Crime Weekly - S2 Ep78: Aaron Hernandez: Behind Bars (Part 4)

Episode Date: May 20, 2022

Fifteen year old Matthew Kent was out for a jog on the evening of June 17th, 2013 when he discovered something that would change the course of multiple lives. Kent had just finished working out at the gym, and he was training for his high school track team, so he decided to run the short distance back to his home in Westwood Estates in North Attleboro, Massachusetts. His route brought him through a secluded clearing in an industrial park around 5PM where he saw a man, lying on his back, not moving. Kent approached the man to ask if he was alright, and when he received no response, he called the police. The body was that of 27 year old Odin Lloyd, a semi professional football player and a linebacker for the Boston Bandits, a family man whose two loves in life were his family and football, but for some unexplainable reason he had been shot to death, execution style. Odin was not from North Attleboro, and it wasn’t the kind of place where random acts of violence occurred, but law enforcement quickly discovered that he only knew two people in the area. Shayanna Jenkins, the sister of Lloyd’s girlfriend, and Aaron Hernandez, Shayanna’s boyfriend and tight end for the New England Patriots. No one wanted to believe that a young and talented professional football player who had just signed a 40 million dollar contract could possibly be involved with this brutal murder, but as the investigation progressed, a pandoras box was opened, revealing that there was another, darker side to Aaron Hernandez.  Try our coffee!! - www.CriminalCoffeeCO.com Become a Patreon member -- > https://www.patreon.com/CrimeWeekly Shop for your Crime Weekly gear here --> https://crimeweeklypodcast.com/shop Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/c/CrimeWeeklyPodcast Website: CrimeWeeklyPodcast.com Instagram: @CrimeWeeklyPod Twitter: @CrimeWeeklyPod Facebook: @CrimeWeeklyPod

Did you know using your browser in incognito mode doesn't actually protect your privacy? Take back your privacy with IPVanish VPN. Just one tap and all your data, passwords, communications, browsing history, and more will be instantly protected. IPVanish makes you virtually invisible online. Use IPVanish on all your devices, anytime you go online at home and especially on public Wi-Fi. Get IPVanish now for 70% off a yearly plan with this exclusive offer at IPVanish.com slash audio. Hello, everybody. Welcome back to Crime Weekly. I'm Stephanie Harlow. And I'm Derek Levasseur. So before we dive into today's episode, I do want to address something that I was seeing in the comments of the last episode.

I wouldn't have usually talked about it except that it was, you know, I think like five or six people who said something. You know, Derek and I are in the comment section on YouTube, on the YouTube video. We love talking to you guys. You know, we feel this is truly a community. We value your feedback and your opinions. And sometimes, you know, you make us see things that we didn't see before in a different way. But it's also hard to respond to the comments and truly make yourself like understood. Social media doesn't allow for a really in-depth back and forth conversation. So I just want to talk about it real quick. In the last episode, we used an example of the way that Aaron Hernandez spoke to different

people in his life as sort of like a sign or a factor in why he was living a double life. And multiple people told us in the comments that this was not a sign of Aaron living a double life, but it was Aaron using code switching. So the broad definition of code switching is, quote, the practice of alternating between two or more languages or varieties of languages in conversation, end quote. So basically, some people feel that they have to behave and speak in a certain way when they're with a certain group of people, but this isn't the way they would normally speak or behave. They just do so to appear like professional or fit in or not make

anyone uncomfortable, etc. Now, according to Harvard Business Review, this has been a strategy that's long been used by minorities to successfully navigate interracial interactions. And I mean, I would argue that a lot of us probably use code switching from time to time. Like I'm not going to speak to my mother in the same way I would speak to my friends. I'm not going to speak to my employer the same way I would speak at home with my family. I have a tendency to swear a lot like at home. And while I may feel comfortable doing that around my friends and my husband, I'm not going to feel comfortable doing that around my mother or my boss. And I totally understand that this is a real thing. I'm not negating that at all. But I really truly don't think that was what

was happening with Aaron Hernandez, right? Because Aaron wasn't raised in like the streets. He came from a working class, middle class family. And I guarantee you, if his parents had heard him using language like he was using with Alexander Bradley, they would have told him to cut that shit out. You know, this wasn't necessarily like his culture. It wasn't his background. Aaron used the N-word constantly in conversations with people of all different races when he was talking to like his street friends.

It wasn't really who he was. He didn't feel the need to hide the way he spoke to his professional co-workers and friends because he was afraid they would be uncomfortable by who he was. He felt the need to hide it because he was truly hiding that other part of his life from everyone besides a handful of people. He wasn't like that around his family. He wasn't like that in the locker room. We can't really say that it was his culture because it truly wasn't. It was just this persona that he adapted to fit in with a certain group of people, similarly to the way that he started speaking with a Southern accent after he attended the University of Florida for like three months. You know, it's just something that he did. Additionally, it's not really my assertion

alone that Aaron was living a double life. It's the theory of many individuals who've analyzed this case. Even his own brother said that Aaron didn't behave that way or speak that way ever. So in a sense, you could almost say that what Aaron was doing was like more cultural appropriation than code switching. But I also think that behaving in a certain way with a certain, you know, group of people and behaving differently with other people is very common. And if like all the other examples of the way that Aaron was living a double life didn't exist, this wouldn't really have stood out to me at all, the way he was speaking differently to people. And I wouldn't have mentioned it, you know, but there was multiple examples of how he was living a double life that had to do with like sending weapons over state lines and, you know, the amount of marijuana that he was smoking, different things that kind of just add on to the reason he was living a double life.

So I just wanted to get that out there. Let me know if you agree or what you think or if this has changed your opinion in the comment sections. Do you have anything to say about this? And we don't ever pretend to be minorities. We don't know what it's like to maybe have to do that in certain situations. But for me, I agree with you. And I'll even take it a step further. And this kind of might be what you said. But for me, it's the Aaron that we see through the text messages and conversations that he had with people like Alexander Bradley. That's who he was. That's who he wanted to be. And when he was talking to other people, not just Tim Tebow or Urban Meyer or Bill Belichick or Bob Kraft, he was putting on a front, a persona for them because not because of the color of their skin, but because it's his profession. You can't go in there and talk the way you would talk to Alexander Bradley. You can't talk like that to Bill Belichick. And I don't think Aaron Hernandez was doing that because he was a minority and these were white individuals he was speaking to. I just think he was doing it to, he had multiple hats. In some environments, he had to be more professional and some he could let his hair

down and be himself. And we saw both sides of that. And as you said, Stephanie, we do that too. There's certain environments where if I'm talking to my college buddies in a group chat, I talk different to them than I talk to my mother or I talk to people I work with. It's just, you know, I think we're all guilty of doing that in some way or another. I personally don't think it was that deep for Aaron. I don't, but he's no longer here. Maybe he would have a different opinion on that, But that's why we have YouTube comments, right? Like you're not going to agree with everything we say. And I don't even know if people were disagreeing with us. They were just kind of informing us.

Just like the 911 dispatch thing too, where people disagreed with us on that. Listen, that's what the comments are for. Have an opinion. It's subjective. You know, engage, talk about it in the comments, engage with each other. As long as everyone keeps it respectful, no issues with that. Yeah, but for me, it was this thing where it was like they suggested it was his culture, that that's like his background.

That's where he came from. And I don't think that it was. He didn't speak like that at home with his parents. He didn't speak like that. He grew up in Bristol, Connecticut. Yeah, he didn't speak like that at home with his brother. He grew up in a middle class environment. And he didn't speak like, oh, you're G'd up or get the wolves on deck, stuff like that. He didn't talk like that at home.

He would not have been, you know, his parents would have been like, you better cut that shit out. Why are you talking like that? You know, you're not going to do that. So you can't say it's his culture because he didn't really develop that persona until he was like late in high school after his father died, after he started hanging out with the guys at cousin Tanya's house. So it's not really like his culture. It's just this persona he took on. And we can't just decide what our culture is going to be, you know, halfway through our lives and then start talking like that. It reminds me of Malibu's Most Wanted. Like, I don't know if anybody remembers that. Yeah, you just referred to Aaron as Malibu. That's brutal. B-Rad. That's brutal.

Okay. It was like B-Rad. So he just grows up in Malibu. Aaron Hernandez is B-Rad. He talks like, you know, the way he talks and everyone's looking at him like, this isn't like how you grew up. What are you talking about? You can't just like take on a persona halfway through life and then say that's your culture and your code switching at that point it was just like who knows who the real aaron was we don't know even who he was if that was him or if that was him we don't know i think that who he really was got lost somewhere along the way and he was trying to figure that out and he kind of just took on and absorbed personas around him he starts talking about the southern accent when he's in florida you know stuff like that he does it to fit in and feel accepted.

And so he's going to be a chameleon and change who he is and how he speaks and how he behaves depending on who he's talking to, if that makes sense. Yeah, I think it makes sense. But I'm glad people like code switching, never heard of it. So I definitely think there's people

who are doing it for the reasons that people laid out in the comments every single day. And I can't relate to it, but I completely understand what they're saying. I think we're both on, you and I are on the same page at least where we don't think that was the case here. That's all we're saying. In this particular situation, I don't think it was that deep for Aaron. Positive note, which I don't even know if that was negative. We're just kind of addressing it. Positive note, wanted to give a quick shout out to Ashlyn Rose. A while ago, we'll put up the picture right here. John, if you can throw that up. We posted a photo that we did from our photo shoot. It was a pretty cool, what would you say, 70s, 80s photo? Stephanie, you always correct me

on this. It was definitely like 20s, 30s. Oh God, here we go okay whatever whatever it was okay so so the 20s 30s photo the 20s 30s era yeah and so cool photo and we have a patreon page so we posted it on our patreon as well we usually post everything first on patreon uh if you haven't checked it out strongly recommend you do sometimes we post uh little separate things on there that we don't post on here it's more personal stuff sometimes what we're just doing on here. It's more personal stuff. Sometimes what we're just doing on a day to day. And we have some pretty cool giveaways sometimes. So if you're looking at that photo, you can see Stephanie and I kind of created a murder

board in the background. And we signed that murder board and I kept it in my house and we gave it to one of our patrons. All they had to do was comment in the comment section. And Ashlyn was the winner. I will be sending it out to her this week. So again, congratulations, Ashlyn, for winning the murder board. And we'll be having some more giveaways down the road, especially now with criminal coffee. Maybe we'll do a criminal coffee bundle or something like

that. We'll give away. So if you haven't checked it out already, link is in the description below. The videos for YouTube go up a day early on there, ad free. And also you get access to some of these giveaways. So check out our Patreon. It's down in the description. Congratulations, Ashlyn. Okay. So we're picking up where we left off. And I think it's so cute that some people in the comments were saying like, oh, sometimes I'm so scared that I don't know where we're going to pick up and that I'm going to forget. But then as soon as you guys start talking, I remember and everything comes rushing back to me. And I hope that's that's the case for most of you, because it would be impossible to sum up like three parts of what we've we've gone through

already. But so we're here. We're kind of Aaron's been questioned by the police about the murder of Odin Lloyd. And he pretty much is just like, why am I here? I'm not talking to you without a lawyer, and he leaves. So the morning after Aaron's first interaction with the police officers who were investigating the murder of Odin Lloyd, Detective Mike Elliott and State Police Lieutenant Mike King paid a visit to the Enterprise Rent-A-Car where Aaron had rented the Nissan Altima. Now, the car had already been cleaned, and they noted the damage to the vehicle, including the fact that the driver's side mirror had been completely taken off. The next step in the evidence collection process brought them to the North Attleboro Industrial Park, where law enforcement attempted to find out if any of the nearby businesses had

surveillance cameras that had possibly captured some activity in the early morning hours of June 17, 2013. Two companies did have security cameras, a gold refinery called Metalor, as well as Bell's Powder Coating. Law enforcement was able to recover seven videos from that night. After this, state trooper Michael Shervin, Sergeant Paul Baker, and ADA Patrick Bomberg took a team of police officers to the home of Aaron Hernandez, armed with a search warrant. While police collected evidence from his house, Aaron played pool in the basement with his fiancée's uncle and watched Game 6 of the NBA Finals. On this day, law enforcement removed several electronics, including an iPhone 5 that belonged to Shayana, a BlackBerry, three iPads, and a one terabyte hard drive, as well as a DVR with surveillance footage from the 14 cameras that were installed inside and outside

Aaron's North Attleboro house. By this time, the media had already caught the scent of a sensational story and they were running with it. They were outside his house. They were outside Gillette Stadium. They were outside his lawyer's office. They were everywhere. But Aaron had nothing to say when he was approached by reporters. New England patriot Aaron Hernandez emerged from his luxurious North Attleboro home Thursday morning AWAY IN A WHITE AUDI SUV. NEWS HELICOPTERS FOLLOWED THE NFL STAR AS HE MADE HIS WAY TO GILLETTE STADIUM. ABOUT AN HOUR LATER, HERNANDEZ LEFT THE STADIUM IN FOXBORO AND DROVE TO HIS ATTORNEY'S OFFICE IN BOSTON. ALONG THE WAY, NEWS CREWS CAUGHT UP WITH HERNANDEZ IN BOSTON AS HE STOPPED FOR GAS. in Boston. Along the way, news crews caught up with Hernandez in Boston as he stopped for gas.

