Original subtitles

I tried as hard as I could to live a dream life, but I didn't end up--

You didn't try as hard as you could have, I'll tell you that.

Tell me how I could've tried harder.

There's not one thing--

- I don't know how you could've. - I lived for my dream life,

but it just didn't work out.

I hear you. I'm sure along the road

there was something you could've done different.

I feel the same in here as I did on the streets,

so it doesn't really matter.

I miss one thing, you know what I mean?

Your freedom.

My freedom's not... That's not what I miss.

I miss one thing. Obviously, my daughter.

Same thing I missed when I was on the streets,

so it's not that big of a deal.

It is what it is.

Mr. Bradley, I'm gonna play exhibit 287.

Recordings of your voice talking to police officers at the hospital.

If you decide that you wanna tell on somebody

so that they don't kill you the next time...

'Cause just so you know, the reason why I got called

is 'cause you were supposed to die yesterday.

He's an asshole, whoever did it.

Obviously, I mean, you got a big-ass hole in your head.

- Fuck yeah, I do. - So, you know what...

Let's try to get a potential killer off the street,

'cause he is a killer.

But if you don't wanna help, that's on you.

Did you tell them who had shot you?

- No. - Why not?

'Cause I didn't wanna tell.

I had... That's not the route I wanted to take.

What do you mean by that?

I didn't wanna tell on Mr. Hernandez.

I didn't wanna inform them that he shot me.

What route did you intend to take?

I wanted revenge.

Alexander Bradley absolutely was capable of killing Aaron Hernandez.

And Aaron Hernandez knew it.

Bradley had guns. He had a crew.

He bragged about the number of guys he'd be able to bring to a fight.

Aaron had reason to fear

getting caught for the 2012 double homicide.

He had reason to fear getting caught

for the shooting of Alexander Bradley in February.

And he had reason to fear Alexander Bradley killing him.

The fight with Alexander Bradley

was the beginning of the end for Aaron.

His whole life started to unravel at that point.

It's his fear of Alexander Bradley

that led to Aaron Hernandez putting up a very extensive surveillance system

in his home.

He went out and literally bought an armored car.

He started to buy guns to defend himself,

and to give to those who were defending him.

He started hanging around Wallace and Ortiz

and have them around him all the time.

Wallace and Ortiz were not his friends of choice at that time.

They were a means to an end. Which was, "Protect me."

Hernandez turned to his agent, Brian Murphy, for help.

He told Murphy someone was threatening to kill him

if he didn't pay him lots of money.

According to Murphy's grand jury testimony,

he knew Hernandez's life was in danger

and that Hernandez had been threatened with extortion.

But at the time, he did not report any of this to law enforcement.

You should just start writing a book

about all the dumb shit you've done.

But the funny dumb shit, not the other dumb shit.

Well, I read a lot.

I love the Harry Potter books.

- You do? - I love them.

Everyone laughs at me, but you know I don't give a fuck.

...in the game, second in goal.

It's Hernandez! Touchdown!

Aaron Hernandez saved the drive

and scored the touchdown.

Understand how one stupid play,

one stupid penalty, one mistake

ends it for all of us.

We found out that shortly after February of 2013,

Aaron asked Bill Belichick to be traded to a different team.

He indicated he was in fear of certain elements.

In response to that, Coach Belichick said no.

Hernandez was a valuable asset to a multi-billion dollar corporation.

No one raised a red flag.

No one in the Patriots organization

reported to law enforcement any of these meetings.

They suggested that he get another apartment.

Something a little more secure.

It just seemed like they didn't wanna ask a lot of questions.

They were happy with what he was doing on the field, and that was enough.

Sometime in April of 2013,

did you know an individual by the name of Kevin Anderson?

Yes. He worked for the New England Patriots, and...

he helps players with any type of...

Anything that they need, um...

to make themselves comfortable.

He contacts me if he has players that need properties.

And the renter of this apartment was?

Aaron Hernandez.

I was sitting here,

and I saw someone I didn't recognize walk up to the door with a key.

So, I said, "Hi, you must be my new neighbor."

He wasn't the least bit friendly.

He just turned and looked at me and...

kind of grunted and went in.

He was dressed in a hoodie.

It was a very warm day,

and no one would be wearing a hooded sweatshirt and sweatpants

unless they didn't want to be recognized.

You know what bothers me, that the NFL

helped him go get an apartment that was secretive somehow.

Now the guy's got a house, why does he need another apartment?

And why are you helping him get it?

Did you think he was gonna be painting Bob Ross pictures over there?

I'm number 11, and he lived in number 12.

We shared a common wall.

Well, first, I smelled the air fresheners, and...

...then, shortly thereafter, I...

There was a very unpleasant smell in the hallway.

Okay. If you could describe what was that unpleasant smell

that you smelled in the hallway?

To me, it smelled a bit like...

It smelled more like skunk than anything else I could think of.

The double life of Aaron Hernandez is never clearer

than when you consider he had a second residence

where he went to chain-smoke marijuana

and escape responsibility as a Patriot and father and fiancé.

There was never a point where I said,

"He's moving towards a life of crime." I mean...

Yeah, was I nervous about the people he was associating with? Of course.

