawyer that at Florida “every time I was on the field I was high on weed.” In a recorded jail call, Hernandez reminisced with his mother about rolling marijuana blunts with his stepfather and two Florida teammates at a Gainesville hotel.

“You’re crazy, like your mother,’’ Terri Hernandez told her son.

None of it mattered. The next week, Hernandez caught a quick 14-yard pass from Tebow.

“Touchdown Aaron Hernandez!” announcer Brent Musburger told ESPN viewers. “You know he didn’t do much last week in their opener, but you could tell the coaches wanted to get him the football.”

After one tough loss, Tebow led Florida to eight straight blowouts. The Gators jelled that year with phenomenal athletes, big personalities, and old-fashioned fun.

“We danced in the locker room for hours after practice,” said Hernandez’s friend, Ahmad Black. “We weren’t interested in going home.”

After the Gators triumphed in another national championship, Hernandez stood near coach Meyer on the stage. The tight end hoisted the crystal trophy above his head, eyes closed, orange confetti stuck to his elbow. Meyer called the 2008 Gators the best collegiate team to ever play the game because the players’ “animal instincts took over on the field.”

 

Hernandez (left) celebrated with coach Meyer and other Gators team after Florida defeated Oklahoma in January 2009 and captured the national championship. (J. Meric/Getty Images)

The season over, classwork should have been the focus. But after making the conference honor roll as a sophomore, Hernandez struggled academically in his junior year, earning a D in a course about poverty and an incomplete in his second attempt at intro to statistics. But grades, by this point, did not matter.

Hernandez had a monster junior season. In his last home game, after scoring a second touchdown, Hernandez added an exclamation point, heaving the football high into the frenzied stands at The Swamp.

Florida fell just short of another championship. Hernandez won the Mackey Award, recognizing him as the best college tight end in the country. The young star seemed to face a choice: Play his senior year or enter the NFL draft.

 

Coach Meyer told the Globe he was “concerned” about Hernandez, but expressed respect for Patriots coach Bill Belichick. “I thought a real disciplined coach would be helpful to him.” (Matthew Stockman/Getty Images)

But apparently Hernandez did not have that choice. Meyer was “growing frustrated” with him, according to a book by Hernandez’s lawyer, because the tight end was a chronic marijuana smoker. Meyer had tried to throw Hernandez off the team but relented under pressure from Tebow, according to the attorney, Jose Baez. But Meyer told Hernandez that after his junior season, “You’re going to have to turn pro.”

Meyer did not respond to allegations in Baez’s book, but Meyer acknowledged persistent rumors about Hernandez’s drug use. “But the tests would come back that he was not smoking and he denied it all the time,” Meyer said.

Hernandez made the announcement to turn pro on the fourth anniversary of his father’s death. At age 20, he would leave for the NFL draft. Expectations were high, but NFL teams had caught wind of Hernandez’s drug use. One psychological profile compiled by scouts, and first reported on by The Wall Street Journal, found that Hernandez received the lowest possible score in the category of “social maturity.”

The red flags pushed Hernandez to try something unorthodox. He wrote a letter to NFL teams offering to take a drug test every two weeks. “Test me all you want during my rookie year,” Hernandez wrote in the letter. “All of the results will be negative while I am having an overwhelmingly positive impact on the field.”

On draft day, the first tight end picked was from Oklahoma. Then the Patriots picked tight end Rob Gronkowski. In all, five tight ends would be selected ahead of Hernandez. In his first year in the NFL, he would be paid about $500,000 less than the tight end picked first, making Hernandez a steal for a team willing to overlook trouble off the field.

One team had a reputation for taking that kind of chance. It had a thorough look at Hernandez in college. The team’s coach, Bill Belichick, was close to coach Meyer, and Belichick had been seen watching Florida practices.

Finally, in the fourth round, with the 113th pick overall, that team made its decision.

The New England Patriots called the name Aaron Hernandez.

 

Edited October 18, 2018 by Monty86

[Pam Cummings 9696]

27 minutes ago, slorch said:

Yeah, I made it up.  This line of thought is never used to defend such actions in a court room.

 

Pro athlete fucks up in life...ohhh but he had such a tough childhood. 

 

It's all over the place.

What are you even talking about? In a court room, where lawyers are paid to defend people, murderers get defended? Well no shit.

 

How about you just read things before you comment on them. That really would make things a lot easier for you.....

[Brew 3049]

9 hours ago, Pam Cummings said:

This. Studying cases like this can help identify and curb this kind of behavior, saving lives down the road.

It’s not going to impact any change when it comes to athletes, but maybe it does for other abuse victims. Athletes are no different than pussy, they always gets put on a pedestal and we all ignore and make excuses for the bullshit that comes with it. Hernandez got as far as he did with no repercussions because of his athletic accomplishments. Those accomplishments allow for the ability to write off or explain away actions that would be deemed odd/criminal in the general population. There isn’t going to be some great revolution of morality in the coaching circles, so the behavior and cover up will remain. There just may not be another one this far out there any time soon. Of course I say that a week before Rae Carruth is scheduled to be released from prison and not long after Ray Lewis was inducted into the HoF.

[Monty86 60]

Part 3a:  Foxborough - Running for His Life

Spoiler

NFL teams said no 112 times to selecting Aaron Hernandez in the 2010 draft. The word was out: Hernandez, the nation’s best collegiate tight end, was a problem.

Scouts described him as a social misfit with a serious marijuana habit, and there were concerns about his possible ties to criminals in his hometown of Bristol, Conn.

Yet with the 113th pick of the draft, the New England Patriots took a chance on Hernandez. Leaders of the most successful football team of the 21st century saw themselves as uniquely suited to molding troubled players into valued contributors. They were banking on their system to keep Hernandez in line.

It was The Patriot Way.

For Hernandez and the team, the pick would prove a massive miscalculation.

“Him going to New England was the worst thing the NFL could have done,’’ said Dennis SanSoucie, Hernandez’s friend since childhood. “The one place you don’t send him back is where he tried getting away from.’’

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Hernandez would play at Gillette Stadium, an easy two-hour drive to his hometown, where, as a teenager dealing with upheaval in his family, he had increasingly hung out with a bunch of small-time criminals. Hernandez would eventually hire two Bristol buddies with criminal records as assistants, one of them a drug dealer who supplied him with pot.

“I think this story turns out a lot differently if he’s, say, in Seattle or San Francisco or someplace just out of reach of Bristol, Conn.,” said Greg Bedard, who, as a football columnist for the Globe and Sports Illustrated, covered Hernandez from his rookie training camp until his final day of freedom.

 

Patriots quarterback Tom Brady and Hernandez, shown here in a 2010 game, had their successes on the field, but Brady once kicked him out of a practice because he was so enraged by Hernandez’s behavior. (Winslow Townson/Associated Press)

But it wasn’t just geography. It was also the franchise. By the time Hernandez arrived, owner Robert Kraft, coach Bill Belichick, and quarterback Tom Brady had built a dynasty that had won three Super Bowl championships. Their win-at-all-costs approach left little room for the personal problems of players in distress. Even when Hernandez finally approached Belichick in a state of deepening paranoia in 2013 — afraid for his family’s safety — his coach saw little reason to get more than minimally involved.

For three bizarre years, teammates and team officials watched Hernandez spiral into trouble with a range of reactions from bemusement to annoyance to alarm; some also learned to give his Bristol crowd a wide berth. Hernandez could be weirdly warm and fuzzy one minute, wildly raging the next, and, as time went on, frequently agitated — and armed.

 

Many Patriots teammates admired Hernandez’s talents, but saw him as immature and a loner. Coach Belichick would later tell authorities Hernandez had “no close friends” on the team. (Jim Davis/Globe Staff)

There’s no evidence that his coaches or others associated with his football career knew with certainty that Hernandez was heavily into drugs or dangerously brandishing weapons, but there were plenty of warning signs. As long as he performed weekend miracles on the football field, no one seemed too eager to find out more about what was up with Hernandez, chalking up his behavior to his youth and dubious choice of friends and hoping that a fiancee and a new baby would turn him around.

That, it turned out, was wishful thinking.

A shot in the air

Police first visited Aaron Hernandez’s home within a year of his first Patriots training camp. At 3:45 a.m. on April 30, 2011, Plainville police received numerous calls about a fight in progress in the street in front of Hernandez’s rented townhouse.

He was arguing with Brandon Beam, a former Bristol Central High School football teammate. Beam and Hernandez had been out drinking in Boston, according to a previously undisclosed transcript of an interview Boston homicide detectives later conducted with Beam.

Beam told the detectives he was driving Hernandez home from Boston in Hernandez’s Range Rover when a state trooper stopped him for speeding at 120 miles an hour in a 55-mile-an-hour work zone and for weaving between lanes.

Beam said he was fortunate, despite receiving a $998 ticket, that Hernandez was riding shotgun. It was a Friday night, and if the trooper had arrested him for reckless driving — a distinct possibility given the circumstances — he would have spent the weekend in jail awaiting a court appearance.

 

[Monty86 60]

Part 3b

Spoiler

The trooper recognized Hernandez.

“I should have been in jail,’’ Beam said, according to the transcript. “But [Hernandez] got me out.’’

Beam and Hernandez were free to go, but the episode wasn’t over. Hernandez was so angry about the traffic stop that the two feuded loudly in the street until the Plainville police, also recognizing the NFL star, shooed them indoors.

Beam was a choirboy compared to some of Hernandez’s other Bristol friends, such as Alexander Bradley, a drug dealer Hernandez met while he was in college. Bradley became Hernandez’s chief marijuana supplier, no small role considering Hernandez’s prodigious use of the drug.

 

A mug shot of Alexander Bradley, an ex-convict who was once close to Hernandez.

Once Hernandez started collecting an NFL salary in 2010, he made Bradley a paid assistant. In addition to supplying drugs, Bradley’s job was to calm Hernandez, who often erupted into fits of anger and paranoia. Bradley later testified that one of his other assignments was to procure for Hernandez a $375 silver revolver.

Wherever Hernandez went, a gun often went, too. One night in the summer of 2012, he turned up at a popular club in New York’s East Village and bought a drink for a female hip-hop promoter who hung out with him a few times.

The promoter, who requested anonymity for fear of retribution, said Hernandez was different from other celebrity athletes she’d met: less entitled, more respectful. But she said she worried about the influence his ex-con friends from Bristol exerted over him. She described him as a follower.

“He was very gullible and willing to do whatever,’’ she said. “It’s like he didn’t realize that he’s getting himself in a lot of trouble by hanging out with the wrong people at the wrong time.’’

She vividly recalled riding along Manhattan’s FDR Drive with Hernandez and two of his Bristol friends. She was in the front passenger seat. Hernandez sat in the back with one of his friends, who had a gun. The rear windows were open.

“All of a sudden, out the back window, I guess they shot in the air,’’ she said. “So the first thing I did was say, ‘Oh my God! Wait! Are they shooting at us? Or are we shooting at them?’ They laughed and were like, ‘Oh my god, this girl is gangster. She wasn’t even scared.’ ’’

But she was furious, she said. And concerned when she saw Hernandez smoking marijuana and snorting cocaine that night.

“You want to shake someone like that,’’ she said. “Like, how do you not know you’re in a bad situation?’’

The incident ended their relationship. She thought Hernandez needed help.

 

Terri Hernandez (right) and Jeffrey Cummings attend a court hearing in her son’s murder case. (Aram Boghosian for The Boston Globe)

Such help, however, was unlikely to come from his mother. Hernandez and his mother, Terri, remained estranged after she dated his cousin’s ex-husband, Jeffrey Cummings. And things with her weren’t so stable: A few weeks after Hernandez signed on with the Patriots, his mother called police in Bristol, Conn., saying Cummings had been drinking and slashed her cheek with a knife during an attack.

Some who worried about Hernandez, including Florida teammate Tim Tebow and Tom Brady, did try to steer him from bad influences. In 2011, Brady was caught on videotape speaking to Tebow, by then the quarterback of the Denver Broncos, after a Patriots game in Denver.