They asked several questions, but not a peep from Hernandez. Thursday evening, Michael Fee, the tight ends lawyer, told our Boston affiliate WBZ-TV, quote, his vehicle is still here. My client is gone for the day. Fee wouldn't talk about the investigation. He would only say some of the media reports are inaccurate. It was while Aaron was at Gillette Stadium that he met with the owner of the New England Patriots, Robert Kraft. Now, Robert Kraft was a New Englander through and through. Born in Brookline, Massachusetts to a modern Orthodox Jewish family, he had very humble beginnings. His mother was a dressmaker who worked in Boston's Chinatown. His father wanted Kraft to become a rabbi, and as a child, Kraft sold

newspapers outside of Braves Field in Boston. Although he was never able to participate in sports because his father felt it would interfere with his religious studies, Robert Kraft was a big-time football fan, and he'd been a Patriots season ticket holder since 1972. Kraft once said that his passion for the Patriots led him to, quote, break every one of my financial rules in my pursuit of the team, end quote. When Kraft paid $172 million for the team in 1994, it was the highest price paid for any NFL team at the time. The Patriots meant a lot to Robert Kraft, and they were a large investment. So of course, he was going to want to get ahead of the rumors that one of his players was potentially a murderer. Did you have an opportunity at that time to have a conversation with the defendant?

Yes. And just tell us about that. What did you say to the defendant? I wanted any of our players... Sir, just with regard to, did you say something to him to start the conversation? Yes. And what was that, sir? I understood there was an incident that had transpired and I wanted to know whether he was involved and if he was, you know, I wanted to make sure he's part of our, any player who comes into our system, I consider part of our extended family and I wanted to get him help. So as a result of did you say this to the defendant? Yes. 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 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. Okay. So at the time that you had this conversation with him, had you learned about a homicide that had occurred in North Attleboro, Massachusetts? Yes. So when you referred to speaking to him about wanting to know whether occurred in North Attleboro, Massachusetts? Yes. So when you referred to speaking to him about wanting to know whether he was involved in this incident, was it in relation to that homicide? Yes. Now, did you have a further conversation with him about

if he knew the victim of the homicide? I believe I did. Okay. And do you recall what he told you? I think he said that he was the boyfriend of his fiancee's sister. He was her boyfriend. Okay. And did he further describe the nature of their relationship no so i think it's it's kind of funny watching robert craft because he has no idea what it's like to testify in a murder trial or to like be in a court of law he's trying to to qualify his responses he wants to he's like in pr mode you know he wants to explain like well what did you, what did you say to him? Well, you know, my players are family. So I went but they're like, no, just answer the question. What did you say to him? And he had a very hard time with that because they want you to be very factual in court. And he wanted to sort of like,

set up his answer before answering because I think he doesn't want to seem like he's over here like Aaron, did you do this? You know, like trying to get the person who's being accused of to answer other people's questions too often either, where he's under this, this, this constricted environment where he's just like everybody else. And he has to abide by the rules of the court as well. So most people aren't cutting off Robert Kraft, you know, Hey, Oh, don't say it like that. We just want the, we just want the facts. So I will say this as a longtime Patriots fan. And I know I've seen it in the comments. I'm biased. I'm a huge Patriots fan. I've said it. I live 20 minutes from the stadium. But I will tell you that Robert Kraft is someone who has always said, like any player who comes through our system is like a family member, and he's had very close relationships with a lot of players. I do think that his relationship with Aaron was more involved because Aaron was an amazing football player, just like any sport. If you're

really good, you get preferential treatment. You're more of a family member than the guy who's sitting on the bench. So I think it was a couple of things going on here where when Robert brought Aaron into his office, one, PR reasons, listen, we need to know we're the New England Patriots. This isn't Aaron Hernandez's football team. Anything that you're involved in is a direct reflection on our team. And we don't want to have a situation where we have a potential murderer associated with our organization. So I need you to tell me right up front, what happened here? Did you do this? Were you involved in any way? And if you were, you need to be up upfront with us right away so that we can get you the proper help, whether that's legal representation, whatever it may be, not only for Aaron, let's not spin it like he's doing this for Aaron. Robert Kraft is

doing this for him and the New England Patriots and to protect their organization, to protect their reputation. And I don't think going into this, Robert was expecting Aaron to be like, yeah, I killed him. But maybe he thought, you know, Aaron was going to come out and say, yeah, you know, I knew about it. I was there was one of my buddies. And then Robert would have said, okay, let's get you a lawyer. If you really didn't do it, let's get you a lawyer to make sure that you don't get jammed up for something you didn't do. But Aaron told him, nope, no involvement whatsoever. So I think at that point, Robert was like, okay, we'll monitor it, but he's telling me he didn't do anything. And so what else are we going to do until the police department and the state police do their investigation? If he's saying he doesn't need help because he wasn't involved, well, then I got to trust him. And when Aaron signed his contract, he actually donated $50,000 to, it was actually the Myra Craft Giving Foundation, I think.

It was like a charity that Robert Kraft is involved with. That's his wife. Yeah. And he did this because Aaron said, you know, he gave me a life. Like Robert Kraft gave me a life. He gave me a chance. And he took me, he brought me to his home. He like let me meet his family. I had dinner with them. He gave me a chance. And he took me, he brought me to his home. He like,

let me meet his family. I had dinner with them. They took me in. And this is my way of saying thank you for that, you know, giving me a place to feel that I belonged. And so he donated $50,000 after he got his money or he signed his contract. So yeah, it seemed like Kraft had made an impact on Aaron, just not a big enough impact, I guess, for him to kind of go on the straight and narrow because he did this right before his daughter was born. So kind of after that double homicide in Boston had already gone down. Yeah, that sounds that sounds about right, though. Robert is known to do that with a lot of players. anyone who's came through his system always says like, you know, Mr. Craft was always like, he's the guy, if you go look up some videos of him, he's the owner that after the games, he's in the locker room waiting for the team and he's hugging every single player that comes through the door. You don't see that with a lot of owners, but every single player on their way

in makes it like a conscious effort to like walk over to him and like give him a big hug, win or lose like this. That's the environment he's created. But exactly what you said, ultimately, he can do what he can. He can try to be someone who's there for them, but it is a business and he's not their babysitter. So, you know, when they're not at the facilities and they're not playing, these are grown adults and they're going to do what they want to do, regardless of the environment and the structure you put in place in the organization. And Aaron is just one example of that. There's a lot of players who go off the beaten path, have the whole world ahead of them and just can't escape, you know,

their own bad decisions or the people they're hanging out with. And Aaron was an example of that where Robert put them in a great situation, great organization, opportunity to win a lot of Super Bowls, maybe be a Hall of Famer one day. And it didn't matter to Aaron. His reputation with his gangbanging friends was more important than his reputation amongst people who actually could have had a positive impact on his life. But you heard what Aaron told Robert Kraft or what Robert Kraft claims Aaron told him. He said that he hoped the time of the murder would come out and this would prove that he was innocent because he'd been in a club at that time. But this was only a few days after Odin Lloyd's body had been recovered. And not only had the time of Odin's murder not been revealed to the public through the media, but the police hadn't told Aaron what time Odin Lloyd had been killed. I don't even think they knew it themselves at that point.

Yeah, that's interesting. So if Aaron was indicating that he was aware of Odin Lloyd's time of death before it was publicly released, and yet he's trying to proclaim that he wasn't there, that's a problem. Yeah. It's like when somebody's like, oh, can you go to dinner with... No, when somebody's like, can you come over tomorrow? And you're like, oh, I'm busy around dinnertime. And they're like, well, I didn't tell you what time I wanted you to come over. It's kind of like you're just preemptively trying to get out of this. But yeah, if you know what time Odin died and you know you weren't there because you were at a club, which obviously was later proven to be false anyways. Aaron didn't go to a club that night. Then it tells that you have that inside information. What do they call that when detectives hold things back from the public to see if you know something

that they didn't release yet? Guilt knowledge. Yeah. Aaron had some guilt knowledge, man. Yeah. There wasn't any specificity there with the knowledge, but it was insinuated by basically saying, hey, I know what time I was at the club at and that was around the same time that Odin was killed. OK, well, they haven't set a time of death yet. So how would you know that? Exactly. Let's take a quick break. We'll be right back. Did you know using your browser in incognito mode doesn't actually protect your privacy? Take back your privacy with IPVanish VPN. Just one tap and all your data, passwords, communications, browsing history, and more will be instantly protected. IPVanish makes you virtually invisible online.

Use IPVanish on all your devices, anytime you go online at home, and especially on public Wi-Fi. Get IPVanish now for 70% off a yearly plan with this exclusive offer at IPVanish.com slash audio. So Aaron also met with the Patriots director of security, Mike Briggs. And Aaron told Mike Briggs the same thing, that he was not involved in the murder of Odin Lloyd, but he didn't just tell Briggs that he was innocent. He swore he was on the life of his baby daughter, Avielle. That same day, as the news vans camped outside of Aaron's home, Aaron was served by a Miami-based law firm who were representing Alexander Bradley.

Bradley had agreed to withdraw the civil suit. But now, with these new developments that Aaron was potentially involved in the shooting death of another man, Bradley had decided to go through with it after all. When Aaron drove to Gillette Stadium for practice on Thursday, June 19th, Mike Briggs told him to go home. He testified that he had told Aaron his presence at the stadium was, quote, bad for business, and Aaron didn't make a fuss, he just finished up a phone call that he was making, and then he left the stadium immediately. Two days later, on Saturday, June 21st, police entered Aaron's home again with another search warrant and police dogs.

According to law enforcement officials at the scene, Aaron was not fazed by their presence at all, with one police officer saying, quote, During the search, he just sat there and talked to us like he was talking to any other person. He had no expression on his face. He knew we were there for a murder, but he didn't show any nervousness. He'd lay on the couch watching TV and playing with his daughter, smiling, laughing. He didn't care. He thought he was above the law. End quote. Police left the house that day with more evidence bags, as well as a semi-automatic Hungarian-made AK-47 and a safe that contained a box of.22 caliber ammo. Real quickly, without saying names, I can tell you that although I don't have any inside information, I can confirm this was the temperament that Aaron had that day. I know detectives who personally were involved in that search warrant, the execution of that search warrant. And it was very controlled because Aaron's a celebrity. These are Massachusetts police officers. Obviously, most of them are probably fans of Aaron and the Patriots. So they

were very specific about who went in. There was more senior guys. And one of the guys that I had worked with numerous times out of North Attleboro was part of this team. And he's actually in a couple photos of when they're taking Aaron out of the house. But he had said, Aaron, honestly, if you didn't know the specifics of the case by looking at his demeanor, you would think he doesn't have a care in the world. He really wasn't concerned about them being there where you would expect someone who knows they're guilty to be very concerned about what evidence you're gathering, what things you're taking, questioning why they're taking it. He was kind of pretending like they weren't even there. I remember him saying it was almost like he thought like we were like cleaners that day, just cleaning the house. And he didn't

even acknowledge our presence. So kind of like we saw Chris Watts when the police were in his house, he was acting super nervous. He was acting weird and he was like directing them like, oh, I think her ring's in the bathroom. And he was like very interested in what they were doing. And Aaron is acting like nothing's going on. Now, do you think this is purposely his demeanor, like he's controlling himself to that extent? Or does he really think that like nothing's going to happen to me, like they're not going to actually arrest me? No, I don't know. Aaron seems like a really complicated guy. And nothing's going to happen to me. Like, they're not going to actually arrest me. No, I don't know. Aaron seems like a really complicated guy. And we're going to get into some of the issues with CTE and all these things.

Maybe that was a factor in it. But he just seems like a really off dude, to be honest. And I would have expected Aaron not to be nervous, but to try and use his celebrity to garner a friendship, like to garner like maybe preferential treatment with these police officers by going up to them. Hey, how you guys doing today? Hey, you know,

I got some signed stuff in the back. If you want to take some tickets or whatever, they're all yours. Like maybe talking about Tom Brady a little bit, like try to befriend them. I think that's what I would have expected. And probably they would have expected where it's like, this guy's basically kissing our ass because he knows we're here to bring him down.

And he's trying to make it so we're less likely to do that because we like him. And that wasn't the case either. He just didn't acknowledge their presence, not one way or the other. He was indifferent about it, or at least he was portraying that. I think he legitimately didn't think that he was going to get arrested. I think because he had like cleaners come in, you know, like the day after Odin Lloyd's murder, like he had the house thoroughly cleaned. He's the guy's got like three cleaning ladies, which is bananas to me. But he I think he really just didn't think that anything was going to ever happen. And you'll see this later in like jail calls, too. He's like, I'm going to be out. You

know, when I get out, we're going to do this. And I mean, it's like you're you're in jail. You're like waiting for your murder trial. You know, you're pretty confident. So I don't know if it was because he thought he was above the law. I don't know if he thought he did a good job cleaning up after himself, which we will find out he did not. But he was confident that nothing was going to happen to him. It was almost like this fantasy that he had created at this point. Yeah. And I also think there was a sense of entitlement. He was thinking, I got the best lawyers in the business.

I've seen other high profile celebrities get off on things that they probably did. But, you know, when you have the right lawyer who has an ability to bend the truth and find holes in the investigation itself, you can get off on a technicality. And I have a feeling that his attorneys were maybe making him feel even more confident than he should feel. And that's probably why he was portraying that level of confidence like he was going to get out because his lawyers were probably saying, hey, they don't got this. They don't got that. This is a hole in their case. We're going to beat that all up in court. You're going to be fine. And so he genuinely thought it was just a matter of time before he gets out and he's back on the football field.