I mean, had it ever hurt him in the past? You know, not really.

I was at his house with Odin Lloyd two weeks before the incident.

That's how shocking this is to me is that everything was fine.

He wasn't as joyful, as happy,

but I attributed that to him getting back from practice

and being pretty tired, and wanting to hang out in the sauna

and wanting to beat DJ at pool a couple times, you know?

And it's not clear, but at some point along the way,

when they were partying,

did Odin learn something or was something said?

He told me that I looked good,

and he asked if I could dance with him.

Then I proceeded to dance with him. I agreed to dance.

All of a sudden, he seemed irritated,

and in the middle of the song, he just abruptly,

like, just took off.

He walked off back towards the DJ booth.

He was just standing and staring.

- What was he staring at? - At Odin.

When you say he was staring, how did he appear to you?

He's just staring angry, looked like he was upset.

And how about his eyes?

His eyes were just beaming directly at Odin.

We come out the club, and Odin was running to try to catch up to him.

At Rumor, witnesses say Aaron suddenly gets angry at Odin.

But prosecutors were never able to say why.

The "why" is the story here.

Why Hernandez would have killed Odin Lloyd.

We can only speculate as to whether

Odin Lloyd knew about Aaron Hernandez's double murder,

or any of the other secrets that he had been keeping.

Just two days later,

Aaron texted him and said, "Let's step out for a little bit."

You took the dog out sometime late in the evening

and saw Bo and Charley Boy preparing to leave, correct?

Yes.

And I think you said they were getting into a silver car?

Correct.

Aaron wants Ernest Wallace and Carlos Ortiz around him that night.

12:22 a.m., Odin Lloyd waiting for Hernandez to come pick him up,

texts Aaron and says, "We still on?"

Look at the nature of this murder.

Car pulls down there.

Nobody's around.

No traffic, it's dark, no eyewitnesses.

This place, a perfect location to commit a homicide.

Four people in the car. Odin Lloyd's in the rear passenger seat.

A shot was fired in that car.

Shell casing's under the front seat.

We know Odin Lloyd began to get out of the car.

This defendant's out of the car.

And he plants his footprint.

The next shot being in his arm.

Then the next shot through the clavicle and out the back.

And then as he's ducking down,

the one that is shot from the back of the neck

and runs through... down along his spine.

He's now been disabled.

He's laying on the ground.

There's two final shots that are put into him.

Exactly where the body was was actually very hard,

almost ledge-like, very hard stone.

I don't think there's trees there anymore, but there was a lot.

There were mounds of dirt, lots of grass.

And any sources of lighting? Like, um...

street lamps, or anything in the area--

No, no.

- Homes nearby? - No.

And in that area, when you got down to the body,

just describe what you saw.

What appeared to me is, bullet wounds to his chest,

and a bullet wound to his right flank.

Blood around it.

There were flies around it, and there were flies around his nose also.

- State your full name? - Ursula Ward.

And are you the mother of Odin Lloyd?

Yes.

And you understand you're to be called as a witness in this case.

Yes.

And did we have a conversation about a picture that I would show you?

Yes.

And do you recall making an identification of your son's body

at the medical examiner's office back in June of 2013?

Yes.

When Ursula Ward was called to the stand, she talked about her son,

and she had been under strict instructions from the judge

that if you show any emotion,

it could prejudice the jury.

You could just see how she was trying to control her emotions

as she spoke about what happened.

You recognize that?

- Yes. - Okay.

- Is that a picture of your son? - Yes.

And when you saw that, that was at the medical examiner's office?

Yes.

Thank you, ma'am.

Nothing further, Your Honor.

Hey.

Hey, you.

I don't wanna go back to where we were, so let's just move forward.

You know, I just get so angry 'cause this should've never happened!

No, it'll be okay.

And listening to all that shit, it's like, my God!

All of a sudden, one day, that became big news.

The murder and the fact that the police were investigating Aaron Hernandez,

and that was when I realized,

"He has a mansion.

He has a girlfriend. He has a baby. He lives in a mansion."

It showed him on TV...

you know, being taken out, arrested.

You know, as a possible murderer.

The Hernandez issue, impact on the Patriot organization?

Well, it's one of the saddest things that's happened in my tenure of ownership.

- What did you know about him? - We've said a lot on the issue,

and he was... Everything I ever saw about him was first-class in the building.

Your Honor, if I could call our next witness Robert Kraft.

So when Robert Kraft came to testify at the Odin Lloyd trial,

Aaron Hernandez's worlds collided.

Here was the first time a Patriot or anyone involved with the organization

stepped foot in the courtroom,

and here comes the billionaire owner of the team.

The man who made his dreams come true.

He's outside the double doors, and Hernandez, as soon as he hears that,

he looks over his shoulder six times

before Kraft came in the courtroom.

Kraft was one of the few people with the Patriots organization

that Hernandez was known to have contact with

during the period that he was a suspect.

- Just go right there. - Right this way, sir.

And what do you do for work?

Um...

Whatever they ask me to do.

Did you have an opportunity to have a conversation with the defendant?

I understood there was an incident that had transpired.

Any player who comes into our system, I consider part of our extended family,

and I wanted to get him help.

And what did he say when you had asked him

whether he was involved in this matter?