Tebow had tried to mentor Hernandez in college and later asked Brady for help. It proved no easy task.

“I’m trying to watch over Aaron and Brandon,’’ Brady told Tebow, referring to another former Florida player, Patriots linebacker Brandon Spikes.

 

Media microphones in 2011 picked up a short exchange between Brady (12) and Denver Broncos quarterback Tim Tebow (15) about the challenges working with Hernandez and another player. (Jack Dempsey/Associated Press)

“I appreciate that, man. They’re good guys,’’ Tebow responded.

“Yeah,’’ Brady said. But they’re “a lot to handle.’’

Hernandez leaned on that support, at times. He would later say in a phone call from jail that he had once asked Brady, receiver Julian Edelman, and the team’s offensive coordinator Josh McDaniels how they would respond if he landed behind bars. Would they stand by him, or forget him?

Hernandez on his lack of jail visits from teammates

“They always say they love me,’’ Hernandez said in the recorded call. “I used to say, ‘If I was ever in jail, would you come visit me?’ They all said, ‘Yeah, this and that,’ but I knew those [expletive] wouldn’t.’’

McDaniels, however, did try to dispense some life advice to Hernandez, according to texts between Hernandez and others in the Patriots organization that the Globe obtained.

“You make sure you love that baby girl and your fiancée every day!’’ McDaniels texted him in the spring of 2013. “There are only a few important things in life and they are one of them!! Keep treating them right…Love you!’’

Brady’s personal trainer, Alex Guerrero, also took a turn trying to counsel Hernandez, texts indicate.

“Thank u for today even tho at the end of the day it’s all up to me to be a big enough man to make the changes!’’ Hernandez wrote Guerrero in the spring of 2013. “Hopefully it woke me up enough to stay on a path that I want to be on and not hit a wrong turn over time like I always have in the past!’’

Coach “shows some love”

The Patriots under head coach Bill Belichick and owner Robert Kraft had astronomically high standards — no coach had ever won the Super Bowl three times in four years — and they measured employees by results. They had lots to love about Hernandez, who started out, at 20, as the youngest player in the league and quickly became one of the multibillion-dollar enterprise’s prized assets.

 

Hernandez, whose athletic prowess was undisputed, celebrated his fourth-quarter touchdown that put New England ahead of the New York Jets at a game in GIllette Stadium. Teammate Rob Gronkowski (87) pumps his fist. (Jim Davis/Globe Staff)

Hernandez was the latest in a stream of players with bad reputations the Patriots had taken on. Belichick and his staff failed to rehabilitate some, such as Willie Andrews, who arrived in 2006 with a criminal record that included a gun conviction. Andrews departed in 2008 after he was arrested twice in five months, first on charges he was distributing marijuana, then because he allegedly pointed a gun at his girlfriend’s head during an argument. The first case was continued without a finding, and Andrews was acquitted in the second case when his girlfriend declined to testify.

Belichick’s way did, however, work with other players. They included Randy Moss, who had past run-ins with the law and a history of the NFL fining him for misconduct, but he blossomed into Brady’s favorite receiver when he came to New England in 2007.

On the field, it all seemed easy for Hernandez. He and Rob Gronkowski emerged as the most potent tight end tandem in the league, combining for 169 receptions, 24 touchdowns, and 2,237 receiving yards in 2011 alone, all NFL records for a pair of tight ends.

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They became an NFL sensation, known among fans in some parts as the Boston TE Party. Others favored “Shake and Quake,’’ for Hernandez’s speed and agility, and Gronkowski’s devastating force.

The two became friends, though they rarely socialized together away from the stadium. When Hernandez joined Gronkowski in the Twitterverse by opening an account in December of 2011, Gronkowski tweeted: “ooo look who it is…my partner in crime!!!@aaron hernandez follow him people.’’

In some ways, Hernandez was even more valuable to the Patriots than Gronkowski, who was a better blocker and an impossible matchup down the field, but he didn’t have Hernandez’s athletic versatility. In addition to his receiving skills and gift for gaining ground after his catches, Hernandez was flexible enough to double as a running back, a valuable extra dimension.

 

Patriots tight end Rob Gronkowski and Hernandez were a powerful duo. (Barry Chin/Globe Staff)

As the Patriots marched toward the Super Bowl in Hernandez’s standout 2011 season, the new star gave his team and its fans a late-season scare. In a divisional round playoff game against the Broncos, he was trying to score the first rushing touchdown of his NFL career. He needed to gain four yards, but he barreled ahead only two yards before he collided with Denver linebacker Joe Mays and suffered a concussion.

Hernandez appeared groggy walking off the field and received medical attention on the sideline. He did not return to the game.

The Patriots knew plenty by then about the dangers of football head injuries — and the purported damage to their own players.

In 2007, the Globe had told the story of former Patriot Ted Johnson, who was suffering from severe depression that he believed was connected to Belichick rushing him back after he absorbed back-to-back concussions within days during the 2002 season.

Belichick told the Globe at the time, “If Ted felt so strongly that he didn’t feel he was ready to practice with us, he should have told me.”

 

Hernandez’s rise as a football star coincided with growing awareness of the danger of concussions. In 2010, ex-Patriot linebacker Ted Johnson spoke in the Massachusetts State House about head injuries. (Essdras M Suarez/Globe Staff)

 

Many retired players, including ex-Patriot Ronnie Lippett, said they have been diagnosed with serious cognitive problems and accuse the NFL of not doing enough to compensate harmed players. (Craig F. Walker/Globe Staff)

 

Pro Football Hall of Fame linebacker and former Patriot great Nick Buoniconti announced that he will donate his brain to CTE research. “I’m not half the man I used to be,” he said through tears. (John Tlumacki/Globe Staff)

By the time of Hernandez’s concussion — the second documented brain injury in his football life — five former NFL players had committed suicide and been diagnosed with CTE. Within five months of Hernandez’s concussion, two more former NFL players would kill themselves, including a 43-year-old former Patriot, Junior Seau. Both deceased players also were diagnosed with CTE.

In Hernandez’s case, the Patriots classified his concussion as minor. He didn’t miss practice the following week, though he was listed as “limited.’’ And he indicated to reporters during the week that he was OK.

“I just do what the coaches ask,’’ he said.

He did what NFL gladiators do: He played on.

 

Hernandez had two documented concussions during his career, but researchers say those numbers alone do not measure potential brain injury. They say some players – eager to maximize their time on the field – have routinely under-reported concussion symptoms for fear they will lose their jobs. (Jeff Gross/Getty Images)

It’s impossible to say what, if any, effect the concussion had on Hernandez’s behavior, but it joined a growing list of things that could have harmed his brain. In addition to smoking large quantities of marijuana and sometimes using other drugs, Hernandez now had suffered at least two concussions and had absorbed countless hits to his head since he began playing tackle at the age of 8.

On the day of the Super Bowl in Indianapolis, he tweeted, “All love to my fans and hello good morning to all my haters!!! Imma put my [Super Bowl] ring on my wedding finger cuz I’m married to the game!!!’’

Early in the second half, Hernandez caught a 12-yard touchdown pass from Brady to give the Patriots their largest lead over the New York Giants, 17-9.

A boyhood dream realized, he celebrated in the end zone by pretending he was unlocking a vault and yanking out an armful of cash. As more than 100 million television viewers tuned in, he tossed the make-believe currency skyward, as if he could “make it rain.’’

(Jim Davis/Globe Staff)

But the merrymaking was short-lived. With 64 seconds to play, the Patriots fell behind, 21-17.

As the clock ticked, Brady attempted seven passes. He targeted Hernandez with four of them, connecting on only one, and his final incompletion — on a Hail Mary attempt to Hernandez in the end zone — sealed the defeat.

The sting for Hernandez was eased by the promise of better days to come. He led the Patriots in receptions (8) and receiving yards (67).

“He’s on arguably the best team in football,’’ said his agent, Brian Murphy, long after the game, which he attended. “He’s young. He’s playing at a high level. He was disappointed to lose, but he thought, ‘Hey, we’ll get ‘em next year, and the next year, and the next year, and the next year.’ ”

Hernandez was now a key cog in the Patriots machine. The famously stoic Belichick showed how he felt about his tight end at training camp the next August with an unexpected display of affection.

Hernandez seemed to have injured himself during a drill. As he recounted at the time, “I had a little bruise on my elbow and was whining about it. [Belichick] was just showing me the love of a father figure and he gave me a kiss on the elbow.’’

Then-Globe football writer Shalise Manza Young inquired whether Hernandez had asked Belichick to make his “boo-boo” better.

 

Patriots head coach Bill Belichick kisses the elbow of tight end Aaron Hernandez (81) after Hernandez appeared to injure it during a practice at Gillette Stadium in August 2012. (Amanda Swinhart)

“No, I didn’t ask him,’’ Hernandez said, smiling. “I damn sure liked it though. Felt some love.’’

He felt much more love a few weeks later in August 2012 when the Patriots awarded him a seven-year contract extension worth $41 million, with a guaranteed $12.5 million signing bonus — the largest bonus ever for a tight end.

The Patriots made a very young and troubled man very rich. He was all of 22, and he showed his appreciation by donating $50,000 to a charity named for Patriots owner Robert Kraft’s late wife, Myra.

He also said what Patriots executives wanted to hear.

“This place changed me as a person, because you can’t come here and act reckless,’’ Hernandez told reporters. “I was one of those persons. I came here and might have acted the way I wanted to act. But you get changed by Bill Belichick’s way. You get changed by the Patriot Way.’’

“Do your best to ignore it”

If Belichick and Kraft knew anything about Hernandez’s disturbing behavior before his name became synonymous with shocking violence, they have yet to acknowledge it. But Hernandez’s issues were common knowledge in the locker room.

 

Former Patriots linebacker Dane Fletcher watched a game that was being shown on the giant scoreboard in the stadium as he loosened up before a 2013 game. (Jim Davis/Globe Staff)

Dane Fletcher arrived at Gillette Stadium in 2010 in the same rookie class as Hernandez. He became a rarity: one of Hernandez’s very few friends on the team.

Initially, they hated each other. Fletcher, an undrafted free agent linebacker out of Montana State, needed to prove himself every day against Hernandez, who also had plenty to prove.

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They exchanged punches and insults, until one day Hernandez confronted Fletcher in the locker room. Fletcher, speaking for the first time publicly about their relationship, recalled Hernandez laughing at him “like the Joker in Batman’’ and reminding Fletcher how much he didn’t like him.

Fletcher cursed at him.

“But here’s the deal,” Fletcher quoted Hernandez as responding. “I respect you.’’

At that, Fletcher said, “I started laughing because for once he was the bigger man than me. That broke the shield between us.’’

As their friendship grew, Fletcher said, he saw flashes of Hernandez’s street life. He met some of Hernandez’s thug friends, watched detectives question him outside a bar in Boston for unknown reasons, and dropped him off at his Franklin apartment where Hernandez stored drugs and ammunition. Hernandez called it his “side place.’’

Fletcher said he was not alone among Patriots who saw Hernandez consorting with his ex-convict cronies from Bristol.

 

Hernandez kept close ties with friends back in Bristol, Conn., including some with long rap sheets. He hired at least two as paid assistants. (Aram Boghosian for The Boston Globe)

“I knew they were trouble,’’ Fletcher said. “Everybody kind of did.’’

Belichick himself later told the State Police that he believed he saw Hernandez with an ex-convict from Bristol named Ernest “Bo’’ Wallace.

Cocky and crass, Hernandez also quickly developed a reputation as one of the most talented and hardest-working Patriots, among the first to arrive for practice and the last to leave. Former teammate Rob Ninkovich referred to Hernandez’s “gifted hands” and spectacular athleticism, though has wondered if his sudden wealth, especially so young, sped his downfall.

“It can warp your judgment,” he told the Globe. “There’s a false sense of reality.”