Yeah. The lawyers are like, it's all circumstantial, Aaron. Don't worry about it. But it wasn't. There was plenty of non-circumstantial evidence. And let's talk about the evidence that was recovered during this initial investigation because it is extensive. First, we have the Nissan Altima and its presence on surveillance cameras pulling in and out of the North Attleboro Industrial Park, where Odin Lloyd's body would later be found riddled with bullets. That same Altima was also seen on surveillance at Aaron's home around 1 a.m. with no damage to it, and it was seen at the home of Odin Lloyd at 2.30 a.m. with no damage to it. It pulled into the

industrial park around 3 a.m., and when it returned to Aaron's home around 3.30 a.m., the driver's side mirror was gone and there was like scratches on the side of it. The North Attleboro police would later put out a call to the public for their help in locating the Altima's mirror, saying, quote, this mirror may be found in a wooded or secluded area somewhere close to the route from Faiston Street, Boston, down Route 95 to Ronald C. Meyer, North Attleboro. When the police took possession of the Altima, it had already been cleaned by enterprise manager Kelia Smith, who testified that she would find all sorts of weird stuff in the rental cars that were returned. So this was kind of common to just find a bunch of weird stuff in these cars.

So she didn't think much of it when she found a spent shell casing sort of stuck to a piece of blue bubble gum in the Altima. Smith said, quote, the only reason I had even noticed it was there was a chunk of gum on my rug. I was annoyed by that. You can't get gum out of the carpet. There was a child's picture back there too. I didn't want to touch the gum with my hands, so I used the child's picture. I moved the seat forwards. I saw what I thought was a bullet. I took all that together, the gum, the child's picture, the bullet, and tossed it into a dumpster. But I thought a few days later, oh my God, what if this is important? What if it's not there anymore? I don't arrange when the dumpster gets dumped. That's when I called the police, end quote. So when she says child's

picture, she doesn't mean a picture of a child. She means like a picture a child would draw with like crayons and stuff. Yeah. And to go back real quick, because there's going to mean a picture of a child. She means like a picture a child would draw with like crayons and stuff. Yeah. And to go back real quick, because there's going to be a lot of evidence that you bring up in this case that is kind of just like piling on, right? Like it all says the same thing. You're going to talk about the gum, but just to keep this really like just the structure, the bone structure here, things that you need to know, just commonsensical things that you

can put two and two together. I just want to reiterate what you just said, because there was a lot there. At 1am, the Altima was at Aaron's house. No damage, but don't even worry about the damage right now. At 1am, the vehicle, the Altima, was at Aaron's house. The vehicle is then seen on camera at 2.30 at Odin's house. And by the way, Aaron is seen leaving in the Altima with his buddies from aaron's home so the house the the vehicle leaves at 1a whatever time it leaves that from aaron's home it's then seen on camera at odin's house at 2 30 it's then seen at the industrial park where odin was killed or or at least at minimum at this point his body was was disposed of there right we

won't get into all the where it happened, but the shell casings were found there. And then at 3.30, if you're thinking, well, maybe Aaron got dropped off somewhere. He's seen arriving back at the home in the Altima at 3.30 at his home in the Altima, which is now damaged. So yes, there is a small possibility that Aaron was dropped off somewhere that wasn't seen on camera, but that's going to be on them to prove. And that's going to be very hard to prove when you have multiple locations being caught on camera and you have, as we pointed out in the last episode, Aaron at the gas station as well, buying the gum and all that. So you put all that together and it builds a very strong case that whatever happened to Odin Lloyd happened or was initiated in that Ultima, right? He was picked up in that Ultima and there's no evidence to suggest that Aaron was let out or dropped off anywhere during that time. So at this point, it's fair to say that Aaron was definitely present during Odin Lloyd's

murder. What's going to come into question much later, which is still kind of a question to this day, even though he was found guilty is who pulled the trigger. But, you know, I know you're going to get into all that. I don't want to go too far ahead, but just from a pragmatic perspective, you have the vehicle in question seen at Aaron's home at 1am. And. And you see that vehicle picking up the victim, going to the location where the victim's body was eventually recovered, and then going back to the home of Aaron Hernandez with Aaron still in it. And yet Aaron's going to try to convince the court that he wasn't involved.

That's a tough one for I don't care how good the lawyer is. Yeah. And not only that, but you see the car returning to Aaron's home without Odin in it, Right. So it's not like Aaron could say exactly. And I'm not dropping him off. Yeah. It's not like he could say we came back to my house and then Odin walked out of the house. I don't know where he went. Like something must have happened to him after he left my house. It's like you got back without Odin. We see you pick him up. We see you go into the industrial park. Half an hour later, you're home. But no Odin. And thank God Aaron was so paranoid and had all of those surveillance cameras, because if he didn't have all of those surveillance cameras,

he could have easily said like, oh, Odin was with me. And then he went out to have a cigarette and somebody must have jumped him when he was outside and then left his body in that industrial park near my house. I have no idea. And that might be enough reasonable doubt for a jury to look at someone like Aaron Hernandez and say, oh, how could he have possibly done this? But with here, we have this very laid out timeline, as you just laid out, that makes it impossible for anything else to have happened. At the very least, Aaron was there. He was present when Odin was murdered. And the cameras, as you just said, are so critical in this case. Aaron's own security system is basically what

did him in because when you have a jury, there are going to be other things, but when you have a jury, they're normal people like you and I, and they may not necessarily have a background in law enforcement. So they're going to need to be educated, but there's one thing they don't need to be educated on video. They've watched TV. They've watched movies before they have eyes. So when they're presented with a video, they don't need to have this background in how to watch a video to understand what they're seeing. And then you couple that with timelines, right? To put in perspective when these videos are being shot, when they're viewing them. And it's very easy for any reasonable person to deduce what we're talking about right now without any type of education

from the lawyers beforehand. Hey, I see this. I see the video. I see the car. This is the time. As you said, you can see him picking up Odin. Then you see him go into the industrial park where they know that Odin's body was found. And then they go back to Aaron's house and Odin's no longer there. You don't need to really have a background in investigative practices to understand that something happened to Odin in that timeframe. And yet you have these three other people, Aaron and his two accomplices still present. Reasonable person would believe that these guys know what happened if they didn't do it themselves. Yeah. And then we're going to have evidence that Aaron was at the industrial park that night. So the police were

able to recover this evidence from the dumpster, right? And it was a.45 caliber shell casing they found and that matched the shell casings that they'd found around Lloyd's body at the industrial park. Like you said, the bubblegum looked to be the same brand and flavor that Aaron had been seen on surveillance video purchasing at a gas station just 30 minutes before he arrived at Odin Lloyd's house to pick him up. There was a bottle of vitamin water in the car. Also, he was seen on camera buying that. Additionally, there were four stones wedged into the rear passenger side tire of the Nissan Altima, and these stones created an anomaly in the tire's tread pattern. These anomalies

perfectly matched tire tracks that were found at the scene of Odin Lloyd's murder. State Trooper Todd Gerad would testify that tire characteristics such as grooves, sipes, and wear bars had eliminated the front two tires of the Altima because they were a different design, but the two rear tires had the same design as the tracks that were left at the scene, and that anomaly that those rocks made, it was pretty clear that it was this exact Nissan Altima, which had been at the industrial park on the night of Odin's murder. Dirt found in the tires of the Altima was also matched to dirt in the industrial parks, but tire tracks were not the only thing that law enforcement found

at the industrial park. They also found a sneaker print from size 13 Air Jordan Retro 11 Lowe's. And these were the shoes that Aaron was wearing that night. Stephen Bennett, who worked for the Massachusetts State Police CSI Department, he obtained a new pair of these shoes. He then made a transparency of the soles, and he compared that to a foam cast he'd made of the shoe print at the scene, and it was a perfect match. And when shown surveillance footage of Aaron the night of Odin's murder, Nike employee Herbert Hedge identified the shoes that Aaron was wearing as Air Jordan Retro 11 Lows. These sneakers have a distinctive sole with a herringbone pattern,

a series of three circles in various sizes, a ripple in the middle, and the famous Jordan Jumpman logo. And it was the same size that Aaron wore. But by the time the investigation had progressed to the point where police were focusing on the shoe print, 11 months had passed. And when they entered Aaron's home again to locate these shoes, they were not in Aaron's closet. They were not in his home. And to this day, they have not been found. I know you love this shit with like the tire treads and stuff like that.

I know you're into it. Love it. It motivates me. It's so cool. And I've're into it. Love it. It motivates me. It's so cool. And I've had the opportunity to do it. And you guys might be saying, well, this is almost overkill at this point, but we always talk about defense attorneys and they're going to try to poke holes. The detectives know this. They're going to try to poke holes in certain elements of their case. So they could have stopped at the camera footage and been like, oh, we got it. Slam dunk. We're

good. And then all you have to do is have a lawyer come in there and put a level of doubt in the jury members' minds that, yeah, it's an Ultima, but was it the same Ultima? How many Ultimas are out there in that color? How do we know that's the same Ultima that picked Odin Lloyd up? We don't know. And it's just, all you need is a couple of jury members to go, yeah, you know what? Maybe you're right. So they're going the extra step.

And that brings in the gum that's found in the same Ultima that's found at the scene, the shell casings, right? Then the shoe print. Love this. This is exactly what I talked about a few episodes ago with the shoe print that I found on the counter where I was able to match it to the individual with the Air Force Ones. And yeah, when this information, you're saying that Aaron's team knew about this information with the shoe before they went and tried to get the shoe?

No. So they didn't know about it. It just so happens that Aaron knows what shoes he's wearing. So obviously anything that may tie him to this, he would try to get rid of before it goes any further. That would be common sense. Yeah. So that white sweatshirt you see him wearing in the surveillance too, they never found

that either. Gone. So I think what happened is Aaron probably thought he was fine until the police started showing up, like probably that first night where they brought him into the police station and he said, I'm not talking to you without a lawyer. And then he went home. He probably took those shoes. He took the sweatshirt, whatever pants he was wearing, burned them, got rid of them. Allegedly, I'm just saying that's probably what

he did. I don't know for sure, but they're nowhere to be found. So he definitely owned a pair of shoes like that. You can see him wearing them on the surveillance footage, but now they're gone along with that white sweatshirt and probably the jeans and stuff he was wearing. So I think as soon as the police started taking an interest, he got rid of that stuff. And they didn't get to that part of the investigation where they're comparing the shoe print until almost a year later. And by that time, I mean, he probably could have gotten rid of those shoes five times. And that's why they do this.

So, right, like it might feel like a little bit of overkill, but it's thoroughness, obviously. But also, if the lawyer is able to rule out one aspect of their case, one piece of circumstantial evidence, he also has to, or she also has to rule out all these other things. And it just makes their case stronger because it is a chess match. They're going to have their pieces, the defense is going to have theirs, and ultimately, it's going to be who has that stronger case to present to the jury. And these things not only put that vehicle at the crime scene, but more specifically, it puts Aaron Hernandez. And that's really what they're trying to figure

out. I don't think they're going into it saying, hey, Aaron's definitely the shooter. In fact, they might've thought he put one of his lackeys up to it. That's kind of what you would think he would do, right? But they do know that Aaron was there. And the reason they know Aaron was there was because of the evidence you're laying out, the chewing gum, the vitamin water, the shoe print where, listen, the car's there, but now you have a shoe print. And in this industrial park area, it's kind of like a dirt area. If you want to go look up pictures, it's not like concrete. So it's like dirt and rocks. And so if you're stepping on it, just like any dirt area that you step, you can leave behind a shoe print as you're walking around that area. And so that not only shows that Aaron was there in the car, it shows he exited the vehicle, which is extremely important as they him was outside the vehicle when doing so. More importantly, I would guess, and maybe we're going to get there, the shoe prints that were identified on the ground were probably in the area in which they believe the shooter was standing when the shots took place. All very compelling stuff when you put it together. Shoe prints were right by Odin Lloyd's body.

And you know what else? Because I bet you're thinking like, wow, this is a really good case. You know, circumstantial evidence or not, this is a really good case. All you need now is like DNA placing him at the scene. Well, they had that too, right? Because there was a blunt found.

There was a blunt found. I mean, that's not enough. We got some more for you. That's what I'm saying. Like all of this stuff and people could be like, well, anybody could have, his friends could have worn his shoes that night. Like shoes that night. There's a million things that people-

Just flopping around in his size 13 shoes. Yeah. Just like there was apologists for OJ Simpson, when you have an idol, when you have someone you look up to, like Aaron Hernandez was to a lot of people, it's very hard to admit that he could have done this and you just don't want to admit it. You're going to find any loophole to get you out of it. But you got his DNA. There was a blunt found at the scene by where Odin Lloyd's body was found that had Aaron Hernandez's DNA on it, as well as Odin Lloyd's DNA on it. So what you have here is probably they're driving over to the industrial park. They're smoking. They're still smoking when they get out. They're like, let's take a quick walk. At this point, Odin Lloyd knows what's up. Okay, I have to believe he knows what's up. You've seen this in every mob movie ever. The Sopranos, they do it every other week. They're mad at someone in their crew, and they're like, let's take a walk by the docks. The guy in the crew knows what's up, but he can't do anything about it at this point. And so they're walking, they're still smoking. Aaron

flicks the blunt out and boom. And that's exactly what happened. But then this idiot leaves it there. So he was really not thinking that this was ever going to come back on him. No, I will say too, when you compare it to OJ, there are definitely people who think, a lot of people who think OJ didn't do it. I feel like from what- No, there's not. There's a lot of people that think OJ didn't do it. Absolutely. I worked the OJ case. I did a six part series on it. I can show you the emails if you'd like to see them. A lot of people, there's a good group of people out there who believe the son, Jason Simpson did it, but we'll save that for a different day. There's a good group of people out there that think the earth

is flat too. But I mean, like, show me, show me your work. Do the math. We should actually cover OJ at some point because I mean, I've been out there, you know, it'd be, it'd be a good case to cover because I'm sure you've researched it. I mean, it's one of the most prolific cases in true crime, but I definitely had a whole different take on it going out there, being at the crimes, all these different things, but not to go too much off the path here. Wait, do you think he didn't do it?