He said he was not involved, that he was innocent

and that he hoped that

the time of the murder incident came out,

because I believe he said he was in a club.

Robert Kraft was a key witness for the prosecution

because he recalled how Aaron Hernandez said to him,

"You know, I can't wait for the timeline on this to come out

because I was clubbing when all this was going on."

So, he's lying about his whereabouts, and the cameras would show that.

And also, he's saying that he knows what time everything happened.

I remember jurors later on said, "How could you have known the timeline?"

That really helped build the case against him.

Um, when you went to leave, did he say anything else to you?

He hugged and kissed me, and thanked me for my concern.

His attorneys did, in closing, allow that Hernandez

was at the scene of the crime.

And the jurors were somewhat surprised.

They had to digest the stunning 180 during defense closing arguments,

putting Hernandez at the scene of the crime.

He was a 23-year-old kid...

who'd witnessed something.

A shocking killing,

committed by somebody he knew.

He really didn't know what to do.

Hernandez's defense was, "It wasn't me,

it was Ortiz and Wallace, they were the ones that were dangerous."

Aaron was just caught up in it, and he was scared of them

because they were so violent.

The prosecution played a soundless clip

of Hernandez and Carlos Ortiz

and Ernest Wallace the day after. It was just left to play.

If these guys are murderers, if you just watched them kill somebody,

and you fear for your own life, you don't hand them your own baby.

You get in a car and bail out of there as fast as possible.

There was no remorse, there was no concern

on Hernandez's face in those images.

For the jury to absorb that scene,

and to know the heartbreak and humiliation

that Odin Lloyd's family went through,

and to contrast that with the millionaire Patriot

who just went about his life as if nothing happened,

you know, that made it very real.

That would be consistent with somebody that didn't see themselves

as attached to what really happened.

And that certainly is one of the characteristics of a sociopath.

The evidence on that video, that shows you, what is his intent?

Is he, you know, yelling at somebody... You know, "What did you do?"

Grabbing him, shaking him? "You just killed my friend"?

There's none of that.

After serving smoothies and having lunch with them,

and laying around the pool all afternoon and having them play with your baby,

what is he doing?

Fist-pumps, hugs... Does that appear to be somebody

who's upset about what's happened, that his friend

is laying out in a field?

As he's breaking... As his skin begins to slip?

Inconsistent!

If you can push away something

that you're responsible for

and find a way to justify it...

That's not something everybody is capable of doing,

and he was very good at it.

I often wondered, "Would there ever be

a point where he would crack

and realize, 'Well, this is it'"?

Well, there's a chance that you, like, you...

Like, they were saying that there's different types of degrees

that some, like... Or they might convict you of one type

that might be better.

DJ, if I get convicted,

there ain't no fucking... I'm getting life in prison with no parole.

There ain't no fucking second degree with me.

If they're convicting me, I'm getting the top of the line.

The jury was out for a week, seven days,

working a full day each time.

And as the old rule goes, the longer it takes,

the better chance you might have of getting an acquittal.

Many people have asked me

do I think the state's got a lock on the case?

Believe it or not, no, I don't.

I believe that there is a mountain of evidence

showing that Hernandez murdered Lloyd.

he's a sports superstar.

Do I have to say OJ Simpson?

There's never a lock on any case, ever.

I've never been in a room with more tension,

you know, when a verdict comes in in a first-degree murder case.

Now you may bring in the jurors.

What is the jury thinking at this point?

Madam Foreperson, on indictment 2013-983-A,

charging the defendant Aaron Hernandez with murder.

What say you, Madam Foreperson? Is the defendant not guilty?

Guilty of murder in the first degree? Or guilty of murder in the second degree?

Guilty of murder in the first degree.

Madam Foreperson, by which theory or theories,

deliberate pre-meditation and/or extreme atrocity or cruelty?

Extreme atrocity or cruelty.

Members of the jury,

I want to thank all of you very, very much

for giving your valuable time to hear and decide this case.

I also understand that it is not easy to sit in judgment of a fellow human being.

I miss my baby boy Odin so much,

but I know I'm gonna see him someday again.

And that is giving me the strength to go on.

I forgive the hands of the people that had a hand in my son's murder...

and I pray and hope that someday,

everyone out there will forgive them also.

I have to commend Ursula, Odin Lloyd's mother,

because of the power she carried.

Because I know I could never do that. If that was my son, or my daughter,

I could never do that because the anger would just...

And I remember seeing her talk a bunch of times,

and just the way she carried and presented herself was amazing to me.

Convicted killer Aaron Hernandez

beginning his life sentence in Walpole.

Soon, the former Patriots star will be transferred to his permanent home,

the Souza-Baranowski Correctional Center in Shirley, Massachusetts.

As he sits behind bars, Hernandez will be preparing to face two more murder charges.

I was in Shirley Max for I think probably six or seven years

for, um, drug trafficking.

The prison's built so if there's an issue,

they can lock the whole place down, like, instantly.

There's all these major doors, everything's controlled by computer.

The fences outside are, like, electrified.

I've seen so many, so many fights.

I was telling Aaron how... What to expect when he got up there

and who to hang out with and which side of the prison to try to go on to.

So, um, I gotta tell you something before you hear it from anybody else.