But Hernandez’s combustible temper became readily evident. In his first days in training camp, he threatened to “f— up’’ six-year veteran Wes Welker, after Welker teased him about needing help in the film room, according to individuals familiar with the incident.

Receiver Brandon Lloyd, offering his most detailed account of Hernandez’s troubling behavior, said Welker warned him.

“He is looking at me wide-eyed,’’ Lloyd recalled. “And he says, ‘I just want to warn you that [Hernandez] is going to talk about being bathed by his mother. He’s going to have his genitalia out in front of you while you’re sitting on your stool. He’s going to talk about gay sex. Just do your best to ignore it. Even walk away.’ ’’

But there was no avoiding Hernandez. Teammates described him as an attention-seeker who at times seemed unhinged.

 

Some former teammates describe Hernandez as emotionally volatile. Hernandez – shown here at a pregame warm-up in 2011 – also delighted in provoking some teammates. (Barry Chin/Globe Staff)

“There would be swings where he’d be the most hyper-masculine, aggressive individual in the room, where he’d be ready to fight somebody in fits of rage,’’ Lloyd said. “Or he’d be the most sensitive person in the room, talking about cuddling with his mother. Or he’d ask me, ‘Do you think I’m good enough to play?’ ’’

Hernandez’s erratic behavior enraged Brady, the legendary team leader, one day when Hernandez was sitting out practice because of an injury. On the sidelines of the non-contact practice, called a “walkthrough,’’ Hernandez kept referring to Belichick as “daddy,’’ as he had all season.

“He was out at the walkthrough in flip-flops trying to run around,’’ Lloyd said. “He was laughing. He was loud. And Tom keeps it serious in the walkthrough. And Tom says, ‘Shut the f— up. Get the f— out of here.’ ’’

Lloyd recalled that Hernandez’s mood transformed instantly: “It was like he went from this child-like, laughing, disruptive behavior … and he storms off in a fit of rage.’’

 

Hernandez and Brandon Lloyd shared a locker next to each other as Patriots teammates. Lloyd said some veterans on the team warned him to look out for Hernandez’s bizarre behavior. (Bill Greene/Globe Staff)

Even players who generally liked Hernandez, giving him the nickname “Chico,” were wary of how he acted when he was with his Bristol friends. Fletcher said he made a demand: “I said, Chico, here’s the one rule: You can bring one of your friends. I don’t agree with your friends. You can bring one but not any more than that.’’

Fletcher hired a limo one night in the summer of 2012 and shuttled Hernandez and one of his Bristol friends to a bar in Boston.

When Fletcher left the bar, he discovered Hernandez and his Bristol friend seated in the limo with two strangers. He said the men introduced themselves as detectives. Fletcher assumed they were Boston police, but he said he never knew for sure.

He quoted Hernandez as saying, “They think they got something on me, and I don’t get it because they don’t have anything on me.’’

The detectives made no arrests and issued no warnings, according to Fletcher. The Globe has yet to determine who they were.

That fall, Fletcher hoped the birth of Hernandez’s daughter, Avielle — on Nov. 6, 2012, Hernandez’s 23rd birthday — would change him.

“Now he’s actually working for something and playing for something, not just himself, because I knew he was selfish,’’ Fletcher said.

 

Hernandez and former Bristol Central High classmate Shayanna Jenkins dated briefly as teenagers, then reunited years later as a couple. (Bristol Public Library)

The baby’s mother, Shayanna Jenkins, had known Hernandez since elementary school. They had dated in high school, a period in which Hernandez also had secret liaisons with teenage boys, too. And they had stayed in touch during Hernandez’s years in Florida.

When he reached out to Jenkins after college, she reached back. She moved into his townhouse in Plainville during his second season with the Patriots in 2011 and commuted for several months to her job as a manager at a Big Lots in Bristol.

Then she discovered Hernandez had cheated on her and moved out. She started to grasp the burden of some NFL spouses — that NFL stars often get what they want.

Over time, Jenkins chose to do what spouses of many famous figures have done — endure the infidelity. By the summer of 2012, she was back in Plainville and pregnant.

She later gave police this matter-of-fact description of her relationship with Hernandez: “I cook and clean — he is the man. I know my role.’’

 

Hernandez lived with Shayanna Jenkins and their young daughter in a 8,130-square-foot, five-bedroom home in North Attleborough, Mass. In June 2013, Hernandez drove away from the house at a time when police were focusing on him as a murder suspect. (Ted Fitzgerald/Pool, Mark Stockwell/The Sun Chronicle via AP)

By moving back with Hernandez, with their daughter on the way, Jenkins gave him a chance to show he could be a good provider. They got engaged and he bought them a $1.3 million home in North Attleborough. She had a nice Audi SUV, and bank records the Globe obtained indicate she was rarely short on spending money after he signed his big contract.

But Jenkins learned painfully that Hernandez hadn’t become a family man at all. There were many nights when she saw little of her fiance as he caroused with his Bristol crew.

One night, on July 15, 2012, Hernandez set out with Bradley to the Cure Lounge in Boston’s Theatre District.

Many lives would never be the same.

 

[Monty86 60]

Part 4a:  Murder - A Killer in the Huddle

Spoiler

Aaron Hernandez spent only about 10 minutes inside the Cure Lounge that July evening in 2012 — just enough time to down two drinks. Not nearly enough time for most people to get into trouble.

But something happened in the flashy basement dance club around 12:30 a.m., something that got under Hernandez’s skin. Prosecutors later said that a patron named Daniel de Abreu inadvertently bumped Hernandez, causing a drink to spill on him. The two men had never met, but the Patriots star tight end allegedly felt disrespected.

It wasn’t really a surprise. By his own account, Hernandez often became high-strung and jumpy at clubs, convinced that people wanted to “try” him, or physically challenge him. And he had a history of taking offense at small slights: At 17, he punched a bar manager in a dispute over a $12 tab.

This time, the outcome would be far worse than a sucker punch to the head.

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Two hours later, at about 2:30 a.m., Hernandez and his hometown pal Alexander Bradley pulled up in a silver SUV next to a car occupied by de Abreu and Safiro Furtado near the edge of the Theatre District. The two men, military veterans from Cape Verde, had no criminal records. They had come to Boston seeking better lives.

Witnesses testified that someone in Hernandez’s car shouted at the men, “What’s up now,’’ and screamed a racial epithet before firing five shots, killing them both.

 

Boston police collected evidence near a car in which two men from Cape Verde, Daniel de Abreu and Safiro Furtado, were shot to death in July 2012 in Boston’s South End. (Courtney Sacco/Associated Press)

To the public, Aaron Hernandez was a rising star — only 22 years old and weeks away from signing one of the richest football contracts ever for an NFL tight end. But July 16, 2012, marked a turning point in his life, as the chasm widened between his celebrity image and the brutal reality of his life.

Hernandez and his companion that evening — his personal assistant and drug supplier Bradley — each claimed the other fired the shots, and a jury would later find Hernandez not guilty of the crime. But, if Hernandez didn’t kill the men himself, he was at the scene of an execution, and he provided the getaway car.

Hernandez would become a haunted man. He was no longer just indulging paranoid fantasies, as he and his co-conspirator, Bradley, turned on each other. Somebody really was out to get him.

“Right between my eyebrows”

Boston homicide detectives swiftly determined that the two dead men, de Abreu and Furtado, had been at Cure, and when the detectives reviewed surveillance footage from the club entryway, they spotted a familiar figure in the crowd: Hernandez.

“Sergeant [Marc] Sullivan, he picked him right off the bat,’’ Detective Paul MacIsaac said in an interview. “He walked in with our victims at the same time. No interaction. He went downstairs. Nine to 10 minutes later he came out and left, and that was the end of that.’’

Initially, police thought Hernandez’s presence was just a coincidence. They concentrated instead on finding the SUV involved in the attack, which had gone missing. In fact, Hernandez had the silver SUV — a loaner from a car dealer in exchange for promotional help — stashed in a cousin’s garage.

 

The victims of the drive-by shooting in Boston’s South End, Safiro Furtado, left, and Daniel de Abreu, were buried side by side in Mount Hope Cemetery in Boston. (Jessica Rinaldi/Globe Staff)

And as the victims’ families prepared to bury them side by side in a Boston cemetery, Hernandez partied on.

He was spotted within days of the murders riding jet skis with a bunch of Bristol, Conn., friends, including two ex-convicts, in the posh harbor town of Newport, R.I.

That same month of July, he reported for training camp in Foxborough. But the 2012 season would prove to be a disappointment, as Hernandez failed to live up to the grand expectations of the $41 million contract he signed two weeks before the opening game.

First, he missed six games with an ankle injury. Then, no sooner had he returned to action than he tore a shoulder labrum in a game against the Miami Dolphins. He played hurt in the final six games of the season, including the last of his career — a 28-13 loss to Baltimore in the conference championship game in January 2013.

 

Hernandez, left, played in this AFC Championship game with Tom Brady in January 2013. He would keep hidden his involvement, six months earlier, in a fatal drive-by shooting in the South End. (Matthew J. Lee/Globe Staff)

All in all, it was a lost season, by far the worst of his three with the Patriots.

A week later, Hernandez and Bradley were partying again at Cure, as if that drive-by shooting had not happened on that summer night six months earlier. Driving away, Bradley was behind the wheel at 2:20 a.m., when they were clocked traveling 105 miles an hour on the Southeast Expressway, according to a state trooper’s report the Globe obtained.

A brief, wild chase through traffic ensued before the trooper pulled them over. The report states Bradley was wobbly drunk and Hernandez said, “Trooper, I’m Aaron Hernandez. It’s OK.’’

Once before, the ploy had worked for Hernandez. But this time it was not OK. Bradley was arrested and charged with DUI. The new year was off to a rocky start for the pair — and it was about to get much worse.

A few weeks later, in February, Hernandez and Bradley flew to Florida to party with one of his Florida Gator teammates, Deonte Thompson. But by the time Hernandez arrived in Belle Glade, Thompson’s hardscrabble hometown, his paranoia was rising.

 

Hernandez flew to Florida to attend this 2013 Super Bowl Party hosted by an ex-college teammate, Deonte Thompson. It was on during this trip that Hernandez allegedly shot his friend, Alexander Bradley, in the eye. (Suffolk County District Attorney's Office)

Despite all his money and fame — not to mention a new baby and an impending marriage — Hernandez couldn’t seem to relax and enjoy any of it. The pressure was getting to him.

The party started at a nightclub in Belle Glade and lasted for days. From Belle Glade, Hernandez, Bradley, and Thompson’s buddies hit a Miami strip club named Tootsie’s, where Hernandez ran up $10,000 in charges the first night.

As they partied in the VIP section, Hernandez grew nervous about two older men who were seated across from them and rarely moved, Bradley later recalled. Hernandez was certain they were police, possibly from Boston.

Bradley recalled telling his friend that the plainclothed men were probably tracking them because of their shared secret: the double murder.

Hernandez’s anxiety spiked. Tensions between Hernandez and Bradley were escalating, too. On the second night at Tootsie’s, they bickered. Bradley said they fought about the bar bill. Then about a forgotten cellphone.

When the party ended, they drove north on Interstate 95. The wrangling stopped, and Bradley fell asleep. He later testified that he “woke up with a gun at my face, right between my eyebrows.”

 

Alexander Bradley pointed to a scar near his eye, which he said was caused by Hernandez shooting him in the face. He testified against Hernandez in 2017, saying the Patriot tight end, not him, had months earlier fired the bullets that killed two men in Boston’s South End. (Steven Senne/Pool)

As the sun rose the next morning, police found Bradley lying in a parking lot, bleeding from a bullet hole between his eyes.

Hernandez was gone. He had flown out of Florida believing he was carrying less baggage than when he arrived. He believed he had seen the last of Bradley.

Then his phone rang. The caller’s number appeared to be Bradley’s.

“Hernandez thinks he’s dead,’’ said MacIsaac, the homicide detective. “Now he’s getting a call from a ghost.’’