Oh God, no. I said right in the episode he did it. The whole reason we did the show was because we had a private investigator who wrote a book basically saying that Jason Simpson did it. And I was able to disprove that theory, which was predicated on a time card that this individual had, this investigator. I was able to contact the time card company, which was no longer even in business as I found someone who worked for it. I was able to prove that the time card company, which was no longer even in business as I found someone who worked for it, I was able to prove that the time card that he'd been showing the whole country at all these speaking engagements was side B of a side A and B card. So what he was showing where it was basically saying, hey, Jason Simpson wasn't working that night was actually the week of the funeral.

And we'll just say that it didn't go well. He didn't like that. I was able to put that on a one of those like what do you call it? The projector projectors. Yeah, I put it up on a projector and and show him. Hey, here's side B of the card. You can see the B in the corner. There's an A. You only photocopied one side. Look at you cracking cases.

I'm so proud. It wasn't good. He were no we no longer talk, but he does. He was coming from a good place where he felt like he had something. And there are still people, even after that, you know, that series who still believe that somebody else might've done it. But when it comes to Aaron, living in the area of new England, you know, seeing online, I don't feel like there's a lot of people who think Aaron wasn't involved. There are some people who say maybe he wasn't the shooter, but I don't think there's a lot

of people out there saying, nope, he had nothing to do with it. He got framed. I don't see much of that. Yeah. But I mean, there's a group of people who are big fans who just didn't want to accept it. And if you have those people on a jury, they might be looking for an out. They might be like, I'm not going to be the one to end this kid's life. Like, just give me an out. The DNA gives you no out. I mean, I guess you could say that maybe he smoked it earlier at the house and then Ernest Wallace took the blunt and got in the car. And Aaron was just sitting on the side of the road somewhere, you know, having a lemonade sale or something while this was happening.

Like, I guess you could, but all stacked up together. I feel there's no doubt that Aaron Hernandez was present. And I truly believe that he was the one that pulled the trigger a million percent. No doubt. Do you know? Well, before we get I got a question for you. But before we get there, let's take a quick break. All right. So we're back. Question for you.

And I think I know the answer to this, but I'm not sure. When we talk about the shooter, right? Who is the actual shooter? Do we know if with the search warrants that if the police ever did a GSR, a gunshot residue test on Aaron Hernandez. Not anywhere that I could find. They didn't say that. And I doubt that they did. It might've been too much time. It might've been too much time. By the time they started considering him a suspect, even if it was a few days, I mean, just by him washing his hands, it would come off. For anyone who doesn't know, when you fire a firearm, there's a gunpowder

residue that kind of goes into the air. If you look on video online, you can find some videos where it might not even be present to the human eye, but the gun is not completely sealed. So basically gunpowder comes out all the holes in the gun, wherever they can escape it will, and it leaves this gunshot residue on your hand. So a lot of the times when we had shootings in my hometown where I was working, what we would do is do a GSR test on them at the station or in the immediate area. And we also did it for potential suicides where, you know, if we have something that looks like a suicide, you can always do a quick GSR test on the hand of the person. And what you're expecting to

see is gunshot residue. If you don't, more than likely, it's not a suicide. It might've been staged to look like one. So that would have been really helpful in a case like this, where you could have done a GSR test on Aaron immediately. And unless he was really scrubbing away, he might have some remnants of GSR on his hand. He could always make the, and we've had this happen before where they could say, I was legally shooting a gun yesterday at the gun range, but then you would have to go prove that and look down that rabbit hole. So they probably didn't have it in this case. Cause I think if they did, we would have heard about it. Cause that would have been a real, you know, that would have been just another layer

to this case. Although he was someone who shot firearms before. I don't know if he was doing it at a gun range, but it would have been something they could have entertained and looked into. He wasn't shooting anything at a gun range. He didn't even have a license to own a firearm. Right. He didn't have a blue card or anything like that. No. And I mean, I think by the time the police even were able to get close to him, once they get the warrant to search his house, too much time has passed.

But you know what? I bet it would have been on that white sweatshirt. I bet you would have found some gunshot residue on that white sweatshirt that's completely lost to time now. Oh yeah, absolutely. And in fact, in Rhode Island, you don't even have a blue card. It's easier in Rhode Island to get a gun. In Massachusetts, it's even harder. So there's like a, I believe there's like a safety course. So there would have to be some legal documentation. So to your point, if there's GSR on his sweatshirt, on his hand, on any of his jeans, well, Aaron,

when are you firing a gun? Because you don't have a gun permit. You have a right to have a gun in your home, but where are you shooting this thing? Because you don't have the right to do so. So yeah, he had to get rid of that evidence. He would have been, I mean, he was an idiot and when we, not to be disrespectful, but he was an idiot when it came to this case. And if he had any brains, he would have made sure he got rid of everything that he could remember would be associated with the case, which it seems like he

did. But there were things, as I know we talked about before, that he didn't do a great job of, one being the surveillance footage. And something the police found that I had never heard of before, and I've seen a ton of documentaries about this. I've gone through this case, but they found a gun. They found a.22 caliber pistol buried in a wood to conduct a detailed scan of the terrain for evidence. State Police Trooper Stephen Gallagher testified that while the topography was tough due to rocks and debris, officers found the gun through leaves. Photographs of the gun showed it had been discolored by rust and other environmental conditions. End quote. That.22 caliber pistol was not the gun

used to murder Odin Lloyd, but this gun was traced back to an Oscar Hernandez, who, if you remember, was Aaron's friend in Florida who'd shipped him some guns hidden in a car. And later, the police and the prosecution would sort of theorize that it was possibly Cheyenne, Aaron's girlfriend, his fiancee, who had taken that gun and buried it in that area due to some GPS of her car and like the way the area she was It's just my opinion. I'll stress that. She's never been charged with a crime. There is evidence that suggests that she might have made some stops at certain locations. And I personally believe that she was disposing of evidence at that point. That's my personal she did make some stops and that she did dispose of evidence, but we'll get there because, yeah, we're going to get there. And let's go back to that video of Aaron, which was taken outside of the North Attleboro Police Station the day after Odin Lloyd was found dead. So we actually discussed how Aaron had taken that phone apart and then he was handed another phone by his lawyers. And then he used the new phone from his lawyers to immediately place a call to his partner in crime, Ernest Bo Wallace.

Now, there was some comments. And this is kind of why I like the fact that the YouTube video comes out a little earlier now because it comes out the day before we record the new one now. So I'm able to kind of like get that feedback before we record the new episode and then I can address comments that people had. But I think I saw one or two and they were like, oh, well, that doesn't seem suspicious that he doesn't want to use his phone and the lawyers are just trying to help him out. Like that doesn't seem suspicious to me. It is suspicious when you're questioned by the police in a murder and then you meet up with your lawyers. You take your current phone apart

so that it can't be tracked. And then your lawyer gives you a phone and you immediately call your accomplice who you were with on the night that Odin Lloyd was murdered so that you can get your story straight. That's suspicious. As far as was the lawyer doing anything wrong, well, I don't know. You be the judge. Do you understand that? Yes, ma'am. Is that what you wish to do?

Yes, ma'am. That's Aaron Hernandez telling the judge this is him in his attorney's car at the police department the night after Odin Lloyd was murdered. It appeared that he took his phone and took it apart. The former Patriots tight end had just been questioned by North Attleboro police. THE FAMILY WAS TOLD HE WAS TAKING HIS PHONE. HE WAS TAKING IT FROM HIS HUSBAND. IT APPEARED HE TOOK HIS PHONE AND TOOK IT APART.

THE FORMER PATRIOT'S TIGHT END HAD JUST BEEN QUESTIONED BY NORTH ADELBURROUGH POLICE. THE VIDEO SHOWS HIM IN THE CAR TAKING APART HIS PHONE. HE THEN USES HIS ATTORNEY'S PHONE TO ALLEGEDLY CALL HIS CODE DEFENDANT, ERNEST WALLACE.

HE IS USING ONE PHONE, EITHER TEXTING OR CALLING, AND THE OTHER ONE IS ON HIS LAP, AP pot. You didn't see him smashing his phone, did you? No. Defense attorney James Sultan quick to point out Hernandez then puts the phone back together. What's more, he says, Hernandez was targeted that night by police, noting they specifically zoomed in to get a tighter shot. I don't see the problem with that. I'll be honest with you.

I don't see the problem with that. It's their security cameras. Aaron has the ability, the cameras, they're seen. They're out in plain view. It's not in a private area that he has an expectation of privacy. And it's really easy to see what he's doing there. He's taking the battery out of his phone because he feels like it could be tapped or something by law enforcement because obviously he's on their radar. So he believes by taking out the battery that whatever recording devices within that phone or whatever application they're using to record the sounds and sites around that phone, if there's no battery in there, that recording device is no longer powered. So he

can use the other phone to call his accomplice, get his story straight, and then put his battery back in. So if the recording device wants to continue recording, then it can do so. It's so fascinating to me. And we do make numerous episodes about it, so I won't go there. But it sounds to me like the call to Ernest, Ernest is his first name again, right? We said Ernest Bo Wallace. That call to get your story straight was made in the presence of your attorneys. I want people to weigh in the comments because I honestly don't know the answer to this, but I know there's like a code of ethics with doctors and lawyers. I mean, obviously there's certain things that you can be privy to as an attorney, as a defense attorney, but I wonder what the obligations are. And maybe you know the answer, Stephanie. I don't. If you're a lawyer and you're sitting there and your client says on the phone,

hey, listen, man, I need you to get rid of the gun that I killed that dude with, you know, because it's going to come back on me. They're on to me. I need you to dispose of the gun. Does the lawyer have the legal obligation to report that to the police? I don't believe they do. But doesn't that also kind of make them, in a way, an accessory because they're assisting in the destruction of evidence? I wonder how that would work. You'd

have to prove it, of course, but it's such a gray area. So if you're asking me whether or not a defense lawyer can defend his or her client knowing that that client is guilty, I think that they can and they do. Yeah. Now, I'm not sure the legalities of it. I hope someone in the comments, defense attorneys, we have a bunch of you. Please, I want to learn. I'm going to look it up too, but what is your obligation based on what you know? I know what there's probably like a legal standard and then it's up to you personally to decide what you heard and what you saw, right? I mean, then it's up to you personally to decide what you heard and what you saw right i mean that's all up to interpretation but i wonder what the code of

ethics is when that comes down to it i know there's a name for it there's something where you have a legal responsibility to do certain things okay i found it hit me with it i'm super interested so it's not like you know a priest know, like with a priest or a psychiatrist, like they have like confidentiality unless you unless you confess well as the innocent. So I guess, yeah, they they know they can know. Like, I think Jose Baez knew Casey Anthony was guilty, but he's still going to do his job, which is to try to get her acquitted. And I don't necessarily understand that. I understand if you're a defense attorney and you're like, well, this person could be guilty or they could not be, but it's my job to just present the evidence that makes them look not guilty. But knowing that they're guilty and then continuing to try to get them freed, to me, it's a moral gray area for sure. Well, here's where I come at it. And I mean, I think we're all on the same page. I would hope

that both prosecutors and defense attorneys want to get it right, want to get it right. They want justice for the victim in the case, right? And what you just said, Stephanie, like, hey, listen, if there is any doubt that the person you're representing did this, they have a right to a legal defense and to be defended to the fullest extent of the law because it's not your obligation to prove that they didn't do it. It's the obligation of the prosecution. Your right is to defend them. However, if it's a clear cut case where you know definitively that this person is responsible for the death of the individual who is no longer there, but you're looking at their family members in the courtroom, I would think that your morality would become

part of this case and you would remove yourself from it. And I'm sure there's examples of that out there, but I really want to know what you guys think, because this is something that I've talked about before, where the whole judicial system has kind of become a joke because it's not necessarily about getting the truth. It's about who has the better representation. And that's not how it's supposed to be, because it's not for just the people being defended. It's for the people that are no longer here to speak for themselves. And if the lawyers are in on the whole situation as far as what really happened, I would think they should have a legal obligation to remove themselves from the case so that they're not misrepresenting information that they know to be false. So it says the key difference is between factual guilt, what the defendant did, and legal guilt, what a prosecutor can prove.

Bullshit. I hate that. A good criminal defense lawyer asks not, what did my client do? But rather, what can the government prove? No matter what the defendant has done, he is not legally guilty until a prosecutor offers enough evidence to persuade a jury or a judge to convict. So let's see, that's a moral gray area, I think. But, you know, it is what it is. And we've seen lawyers recuse themselves in cases before, and they never say why. But I think sometimes that it is this, you know, they're like, I know what you did,

and I don't feel comfortable trying to free somebody who committed this violent crime back into society. And my hat's off to them at that point. And by the way, I'm not saying for certain that Aaron's attorneys knew he was guilty. I'm not saying that. I'm just talking in generality, like, you know, in those cases, because I do think in most situations, defense attorneys are very good people like you and I, and they're trying to do the right thing. I even read a story somewhere about Johnny Cochran with OJ Simpson, where Johnny Cochran was a very intelligent man, one of the best

attorneys I've ever seen in a trial. And my understanding is he went to OJ and said, did you do it? All I want to know, I don't want any details. Did you do it? And OJ said, no, I didn't. And he's like, that's good enough for me. Say no more. He didn't want to, you know, he didn't say to him, hey, tell me the truth so I can work around that. And that's, I think that is a difference for me. So I have no issue with defense attorneys, maybe having a, a clue as to whether their client was involved or not. And you know, if that's the case, it's on the prosecution to prove their guilt and it's not your job to defend them. But if there are cases, and I know there are, where you can't avoid it and you know what happened because of something you overheard or whatever, I would like to think that most

people would remove themselves. Not saying it happened here, but it sounds like, and it seems like it was an issue in trial, that it almost looks like Aaron Hernandez called his co-conspirator while the lawyer was present and in a vehicle, by the way. So you're a foot away from them. It would be impossible for that lawyer not to hear the conversation that transpired in his presence. What was said during that call? I'm sure it wasn't like, how are you doing today? So just speculation is that they were discussing the specifics of what happened and what needed to be done. And it wasn't like the lawyer stepped out of the car so Aaron could have that call with his friend. He was there.