What?

Um...

Tanya's going to get a biopsy on Thursday. Her cancer grew.

Yeah.

It's in her... The one in her chest grew, the one... Well, they all grew.

The one in her liver, the one in her chest and the one in her lungs grew.

Um, what's it called... It's in God's hands, you know?

And God's gonna make her okay. We just gotta keep the faith

and keep praying and, you know, they're gonna find

the right course of treatment to help her.

Yeah. Is she nervous?

Yeah, a little bit, but she's gonna be fine.

In October 2015, Tanya Singleton passed away

in a bed that was set up in her living room.

I ain't even trying to think about all that.

I'm just taking it minute by minute, you know?

I want you to be okay, to have a clear head

and not to do anything stupid. I just want you to know

that I'm here for you, and I'm always gonna be here for you,

no matter what anybody else is doing. So I've always been here for you,

and I'll always be here. I'll always come to visit you,

and I'm always gonna talk to you.

So I just don't want you to think that you're in this alone...

Because I'm always gonna be here no matter what,

and no matter how long it takes.

I think after the Odin Lloyd conviction,

he had a little bit of a downward spiral.

He had told me that he got that tattoo, the "lifetime" tattoo,

on his neck afterwards, and he had just resorted to surviving in prison

and just saying, you know, "Fuck all this, I'm here for life." And then,

um, I think Shayanna and Avielle reinvigorated him,

and he decided he was gonna fight.

After two years of serving at the Shirley maximum security prison,

Aaron Hernandez is brought back into the courtroom

under the charges of two homicides in Boston.

Initially, he did want me for the Odin Lloyd appeal.

After a few minutes of sitting with him

and finding out that this Boston case

was right around the corner,

I said to him, "Listen, more than happy to look at your appeal,

but the problem is if you lose this case, might as well just pack it up and go home

because that appeal means nothing."

It finally hit him, this is for all the marbles.

The Boston case was now everything.

First week of his double-murder trial,

only his fiancée showed up to support him.

Mom isn't here, his brother isn't here,

none of his friends are here, none of his old coaches are here.

He told me that they came for the first trial,

and he felt that once he got convicted, that everybody just

disappeared because hope was gone.

There were low stakes in the second trial.

He's already convicted of life.

People thought he was going to get convicted again.

There certainly remained a fascination

with Aaron Hernandez in Boston, but nationally,

once you lose the stakes of "he could walk out free,"

there's gonna be less news interest in him.

It has been five years

since Safiro Furtado and Daniel de Abreu were gunned down

in cold blood.

Their lives matter in this room as well.

Aaron's famous. Aaron's catching touchdowns in the Super Bowl.

Who are these other guys? We don't even know.

Nobody knows their names.

Um, they're not from America.

Ma'am, I'm gonna show you a photograph

and ask you to look at the photograph

and tell us if you recognize the person in that photograph.

Of course, it's my brother.

I met those families. The mothers, the brothers, the cousins.

Tight-knit immigrant families, had come to this country seeking a better life,

and then to have one of their own murdered in a senseless act,

just a sad, terrible tragedy.

The story is not just the Aaron Hernandez story.

There's a lot of lives affected by this guy.

Their whole family was there. And when I say their whole family,

they took up two, three rows of people there every day.

How could I convince the jury to care about Aaron

when his own family doesn't?

The jury selection was extremely hard.

After months and months of working and build-up,

we were finally getting ready to start. And just as we walked in,

some woman just blurted out, "My god, he's gorgeous."

So I thought in there, I said, "You know, I think we need more women on the jury."

The first time I thought Aaron Hernandez could gain a not-guilty verdict

was when Jose Baez took the case.

Jose Baez is a tremendous lawyer.

Now Aaron Hernandez was being represented

by someone who arguably could be called a celebrity attorney.

Jose Baez, who had very famously represented Casey Anthony,

a woman who was accused of murdering her daughter.

To the shock of a lot of people across the country,

she was acquitted of that. So the question became

could Jose Baez do the same thing for Aaron Hernandez?

Our biggest problem going into it was how do you

convince 12 people that the convicted murderer

sitting over there didn't do these two?

Sometimes you want something so badly

that you're willing to make a deal with the devil.

That is exactly what the Commonwealth did in this case

when it made a deal with the killer

of Safiro Furtado and Daniel de Abreu, who is Alexander Bradley.

Alexander Bradley was no angel.

He's a guy who had trouble with drugs, with guns...

He had a past.

That guy is probably

the toughest person I've ever seen,

and I knew he was going to be a difficult witness to cross-examine.

Mr. Hernandez was upset. He turned in a manner

in which he was going to make a confrontation out of the issue.

So upset that he's gonna still wait another hour to kill some people

- over a spilled drink. Right? - Yes.

What transpired down in the Cure Lounge is the foundation of this case.

Well, the truth was with this man, and it wasn't that hard to find.

There was a photograph of him that they kept from you.

Did you see Mr. Hernandez again that night?

- Yes, I did, sir. - What did you say?

- "Thanks for the picture." - What did he say?

"No problem, have a good night."

- Did he seem angry? - Not at all, sir.

- Did he seem upset? - No.

- Furious? - No.