Bradley had survived, though he lost his right eye and needed multiple surgeries. He refused to cooperate with the police, and investigators failed to tie Hernandez to Bradley’s shooting.

 

A strip club’s wristband worn by Bradley when he was found.

 

The parking lot near West Palm Beach where police found Bradley.

 

A bullet casing at the crime scene. (Palm Beach County Sheriff's Office)

Once again, the Patriots star was free to go. But now Hernandez had good reason to be afraid: Bradley wanted revenge.

“Do what you gotta do”

For the second time in six months, Aaron Hernandez had been at the scene of gunshot violence. Yet no one in authority had a clue: not the police, the Patriots, or the NFL.

Hernandez’s agent would, however, soon know about the Bradley shooting. Brian Murphy worked to help his client calm Bradley’s fury, and stave off his threat to sue.

“U left me with one eye and a lot of head trauma,’’ Bradley texted Hernandez. “U owe for what u did.”

A texting war ensued: nearly 500 messages, rife with threats of death and extortion, over three months. The Globe obtained the texts through public records requests.

Hernandez fired back: “If u ever got me in trouble or ruin my life for suttin I didn’t do…u will pay!!!’’

“Here u go threaten again,’’ Bradley replied. “U know that dont scare me tho if u knew how [geared] up i am u wouldnt even say that.’’

See other Hernandez text messages

Bradley

Hernandez

u left me with one eye and a lot of head trauma u owe for what u did

if u ever got me in trouble or ruin my life for suttin I didn’t do...u will pay!!!

Here you go threaten again u know that don’t scare me tho if you knew how g eed up i am u wouldnt even say that.

Murphy was Hernandez’s trusted adviser and one of the few familiar with some of his personal troubles. Murphy, president of the Athletes First agency, had represented more than 150 NFL players; he grew up south of Boston, a big Patriots fan.

When Hernandez told Murphy that Bradley was threatening to extort or kill him, Murphy called Bradley’s attorney and tried to quietly settle the matter, Murphy told a Suffolk County grand jury in 2014, according to a transcript of the hearing the Globe uncovered.

When that failed, Murphy, a former attorney, connected Hernandez with Ropes & Gray, his old law firm. Hernandez soon had a criminal defense lawyer in Florida, though no charges were ever filed in the Bradley shooting.

 

Brian Murphy, Hernandez’s sports agent, testified during one of Hernandez’s murder trials in December 2016. (Josh Reynolds for The Boston Globe)

Murphy knew, by that time, that Bradley had accused Hernandez of trying to murder him. He also knew that Hernandez’s life might be in danger.

But Murphy did not tell the Patriots or law enforcement until much later — until after another man had been murdered. Murphy later told the Globe in an interview that he “failed miserably’’ as Hernandez’s adviser.

 

[Zepol87 9263]

@Monty86 thanks man. You the real MVP

[Monty86 60]

Part 4b

Spoiler

Fearing for his life, Hernandez hired another Bristol friend, Ernest “Bo” Wallace, to be his bodyguard, day and night, after the Bradley shooting. That meant he was constantly accompanied by a man 18 years his senior who had been in and out of jail for a variety of offenses and had failed more than a dozen court-ordered tests for cocaine, marijuana, and the dangerous hallucinogen PCP, or angel dust.

Still, the threat posed by Bradley was never far away, especially after he warned Hernandez he had semiautomatic weapons, bulletproof vests, and a crew that ran six deep.

 

Ernest Wallace, shown here at Bristol County Superior Court in 2014, was a Bristol friend hired by Hernandez to do small errands. Hernandez met Wallace at his second Bristol home of sorts, where his cousin, Tanya Singleton, lived. (Stephan Savoia/Associated Press)

“Since u tried 2 end me i will end u if u dont do what u gotta do,’’ Bradley texted him. He wanted cash — lots of it — to settle his grievance out of court.

Hernandez, with his anxiety rising, then did something entirely unorthodox for an NFL player. He went to see his coach, Bill Belichick, as if he were seeking advice from a surrogate father, the authority figure he called “daddy.’’

Belichick agreed to meet him at Gillette Stadium on Feb. 18, but Hernandez failed to appear, citing an unspecified problem in California, where he was staying. Belichick then said he would make time for Hernandez if he met him at the NFL Combine in Indianapolis, an annual showcase for college players before the league’s draft.

Discuss: Who, if anyone, could have stopped Aaron Hernandez’s violent behavior in his final year as a Patriot?

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NFL players have no reason to attend the Combine. But Hernandez flew there on the weekend of Feb. 23-24 to meet privately with Belichick in the coach’s room at the Westin in downtown Indianapolis.

That visit would be perhaps one of the biggest missed opportunities for the Patriots management to intervene in Hernandez’s troubled life.

That meeting, in an upscale hotel room, was just the two of them, and there are slightly different accounts of what was said behind closed doors. But this much is clear: Hernandez was afraid and asking for help. The Spotlight Team is disclosing both accounts for the first time.

One version comes from Murphy’s sworn testimony before the Suffolk grand jury. The other is based on a report by a State Police lieutenant and a trooper of their 2013 interview with Belichick — a four-page document the Spotlight Team obtained.

Murphy told the grand jury that Hernandez requested the meeting with Belichick because he feared someone would “try to take him out.’’

The agent testified there were “several occasions where we would be at [Gillette] stadium or we’d be at a restaurant near the stadium and he was afraid that someone was following him or that someone was going to attack him.’’

Indeed, Murphy said, Hernandez feared he would be shot on the football field.

 

As Hernandez finished his third season as a Patriot, he showed heightened paranoia and mood swings. He often drank heavily and used drugs. He also had a number of injuries. (Jim Davis/Globe Staff)

“A lot of people, they would get a lot of credit for shooting Aaron,’’ Murphy testified. “Even though that meant they were going to jail for life, it would be worth it to them.’’

Murphy, who attended the Combine, testified that Hernandez recounted details of the meeting to him afterward. The agent stated that Hernandez requested the meeting to tell Belichick that “he and his family would be a lot safer on the other side of the country.’’

“He wanted to talk to coach Belichick about possibly being traded or released so he could go play for one of the West Coast teams,’’ Murphy testified.

He said that Hernandez told him Belichick replied, “We can’t trade you; we can’t release you for numerous reasons.’’

Murphy was not asked by the grand jury why Belichick couldn’t trade or release his client. But it might have been as simple as money. The team had guaranteed Hernandez a $12.5 million bonus only months earlier, and with six years remaining on his $41 million contract, the Patriots had a huge investment to consider.

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Belichick, speaking to State Police troopers and a North Attleborough police captain who also attended the interview, offered a subtly different version of events. He asked the officers not to record the session, so the only account is the typewritten police report.

The document states that Belichick told them Hernandez “was concerned about the safety of his daughter and his girl’’ because “people might potentially harm’’ them.

Belichick said Hernandez told him he “was not concerned about his own safety because he had money.’’

“William Belichick further indicated that Aaron Hernandez expressed interest in relocating, even though he had only recently purchased his home,’’ the report states, because his North Attleborough house lacked adequate security.

Belichick told the troopers he offered to connect him with the team’s security chief, Mark Briggs, which Hernandez declined. But Hernandez did accept Belichick’s offer to help him find a new residence, preferably a more secure property.

 

Even though Hernandez told his coach that he worried about his and his family safety, he rented a rather ordinary apartment in Franklin with minimal security, with the help of a Patriots’ staffer. (Gretchen Ertl for The Boston Globe)

Instead, the new place was a $1,200-a-month, two-bedroom apartment about 12 miles from Hernandez’s North Attleborough home. Kevin Anderson, the Patriots staffer who helped Hernandez find the place, later told Belichick that Hernandez was shown several properties and “rented the worst apartment with the least security,’’ according to the police report.

The apartment would become known as Hernandez’s flophouse — a place he kept secret from his fiancee Shayanna Jenkins, but not the criminals in his circle of friends from his hometown of Bristol, Conn. Belichick was asked about the place in a 2013 news conference but has never publicly disclosed his role in helping Hernandez secure it.

The coach’s low-key handling of Hernandez’s concerns — there’s no evidence he went to police or even to the Patriots’ security chief about a star player’s report that his family might be in danger — seemed not to match what a Patriots executive later said he expected the coach would have done in such a situation. After Hernandez was charged with murder, Patriots president Jonathan Kraft rejected a magazine report that Belichick had advised Hernandez “to lay low, rent a safe house for a while.’’

 

Patriots coach Belichick, shown during a 2012 game, rejected a personal request by Hernandez to be traded to a West Coast team, according to Hernandez’s agent. (Jim Davis/Globe Staff)

“If a player had told Bill that his life was in danger, Bill would say, ‘We’re calling Mark Briggs, we’re calling the authorities,’ ” Kraft said on WBZ-FM before a preseason game on Aug. 29, 2013. “His response wouldn’t be, ‘We’re going to get a safe house and you’re going to lie low.’ I know Bill. That’s not what he would say.’’

The Spotlight Team notified the Patriots of its findings and invited comments from Kraft, Belichick, Tom Brady, and others associated with the team. Their only response related to the police interview with Belichick.

“Coach Belichick wanted to make it very clear that he stands by what he told police investigators, 100%,’’ Stacey James, the team’s vice president of media relations, said by e-mail.

The many questions that went unanswered included: Why didn’t Belichick report Hernandez’s safety concerns to law enforcement when Hernandez shared them in February 2013?

Belichick told police that Hernandez eventually told him that “he no longer had safety concerns.” But that conversation came in May, more than two months after Belichick learned that Hernandez feared for his fiancee and child’s lives.

The episode raises additional questions: Had the Patriots promptly alerted law enforcement, might investigators have uncovered not only Bradley’s death threats against Hernandez but the reason for them — that Hernandez had allegedly tried to kill him? Might that disclosure have helped police solve the double murder in Boston before anyone else was killed?

After the meeting in Indianapolis, Hernandez returned to California. He had hoped to work out with Brady during the offseason, but the shoulder he had injured required surgery. So he went to Brady’s Los Angeles surgeon for the operation in late March, renting a townhouse in nearby Hermosa Beach where he could recuperate.

Hernandez on playing through injuries

Jenkins and their new baby went west, too, and early on the night before the procedure Hernandez received a text from Brady: “Good luck! I hope everything goes well … love you my brother and hope to see you soon.’’

But the night went badly, underscoring Hernandez’s worsening mental state. Near dusk, Hernandez was arguing with Jenkins when he put his fist through a window at the townhouse. Jenkins frantically called 911.

Hermosa Beach police Officer Todd Lewitt, the first to respond, said in an interview that Hernandez was intoxicated and bleeding heavily but declined medical assistance.

Six days after the shoulder procedure, Lewitt was called again to the same address for a domestic disturbance. Again, he said, Hernandez was drunk. Officers determined, as they did in the first call, that Jenkins and the baby were not in danger and took no further action.

In hindsight, Lewitt said, he wished that police had searched the townhouse for contraband. Hernandez’s friends later testified they had seen drugs and a gun in the residence. If Hernandez had been charged with illegal gun possession, it might have prompted the Patriots or the NFL to take action.

Hernandez’s brother, Jonathan, also saw a gun there. In his forthcoming book, “The Truth about Aaron,’’ he describes discovering his brother sitting alone on the townhouse roof holding a handgun.

Jonathan Hernandez said in an interview that Aaron was rubbing the barrel of the gun on his chin, his face looking empty and defeated. Aaron barely acknowledged his brother, but eventually reassured him that he was fine.

 

Hernandez greets his older brother Jonathan before the Super Bowl at Lucas Oil Stadium in Indianapolis in February 2012. They shared many happy times together growing up in Bristol, Conn., but also some painful times under their father’s rule. (Jim Davis/Globe Staff)

Aaron Hernandez wasn’t about to open up to others about his mounting troubles.

On April 4, more than a week after Hernandez’s operation, Belichick texted him: “Just checking in. Sounds like the surgery went well. Hope you are doing ok!! Let me know how things are going. Best, BB.’’