So I don't know. You guys come to your own conclusion, but please, I am so interested by this because it is that moral gray area. I want to know what the general consensus is of our viewers, of our listeners, of some defense attorneys out there, some prosecutors. How do you guys all feel about this? Because I look at it from the perspective that it could be my family member or friend who's the victim and understand that they may not get justice because there wasn't enough legal proof to convict someone when there's absolutely truth and proof to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that this person did it. But on a technicality, they get off. I'd be a tough pill to swallow, and we see it happen over and over. Well, the thing is, so it was reported in the media, a lot of places,

like a lot of so many places, because I usually check these sorts of facts. Like I have to see them in three different separate places before I put it in. And I think that it's real. This was reported a ton of places that Aaron was seen smashing his phone in this surveillance video. They get all specific. They say he stood up and he smashed the phone. And I'm like, what? Did he really do that? That's crazy. So I'm looking and I'm like, no, I got to see this video for myself. Unless I see him physically smashing that phone, then I don't believe it happened. And as you see in that video, the lawyer even says to the cop, like, but you didn't see him smash his phone. And the cop's like, no.

So he didn't smash the phone on camera. However, according to ABC News, when a cell phone used by Aaron was given to the investigators, it was handed over in pieces, right? So at some point, he had destroyed it or it had been destroyed. It had been smashed. It just doesn't appear that this act was captured on camera. And so I think that that is interesting, you know, that you would be like, yeah, you can't have my phone right now on this night that you've asked for it, that I clearly have it. And when I give it to you, it's in a million pieces because I broke it on purpose. Let's take a quick break. We'll be right back. All right. So there was other evidence found at the industrial park. You know, we did talk about that, the blunt with the DNA on it. There was also a white towel found at the scene, which prosecutors alleged was the same white towel seen hanging around the neck of Ernest Bo Wallace on gas station surveillance before Odin Lloyd's murder.

Now, when Aaron called Wallace from the police station, Wallace had already left Massachusetts and he was staying out of sight at the Bristol home of Aaron's cousin, Tanya Singleton. And evidence showed that Aaron used a phone that belonged to one of his lawyers to call Wallace three times and to text him at least once before leaving the police station. And let's talk about the security system at Aaron's own home. Chromatech video and sound employee Mark Archibald testified that he'd been the one to set up Aaron's home security system in May of 2013. At this time, Aaron had allegedly asked Mark to show him how to turn off the cameras, and Aaron said he wanted to know how to do this because he didn't always want his fiancé to see what he was doing with his buddies in the basement, which he referred to as his man cave. During the trial, Glaucia Santos, Aaron's housekeeper, testified

that she'd been called to clean the house the day after Odin Lloyd's murder, and while she was there cleaning the bathroom in the basement, she saw Aaron fiddling with the security system in the corner of the basement near a home theater. She said he was messing with it for three to five minutes before she made a noise, sort of purposely like alert him to her presence, at which point he stopped what he was doing immediately and left the room. And the truth was there was no surveillance footage to speak of from the basement the day after Odin Lloyd's murder. And police would later find the cable marked Man Cave had been disconnected from the system. And what you see here is he disconnected that at like 3.30 a.m. the day of Odin's murder. Like right when he came home, when you saw him standing in the house on surveillance with the gun in his hand or allegedly the gun in his hand and he's standing by the door to the basement, he'd already shut off the surveillance footage to the basement.

Additionally, Aaron's security system looked as if it had been intentionally destroyed. And you were asking me about that earlier. If we were going to talk about the, you know, the state of the security system, like he kind of looked like he had beat up on it a little bit. Yeah. My understanding is that they smashed it. Like they like tried to destroy it almost. Yeah. It was in was in pieces handed it over to him in pieces kind of like his phone yeah yeah exactly and it's like think about that for a second like like how dumb do you think

the cops are here's my camera system it fell on the way here multiple times and got ran over by a car sorry he doesn't care. He doesn't. But do you see like the like, wow, man, you are a cocky. You know what to think like that hurts you. I don't know if you see that, but that hurts you. But he's like, yeah, listen, I don't really give a shit. I know you know why I did it. Good luck. Because it's not about what he did, right? It's what they can legally prove he did. Not what you know you know, it's what you can prove. Well, let's talk about Shayana Jenkins' role in all of this, Aaron's fiance, and what she was seen doing on the home surveillance system. In front of a grand jury in August of 2013, prosecutors alleged that Shayana lied 29 times. Some of the things that she lied about was she

claimed she hadn't seen or spoken to Ernest Bo Wallace after Odin's death. She also told the grand jury that she'd only ever seen one gun in her house and that she had told Aaron to get rid of it. Shiana had claimed that she'd gone to bed early on the evening of Lloyd's murder, but she's seen on surveillance welcoming Ernest Wallace and Carlos Ortiz into her home that night. And on June 18th, Shiana was seen on surveillance struggling under the weight of a heavy garbage bag, which she claimed were old baby clothes. She was then seen placing that garbage bag in the trunk of a car, her sister's car, and driving away. When asked where she disposed of the bag, Shiana claimed that she could not remember. That grand jury would have a very hard time believing Shiana, and they indicted her on one count of perjury. Now, this charge was dropped after Shiana agreed to be more truthful

during her fiancé's murder trial. During that trial, Shiana admitted that she had seen Ernest Wallace after Odin Lloyd's murder. She also admitted that Aaron had sent her a text on the morning of June 18th, a text that said, quote, go in back of the screen in movie room when you get home and there is the box Avielle likes to play with in the tub in case you were looking for it. Remember how you tuned that big TV? LMAO was just thinking about that. LOL. Wink, wink. Love you. Talk to you later. K. End quote. And apparently Aaron also called her before she's seen on surveillance, kind of struggling with this big heavy box and garbage bag. We know for sure this is video of Aaron Hernandez's fiancee,

Cheyenne Jenkins, the day after the murder, carrying a large black bag out of her house. We don't know what was in it. Prosecutors say they do know. They say it was a safe inside that contained the murder weapon. Although the jury never heard it, Jenkins testified she did remove a box from her North Attleboro home at the request of Aaron Hernandez. And contrary to her grand jury testimony, she says Hernandez made it known whatever was in the box had to go. The defendant had called you and said it was important that you go down and get this box and get rid of it. Is that right? I believe so.

This morning they did hear that Jenkins found a gun at the home and wanted it gone. I mean, I found it in my junk drawer. Jenkins refused to match the gun to surveillance video that shows her fiancé holding something. But she did say there were similarities between the weapon she saw and a Glock brandished in court by prosecutors. Shape, yes. Okay, color? Yes. Size?

I'm not sure. SHAPE YES. COLOR? YES. SIZE? UM, I'M NOT SURE. THIS MORNING ONE OF THE WITNESSES WE HEARD FROM WAS A HOUSEKEEPER WHO WORKED AT AARON HERNANDEZ'S HOME. SHE TESTIFIED SHE SAW HIS FIANCEE SHAYANA JENKINS PUTTING A LARGE BLACK TRASH BAG INTO THE BACK OF A CAR THE DAY AFTER ODIN LLOYD WAS KILLED. THE JURY ALSO SAW SURVEILLANCE VIDEO FROM HERNANDEZ'S HOME SHOWING JENKINS WITH THAT TRASH BAG. day after odin lloyd was killed the jury also saw surveillance video from hernandez's home showing jenkins with that trash bag you can see her struggling with it as she carries it out of the house behind you it was big and could you see whether there was anything in it yes all right so i hope you guys are able to see this on video. If you can't,

strongly recommend you check it out, even if you just want to go to our YouTube video and go to the timestamp here and see it because it's really compelling. Because again, you see this woman carrying out this big bag, something very heavy. Shaped like a box, right? The bag's shaped like a box. Shaped like a box. You could tell she's struggling with it. And I'll just hit you guys with this. If you have trash or something you want to throw out and you bring it outside your home, where do you usually put it? With the trash, right?

To be thrown out. It's not what she did. She put it in her car. And I know you're going to go there, but just think about what you do. Even as an investigator, what does a normal person do when they have something they want to throw out? That's not nefarious in nature or is not going to tie them to, I don't know, a murder. You would just probably throw it at the street, but why wouldn't you do that? And you guys should know this by now. We talk about abandoned property, right? If it's in a trash can, it's accessible to anybody. Anybody can go grab it. So you don't want to

dump it immediately outside your home because at that point, Aaron, Shania, they don't know if they're being watched. She may put this trash bag outside on the sidewalk and detectives may come by and grab it. And if they do that, it's game over. It's absolutely game over. So common sense again comes into play here. This is not normal behavior for a human being to do something like this,

especially the day after a murder. So you put it all together and it doesn't smell right. And she was being uncooperative and playing ignorance the entire time. If you watch the trial, you can see it for yourself. She wasn't even very good at it. It was clear to me that she was being deceptive. I don't think she had any involvement with the murder. I don't think she knew it was clear to me that she was being deceptive. I don't think she had any involvement with the murder. I don't think she knew it was even going down. It was transpiring. I think she was in a situation where she was with this man who was making millions of dollars. She loved him. They just had a daughter together and she didn't want to see him go away to prison for the rest of his life because it was going to leave her on her own and maybe in a really tough situation financially as well. So there were multiple reasons why she would do this, but you could clearly see that's what it looks like was happening. Again, I have to qualify it, guys. I don't want to get sued.

Just my opinion, but that's what it looks like to me. Well, Shiana claims that she never looked inside of the box. She didn't know what it contained and after she got rid of it, she forgot where it was that she got rid of it because she was juggling so many other things that day. You know, like her sister being upset that her boyfriend was just murdered. She demonstrated its size, 35 to 40 pounds. It was a cardboard box. And did he indicate to you what was inside the box? No. Surveillance shows her putting it in her sister's car, the victim's girlfriend. Add Shania Jenkins now to the list of people in tears as she listens. The details on where that box

ended up are foggy. Shiana Jenkins is seen stopping at an ATM, withdrawing $800 before she says she unloaded the mysterious box into a dumpster. She can't remember where. Trying to comfort my sister and deal with all everyone's emotions were kind of on me. And there was a form of breaking down at that point. So yeah, I was nervous. Well, that nervousness she says is the reason she can't remember a lot from the hours and the days after the murder defense attorneys did ask her if she smelled anything in the box she was throwing away and she said she smelled something like skunk that's a reference to marijuana which contradicts prosecution's

suggestion that there could have been more important evidence in that box, like possibly the missing murder weapon. And so for anybody who's not watching on video, this box was not big enough where you would need to bring it to a dumpster because it was too big to fit in your trash can. It makes absolute zero sense that she would bring this package, this trash bag to a dumpster in her sister's car. The only explanation would be her not wanting it to be found at her home. Yeah. Well, listen, they're trying to say like the defense is trying to say like, oh, well, there was weed in there. Right. So that means there's not a murder weapon. And my question after hearing that broadcast and the defense's claim that because Shana smelled something skunky in the box, it means the murder weapon wasn't in

there is like, can't both weed and the murder weapon have been in that box? If you're Aaron Hernandez and you don't want the police to find weed at your house, then you also don't want them to find a gun that was used in somebody's murder in your house. You might just throw both of those things in one box and tell your fiance to get rid of it. Why does that even have anything to do with anything? That box was big enough to fit multiple things. So I don't get it. To me, you can see it's a big garbage bag. This isn't a small shoe box.

She was having a hard time maneuvering it because of the awkward shape. Why would you even put a box inside a garbage bag? You just carry the box. Because they don't want it to be seen on surveillance that it's a box. They don't even want it to be seen. It's just very obvious to me what happened here. And I think it's obvious to a lot of people as well. And Shiana was granted immunity before testifying during the murder trial, but she still claimed that Aaron had never admitted to murdering Odin Lloyd and she didn't try to hide the box. She just placed it in a random dumpster

and forgot where that dumpster was. And after testifying, Shiana mouthed, I love you to Aaron before leaving the courtroom. So, you know, ride or die. Yeah, ride or die for sure. And even the biomechanics of that box you guys should really check out the video but you see her trying to like posture embrace the box because it's so heavy if i can find the picture stephanie's seen it john i'll throw it in here i got a picture of me holding like five pounds of weed when i was undercover and based on the size of that box it couldn't be more than five or six pounds of weed that would have been in that if it was completely packed with weed and And I can tell you right now, if you

haven't had any experience with it, five or six pounds of weed is exactly what it sounds like. It's five or six pounds. It would not be that heavy to carry where you're struggling to get it out to the truck like she was. So it doesn't even make, there's something heavy in there. There's something that has that small in size, but has weight to it. And it's probably a combination of things, but one of those things could absolutely be a firearm, which is small, compact, but very heavy, especially if you have a couple of them in there. So it makes more sense that it wasn't just weed in there. There probably was some marijuana. I don't doubt it. We know we've discussed Aaron's use of marijuana and how many blunts he smoked a day. So I don't doubt that that was partially something in there, but it definitely wasn't

everything. I don't know. Maybe, maybe Aaron had that really dense weed, you know? But even so, I mean, that's some dead, I mean, concrete weed. Are we talking concrete weed? It's that good, good. Jesus, man. Never seen any of that.