- Enraged? - No, sir.

Not as Alexander Bradley told you. Not when he told you,

"I had to grab him and take him out of the bar,

'cause he was going to kill him!"

This is Aaron's angry face and Bradley's all,

"Yeah, he was mad."

That's absurd.

It flies in the face of reality. It's an absolute lie.

The cross-examination of Alexander Bradley was really a sight to see.

You had a real battle going on.

And you're threatening to ruin Aaron's life.

I don't believe I threatened to ruin his life. I may have.

I knew I had an uphill battle because he had been powerful.

Let's not lose sight of the fact he wants this to be

all about Alexander Bradley and that he was the real killer.

You now know without any doubt

that the murder car was a silver 4Runner with Rhode Island plates.

Where's that car found?

Is that murder car found at Alexander Bradley's cousin's house?

No. That murder car is found stuffed away in the garage of the house

of a relative who he trusts more than anybody.

The murder weapon is linked to Aaron Hernandez.

The murder car is linked to Aaron Hernandez.

There is no link to any of these people to Alexander Bradley.

I wanna direct your attention, Mr. Nelson, to late March of 2013.

What tattoos do you recall

providing for Mr. Hernandez that day?

Two front views of a semi-automatic handgun,

and a spent shell casing with a little smoke coming out of it.

And a cylinder from a revolver with five out of the six bullets remaining.

On his arm, he wanted "God Forgives" backwards.

What is he asking God to forgive? Right above and below.

The shooting of Alexander Bradley above,

the murders of July 2012 below.

That is a confession.

But this is not a church,

this is a courtroom.

What matters in this room is the truth.

They don't want you to base your decision on evidence,

they want you to base it on prejudice.

"Look at how he's a bad guy, look at his tattoos!"

The lies carry you all the way to Florida.

Alexander Bradley is telling he was shot inside of a car,

and these guys tell you they hear one shot.

It's loud, it's not muffled.

He didn't get shot inside of a car.

And Aaron was telling us that there was a drug deal going on, and it went bad.

The blood doesn't lie.

And he was pissed at Aaron for vouching for these guys.

Mr. Bradley does have a dog in this fight. It's the deal of a lifetime.

He's either there, or sitting right there,

and that's a big incentive.

And this is the time

you jump off the Bradley bandwagon.

Can you read that final part?

"After I tell the court the truth about me not recalling anything

about who shot me."

That text where Alexander Bradley suggests he doesn't quite recall

who shot him in the face was gold for Jose Baez.

The prosecution tried to explain it away, but it was just that little bit

that helped see the doubt that maybe Bradley's not telling the truth here.

Like the first trial, there's a lack of motive.

Never made much sense. Why would a guy get so enraged

at a drink getting spilled on him that he would go out and shoot up a car?

That's a big leap, even when you're putting on trial a convicted felon.

I hated that motive. I still hate that motive,

and it's only when you truly understand who Aaron Hernandez was that

that motive will ever make sense.

I got involved in the Hernandez case pretty early on.

One of the principal problems with the case

is that they had a terribly weak motive.

And, so, to try to create a reason,

the government wanted to use the argument

that Aaron was a closeted gay man

who lived in an extraordinarily homophobic world of sports,

and that that conflict made him strike out in anger against people.

We became aware of a penpal or a phone-pal

that Mr. Hernandez had where he made statements about being angry all the time,

and he tied his anger to certain things that were going on internally.

We had been advised that the prosecution intended to call someone

who would testify about Aaron's sexuality.

It caused a difficult situation that Jose dealt with,

which was to sit down and talk to Shay.

I don't know where this came from.

It's embarrassing in a sense.

It's hurtful, regardless if it's true or not.

It's not something that I believe, and it's just not him.

So we're hoping to get the judge to give us

some type of compromise where we wouldn't necessarily

have to turn this into a salacious trial, but at least we would have some context,

not about his sexuality, but more of his own statement that he's angry all the time

because of things that have happened to him.

As a gay man myself, the next day I went to the courtroom, and I argued

against this really discredited approach.

They knew they were wrong, and they tried it,

and ultimately, they backed down.

But probably appropriately so, the court ruled you... I can't do that.

You know, you would either have to put in everything or nothing.

We did have some conversations in the holding cell.

One that sticks in my mind the most, and I felt really sad for the guy,

Aaron asked me if I felt or believed that someone was born gay.

I said, "I do believe that."

Growing up in our household, my father was extremely narrow-minded.

Especially when it came to sexuality.

He had his definition of a man,

which can be very intimidating for a child, you know, when my brother

has all these questions going on about his sexuality.

- Can I read from the book? - Sure.

It stood out because it describes an incident

with a teenage boy who was at your babysitter's house,

when you guys were younger, and this is a game of hide and seek.

So you go off and you hide, and for five, ten, 15 minutes,

"I remained in this dark closet," where you were hiding, "annoyed.

I didn't understand why no one came looking for me.

I found out much later, when Aaron was in prison,

that the older boy who had been in this household

had actually forced Aaron into the tent."

Do you think Aaron was sexually abused?

I know he was.

Aaron had a belief

that his abuse as a child impacted his sexuality.

That was one of the things that he held onto

as to why he's, in his mind, has this aberrant behavior.