Hernandez replied, referring to his trainer: “Surgery went well and I’m doing fine and have been with Alex [Guerrero] and will continue to be with Alex until it’s time to be back for OTAs! [Organized team activities.] Hope everything has been well on ur end. Can’t wait.’’

In fact, Hernandez was not doing fine. He was gearing up for war with Bradley.

 

Prosecutors identified this gun as the one used in the double murder in the South End involving Hernandez and Bradley. (Boston Police)

In early April, Hernandez sent $15,000 to a Belle Glade buddy, Oscar Hernandez (no relation), for a used Toyota with two .22-caliber handguns and two rifles inside, according to court records.

“Everything goin smooth?’’ Aaron texted him.

“Hell yeah I almost got everything,’’ Oscar replied.

But guns were not enough for Hernandez. He soon spent $110,000 on a 2013 Chevrolet Suburban that had been outfitted as an armored car, a war wagon.

Amid the Bradley drama, Hernandez was facing more issues at home. By mid-May, Jenkins was caring for their infant daughter, managing their house, and running out of patience.

She texted Hernandez, “I’m so annoyed with you — like all this [expletive] I have to do and you have no idea about how I’m feeling today … These are the times where you’re nothing but selfish.’’

 

Shayanna Jenkins, shown here during a court hearing in 2014, was engaged to Hernandez, though their relationship would endure many stormy periods. (Brian Snyder/Pool)

Less than a week later, she was preparing to look at wedding dresses when she complained that she was learning through mutual friends about his past relationships.

“U have too much baggage … I’m serious — skeletons are starting to come out,’’ she texted.

Ninety minutes later, she texted again: “We need to confirm our wedding date — if it’s still happening.’’

Hernandez had proposed to her months earlier. Now, he was waffling about a date. So Jenkins chose one: April 11, 2015.

“Sounds good,’’ Hernandez replied.

When that date finally arrived, he would be standing trial for murder.

‘Not hidin’

As the Patriots looked ahead to their training camp in 2013, there was hope in the air — hope even in Hernandez’s crumbling life.

“This is the year for you,’’ Jenkins texted him during team workouts in May. “I can feel it.’’

“I just hope I stay healthy,’’ he replied.

“You have to think positive. An injury free year.’’

“Hope so,’’ Hernandez texted. “And a great year for us.’’

First, he had an honor to accept. The national Pop Warner football program chose to pay tribute to the Patriots star at its All-American Scholastic Banquet in Boston. The organization’s Inspiration to Youth Award would go to Aaron Hernandez.

It was an odd choice. Texts and e-mails between Hernandez and his agent’s staff indicate he was less than inspired by it all: by the need to attend the banquet and deliver a speech. He was especially angry about his mode of transportation to the event.

He had asked Murphy’s agency to have a car pick him up at his Franklin apartment. En route, Hernandez, that inspiration to youth, texted Murphy’s assistant, “Next time I will not ride in a car service wit no tints.’’

For one thing, Bradley and his crew might see him through untinted glass. And Bradley was out there: On May 29, Bradley texted Hernandez, “I hate that it has come to this but u can’t go thru life consequence free when u do certain [expletive].’’

A showdown appeared to be looming. On June 3, Bradley texted Hernandez that he would be near Gillette Stadium when the Patriots ended practice. He said he was armed with a semiautomatic handgun and was “vested up.’’

Hernandez texted Wallace, his bodyguard, to pick him up at the stadium, then replied to Bradley, “Jus kno I’m up here and I’m NOT HIDIN.’’

Bradley and Hernandez fired 125 texts back and forth between 8:24 a.m. and 3:55 p.m. that day. They exchanged insults, accusations of betrayal, threats.

The jousting ended without an encounter. But Bradley had warned Hernandez a week earlier that he would go public by suing him if he didn’t pay up.

On June 4, the morning after their long day of threats, Bradley indicated in a text to Hernandez that he had demanded $5 million from him, that Hernandez had countered at $1.5 million, and that Bradley said he would accept $2.5 million.

Hernandez did not respond. Instead, Wallace drove him to Boston to meet with his agent Murphy at the law firm Ropes & Gray. The text war was over, but Bradley remained unsatisfied.

He filed a federal suit against Hernandez in Florida on June 13, only to withdraw it four days later before the news media caught wind of it.

Murphy texted Hernandez: “They are voluntarily withdrawing lawsuit so we can engage in settlement talks without this getting to the media. Huge win for us.’’

By then, Hernandez had other problems. His commitment to football seemed to be waning. He reported late for practice the morning after his daylong texting beef with Bradley, and Belichick was losing patience.

The Patriots coach “was like Wtf is wrong with you Florida boys,’’ Hernandez texted Brandon Spikes, his former Florida and Patriots teammates. “He was hot.’’

“They told me they was trying to let me go but they r gonna give me one more year to straighten out lol,’’ Hernandez wrote. “But I ain’t trippin.’’

He was increasingly spending time with Wallace and another Bristol friend, Carlos Ortiz, whom he had known as a kid. Ortiz, like Wallace, was an ex-convict living at the home of Hernandez’s cousin, Tanya Singleton. And Ortiz, like Wallace, had failed multiple tests for cocaine, marijuana, and PCP, including tests reported as recently as June 12, 2013, five days before Hernandez committed an unspeakable act of violence that would prove his undoing.

 

Before Odin Lloyd was murdered by Hernandez, Lloyd was dating Shayanna Jenkins’ sister and had regarded Hernandez as a friend. Trophies and a picture of him as a semi-pro football player remain at his former Dorchester home. (Yoon S. Byun/Globe Staff)

Odin Lloyd, a 27-year-old semipro football player for the Boston Bandits, had grown closer to Hernandez in recent weeks. He was dating Shayanna Jenkins’s sister, Shaneah, and Hernandez found that the two men had more in common: They both liked smoking marijuana, playing video games, and nightclubbing.

Around 1 a.m. on June 15, 2013, Lloyd bought Hernandez a drink at a club named Rumor in Boston’s Theatre District. Witnesses described it as an ordinary evening, but prosecutors say something Lloyd did or said made Hernandez angry — exactly what has never been proven.

Two days later, Hernandez tweeted, “Happy Father’s Day to all the great dads out there.’’ He went to dinner that night with Jenkins at a Providence cafe, where patrons saw him smoking marijuana outside. The bar manager said Hernandez’s tab for himself, Jenkins, and two other couples included 11 cognacs, 10 Sex on the Beach cocktails, seven beers, and two vodkas.

“We were both intoxicated,’’ Jenkins later testified.

She also testified that Hernandez used her phone multiple times at the cafe to text Wallace in Bristol. In one message, Hernandez wrote, “Please make it back cuz I’m definitely trying to step for a little.”

Hernandez then texted Lloyd, arranging to meet that night. A minute later, he messaged Wallace again: “Get your ass up here.’’

At 2:33 a.m., the three men – Hernandez, Wallace and Ortiz – picked up Lloyd at his Dorchester home. Lloyd seemed to sense trouble.

Hernandez Surveillance footage

▶ Play

Surveillance footage shows Hernandez around the time of Odin Lloyd's murder.

“Did you see who I am with?’’ he texted his sister at 3:07 a.m.

No response.

Lloyd tried again at 3:11 a.m.: “Hello?’’

She responded: “Who?’’

“Nfl,’’ he texted at 3:22 a.m.

A minute later, he wrote, “Just so you know’’ — his last known words.

Lloyd was shot six times and left to die in the industrial park near Hernandez’s North Attleborough home.

The next morning, State Police delivered the news to his mother, Ursula Ward.

“I was on the floor rolling and screaming,’’ she recalled in a June interview. “I got up and said, ‘Wait a minute. How do you know that was my son?’ And he says, ‘Ma’am, he had his wallet on him. His driver’s license was in his wallet.’ … Don’t ask me what happened after that because I couldn’t remember anything else.’’

 

The mother of Odin Lloyd, Ursula Ward, is comforted by loved ones at his funeral service at a church in Mattapan. Her son was 27 when he was killed by Hernandez - and the exact motive remains unknown. (John Tlumacki/Globe Staff)

Hernandez had left a trail of evidence in Lloyd’s murder. Soon, police were posted outside his house, and he called Murphy for advice.

“I assumed it had something to do with the Bradley case,’’ Murphy recalled. “I told Aaron, ‘Walk out to the policeman and ask him why he’s there.’ ’’

Hernandez complied and said, “They just asked me questions about my other friend, Odin Lloyd.’’

He told Murphy there was nothing to worry about.

The next day, Belichick summoned Hernandez to his office. The coach later told the police he asked Hernandez “point-blank’’ if he was involved in the murder and Hernandez replied, “Absolutely not.’’

Belichick said the conversation lasted less than five minutes. He never spoke to Hernandez again.

Patriots owner Robert Kraft also wanted answers. When Hernandez met him that day at the stadium, he hugged and kissed the billionaire owner and assured him he was innocent.

The police suspected otherwise, and eight days later former Globe sportswriter Greg Bedard was posted outside Hernandez’s house on his last day of freedom.

“Must have been five or six or seven cop cars drove in,’’ Bedard recalled. “Not too long after that is when Aaron came out in cuffs and the white T-shirt. That’s when you realized that this was not going to probably end well for Aaron Hernandez.’’

For his brother Jonathan the scene was “the worst thing imaginable … like seeing your brother die over and over again.’’

The Patriots released Hernandez almost immediately, costing him the balance of his $41 million contract. Kraft told the media that he and the Patriots organization had been “duped’’ by their prized tight end.

 

About a month after Hernandez’s arrest, Patriots coach Bill Belichick walked into a press conference to speak to reporters about his former star tight end. (John Tlumacki/Globe Staff)

Belichick was more circumspect. He read a seven-minute statement, scarcely mentioning Hernandez’s name.

“As the coach of the team, I’m primarily responsible for the people that we bring into the football operation,’’ Belichick said. “Overall, I’m proud of the hundreds of players that have come through this program, but I’m personally disappointed and hurt in a situation like this.”

Hernandez’s teammate Dane Fletcher was present when Belichick separately addressed the team. Fletcher quoted the head coach as saying the episode was “not going to be spoken of.’’

“He is not part of this team,’’ Fletcher recalled Belichick saying. “He will not be spoken about in this locker room.”

The coach said the team would instead focus on winning another championship.

It was the Patriot Way.

 

[TXSG8R 3362]

I get what Slorch is saying, I just think its really too simplistic based on how little we know about the human brain.  We know CTE fucks people up.  That doesn't mean it made Aaron a murdering piece of shit.  We know abuse can fuck people up.  That doesn't mean it made Aaron a murdering piece of shit either.  You toss in entitlement, hero-worship, lack of consequences for your actions, sexuality confusion/denial in a super masculine environment, loss of a father, etc, and you have a lot of ways someone can get their wires crossed.  

I think morals are a largely learned trait, either directly (thou shalt not kill) or indirectly (seeing how death affects someone you love).  I think when you roll up a really shitty childhood with having a bunch of your brain turned into mashed potatoes, you run the risk of making an Aaron Hernandez.  

Its possible that a stronger upbringing could have allowed him to overcome some of the CTE effects.  Maybe he would have had enough of a countering voice in his head to look inward and kill himself before harming others like Junior Seau (possibly) did.  Its also possible that he was the kid with dead eyes that would drown kittens as a kid and had no path forward except as a piece of shit. 

I do know that hes a great example of the system failing.  Putting a kid on a pedestal based on his physical achievements rarely does anything good for them.  His educators and mentors that passed him along while ignoring the warning signs failed him, and anyone he hurt. 

[Monty86 60]

And now for Part 5:  Prison - A Room of His Own   (FYI I never signed up for the Globe, just used Firefox and IE both, each gave me 2 free articles)  Apparently the last part will drop this Friday.

Spoiler

He had lost all the trappings of life as a football star.