No, definitely, definitely not. Just, you know, a picture I'm talking about? I think I showed it to you. It definitely wasn't just weed in that box. I carry around five to six pounds of weed on a regular basis. All right. I wasn't going to say it. Light as a feather.

It really is. I mean, it's five or six pounds. Yeah. But it's big in size because it's a big bag. Yeah. It's a big bag of weed. So even if he had, like I said, five pounds in there, she would be able to pick it up and put it over her head with one hand. It's nothing. With a pinky, man. Yeah, it's nothing. So obviously this whole thing,

it's going to drive a wedge between Shana and her sister Shania, who, you know, previous to this, they were very close. Shana sat in court every day and supported the man who was on trial for Odin's murder, while Shania sat next to her boyfriend's mother and Odin's sister, Shakila, a woman who she now refers to as her sister, as she and Shayana remain estranged. And like, listen, I get it. I get it. You want to stand by your man. It's not my typical thing. Like, no get it. I get it. You want to stand by your man. It's not my typical thing. No judgment

here. Everybody makes their own decisions and everybody faces their own consequences. What I have a hard time understanding, once again, a moral gray area is doing this to your sister. I guarantee you that Shayana had justified it by saying, well, Aaron is going to be my husband. He's the father of my child. He's this famous, talented football player. I feel sad that Odin's gone, but Shania was just dating him. They'd only have to figure that there'd have to be some kind of justification happening on Shayana's part to make it okay for her to do what she did to her sister. That's family. You don't do that. I want to pose a question to you, but I also want to pose it to everybody out there. And I don't know Shayana, but I'll play devil's advocate. I'm known to do that. Is it possible that Shayana did not know exactly

what happened with Aaron? Maybe she knew in her head or put two and two together, but Aaron said to her, hey, there's a box. Don't look in it. Get rid of it. You don't want it. Just do it. Is it possible that for her own separation from the case that she really didn't... Aaron never told her the specifics, never admitted to shooting Odin, just basically said, Hey, there's something I need you to get rid of, do it. And she didn't ask questions and she just did it. And there are things that she's seen over the years that she may be left out or whatever, but is it possible that Shayana really didn't know that this was going to happen? And more importantly, didn't know, still to this day, doesn't know exactly what happened because she never had that opportunity to discuss it in detail with Aaron or he wouldn't tell her. And she was just being

a good soldier and doing what Aaron told her to do. Sure. Absolutely. I think there was a good chance that initially the first days, the first weeks, she didn't know what happened. But like I said, she's there every day in court. She's hearing the same evidence that we are hearing now, which we've already discussed is pretty irrefutable. Like it's hard. Oh, she knows. Yeah. That's what I'm saying. It's hard to look at that evidence.

It's hard to listen to that during a trial and be like, definitely, you know, there's a shadow of a reasonable doubt. No. And then if you do hear that, once you do sit through that trial, you go to your sister and you say, Shania, I am so sorry. I was blinded by love. He's the father of my child. I didn't want to believe it, but now I see what happened here. I am so truly, deeply sorry for the hurt that I've caused you and the hurt my family's caused you, and I hope we can reconcile. These two sisters do not speak to each other. It's not up for me or you to say like what Shayana did or how she felt or if she was, you know, ignorant to it. Shania clearly thinks that she played a bigger part in this. And I feel that if Shayana had come to her after the trial and been like, damn, my bad. So sorry. I had no idea about any of this. I hope you forgive me.

Shania would have been like, yeah, okay, I do forgive you. You didn't know. We all make mistakes. We're all blinded by love. But it doesn't appear that that ever happened. There's no reconciliation here. And I don't know if Shiana made an attempt, but I'm going to go and say, I guess she didn't. No, I would agree. And maybe at this point, Shania probably doesn't want to hear from her. But I do think that's why I just wanted to point that out. I do think there's a possibility where Cheyenne is sitting in court hearing the case, right, as we are and realizing, holy shit, I definitely disposed of that gun. There's no doubt I could hear it clanking around. I mean, I never opened it.

I didn't want to know. But even if she didn't, she's putting two and two together where she realizes, like, I absolutely was involved in the destruction and disposal of evidence linked to a homicide. There's no way she doesn't, she's not able to compute that at this point. And there's no way my husband or my fiance is going to be like, oh, get this shit out of the house really quick and not tell me what's in it and not tell me why he wants me to get it out. And if he's not telling me that stuff, you better damn well be sure I am looking. I'm looking. You're definitely looking and writing a podcast. I'm looking in the box. I'm looking in the box because something like this might have what's in the box. You know, something like this might happen where I'm going to be sitting in a courtroom in front of a grand

jury or a jury and people are going to be asking me the tough questions. And I'm going to look like a damn fool if I'm like, I have no idea, officer, what happened to this box? I threw it out. I completely forgot because everybody's emotions were on me. And who, where did it go? Like, I'm going to look like a damn fool. I'm going to look like a stupid woman that doesn't ask questions and just does what she's told. And she did say that during the trial. Like I learned when not to ask questions. I learned to not question him in certain places. But you got somebody who's murdered. Your husband, your fiance got pulled into the police station because of it, at least to protect yourself. You look and see what's in

the box. But maybe she wanted plausible deniability. I mean, that's that's also possible. Yeah, I definitely think it's possible. I would not be surprised if that was the case. You think she didn't look in the box, though? I mean, I would look in the box. You would look in the box. I don't know. I think she knew in her heart, whether she looked or not, she knew what was in that box. The fact that she knew that it wasn't something she could dispose of in her own trash can,

any person with half a brain would know there's something in here that I don't want the police to find and it ain't marijuana. And just by feeling it and holding it and carrying it, you would put two and two together very quickly that it's probably clothes, it's probably a weapon. My guess is she looked in the box, but I wouldn't be surprised if she didn't. Yeah. And this isn't her fault, obviously. Like she didn't murder Odin Lloyd. And we've all made bad decisions in our lives that we've later with hindsight looked back on and been like, damn, I should have looked in that box, you know, but but she didn't do it at that point. So what are you know, all you can do is learn from it. But I'm telling you, ladies, if your husband or your boyfriend calls you and tells you to get rid of box, you better look in

that damn box. Look in the box. I'm glad you said that though, because she's not responsible for Odin's death. Absolutely not. And I would be shocked to learn that she was aware this was going to happen. I don't think Aaron was filling her in on this information. So that is important to keep in mind. Yes, she's not telling the truth. She has her reasons for doing it. We don't agree with it, but ultimately she's not the reason that Odin's dead. And she wasn't the one incentivizing Aaron to carry out this type of behavior. He was doing that on his own. So yeah, she didn't make the best

decisions, but by no means is she a murderer. I definitely don't think he told her about it leading up to it because you and I both had talked about it. And we kind of theorized that maybe one of the reasons Aaron wanted Odin Lloyd dead was because Odin knew he was cheating on Shan and he was bringing girls back home to his Franklin apartment. So no, he's not going to be like, yeah, I got to take out Odin. He knows too much about my extracurricular activities, as you put it. So definitely not something that he told her leading up. And at this point, this is for Shania to eventually forgive her or not. I just think I feel bad all around for everyone. Hopefully they mend bridges after a while because, you know, he's no longer

here. Aaron's no longer here. Odin's no longer here. They're still sisters. Who knows? Maybe they work things out. Maybe. But moving on, the week of Monday, June 24th, brought law enforcement to Bristol. They drove to Tanya Singleton's house at 114 Lake Avenue to question her, but she was not home at the time. The next day, they returned to Bristol when they found out that one of their detectives had a wife named Jodi. And Jodi happened to be the probation officer of a known associate of Aaron's and one of the men he had been seen on surveillance with the night of the murder of Odin Lloyd, and this was Carlos Ortiz. So Jody claimed that just a few weeks before, Ortiz had told her he was using drugs daily, including marijuana, alcohol, cocaine, and PCP. He'd been scheduled to begin a drug program, but he'd never shown up. On June 18th, six days after Ortiz had tested positive for alcohol, cocaine, THC, and PCP,

he texted his probation officer Jody that he would have reported to the program, but he didn't know where to go. And since he was on probation, crossing state lines to travel with Aaron to Massachusetts to get Odin Lloyd, that had violated the terms of his probation. However, he was coming in that day to meet with Jodi and the police would be there when he did. During this meeting, Ortiz said he didn't know anything about what had happened to Odin Lloyd. He said Aaron was like family. He said he didn't know where Odin lived, that he'd never even been to that industrial park. He didn't even know where it was and he wasn't a violent person. Ortiz said that on that night, they'd all been planning to go to a club, but he'd ended up staying the night at Aaron's apartment in Franklin instead.

The police showed him the surveillance video from Aaron's house and the gas station that night to be like, you weren't in Franklin. Let's just be honest here. We have your whole, like, route going on here. And they told him, listen, Aaron's got money to get a lawyer. Aaron's got money to fight, you know, this charge for as long as he wants to. And he's going to hang you out to dry for this crime. Now, Ortiz changed his story slightly. He admitted to having been in the Nissan Altima that night, but he claimed to have fallen asleep, only waking up when he heard gunshots, but he said he'd never gotten out of the car. After being interviewed for nine hours, Carlos Ortiz submitted to a polygraph test, which he failed. When he was

given the information that he failed, Ortiz shifted his story again, claiming he had opened the car door, but he'd never gotten out of the car, and he hadn't seen who had shot Odin Lloyd because it was too dark. However, immediately after hearing gunshots, Ortiz claimed that Wallace told him that Aaron had fired the shots that had taken Odin Lloyd's life. Additionally, Ortiz told police that after they'd gotten back from the industrial park, Aaron had placed multiple firearms into a box that he then put in the basement. Aaron Hernandez was arrested at his home on June 26, 2013. Up until that point, the New England Patriots had not commented about the murder investigation. But less than two hours after his arrest, the team put out the following statement, quote, A young man was murdered last

week, and we extend our sympathies to the family and friends who mourn his loss. Words cannot express the disappointment we feel knowing that one of our players was arrested as a result of this investigation. We realize that law enforcement investigations into this matter are ongoing. We support their efforts and respect the process. At this time, we believe this transaction is simply the right thing to do, end quote.

And the transaction they were referring to was basically cutting Aaron from the team after paying him almost $10 million of his $40 million contract. Huge turn of events in an area known by North Attleboro residents as the neighborhood where many Patriots football players live. There's been Teddy Bruschi, Richard Seymour, Hernandez, Matt White. It's definitely got a lot of Patriots in it. Within the past 24 hours, one of the homeowners, now a former Patriots football player, Aaron Hernandez, was arrested and charged with murder.

This after the body of 27-year-old Odin Lloyd was discovered less than a mile from Hernandez' home. Innocent until proven guilty. That's what I say. I mean, I've met him before and he seems like a real great guy. I mean, I got his autograph when I was younger and he was all smiles. Just a nice guy. So I'm pretty surprised. Dan McKinn has lived in the neighborhood his whole life. He and many other neighbors are thankful for answers

after long days of media frenzy and police activity. We're very relieved. The traffic was crazy and out of control, so I think everybody will be happy now. I guess it's finally over. I guess they found what they needed to find, and they collected the evidence they needed to collect, and they were able to get enough to arrest him. Yeah, I mean, they were building a pretty strong case. And then you have an individual who was present that night saying that what he witnessed and that does put Aaron at the crime scene, does put him as the shooter. And I'm assuming at this point Ortiz agreed to be a cooperating witness if he's giving all this information.

So that would be enough to go to a judge and write up the affidavit and get an arrest warrant, which they did. And it's always interesting because I remember working at the station that day. I was up in the detective's office and I know a few of those detectives in that video. We worked multi-jurisdictional operations together. So seeing them on camera like that, it was surreal for me because they were arresting someone who I looked up to as a football player. I liked watching them on Sundays and to see friends of mine arresting someone who I looked up to as a football player. I liked watching them on Sundays and to see friends of mine arresting someone who I admired to a certain degree as a

football player, as a Patriot player, was definitely a weird moment for me as a police officer, but it was the right thing to do. And as things were starting to come out, it was very obvious that Aaron Hernandez was involved in this murder. And he's no exception to the rule. I don't care what you do for a living, how good you are, you're a fan of the game. I don't care if you're friendly to the people that come up to you and ask for autographs. We're all judged by the same person. And while we're here on earth, we're judged by the judge. And so he's got to answer for his actions. And I remember watching it and I wasn't even so much happy they got him.