All rise.

What say you, Madam Foreperson?

Charging murder in the first degree, victim Daniel de Abreu.

You find the defendant not guilty, guilty of murder in the first degree,

or guilty of murder in the second degree?

Not guilty.

Charging murder in the first degree, victim Safiro Furtado.

You find the defendant not guilty, guilty of murder in the first degree,

or guilty of murder in the second degree?

Not guilty.

I don't know whether he was reacting

just from the pressure of it all ending,

or that somebody finally believed him.

He'd gone a lot of years without any victories.

He had gone a lot of years without anybody cheering him or believing him.

Later on that day, Aaron called me and we...

We rejoiced together, and he was so excited, so happy,

so looking forward to his future. And he was talking

about things he wants to do, talking about getting out one day,

talking about his appeal...

And... he was ready. He was ready to go.

This rumor, this Aaron Hernandez rumor...

It is big.

In the context of the trials, we never described Aaron Hernandez's sexuality.

They were just rumors at that point and, you know, you don't out somebody

for the sake of outing them. Just because it's salacious and interesting

is not enough to do something like that to somebody.

But what ended up happening was that another reporter did out him,

and also tried to connect it to Odin Lloyd.

Michele, knows the real motive for the murder of Odin Lloyd.

And let's just say that Odin Lloyd caught Aaron Hernandez

in a compromising position, yes.

Let's just say that Aaron Hernandez

was a former tight end before he was kicked off the Patriots. Yes.

- On and off the field? - Yes.

And then he became a wide receiver?

My sources, what I've been told, is that there is absolutely no evidence

that that's why Odin Lloyd died.

But we also wanted to show that the way that this had come out was problematic.

That, you know, a man's sexuality being discussed on the radio

in pretty crude terms was insensitive, no matter who the person was

and what they might have done, this is something that, you know, um,

is just a big no-no in media.

At the time, I was living at my father's house.

I woke up in the morning to screaming, and it was my father screaming,

and he opened the door and said, "Aaron just hung himself."

And some news just breaking as we come on the air, former NFL star

Aaron Hernandez found dead in his prison cell overnight.

Apparently, he killed himself.

Medical personnel attempted to perform life-saving techniques.

They transported Hernandez to the hospital where he was pronounced dead

just after 4:00 a.m. this morning.

I was as shocked as anyone, and because I had just spoken to him hours earlier,

and he was so happy and so ecstatic.

He was an eternal optimist.

It's very hard for me to accept the fact that he may have committed suicide.

- We are keeping an open mind. - It doesn't sound like him?

Not the Aaron that I know.

Hernandez's death comes the same day

the Patriots head to the White House.

A spokesperson for the Patriots said they would not be commenting today

on Hernandez's death.

So he spoke to Shayanna Jenkins, his fiancée, that evening

before he went into his cell. There was your traditional "lights out."

She didn't notice anything different in his tone.

The protocol at the prison requires

correction officers to make hourly rounds at the facility.

And while there was no video inside the cell itself,

in the general area of the block, detectives will be able to see

what was going on in the hours leading up to discovering Hernandez.

I know Aaron was into the K2. It's like a synthetic marijuana.

Sources said Hernandez was smoking synthetic marijuana

the night before he committed suicide.

These are the photos of the Bible investigators found

in Aaron Hernandez's cell.

Officials say he was found with the Bible verse John 3:16,

a reference to eternal life through Jesus, written across his forehead.

Some brothers were even saying like...

"Hey, I feel sorry for the dude."

And that's when I started looking at it like, yo,

at the end of the day, he's human, too. We all make mistakes.

Will I always have resentment for the man? Hell yes. Hell yes.

My heart goes out to his family,

his four-year-old daughter, his mom, his loved ones.

But it especially goes out to the Odin Lloyd family

because they don't get to see him anymore.

I'm just going to make it very, very clear:

Aaron Hernandez gets no sympathy from me.

He had his mind set up.

I think when we saw him in the courthouse,

you know, just looking at his daughter that way,

it was like the saddest thing I've seen in a long time.

And I know a lot of people don't like him.

I know a lot of people think he's a murderer and everything else, but...

that breaks your heart.

He knew that that was the last time he'd be seeing her.

I mean, he didn't show any emotion at all

when they said, "You're going away forever."

But when he gets off...

Either that or I was thinking,

"Jesus, I should've hired Baez for the first trial."

But that's the only two things I can think of that were going through his head.

You started to wonder why would he have taken his own life?

One thing we learned that there were three letters that he left behind.

A letter left to his fiancée, one to his daughter and one to his lawyer.

The suicide note to Shayanna says, "You're rich," and it's underlined.

Some thorny legal questions remain.

Another inmate told investigators Hernandez mentioned

that if you die in prison and you have an open case,

your case gets thrown out.

Previously, the most famous inmate at Shirley Max

was a Catholic priest who had been convicted

of sexually assaulting children.

And he was murdered

before his appeal went through, and because of abatement,

he was technically found not guilty.

So, inmates in that prison knew about abatement.

There was a really archaic law in the State of Massachusetts

called the abatement, that if, in fact, you die

while a murder case is under appeal, which was the case here, that if you die,

that means you can't participate in the appeal,

and therefore, the conviction would be erased from the record.