The Sunday glory, the rush of money, the posse of friends and protectors. All gone. His fiancee was not allowed to visit, and he could see his little daughter only through a glass window. Each day ended on a cot inside a 7-by-10-foot jail cell.

Yet Aaron Hernandez seemed strangely content at the Suffolk County Jail as he awaited trial in the summer of 2014. The former New England Patriots tight end delighted in playing poker, cribbage, and whist (he thought it was called “wiss”). He developed a fondness for Harry Potter books and reveled in such tiny privileges as using the prison microwave to warm up his snacks.

“So you get two honey buns, right? And you put a layer of peanut butter in between the two honey buns with the icing facing each other,” he explained in a phone call to his incredulous fiancee, Shayanna Jenkins.

The man who once seemed caught up in chaos any time he was off the football field appeared to thrive on the enforced structure of prison life.

“My room is very organized,’’ he told Jenkins. “I have everything lined up perfect, have my little trash in there. Everything all folded, I always make a nice perfect pillow.” He added, “It’s actually cozy. I think I enjoy it too much.”

For Jenkins, now raising their daughter alone and facing perjury charges related to his case, Hernandez’s childlike contentment seemed stunning. “Oh my gosh. I can’t even fathom what you’re saying to me right now,” she said.

 

Hernandez was driven out of the North Attleborough police station after his arrest in June 2013. Almost immediately, the Patriots released him, costing him the balance of his $41 million contract. He was 23 years old. (Dominick Reuter/Reuters)

To the public, Aaron Hernandez had turned virtually silent from the moment of his arrest. He appeared brooding and thuggish in court, relying on a cast of lawyers to speak for him, and did not take the stand at his own trials.

But inside the jails that held Hernandez for the next four years, his personal drama was unspooling, as he revealed his thoughts and feelings in letters and telephone calls.

Hernandez describing prison life in a jail call

Nearly 300 Hernandez phone calls from his six months at the Suffolk County Jail, obtained by the Globe Spotlight Team, provide a remarkable window into his world, at a time when he had not yet been convicted of murdering his friend Odin Lloyd, and when he was still hopeful about his future.

Many versions of the man come through in those calls. The domesticated Hernandez who appreciated a well-fluffed pillow. The rule breaker who would later be punished again and again for violations at the state’s maximum security prison. The tough guy who could handle months in solitary, but was wounded to learn his old sports awards were being taken down at Bristol Central High School.

And there was the philosophical Hernandez, who sometimes turned to books, and, increasingly, the Bible, for inspiration. Often, he sounded like a man struggling to make sense of his own bad choices.

“I tried as hard as I could to live the dream life,” he told a friend. “But it didn’t end up working out.”

The calls, along with hundreds of pages of records and interviews with people who knew Hernandez, shed light not only on his thinking, but on the institutions and people — family, friends, coaches — that might have slowed his downward spiral.

The final failure to intervene came in prison, where officials seemed to turn a blind eye to Hernandez’s drug use, neglected to safeguard their famous inmate, and hid from the public the truth of what happened in his final days.

“He was a 22-year-old kid who was ultimately signed for an enormous amount of money, who had known problems, and no one did anything to try to address what was going on,’’ said George Leontire, one of his lawyers.

“Three oatmeal cookies”

“Outside, the view is beautiful,” Hernandez told his mother in a phone call from the jail on Nashua Street, in downtown Boston. “When we go outside to play basketball, it’s on the roof.”

Tall fences surrounded the court, so people couldn’t jump off, he said. “But you look out the fence and you’re looking at the whole city, all the bright lights, and it looks beautiful at nighttime.”

 

The Suffolk County Jail is located along the Charles River just blocks away from TD Garden and Massachusetts General Hospital. (Michael Swensen for The Boston Globe)

Hernandez had spent the year since his arrest at a much harsher jail. Now he was telling family and friends about his view of the Charles River, and marveling at duck boats full of tourists moving from water to land. He got to watch TV, and ate more food than the 240-pound former athlete had been allowed in months.

He described meals to his lifelong friend Ryan McDonnell in a low voice so no one would hear.

“For breakfast,” he whispered in a call, “I got three pancakes, with two sausages — not bad.” Lunch was chicken parmesan, “with pasta, a little salad container, three oatmeal cookies, a milk, with some butter.”

For a man whose feats once played out on the national stage, the world had become much narrower. In jail, he focused on the smallest of creature comforts, taking “bird baths” at his sink, and wrapping his cell light in a shirt to give it a homey, burnt orange glow.

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He talked, too, of sharing his new home with the four-legged creatures in the heater.

“There’s rodents here, so like mice,’’ he explained to a friend. “They may come out here and there, but they just, like, peek their head out and go right back in.” He said they didn’t bother him. “It’s better than mosquitoes, roaches, frogs, um crickets, spiders, ants, you know what I mean, that was at the other place.”

That other place was the Bristol County Jail, an hour south of Boston. There, Hernandez had been under the watch of Sheriff Thomas Hodgson.

Hodgson bragged about getting rid of the basketball court at his jail, and turning it into a religious retreat. He took french fries off the chow list (if you don’t like it, “don’t come here”). And he’d later draw headlines by offering to send inmates to help build President Trump’s border wall.

 

Bristol County Sheriff Thomas Hodgson stood in a cell, similar to the one in a segregated unit where Hernandez was held. (Stan Grossfeld/Globe Staff)

When Hernandez arrived at the Bristol jail, Hodgson said he told him, “ ‘I want you to know that you’re going to be treated no better and no worse than anybody else.’ ”

But he kept Hernandez in an especially grim section of the jail, reserved for inmates who were mentally ill or violent.

The guards did give Hernandez some privileges, however. They’d let him do pull-ups on the stairs outside his cell, and allowed him to work out in a small cement courtyard, instead of locking him up in one of the cages out there.

But Hodgson played up his tough treatment of Hernandez, who had not yet been convicted of a crime. He kept his celebrity charge in isolation, he said, to protect him from inmates who might harm him. He urged Hernandez to read the Bible, and talk to his dead father.

 

Hernandez once raced for touchdowns on the green turf of the nation’s top football fields. Behind bars in the Bristol County jail, he was allowed limited periods of exercise in a cement courtyard. (Scott LaPierre/Globe Staff)

“He started more and more to trust me, almost like a father figure,’’ Hodgson said.

That claim was “nonsense,” according to Jose Baez, a Miami lawyer who would later represent Hernandez in a different murder case — the 2012 killings of two Cape Verdean men in Boston’s South End. When the sheriff would stop by his cell, Baez said, “Aaron would look up at him and flip him the bird.”

It’s possible Hernandez told both Baez and the sheriff what they wanted to hear. It was a skill he’d perfected over his life, to please whomever he was with. He would coo sweet “I love yous” to his daughter and fiancee one moment, then shift to gangster slang the next, crassly recalling nights of prowling strip joints with his college football pal Mike Pouncey.

Hodgson said Hernandez adapted to jail life, but there were also clear signs of distress. He would scream and bang on his cell door, according to prison records. He was disciplined a number of times. And when he once asked to be moved out of segregation, the sheriff did not allow it, he said.

So, when Hernandez was transferred to the Suffolk County Jail in Boston in July 2014 to be closer to the lawyers preparing for his trial, it came as a reprieve. At Suffolk, all inmates were awaiting trial and were given more freedom. Hernandez often sounded at peace there, working out, playing chess, and imagining a future with his daughter.

“Avielle,’’ he called to her on speakerphone. “Daddy loves you more than anything in the whole wide world, and that’ll never change!”

Outside the prison, the walls were closing in. Prosecutors were preparing their case against Hernandez in the Lloyd murder, and they had some damning evidence.

Lloyd was a young Dorchester native who’d been dating the sister of Hernandez’s fiancee. The two used to hang out together. On the night he was killed, Lloyd was in a car with Hernandez and two other men.

 

Hernandez (center) sat in court next to a monitor displaying the image of his former friend Odin Lloyd, whom he was accused of killing. One of his defense attorneys, Charles Rankin (left) was next to him. (Steven Senne/Pool)

His body was found in an industrial yard close to Hernandez’s sprawling suburban home, with keys in his pocket to a car Hernandez had rented. And Hernandez showed up in video surveillance at his own house, shortly after the murder, carrying what appeared to be a gun.

No one seemed to know what could have driven Hernandez to kill, including the prosecutors. But they didn’t have to establish a motive. They just had to prove Hernandez was there that night, and that he was involved in the crime.

In jail calls, Hernandez said his lawyers were confident about his case.

“Trial’s in January, [expletive] looking good,’’ he told Mike Pouncey. “They know I ain’t do [expletive]. So they don’t got what they got to, you know what I’m saying, to find me guilty … and they know I’m innocent.”

The Patriots cut Hernandez immediately after he was arrested. They hired a “character coach” to counsel players with problems and claimed Hernandez had duped the team’s top brass. And because he was no longer on the team, they said they would not discuss him further.

 

Fans lined up to exchange their New England Patriots Aaron Hernandez football jerseys at Gillette Stadium in Foxborough in July 2013. The Patriots offered the swap for the jerseys of other players. (Michael Dwyer/Associated Press)

Even in his hometown, where he was once a sports hero, Hernandez’s memory was being erased. His mother told him in one prison call that his brother was picking up Hernandez’s plaques from Bristol Central High School.

“They took ’em down?” Hernandez asked. Yes, his mother said, “Your All-American, the Gatorade” Player of the Year award.

He tried to laugh it off, but it plainly hurt.

In jail, Hernandez was still a football star. On Sunday afternoons, inmates crowded around the TV and rooted wildly for the Patriots. Hernandez had always hated being a spectator, but still he joined in.

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“So funny, guys in there, last year probably you were their favorite player,’’ said McDonnell, Hernandez’s friend from his boyhood in Bristol. “Now you’re hanging out with them.’’

Hernandez sometimes fretted that his former teammates had forgotten him. He was happy to hear that his old offensive coach, Josh McDaniels, had asked for him. But McDaniels couldn’t visit, Hernandez was told, because of how it would look.

So he wanted to write to McDaniels. In a phone call, he asked his agent, Brian Murphy, for the address. Murphy suggested Hernandez could always send mail directly to Gillette Stadium.

“Yeah, I’ve [expletive] sent one there before. But I don’t think they’ll even let it through,’’ Hernandez said. Murphy then admitted he had yet to deliver a letter to quarterback Tom Brady that Hernandez had written.

The conversation grew awkward, and Murphy changed the subject: “So tell me about jail, man. You getting good at handball?”

“I was very selfish”

Jail made Hernandez cling harder to the people most likely to take his calls. Chief among those were his fiancee, his mother, and his Bristol friend McDonnell. Hernandez kept track of when they’d be available to talk, since jail calls are only outbound and cut off after 20 minutes.

Jenkins would accept Hernandez’s calls, often twice daily, even when she was frustrated by him. She wanted to let him talk to their daughter. And she seemed to know she was his lifeline.

Still, over time, a physical distance grew between them, since Jenkins could not visit Hernandez in jail. She was facing her own charges in the Lloyd case — perjury over her role in disposing of a box allegedly containing the murder weapon. The charges were eventually dropped. But for a long time, the only way Hernandez saw Avielle was when Jenkins’s mother brought her.

Hernandez would sometimes show flashes of jealousy, worried his fiancee was seeing other men. He had hardly been a model partner himself, and now he was trying to make amends.

 

Shayanna Jenkins, Hernandez’s fiancee and mother of their child, appeared at her arraignment on perjury charges. (Steven Senne/Pool)

 

Terri Hernandez, mother of Aaron Hernandez, left Bristol County Superior Court after her son was charged with murder. (Brian Snyder/Reuters)

 

“I was very selfish,’’ he told her on one call. “The reason I always thought I had a good heart was ’cause I did it for all my friends. But I didn’t — I wasn’t a good-hearted person to the person that actually was my fiancee.”

Hernandez also reconnected with his mother in jail, after a long period of estrangement. He had been furious at her for dating Jeff Cummings, then the husband of his favorite cousin, Tanya.