I was just disappointed because I knew at that point his career was done. And I knew that someone who I thought was a good person doing the right things was actually no different than some of the murderers that I had arrested in the past. And it's disappointing, but I was glad that they got their guy and that Odin and his family were going to get some justice. So two things. First, the woman in that clip, like she's not like, oh, thank God, you know, they got the murderer of an innocent man. She's just like, yeah, we're all happy that the cars are gone. There's no more traffic on our very expensive, bougie block where we're used to being left to our own devices. It's like the audacity. But second, you remember when he got arrested,

and you can see in that clip, he was wearing a white t-shirt and he had his hands and his arms inside the t-shirt through the back, right? So his hands were going out the bottom of his shirt, and that's how he's handcuffed. And do you remember in the aftermath of that like there were a lot of fans who were like he's not guilty they showed up to his trial with their hands through their shirt like that in like a show of solidarity because apparently that was cool they were taking pictures themselves was all over social media kind of gross yeah he must have when they when they went into the house he must have had obviously no shirt on. So they don't want him walking outside with no shirt on. So we've had to do that before where

big guy has the ability to really hurt a lot of police officers if he wanted to. So they want to get him in handcuffs as quick as possible before he realizes the jig's up. So they probably walked in and said, hey, Aaron, how you doing? We just got to talk to actually turn around for a second. They throw cuffs on him as quick as possible. Cause also if he tries to run, if he gets outside and you ain't catching him, you're in for a good foot pursuit. I tell you right now, I'm going to be gassed after 15 seconds. I'm going to be like, all right, just we'll catch him on the other end. I'm not tackling Aaron Hernandez. We'll get them later guys get the cars get the cars literally be like uh we we had another injury today derrick's in the hospital he tried to

tackle aaron hernandez and he just ran him over like a truck hold a shin muscle but that would be really embarrassing that's a really valid point because i always thought this was like a choice that aaron made like maybe no no yet i thought maybe he didn't want people to see the handcuffs so he was like you know let me do. Oh, no, no, yet. I thought maybe he didn't want people to see the handcuffs. So he was like, you know, let me do this. But yeah, that makes a lot more sense because no shirt on. He's in the house. They handcuff him. And then you have to. It's also stupid. You have to like make sure they have socks and a T-shirt because those clothes are what they're going to be going to court with. So so many times we've arrested someone who's in sandals or whatever. And we'll say to their family member, hey, could you grab him a pair of socks and a t-shirt because they're going

to need it for court tomorrow for the arraignment. So yeah, they threw a shirt over his head because they knew there were cameras outside. He's going to need a shirt anyways. He can't be in the jail cell with no t-shirt on. So they grabbed that for him, threw it over his head, right over the cuffs because they damn well weren't about to take the cuffs off of him and give him an opportunity to to make a move because you could see the detectives next to him they're not small guys either by the way but aaron just like would yeah he dwarfs them yeah yeah he would he would pick them both up and just throw them it reminds me of like a cartoon where there's like a giant

and all the guys the little guys are trying to like throw stuff at him and he's just like throwing him off of him. Like that, that's what Aaron said. They said it. They were, you know, they were, they were ready for the worst because if he does, if he realized that, okay, they got me, he could, he could have hurt some people. I would have asked for like a hoodie. Cause you know, it's about to get chilly in that jail cell tonight.

You know, I, I, I'm willing to bet that they didn't give him an option. It was like, Hey, Cheyenne or whoever grabbed my t-shirt. He's leaving. That was it. That was it. It wasn't an option. It's going to be a cold night, Aaron. So later, the Patriots announced to fans that they could trade in their Aaron Hernandez jerseys. And one by one, Aaron's sponsors like Muscle Milk and Puma dropped him. As time went on, he'd be removed from sports video games, trading card packs, and the University of Florida would wipe his name from the stadium in which he once played. Now, the same day of Aaron's arrest, police descended on the home of Tanya Singleton again,

and at this point, she was having a house party with a bunch of people, including Carlos Ortiz and Ernest Bowe Wallace. During their search of the house, they found a picture of Aaron, and it was like a selfie, I guess, and he was holding up a Glock in front of a mirror. They were also interested in the garage that had the windows painted over so that no one from the outside could see in, but according to the police, the paint job was not great, and they could still see a silver Toyota 4Runner inside. They asked Tanya's daughter, Gina Mercado, who the vehicle belonged to,

and she told them that Aaron had left it there a year prior, and it had not been driven since. The police found that before being put into the garage, the SUV had been cleaned and detailed, but now it sat covered in dust and cobwebs with a dead battery. Now, at this point, the police didn't realize the significance of this vehicle, but they knew it had belonged to Aaron, so they wrote the license plate down and they continued on with their search, during which they collected a Department of Corrections intake sheet for Ernest Wallace, a prison ID card for Carlos Ortiz, a Caltech gun box, two boxes of .38 caliber cartridges, four child's drawings that resembled the child's

picture Kelia Smith had used to try and get the bubble gum out of the carpet of Aaron's rental car, a bag of clothes that matched the ones Aaron had been wearing the night of the double murder in Boston. And on June 21st, a woman named Jaylene Diaz Ramos was taken to the hospital after being involved in a four-car collision on I-91 in Springfield, Massachusetts. Her car was towed from the scene, and inside of it, police found a Smith & Wesson.38 special revolver in the trunk. Now, it turns out that Jaylene was from Bristol, and she told the police that the gun belonged to a friend of hers, a football player who went by the name Chicago. Just a few days before the car accident, Jaylene had given Chicago, whose real name was John Alcorn, and some of his buddies a ride and they left their belongings in her car. Now, it turns out that John Alcorn was the cousin

of T.L. Singleton, who was the husband of Tanya Singleton, who was the cousin of Aaron Hernandez. And this weapon that was retrieved from her car was the same one used to kill Daniel D'Abreu and Zafiro Furtado in Boston. And you will never convince me that Aaron Hernandez did not like lawyer juju nonsense in court, their families didn't get the justice that they deserved. Right. I will say, I hope there's some there probably isn't. Let me just retract that, you know, knowing what happened, knowing the person who did it, knowing that someone got him off. Definitely not a good feeling, but at least they have some understanding of what happened. And they know, they probably know Aaron's the one who did this and they know Aaron killed himself. So ultimately there's something there. I don't think it's enough for them. It never will be right. Even if they are found guilty, it's never enough because you still

don't get your loved ones back. But I would like to think for their sake, there's some peace in knowing like this person who's most likely responsible for the death of your loved one, knowing how they went out in their last moments. That would give me some peace, not a ton, but something. Yeah. At least having some answers instead of, you know, who did this? Just nothing. Yeah. It could be a random. You could walk by the person who did it. You wouldn't know. That would be even harder for me. I agree. I agree. But I mean, you know, you still nothing. But that's that. We talked about this double homicide earlier. And that's why we had to come back to it, because if it wasn't for this case, there would never have been any answers about the double homicide. Nothing. This is all from Odin Lloyd's homicide that we're here. And that's why it was so important to kind of do it in that order. I agree. Yeah. It's something I'd rather

know who did it than not know. And at least know he was going away for something. Right. Right. He wasn't going to live. He wasn't going to be out there walking amongst everyone because your loved ones no longer had that opportunity. He was going to be in a position where everything that he had worked for his entire life was gone. Yeah, he wasn't going to be out there on TV playing football every Sunday to fans of cheering crowds and or cheering fans of crowds or you know what I'm trying to say. I'm with you. I'm with you. So shortly after the Massachusetts police issued an arrest warrant for Ernest Bo Wallace, because now they have Carlos Ortiz.

But Ernest was no longer on the East Coast because Tanya Singleton had driven him to a bus station and bought him a ticket to Florida as well as a new cell phone after the police had searched her house. Wallace was hiding out at his mother's home in Miramar where neighbors had seen him swimming in the pool. But when the arrest warrant was made public and he knew that the police were looking for him, he felt there was enough heat on him to compel him to go to the police and turn himself in. Law enforcement now had all three men in custody who they believed were connected to the murder of Odin Lloyd. But things were not looking good for Tanya Singleton now that so much evidence

from the Boston double murder was found in her home and in her possession. And to add to that, her husband, T.L. Singleton, he drove off a road in Farmington, Connecticut on June 30th, and he was pronounced dead at the scene. According to his toxicology report, singletonate cocaine, PCP, oxycodone, and alcohol in his system at the time of his death. On top of all of that, Tanya had been told by her doctors that her breast cancer had started to spread to other parts of her body. Police also went to Aaron's Franklin apartment where they discovered a bunch of.45 caliber magazines and ammo, even though Aaron had never had a license to own a firearm in that state. Aaron Hernandez was denied bail, even though his lawyers argued that he would post a large cash bail and he would agree to wear a GPS tracking bracelet while under

arrest. James Sultan, one of Aaron's attorneys, told Judge Rene DuPois, quote, Mr. Hernandez is not just a football player. He is one of the best football players in America. He is a young man who is extremely accomplished in his chosen profession. He wants to clear his name, end quote. And the judge is like, okay, but we usually don't like do this for murderers. You know, people who are charged with murder, we don't just say like, yeah, you can go to your mansion and, you know, wear a GPS monitor. Like, I'm not sure what being a good football player has to do with him not being a murderer. So Aaron's put in jail and he's kept out of the general population, allegedly for his own protection. When you go inside the

Bristol County House of Corrections, there's this horrible slam, and you are in the slammer. The sheriff took me around, Sheriff Hodgson, and what surprised me most is just the finality of being in a cell that is shut, a seven-by-ten foot cell, and that's Aaron Hernandez's life now pretty much. And I just thought, oh my God, this is a guy that had a mansion and he had a $40 million contract and now he's got nothing. He's allowed two books from the library and that's about it. He can write, he can write letters and he can read those books. But for 23 hours a day, he's stuck in there. Yep. Well said. Well said. It's basically it,

right? Everything he had, all those luxuries, everything that he had worked hard for was gone based on a series of decisions. Just finally, this last decision with Odin Lloyd caught up to him, you know, because this wasn't the first time he's made a mistake. If we're to believe he was involved in the double homicide and God knows what else, right? This was the one that finally caught up to him. He had been doing these things over and over. He had individuals in his life who were enabling it, who were covering for him. And he thought

that was going to continue to be the case because he had that group of individuals who would do anything for him. And then most importantly, he had money and he was under the assumption that money would be able to get him out of anything he got into just by hiring the right lawyers. And he was wrong. It's weird because Aaron loved reading Harry Potter when he was in jail. Like he would tell people like, I love the Harry Potter books, but he also loved reading like James Patterson novels, which is weird because then James Patterson went on to like write a book about him. And I just thought that was a little fun fact that I think as James Patterson, it'd be kind of strange. I don't know. But the Bristol County Jail Sheriff Thomas Hodgson, he was actually investigating whether rumors about Aaron's gang ties had any truth to them.

After interviewing Aaron, gang investigators had told Hodgson that they thought he might be tied to the Bloods, but they couldn't be 100% sure. When Hodgson talked to Aaron himself, Aaron told the sheriff that his tattoos were not about the Bloods, but they were connected to a local gang from Bristol. While he spent his days in isolation, Aaron read books, he wrote letters, he made phone calls. Many of those calls were to Tanya Singleton, a woman who had become like a mother to him. On July 12th, Aaron told Tanya to watch what she said as the calls were being recorded and to watch what she wrote to him in letters because they were being read.

And Tanya responded, quote, I know, I'm not saying nothing, I love you so much, end quote. Tanya also spoke to Ernest Wallace while he was behind bars, and she told him that she was being summoned to testify in front of the grand jury, but he shouldn't worry because she had a good lawyer, most likely paid for by Aaron Hernandez. But Tanya was subpoenaed and offered immunity for her testimony, yet she still refused to testify at the grand jury hearing in August, leading to her arrest. On August 1st, Shayana called Aaron in jail to let him know about his cousin's arrest. And Aaron replied, quote, yes, they're just being asses about it. But, you know, they got to get out of their way to be assholes.

Like, the longest she'll do is, like, probably less than a month or a month until the grand jury is done. Do you know what I mean? The only good thing about Tanya being locked up is she's going to lose weight, end quote. This is disgusting to me because he knew she was covering for him. He knew that she was going to be behind bars because she refused to say anything in court that would incriminate him. She was dying of cancer. She didn't have a lot of time left, yet he was willing to allow her to spend some of that precious time in a jail cell if it meant getting him out of one. And this is how he treats. I mean, this person was supposedly very close to him. She loved him clearly, and he claimed to have loved her probably more than most people. And this is how he treats her.

The code, right? They're all part of the code. Blood over everything. You know, I think he feels like. That's not blood over everything, though. It's not blood over everything, though. Like if he cared about her, he would have been like, you don't got to cover for me, man. Like, you know, don't waste.

Don't waste the last months of your life in a prison cell or a jail cell like is so selfish. Not surprised. Prosecutors say Tanya Singleton helped Hernandez's right hand man flee the state. But after today's hearing, she is one step closer to freedom. Eyewitness News reporter Susan Campbell joins us now with the details live outside Ball River Superior Court. Tanya Singleton's attorney tells us Tanya didn't make bail today, but he says she may get out of jail soon. Hands folded and sitting up straight, Tanya Singleton appears in Fall River Superior Court again. The cousin of Aaron Hernandez is accused of criminal contempt and conspiracy to commit accessory after the fact of murder. It's not even alleged that she actually saw or observed anything,

and there's no evidence that she was told anything. Hernandez has been charged with the execution-style murder of Odin Lloyd. Two of his associates, Carlos Ortiz and Ernest Wallace, have been charged with accessory to murder after the fact. Prosecutors say Singleton tried to help both men get away after Lloyd's death, driving Ernest Wallace to Georgia and buying him a bus ticket to Florida. There was also a conversation she had with Carlos Ortiz about assisting him in leaving the country to go to Puerto Rico. Then, according to the state, there's also a missing cell phone that was in Singleton's name

and used by Wallace. One particular phone that was of interest has either been disposed of or concealed or is just not available. The judge set Singleton's bail at $15,000 cash. If we can get everything together, I would expect her to be released. Yeah. Singleton's attorney tells us his client is currently battling breast cancer. Yeah. Why do news reporters talk like that? Singleton's attorney tells us his client is currently battling breast cancer yeah why do news reporters talk like that singleton's attorney tells us his client is currently battling breast cancer why do they all talk like that part of it's a journalism class is it really i'll go through it yeah it's very distracting to me sometimes i don't know why it happens it just does okay well listen she she

did all that like her lawyers like there's there's no evidence that she was told anything. There is no evidence that she was told anything. But don't you think you'd ask somebody like, why do I have to hide your car in my garage and paint the windows and I can never drive this car that's perfectly good and I can't use it and it's just sitting in my garage for a year? Why do I have to get these people out of town? Why do I have to get Carlos Ortiz out of the country? Like at this point, you know, it's just it's kind of bananas. She definitely might not have known exactly what she was protecting Aaron for him, but she knew she was protecting him from something. And I do repeat repeat what the lawyer said. Tanya's attorney says he doesn't understand why. I don't know he said there's no evidence that she knew anything yeah there's no evidence yeah not saying she didn't know anything it's just saying hey listen there's no evidence and it goes back to what we had discussed a lot earlier in this episode because we're two hours and now there's a difference between being guilty and being guilty in the court of law being legally guilty and that's how the lawyer is looking, being legally guilty. And that's how the lawyer is looking at it. She was legally guilty of not testifying, though, you know, so. Oh, yeah, for sure. Like that's what she's in trouble for at this point. She's not in trouble for all the things she did, which they have evidence of these things that she did in the wake of all of

this. You know, like I said, she may not have known exactly what she was protecting him from, but she knew she was protecting him from something that he'd done that was illegal. And I do believe that she did know exactly what he had done because you got Carlos Ortiz, Ernest Bo Wallace. These are all guys that that Aaron met at her house. They're all talking about this stuff. You know, it's that code, like you said. So, yeah, I would go out on a limb and I would even say that Tanya knew way more than Cheyenne. Oh, million times more. She knew way more than Cheyenne and Cheyenne was Aaron's significant other. But I feel like at the root of it, Tanya knew the real Aaron and she was privy to everything. And Cheyenne wasn't. So if anybody knew what happened that night, it was Tanya. If Aaron was going to confide in anyone, it would have been her. I agree.