In light of this legal principle,

do the Patriots owe him any money?

You realize, "If I'm in jail for life

and my wife and daughter gotta see me through this glass,

and if, um, somebody whispered in my ear that,

'Dude, if you bite the bullet on this one

and take your life, your kids will be straight,

your wife will be straight for the rest of their lives'"?

It's no choice.

It's the type of shit a father would do, so if you asked me

if a father would kill himself for his fucking daughter and wife

to be set for life? Fuck, yes. I would.

Abatement remains the law in this Commonwealth,

and this court is compelled to follow binding precedent.

In the interest of justice, the court has no choice

but to abate the proceedings of initio by vacating Hernandez's convictions

and dismissing the charges against him and his appeal.

In our book, he's guilty,

and he's gonna always be guilty.

The Patriots are not just gonna cut a check.

They will fight that thing in court till the last drop,

and it will cost more money in legal fees to get that than they could ever get.

Did he think that far ahead on that? I don't know.

For Aaron to do that, he was hurting.

He was hurting tremendously, to an extreme that no one knew.

Since the news broke on Wednesday morning, rumors have been swirling

about the death of Aaron Hernandez.

The latest reports suggest he may have had a jailhouse lover.

Kyle Kennedy thinks he was probably

the last fellow inmate to see Aaron Hernandez alive.

And when the news broke that, "My gosh, the gay lover..."

I mean, the first reaction my dad had was...

I mean, I remember he looked at me, and he said, "What?

Aaron's not gay. Are you kidding me? This is bullshit, this is fake."

Like, he got, like, offended by them even doing that.

And I think the words I used was,

"Mr. Hernandez was rolling over in his grave right now."

Little did he know that I was a part of it, so, um...

It was very hard, man, it took me months. Um, Aaron had killed himself,

and it wasn't something that I could just come clean on months, months later.

I broke the news.

But once he told me,

it was going to be an extended conversation,

and we talked it out and said, "Hey, man,

I'm glad you told me," and "Gee, whiz,

let's start getting you feeling better about yourself."

Yes. It didn't matter to me

whether he was with a man or a woman.

So, that didn't matter to me.

I wanted him to have someone.

I stand here today proud to say that

being bisexual has no difference

in being an athlete or just being yourself.

He wasn't ashamed of who he was.

Aaron was proud of his sexuality,

it was just, he couldn't say anything at the time.

There was no one in the NFL that ever broke this news.

I saw a lot of the news reports about Aaron, um,

the rumors, the other guy in prison and the extremes

he went through to stay closeted.

You know, I had six shoulder surgeries, I've got two torn knees,

I've had countless concussions, back is messed up to this day,

I'm missing a groin, and, you know,

but I didn't think twice about the injuries and what it was doing

in the long run 'cause I didn't plan on living in the long-term.

My plan was play football as long as possible.

As long as I have that cover.

And then I planned on killing myself

'cause I thought no one would ever accept me.

So, I started talking with a psychologist that the NFL has used before.

Months went by. I was at the end of my rope, and...

I think her first thing she said after I told her was,

you know, that I wasn't the first player to tell her that I was gay,

and that I wasn't the second player either.

She, you know, told me that, you know, if you're just going to kill yourself anyway,

you might as well sit down and talk with these people

that you're afraid will disown you.

I get to my parents' house, and, you know, I told my mom that, you know,

there was something that's been bothering me for a long time

that, you know, I need to talk to you about, and...

So we're just three of us sitting in the living room,

and I finally get the words out of my mouth

and tell them I'm gay...

and my mom just stands up and gives me a hug, and she...

she thought I was gonna tell them that I was terminally ill, so in a sense,

she was relieved that nothing was wrong with me.

So when I came out publicly years later and Mr. Kraft,

he called me personally on my cell phone. I picked up, and it was him.

Told me he was proud of me and, you know, proud that I was finally being honest

and putting myself out there to help other players

that may be in a position like, you know, I was.

I think the whole story about Aaron is really unfortunate because,

you know, you don't know what drove him to do these things.

You know, if he was able

to be himself and, you know, have some of these negative things

not in his life, you know, what kind of difference would that have made?

I didn't know why he did what he did,

and I didn't know any of the circumstances surrounding it,

but I knew at that moment in time that we've gotta get that brain.

Terri and DJ came back into the fold

because we needed their consent for the donation of his brain.

And to their credit, they came together for him.

The family of Aaron Hernandez

has decided to donate Aaron's brain to the study,

so that we could possibly shed light on this case.

It's the latest in a string of NFL player suicides.

The family is having his brain studied. They want to know

if the suicide was associated to a history of concussion-related injuries.

Dr. McKee's research at Boston University was instrumental.

What I really admire is that she didn't ever plan to be involved with this.

She was an Alzheimer's expert, and the brains just showed up in her lab.

She's studied more brains of former contact athletes

than anyone in the world,

so she's doing tremendous work.

My job, I look at the brains after death,

but the whole reason I do it is so we can understand this disease

and learn how to diagnose it during life.

We know this is a problem, and we just want to find solutions.

We want to bring hope and care to the people

that are suffering this disorder.