“It used to ruin my life,” Hernandez told a friend. “But the only thing is, like, people do crazy things for love and I understand. So like, I can’t judge her because love makes you do stupid things.”

In some ways, jail was not foreign to Hernandez. Numerous friends and family members had done time.

“Jail doesn’t bother me,” he told his mother on a call. “I’ve been the most relaxed and less stressed in jail than I have out of jail.”

Hernandez also projected contradictory sides of himself. For a young man grappling with his sexual identity, he was prone to going on homophobic rants.

Hernandez reflects on his life

“There’s this [expletive] faggot that walks around too, puts butter on his lips for lipstick. It’s ridiculous,’’ he said in one call. “Walks around so flamboyant, like ‘Oh my God,’ crazy … ”

Hernandez said he wanted to punch the guy.

After his fiancee and his mother, Hernandez called his friend McDonnell the most, sometimes apologizing for sending him depressing or angry letters. McDonnell did not mince words with Hernandez, once telling him he could have tried harder in his life.

Hernandez admitted to him that he had hung out with bad people. He also claimed he didn’t miss his old existence. Not the money, not the fame. He said he missed his daughter — and something else he didn’t name.

“I don’t miss football. I miss one thing,’’ Hernandez said on a call with him.

“Being free,’’ McDonnell suggested.

But that wasn’t it. “Freedom, that’s not what I miss,’’ Hernandez said. “It was the same thing I missed when I was on the streets.”

 

Before the Super Bowl, Hernandez photographed Ryan McDonnell, a close friend from Bristol, Conn., and quarterback Tom Brady in Lucas Oil Stadium in Indianapolis in February 2012. (Mark Humphrey/Associated Press)

Hernandez did not go into further detail. With his beloved cousin, Tanya, he offered a more stark summary.

“I’m just one empty person,’’ Hernandez told her. “I’ve been like that for so long.”

By January 2015, Hernandez was getting fitted for suits for the Odin Lloyd trial. He bragged to friends that he’d be looking “fly” in court. But he knew the case against him was daunting.

His mother told him the Boston double murder charges scared her more than the Lloyd case. But Hernandez corrected her. No, he said, “Odin’s is the rough one,” because it would come down to what the jury believed.

The trial went on for three months. During that time, the Patriots won the Super Bowl. The team rode through Boston streets on duck boats to celebrate in February 2015, past throngs of cheering fans.

Meanwhile, in the Fall River courtroom where Hernandez stood trial for killing Odin Lloyd, Jenkins sat on one side, while her sister ­— Lloyd’s girlfriend — sat on the other. The trial had moments of high drama, such as the day Patriots owner Robert Kraft was called on to testify.

And one day, two mothers met. As she was leaving court, Lloyd’s mother, Ursula Ward, said Hernandez’s mother approached her. “His mom came to me and said she’s sorry for everything,” Ward said in a June interview.

 

Ursula Ward, the mother of Odin Lloyd, with Shaneah Jenkins, Lloyd’s girlfriend and sister of Shayanna, at a Boston Bandits benefit honoring Lloyd. (Barry Chin/Globe Staff)

On April 15, 2015, after deliberating for six days, the jury of seven women and five men found Hernandez guilty of murder. They did not find premeditation, but they cited “extreme atrocity or cruelty.”

Hernandez dropped into a chair as the verdicts were read, his face blank. The conviction meant an automatic sentence to life in prison, without the possibility of parole. His fiancee and mother wept. So did Lloyd’s mother.

Things were about to change big-time for Aaron Hernandez.

▶ Play

Hernandez and family reacted to his guilty verdict for murdering Odin Lloyd. (Video: Susan Chalifoux/Globe Staff, Photo: Dominick Reuter/Reuters)

“Secrets revealed”

Souza-Baranowski Correctional Center is a maximum security prison 40 miles west of Boston, located in a remote area and surrounded in razor wire. It was nothing like the Suffolk County Jail, with its poker matches and rooftop views. At Souza, inmates spent about 20 hours a day in their cells.

“It’s definitely not the place to be,’’ said Darrell Jones, a former inmate at Souza-Baranowski who had some interactions with Hernandez. “It’s a horrible place, period.”

Jones should know. He was recently released after 32 years wrongfully convicted and incarcerated in Massachusetts, the last nine of those at Souza. He would say hello to Hernandez in the hall, he said, and in the visiting room when their kids came to see them.

“He was always respectful to me,’’ Jones said. “It wasn’t like, ‘Hey, I’m too big to speak.’ So he was cool.”

 

After receiving a life sentence for his murder conviction, Hernandez would be transferred to Souza-Baranowski Correctional Center, a maximum security prison in Shirley, Mass. (David L. Ryan/Globe Staff)

The Department of Correction declined to let the Globe listen to Hernandez’s recorded phone calls from Souza. But previously unreleased records — as well as interviews with people who knew Hernandez, including his brother, Jonathan — portray a much darker chapter there for him.

Within weeks of arriving at Souza, Hernandez was already in trouble.

He used another inmate’s passcode to avoid being tracked on the phone. He served as lookout for a fight, which landed him in segregation. And he was caught with a new tattoo on the side of his neck that said “Lifetime Loyalty,” above a star that’s often associated with the Bloods gang.

Aligning with a gang is common in prison. Souza records call Hernandez a member of the Bloods. It was more likely the Latin Kings, according to Jones, though Hernandez would wind up in a big fight with the head of that gang.

Hernandez was disciplined dozens of times, and spent a lot of time in the hole. He was moved to 23 different cells at the prison in two years, usually as punishment.

“He talked about the relentless taunting by the guards,’’ said Leontire, the Hernandez attorney. “I think the hardest part was the amount of time that he was required to spend in his cell.”

The Department of Correction was not aware of allegations about bad treatment by guards, spokesman Jason Dobson said.

 

A typical cell at the maximum security prison where Hernandez spent his final years. (David L. Ryan/Globe Staff)

Hernandez became more religious while he was locked up, according to his brother, Jonathan, whose book, “The Truth About Aaron,” comes out this month. Fellow inmates would later describe Hernandez as spiritual.

At the same time, matters that Hernandez had always kept tightly under wraps were coming to the surface. He had once told his mother at Suffolk that she would die without ever truly knowing her son, and that he couldn’t trust her enough to confide in her. But while at Souza, he found the courage to tell her two painful things — that he was gay, and that he had been molested as a child, according to Leontire, the lawyer.

“He had been molested fairly intensely as a very young kid,” Leontire said. Hernandez seemed to think the sexual abuse had made him gay, Leontire recalled. He saw it as a way to “control his self-hatred, because it wasn’t his fault.”

His mother declined the Globe’s interview requests. But his brother said Hernandez had endured their father’s homophobic slurs as a youth. He also said he’d learned that Hernandez had been molested.

“It’s just something that you don’t wish for anyone,’’ Jonathan Hernandez said in a tearful interview. He did not name the abuser and said he has not confronted the person, adding, “I need more time.”

Hernandez hired Leontire and Baez, a Miami defense lawyer, to represent him in his second murder trial, which started in March 2017. In this one, Hernandez was accused of shooting Daniel de Abreu and Safiro Furtado, after drinks at the Cure Lounge in 2012.

Hernandez had been out with his friend and drug dealer Alexander Bradley that night. The two were allegedly in a silver SUV; one drove and the other pulled the trigger. Prosecutors had to persuade the jury Hernandez was the shooter.

 

Police impounded this silver SUV after discovering it stashed by Hernandez in the garage of his cousin, Tanya Singleton. A dealer had loaned Hernandez the car in return for perks. (Tristan Spinski/New York Times)

Now, Bradley was testifying against Hernandez, in a deal to save himself from murder charges. The two men had been at war since Hernandez allegedly shot Bradley in the face in Florida, and Bradley had been threatening him in texts.

The Boston prosecutor handling the case, Patrick Haggan, knew Bradley was no Boy Scout. Bradley readily admitted in court to having a cache of guns, including an assault rifle. Those comments “probably looked bad ultimately to the jury,” Haggan said. “But to me it struck a chord as far as his credibility. He wasn’t shy about who he was.”

The defense asked Hernandez’s family to attend the trial, to support him. But his mother never showed up. His brother went once. His fiancee, Jenkins, was a constant presence. One day, she brought Avielle to court, too. Hernandez blew her a kiss.

 

Hernandez blew a kiss to his family as the jury deliberated in his double murder trial in Boston. (Keith Bedford/Globe Staff)

Jenkins kept coming back, even after she was hit with another unhappy surprise.

Baez asked her to meet him on the deserted sixth floor of Suffolk County Superior Court, according to his book about the case, “Unnecessary Roughness.” He felt he had to prepare her for something.

Prosecutors had learned that Hernandez had told another woman he called frequently from Souza that he was attracted to men. Hernandez had told her it made him “angry all the time,’’ according to Haggan.

The prosecutors couldn’t rule out that this might come up if Jenkins took the witness stand, Haggan said.

Hernandez’s lawyers strongly objected to the idea of Hernandez’s sexuality being revealed in court. Still, Baez felt he needed to warn Jenkins, and Hernandez was stricken over how she might react.

“His concern always was the impact on somebody who he loved and who truly loved him, and had stood by him all these years, and how hurt she would be,’’ Leontire said.

The issue never did come up in court. But for Hernandez, the secret was out — to his fiancee.

On April 14, 2017, after weeks in court, the jury acquitted Hernandez of murder. In the end, they did not find Bradley credible. The verdict brought a normally stoic Hernandez to tears. This victory meant his legal team would likely next try to overturn his conviction in the Lloyd case.

▶ Play

Hernandez - and victims’ families - reacted after he was acquitted in the double murder case in Boston. (Photo: Stephan Savoia/Associated Press)

The moment was bittersweet. The judge added five more years to his life sentence, on a weapons charge. By now, Hernandez had already been locked up for four years, more time than the 27-year-old had spent in high school, college, or the NFL.

He was ushered out of the courtroom and returned to cell No. 57, on the G-2 block at Souza-Baranowski.

“God and death”

Three days after Hernandez’s acquittal for the South End murders, his cell door unlocked and slid open. It was gym night. He walked out and headed down a set of stairs at the regular time. Moments later, another inmate slipped into Hernandez’s cell and hid under the bed.

Hernandez wasn’t really planning to work out; he doubled back to his cell just before the door electronically locked shut. The area lights — controlled by guards — went strangely dim for 6:40 p.m., obscuring the view of surveillance cameras.

Hernandez and his visitor smoked K2, an informant later told investigators. It looks like marijuana but it’s more toxic: plants sprayed with chemicals that can cause hallucinations and are hard to detect in drug tests.

The two men talked of God and death. Two hours later, the lights came back up. The cell doors opened and the visitor left. These were brazen breaches of prison rules, but officials did not seem to notice.

This was not a tryst, the inmate later told a prison social worker, according to records. Conversation only. That inmate’s name was not disclosed.

That same day, hours earlier, WEEI sports radio hosts and a guest had made raunchy comments about Hernandez being gay. Jones, the wrongly convicted former inmate, said he never believed Hernandez was gay, and that it would have been dangerous for him in prison. Still, rumors swirled on the outside.

The next evening, on April 18, Hernandez made phone calls as usual, the last one to Shayanna Jenkins, who described the conversation as ordinary. He hustled back to his cell for lock-in at 7:59 p.m., as the light drained from the sky outside his cell window.

Hernandez chatted with other inmates through his door, as the guard on duty made hourly rounds.

Then, correction officer Gerard Breau arrived for the overnight shift on the G-2 block. He walked past Hernandez’s cell three times — at 11:01 p.m., 12:01 a.m. and 1:02 a.m., records show. He never broke his stride or shined a flashlight into Hernandez’s cell, according to an official report describing the prison’s video surveillance that night.

Guards are required to see “living, breathing flesh” on every round.

When Breau went by at 3:03 a.m., he saw a sheet covering Hernandez’s door. He knocked and called out. No response. Breau tugged down the sheet and saw Hernandez hanging from the bars of his window.