Well, from his jail cell, Aaron wrote to fans who had sent him words of support, seeing things like, quote, I know God has a plan for me and something good will come out of this. End quote. He also said that he was a good person, a great dude known for having an amazing heart, and his fans should not believe the negative publicity. Aaron said that this experience had been humbling for him, and he knew that it was going to change him forever. Dude, you got to read some of the things he says to these fans, like in these letters, because they would obviously go on to print them

and share them with the media after. But he's just like, I'm amazing. Everything I do is amazing. Everything I touch turns to gold. Okay, so how could I possibly have done this when I am such a great, perfect person? Like, it's very weird. I think it's an ego, but it's also like, well, as I said, he's like living in a fantasy where he maybe convinced himself he hadn't done this at this point. I don't know, but he seems to have no remorse at all. Bristol County Jail had become

familiar with Aaron's changing moods and unpredictable behavior. After just a few weeks of being there, the guards conducted a routine inspection of his cell, but as he watched them going through his letters, he became agitated, yelling at them that they weren't allowed to read his mail from his attorneys. According to jail officials, Aaron had to be told to back off three times. And when the search was over, the guards saw that Aaron was clutching a paper in his hand, and they were like, what's in your hand? And it was this piece of paper that had the letters M-O-B written on it. Now, the guards told Aaron that behind bars, M-O-B meant member of bloods.

And Aaron told them they were wrong. It meant money over bitches. When they asked him to give them the paper, Aaron yelled, quote, what if I don't give this back to you? What the fuck you all going to do about it? End quote. When he was told he would be written up, Aaron said he didn't care and that he would eat the paper before giving it up, which he then did. When Sheriff Hodgson went to speak to Aaron about this incident, he claims Aaron immediately began screaming at him, and Hodgson said to him, quote, excuse me, why are you yelling at me? Am I yelling at you? What I'm seeing right now is not the Aaron Hernandez I know, end quote.

So during his time at the facility, Hodgson had attempted to help Aaron, and the two of them developed an almost father-son relationship. One time Aaron had told Hodgson that he'd been reading the Bible, and he began to cry, saying, quote, my father told me to never cry in front of another man, end quote. Hodgson was trying to help Aaron work through his emotions instead of just like reacting to them. And Aaron told Hodgson that as they talked about childhood, parents, God, and life, he felt himself changing. And even Cheyenne remarked how calm and nice Aaron seemed to be during some of their phone conversations. Sheriff Hodgson would sometimes marvel at how well Aaron seemed to be adjusting to life behind bars, coming from the life of luxury and opulence that he left behind. And

you'd mentioned earlier, like, yeah, he came from this great life and he's behind bars. That has to be a huge adjustment. Aaron did not seem to have trouble adjusting. So you met with Aaron Hernandez and you said he's acclimating well. Yeah, he's surprisingly, for someone who's not been institutionalized, he seems to be very sort of normal and confident and not at all appearing nervous. And very polite and respectful, but seems to be integrating pretty well. I find that so bizarre. Someone that had his whole life ahead of him as a professional football player, of course he may be acquitted, but I would think you would have to be in total denial to be calm and acclimated at this stage of his situation. Yeah, you know, it's interesting. We have people who react differently when they come

in, and I think it has something to do with perhaps how they've grown up. It may have to do with their ability to be able to, some people are able to block things out and sort of flip them and put a positive spin on them somehow. I don't know how one could find too much positive, particularly from where he came. He left a 7,100 square foot home and he's being housed in a 7 foot by 10 foot cell. Yeah, a very, very tiny cell. Now, he was, when he first came, he was in a single cell, correct? That's right. He was in the medical unit, in a single cell with a bed and a toilet-sink combination. And where is he now? Now he's in what we call a special management unit, where he's in, again, a single cell,

but now he has a bunk bed in there and no roommate. And now he has a desk and he has a small desk and a toilet sink combination. Do you meet with all the prisoners, by the way, or do you meet with Hernandez because he was sort of a special case? Well, in his case, he was coming in as a high profile person. I wanted to introduce myself to him, let him know that he wasn't going to be treated any differently than any other inmate, that he would expect the same procedures and policies to follow along. If he had issues, to let us know. When somebody is a high profile person coming into a prison, you have to be very careful because sometimes you'll have people that will be trying to raise their own stature inside of a prison where they think someone may be important or have a status.

I honestly think that Aaron seemed to be okay with jail because he truly believed he wouldn't be there long. You know, like we said, during phone conversations, he continued to tell his friends and family what he was going to do when he got out, what plans he had for when his name was cleared and he had his life back. But Aaron was still having trouble keeping himself under control, even with his eternal optimism, which is why I'm confused why Sheriff Hodgson's like, oh, he's so polite, such a nice boy. He was not. So when Aaron was

formally indicted for murder on August 22nd, he submitted to a urine test, which turned up positive for a subscription drug called Neurotin. Now, this substance is used as a painkiller, and it's been linked to aggressive behavior as well as possible suicidal ideation. And needless to say, he hadn't been prescribed it by a doctor, so he just sort of procured it in prison somehow or in jail. A month after that, Aaron was in trouble again for possessing gang paraphernalia, once again associated and connected to the Bloods. Five weeks later, Aaron called a security guard or what do they call them? Just guards. What are they called? COs? Correctional officers.

Yeah. He called a CO a scared bitch after the CO would not let Aaron have extra food. And there's also this story where Aaron was sent like honey buns, like in little plastic wrappers and he wasn't supposed to have them. And the guard like caught him and Aaron just like shoved like seven honey buns in his mouth before the guard could get them because he was supposed to compensate them. Aaron was constantly like dying because there wasn't enough food. You know, he's a big guy and he's just constantly complaining that he doesn't get enough food. And so Aaron called the CO a scared bitch. And then he allegedly told this man that when he got out of jail, he was going to kill him and shoot his family. He then proceeded to make a sound like a machine gun.

Aaron claimed he had not made that threat, saying, quote, I did not say I was going to kill him or his family. I said, if I see CEOs that act tough in jail, out of jail, I'm going to slap the shit out of them. End quote. I doubt it. Aaron said, oh, I'm going to slap the shit out of you when I see you outside. It doesn't sound like something that would go along with his tough act that he was trying to keep up. I don't know about you, but I have no reason not to believe Aaron. I mean, he's been completely truthful and upfront and honest about everything. So, you know, I'm going to have to side with Aaron on this one. I think the CEO just completely misunderstood what he said.

And it was probably more along the lines of slapping the shit out of him. Yeah, definitely. Like, you know, like a duel. I mean, who are we going to believe here? Come on. So it was reported that Aaron would also beat his chest like a gorilla while being placed in his cell at night, telling the guards that he was tough, that he was built for this shit. Aaron seemed to really hate one specific CEO, Joshua Pacheco, who claimed that Aaron was,

quote, constantly kicking his cell door and screaming at the top of his lungs, utilizing profanity at times when he wants something, regardless of how minuscule it is. It is not uncommon for Hernandez to kick his cell door constantly until an officer approaches his cell merely to ask the officer for the current time. This to him is comical, causing a disruption in normal operation within the unit. End quote. And this reminds me of what people said about him during collegeco that he'd had a dream that a visit with his daughter, Avielle, was canceled because the CEO had written him up, before continuing on to say, but the dream changed locations. You and your family were on vacation, and I was chasing you.

Pacheco felt that this was Aaron threatening his family, and Aaron claimed, it was just a dream and not meant to be taken out of context. A month later, Pacheco was delivering lunch to the inmates when Aaron yelled at him, quote, I need to be your father figure and show you how to be a man, show you how to have your balls drop. I didn't know the army created little boys and not men, end quote. As Pacheco left Aaron's unit, Aaron yelled out to him, quote, I haven't had any more dreams about you, end quote. Sick dude. Sick dude. It wasn't just the guards that Aaron had a problem with. On February 25th, 2014, Aaron left his cell and approached CEO Kevin Sousa as

he led a handcuffed inmate down some stairs. Sousa claimed that, as Aaron approached, his demeanor seemed like easygoing and he was smiling, but there was still something odd about the way he was walking up on Sousa and the inmate, so Sousa told him to back up, in order which Aaron ignored. For some reason, Aaron walked right up to the handcuffed inmate and punched him in the face, telling the man, quote, go ahead, run your mouth now, end quote. Later, this inmate would explain that he hadn't really done anything. He was a Patriots fan, and sometimes when Aaron would pass by him, he would look at Aaron, and Aaron would demand to know why he was looking at him. It happened yesterday afternoon here at the Bristol County House of Correction in Dartmouth. There were two inmates involved in an altercation.

One of them was Aaron Hernandez. Bristol County Sheriff Tom Hodgson is telling Eyewitness News he's concerned because 24-year-old Aaron Hernandez is locked up in a special section of the jail where only one inmate is allowed out of his cell at a time. So that raised some concerns from me right off the bat as to do we have a systemic failure in our protocols and we'll be looking at that as part of the investigation. Sheriff Hodgson isn't revealing details about the other inmate but he did speak generally about a possible motivation rooted in prison culture which he called quote a whole different world. It's not uncommon where somebody would try to raise their stature with the rest of the inmate

population when they have a notable person in there to challenge that person. So I'm not saying that happened in this case. I'm just saying that those things can happen. And that's why I wanted him in special management to begin with. After an investigation, it was discovered that Aaron was the instigator. And then Sheriff Hodgson said, quote, we were so worried about protecting him. We never thought that he would be the aggressor. End quote. Like,

why? It's so annoying seeing Hodgson in this clip and the other one where he's like, yeah, we got to worry about protecting Aaron because he's a high profile inmate. And sometimes people go, he's in there for murder. Like he's accused of murder. Why would you not think that he's capable of being the aggressor? Like it's bananas. It's almost like he was maybe getting special treatment or maybe Hodgson had gotten a little close and some emotions were involved and he was starting to kind of see him as like a son figure. And Aaron could be very manipulative.

People said that he could be very charming, engaging, disarming. And Hodgson's over here like, I'm not saying that the other inmate was at fault, but I kind of am. And then it turns out like, no, it's Aaron. It's always Aaron. So Aaron was in a pressure cooker. And with his trial approaching, he had plenty to worry about. And that's where we're going to pick up next time. Pick up next time. Another great episode. Covered a lot there. I think we're going to have the trial, probably start getting to some CTE stuff, right? We're getting there. Or what do you think? What are you estimating? Yeah, for sure. I think, I don't want to say, but definitely not a ton.

Okay. Right. I don't want to say and then corner myself, but not a ton left. Not a ton left. Well, either way, we're going to cover it. I always like to say, after you watch a Crime Weekly series, we pride ourselves on you walking away from it, A, learning something new, and B, feeling like you can watch any documentary, have any conversation with someone about the case, and you have a general understanding of the entire thing from start to finish. A general understanding. They've got an in-depth understanding. They know everything. You could write a book.

You could. But we want you to really walk away with a complete picture. Obviously, you're going to develop your own opinions, but we started at the beginning. We're going to finish strong. And just from what I know about it, there's still a good amount to cover. There's a lot of twists and turns that come up and some things that we have to cover. And then obviously, there's the whole CTE element of it, because that absolutely is a factor in this. And as far as when we talk about the aftermath and the debriefing behind some of the decisions that Aaron made, we'll get into that. And I'm sure you guys will have a lot of

opinions on it as well. I'm actually really interested to hear what you guys have to say about that because I don't think everyone is super familiar with that element of the case. There's a general understanding, but a lot of people after what happened, Aaron, happened, probably lost interest in it and really wasn't too concerned in the why. That's for the more advanced true crime enthusiasts where we're going to dive into it. So if you weren't familiar with it, you will be after watching this series. Absolutely. Thank you guys so much for being here. We'll see you next time. Don't forget to follow us on social media and don't forget to pre-order your criminal coffee if you haven't already because I need to

because I'm almost all the way through my alias blood bag and I'm getting a little panicked. So we will see you guys next week. Thank you so much.

Bye. Bye. Be safe.