I kind of thought maybe it was just a publicity stunt of some sort,

but I could not have been more wrong when I saw the results of his CTE.

The most significant... That this for an individual

who was only 27 at the time that he died, he had a very advanced disease.

And not only was it advanced microscopically,

especially in the frontal lobes,

which are very important for decision making, judgment and cognition.

This is the first case we've ever seen

of that kind of damage in such a young individual.

I didn't know too, too much about CTE,

but I started to look at the signs and symptoms or the effects of CTE.

Impulsiveness, you know, rash decisions, sometimes propensity to be violent.

I mean, it was Aaron Hernandez.

And if you look at everything that this young man had going on,

not only physically, but mentally, emotionally, um,

from what happened to him as a child and what he'd been dealing with

in his own life, and then on top of it, you add the CTE,

it all made sense that this tragedy, you know, had probably begun

or the seeds of this tragedy had started many, many years earlier.

I can say that this is substantial damage that undoubtedly took years to develop.

This is not something that's developed acutely

or in just in the last several years. I imagine these changes have been evolving

over... Maybe even as long as a decade.

I think CTE could have, in fact, been a contributing factor

to what happened because I know Aaron's had concussions,

I know I've probably given him personally one or two myself.

He's told me about one I gave to him after the game celebrating,

just smacking his head.

I knew Aaron Hernandez

from Bristol, Connecticut, an All-American.

And to think that this is a game

that we encourage young people to play, and the end result was that...

I'm conflicted. I really am.

I wasn't really shocked because Junior Seau,

the same thing had happened with him.

Having CTE be the kind of thing that both of them shared

is eye-opening to athletes and to everybody in the football world.

I don't know if they're trying to pass the cup of sympathy and empathy around,

but when it comes to him, I have none.

My thoughts that people who think that CTE was somehow involved,

I think that's an absolute cop-out.

There are thousands of former NFL players out there

that might have dealt with concussions. I've dealt with them.

So to use that as a cop-out, I'm not...

No, no. Come on. We're smarter than that, people.

I don't think you can blame it all on football

because lots of people play football.

We've never seen an NFL guy

in the middle of his success go out and start murdering people.

So, I don't think you can put it all on football.

But would Aaron Hernandez be in this situation

if he was a concert pianist? Probably not.

If you look at the symptoms of concussion,

ringing in the ears, imbalance, many others,

I'd experience that on a weekly basis.

Then I really began to question my role in the NFL.

Ultimately, I decided that it was brain health first.

I quit after one year.

The NFL is reeling as a promising young rookie

announces his retirement citing concerns over head trauma.

An uncommon move by Chris Borland.

This has got to worry the NFL.

Our game has never been more exciting, has never been more competitive,

and I don't think it's ever been safer.

In my minimal interaction with folks high in the NFL,

I think there's a certain degree of hubris.

You know, they own a day of the week, football's a religion,

and no matter whether or not they're throwing a flag

or claiming concussions are down or taking players into the blue tent,

the reason football's the most popular sport is because it's violent.

So, they're not in the health business, they're in the violence business.

You know, players joke that Dracula runs the blood bank.

I'm very pleased with what

we're doing in the area of equipment,

what we're doing with medical attention.

And my sons and grandsons played, I played,

and I'd recommend to every mother out there

who wants her young man to grow up special that they play, too.

It's all about the business of football,

whether it's on the collegiate level

or whether it's on the professional level,

and very little to do with what ultimately become

an expended asset of the business, which are these players in the end.

I believe that if someone...

had made football less important,

and Aaron's life and his behavior more important,

the outcomes may have been different.

I was not prepared for this. A murder conviction.

Ursula Ward choking back tears...

A murder conviction will not bring my Odin back,

but it will offer me some peace.

...begging lawmakers to change a centuries-old law

that cleared her son's killer's name.

Why are you fighting as hard as you are?

Because I'm fighting for the other Odins out there

that doesn't have a voice, and I wanted to make sure that my voice heard for them.

The law that has been on the books in Massachusetts for decades.

But this morning, the State Supreme Judicial Court said

that rule was outdated and did not fit with contemporary life.

Aaron Hernandez is a convicted murderer once again.

The family of Odin Lloyd is extremely pleased

that the Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts

has determined to reinstate the conviction against Aaron Hernandez.

I think we all want to be apologetic.

Anyone that was close to Aaron,

you know, we wanna say, "This is why. This is why."

But at the end of the day, he made these decisions.

You know, we can't sit here and say, "This is why he made these decisions,"

or "this is why." We can paint a picture of the things he was going through,

but he made these decisions. The decisions lie with him,

the consequence lies with him.

You had talked about, after the conviction,

you talked about forgiveness. Do you still feel forgiveness?

I do. I do. And I pray to God that his soul is at peace.

I pray to God that he find comfort,

and God will forgive him

of whatever happened.

Avielle! You going ni-night?

Avielle, say bye bye to Daddy.

Never bye bye, it's see you later.

There's no bye byes, it's see you later.

She don't know that yet. Say bye bye!

Nah, no, never bye bye. Daddy's never going bye bye.

She's blowing her nose. I'll talk to you later.

All right. I love you. I'll talk to you later.

Okay, I love you. Bye.

The person you called has hung up.