Breau couldn’t immediately open the cell door — he’d left his keys in a back room, in another breach of department rules. A fellow guard grabbed the keys, and together they pried open the jammed door.

More guards arrived. The cell floor was covered in a slick of shampoo, so they struggled as they approached Hernandez. He had written John 3:16 on his forehead in blood. His lips were already blue, and he was naked. There was a Bible open on the desk and red writing on the walls.

 

A portion of a page, marked with blood, from a Bible recovered from the cell of Hernandez. (Mass. Dept. of Corrections)

One guard put wrist restraints on Hernandez, in case he was faking. It took multiple men to hoist his large frame, and two sets of shears to cut the sheet from around his neck; the first pair was dull. Once he was down, guards took turns doing chest compressions, until paramedics arrived to take him to Leominster Hospital.

At 4:07 a.m., a doctor declared Aaron Hernandez dead.

The news was a shock to everyone who knew Hernandez. State Police launched an investigation, but there was much officials never shared with the public.

For one thing, on the night Hernandez died, Breau skipped his 2 a.m. round altogether. He’d later tell investigators he was tired from getting little sleep the day before, and was “in a fog,’’ according to the records obtained by the Globe.

Breau did not respond to multiple requests for comment. Neither did officers of the prison guard union. Corrections officials found misconduct by Breau, according to their partially redacted report, but would not say whether he was punished. He kept his job.

The Department of Correction also would not explain how Hernandez got access to drugs a day before killing himself.

K2 can stay in the blood for 72 hours. Its psychotic effects include religious preoccupations, and users can become impulsive, according to Dr. Kevin Hill, chief of addiction psychiatry at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston.

“They may ultimately do things that are out of character for them, things that people they are close to would never expect,” Hill said.

The official 71-page State Police report said toxicology of Hernandez’s blood came back “negative for all substances tested, to include synthetic cannabinoids.” But the chemicals in K2 vary widely, making them tricky to identify. Investigators refused to disclose what tests had been done on Hernandez.

The guards who turned down the lights that night were not punished because, according to the investigative report, there was no specific rule about dimming lights.

 

Hernandez’s fiancee, Shayanna Jenkins, and their daughter were surrounded by family and friends at a private funeral for Hernandez at the O’Brien Funeral Home in Bristol, Conn., his hometown. (Jessica Rinaldi/Globe Staff)

The state failed to disclose these prison errors and missteps to the public, and to Hernandez’s family. Eighteen months after his death, his lawyers are still fighting for basic records, including the autopsy and toxicology reports.

Hernandez took to his grave his reasons for ending his own life, and there might have been many. But something he said to a fellow inmate offered a hint of one thing that might have been on his mind at the time.

He learned that if a convicted man dies with an open appeal in Massachusetts, his record is cleared. Did he think that would free up his Patriots money for his family?

In the midst of their grief, it fell to Hernandez’s mother and his fiancee to make a quick decision about his body — to let Boston University study his brain for signs of harm from his many years playing a violent game.

And then, amid a storm of public headlines, they planned a private funeral in his hometown of Bristol.

 

[Old Freak Nasty 821]

If you use Chrome install this extension to bypass the Globe paywall.  Works on many other prominent publications, like the Times, Post, WSJ, Economist, Bloomberg, FT etc.

https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/news-paywall-blocker-by-o/baipbjbpocokgmeemmmgnkbknjfpackn

[yaqdum 182]

6 hours ago, slorch said:

There's also a significant element in our society who wishes to excuse bad behavior because something bad happened in the past..  I 'strenuously' object.

i certainly can't speak for anyone but myself, but there isn't one tiny shred of excuse bad behavior in anything i have written here or thought.  so i assume you have someone -- or someones -- in mind other than me.

what really annoys me is sloppy thinking and wrong-headedness.  those who wish to pass herdandez' transgressions off as merely bad behavior are missing the point completely.  the fact that he was damaged goods is really the story here.  whatever, he had no place in society and had to be put away for the rest of his natural life.

now, the danger here is people pointing the bad boy finger at him.  if there is the suggestion that punishing the bad boy makes this problem so away, that suggestion is way wrong.  aaron was a pawn in this game while the kings and queens were the people who damaged him and the people who used him without disclosing his savage and dangerous nature.  i am convinced there were people in florida who knew the true nature of the problem but kept quiet so he could be used to win games for the home team.  just like there were people in western pennsylvania who knew what that penn state sicko was doing.  the sicks are just sick.  get them out of society.  it's the users, the abusers, and those who cover up crimes against humanity that truly deserve our wrath.

[52-80 19277]

Those stories are fucking wild.

 

Interesting part about Tebow hanging out at bars and covering for Hernandez.

 

 

Looking forward to the movie.

[Vic Mackey 47303]

@Monty86 thanks man! I am all out of rep right now but will give you some when I reload. 

[Vic Mackey 47303]

1 minute ago, 52-80 said:

Those stories are fucking wild.

 

Interesting part about Tebow hanging out at bars and covering for Hernandez.

 

 

Looking forward to the movie.

Shocking that Tebow wasn't this self righteous, holier than thou saint he and the media portrayed him to be...Shocked I tell you...

[SHOOTER12 8852]

23 hours ago, Vic Mackey said:

Yeah someone pasted the text only version of part 1. I would love to read the rest. But not signing up for Boston Globe to read it.

^^^this^^^

[Vic Mackey 47303]

Just now, SHOOTER12 said:

^^^this^^^

@Monty86 posted parts 2-5 on this page. I copied them all into word documents and will read tonight. Part 1 reeled me in. Supposedly the final part releases tomorrow.

[Brew 3049]

2-3 are interesting as well, still need to get through the last couple. Read all the articles and their view is clear that everyone knew what they had with Hernandez, they just didn’t know the extent of the issues and/or ignored the full picture. They paint a clear picture of an immature kid with a sad past that had all of his indiscretions swept under the rug and he pushed it further and further each time after that. At any point someone could have gotten him help but they all just kept cashing in on his success. It doesn’t excuse anything, but it’s a pretty vivid picture of the athletic enterprise in this country and how it pushes kids through without any regard for the kid. His story is the most high profile, but how many college players, former professionals, etc go to jail every year with most coming out of a messed up background where they were idolized on the field and had no repercussions for anything they did. Watch Last Chance U, it is similar stories.

The articles don’t paint Belichik or Meyer favorably, but there are 1000 other coaches just like them but not necessarily as successful.

[Parliament 14368]

Monty, thanks for posting all of those.

[Huckleberry 33519]

11 hours ago, slorch said:

There are some who would say the past abuse makes his actions understandable.

I disagree, that's all.

 

There's also a significant element in our society who wishes to excuse bad behavior because something bad happened in the past..  I 'strenuously' object.

 

Break the fucking chain of abuse.

If you would take 5 seconds to think instead of posting as soon as possible to continue your efforts to seem like a prince you'd realize that understanding Hernandez's abuse as a catalyst for his behavior is actually taking abusers to task for their actions like you claim you want everyone to do. But because you have a name and face for Hernandez in your brain and not for his abusers then you can't even contemplate that they are as guilty as he is. Not just for their abuse of him but also for the cascading effects that resulted in his terrible behavior.

Everyone is trying to tell you that abuse, and therefore those who commit it, is and are even worse than you realize but you're too busy yelling "LALALA ABUSERS ARE BAD" to figure it out.

[ztejas 43741]

4 hours ago, yaqdum said:

those who wish to pass herdandez' transgressions off as merely bad behavior are missing the point completely.  the fact that he was damaged goods is really the story here.  whatever, he had no place in society and had to be put away for the rest of his natural life.

now, the danger here is people pointing the bad boy finger at him.

Quit euphemizing. He murdered someone. Treat him like an adult that is responsible for his own actions.

Hernandez being sentenced and his enablers facing consequences are not mutually exclusive. 

I'm glad he went to prison - because it's independent of anything in his background. He took someone's life and his life was taken as a result. That is the world we live in.

[yaqdum 182]

8 hours ago, yaqdum said:

he had no place in society and had to be put away for the rest of his natural life

here, let me be of help.  this apparently isn't getting through the filter.

he had no place in society and had to be put away for the rest of his natural life

he had no place in society and had to be put away for the rest of his natural life

he had no place in society and had to be put away for the rest of his natural life

he had no place in society and had to be put away for the rest of his natural life

he had no place in society and had to be put away for the rest of his natural life

a few extras in case needed.

[SameSame 1711]

On 10/14/2018 at 1:22 PM, slorch said:

Wrong Souljah, dude.

 

 

Nah bubba you're the right one. It's about our choices right. And nothing affects those choices you say.  I would say having an uncle fuck you in the ass when you're little messes your head up. Changes your brain chemistry.  I never knew Aaron and I don't condone killing people, but don't sit here and tell me shits just black and white.  

You say excuses, and I do get that.  We were both in the military.  Friend got shot through the head another group hit by an rpg right in front of me and I'm walking around like a casual joe. Why.  Why is that. Why the fuck.  

I don't keep a firearm in my home anymore. People say why, I say I'm not sure.  I feel there's something bigger out there.  I feel I don't have to be on the defensive.  Of course I could be wrong, I am a lot.

[52-80 19277]

2 hours ago, SameSame said:

, but don't sit here and tell me shits just black and white

mine's been various shades of brown most my life

[Guest]

15 hours ago, Huckleberry said:

If you would take 5 seconds to think instead of posting as soon as possible to continue your efforts to seem like a prince you'd realize that understanding Hernandez's abuse as a catalyst for his behavior is actually taking abusers to task for their actions like you claim you want everyone to do. But because you have a name and face for Hernandez in your brain and not for his abusers then you can't even contemplate that they are as guilty as he is. Not just for their abuse of him but also for the cascading effects that resulted in his terrible behavior.

Everyone is trying to tell you that abuse, and therefore those who commit it, is and are even worse than you realize but you're too busy yelling "LALALA ABUSERS ARE BAD" to figure it out.

I never let his abusers off the hook.  You wrote that/ reached that conclusion, not I.

I don't get the first sentence at all.  I am trying to be a prince when I share things that have been overcome?  When I doubt the excuse makers because of what I 've witnessed/ lived in real life?  Go fuck yourself.  You are saying my life/ experiences don't matter because of your opinion.  That's bullshit.

You do it repeatedly on here and it's symptomatic of the root cause of the division in our country.  You disagree with someone, so you must attack their opinion.  They are not allowed to voice/ share their experiences because they oppose your rhetoric.  LO-Fucking-L.

[Goo Punch 4275]

i almost want to make a post addressing how completely fucking stupid the "plenty of kids get abused who don't grow up to become killers" argument is, but it's so fucking obvious that if you don't already get it you never will. like, how do you not understand that you can both accept science and still hate aaron hernandez? they aren't mutually exclusive. 

Edited October 19, 2018 by Goo Punch

[Guest]

science of what?

Embracing excuses?  You love them.  My opinion threatens your life choices. You get defensive.

I absolutely get it.

We as a society have a severe aversion to accountability.  Then we handwring/ avoid the root cause of behavior; which is personal choice itself.

Rape. murder, and whatever other heinous crime you want to throw in there are not just accidents.  They are absolute choices to harm someone else.

Edited October 19, 2018 by slorch

[DigDug 1709]

3 minutes ago, slorch said:

science of what?

Embracing excuses?  You love them.

I love ice cream and cleavage.

[Goo Punch 4275]

3 minutes ago, slorch said:

science of what?

Embracing excuses?  You love them.

lmao. "excuses". yup, just like those diabetics with their "excuses" for not producing insulin naturally. or how about that michael j fox? can you believe this guy? you ask him to stop shaking and trembling and he's all, "but i have parkinson's disease!" what a baby. full of excuses. a real man like slorch would never let something as trivial as parkinson's disease cause him to shake. a real man like slorch would never let something as silly as severe brain trauma alter his behavior at all. no siree. a real man faces his medical diagnoses and he cures himself. like a man.