Updated Friday, April 21, 2017, 6:09 p.m. EDT: After a report came out early Friday that Aaron Hernandez had left a suicide note in his cell addressed to a jailhouse lover, speculation as to whether or not Hernandez had a sexual secret began to circulate. Police sources are now confirming that Hernandez’s closeted sexuality is being investigated as a possible motive in the murder of his friend Odin Lloyd.
Newsweek reports that an intimate relationship Hernandez had with a male former high school classmate was at the center of the investigation into Lloyd’s murder.
Ernest Wallace, who was a co-defendant in the Lloyd murder case, reportedly told detectives that Lloyd had called Hernandez a “schmoocher,” which Hernandez and his companions took as a gay slur, and according to Newsweek, Wallace was also recorded during a jailhouse visit telling Hernandez’s cousin Tanya Singleton that he would not have helped Hernandez get rid of the murder weapon if he had known that Hernandez was a “limp wrist.”
From Newsweek:
Hernandez’s alleged longtime male lover, the high school friend, was interviewed extensively by authorities after Lloyd’s murder, and was forced to testify in front of a grand jury. Law enforcement officials also say Hernandez moved a large amount of money into three accounts shortly before his arrest for the Lloyd killing: one account was for his fiancée; a second was for his daughter; the third, where the most money was moved, was for that friend.
If Hernandez carried on this thug image in order to hide his sexuality, then this story is even more tragic than initially thought because it means that America, and all the toxic masculinity and male fragility that it perpetuates, is at least partially complicit in these crimes.
We live in a society where men are not allowed to be viewed as less than manly for fear of being ostracized, or, worse yet, are persecuted for who they are and who they love.
If Hernandez was indeed trapped in the closet, the ending of his story is even sadder than we imagined.
Earlier:
The rumor mill surrounding former New England Patriots star Aaron Hernandez’s suicide continues to whirl, and the stories are getting wilder and wilder. An unconfirmed report published Friday claims that Hernandez left behind three suicide notes, one of which was addressed to his gay jailhouse lover.
The Daily Mail reports that three notes were found in Hernandez’s cell after his suicide earlier this week. One was addressed to his fiancee, Shayanna Jenkins-Hernandez; one was addressed to their 4-year-old daughter, Avielle; and the third was addressed to an unnamed gay jailhouse lover who is reportedly now on an “eyeball to eyeball” suicide watch, according to the report.
The lover is allegedly the last person to speak to Hernandez before he took his own life, according to the Daily Mail.
The notes were reportedly found next to a Bible opened to John 3:16, the same Scripture that Hernandez is said to have had written on his forehead in marker and that reads: “For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.”
The Daily Mail reports that Hernandez had been planning his suicide for weeks and had even given away most of his personal belongings to other inmates.
Additionally, the report claims that Hernandez covered the floor of his cell in soap so that “if he lost his nerve he wouldn’t be able to save himself as he would slip around and not be able to land firmly on his feet.”
From the Daily Mail:
“Chief Medical Examiner Dr. Henry N. Nields performed an autopsy on Mr. Hernandez on Wednesday and concluded today that the manner of death was suicide and the cause asphyxia by hanging,” stated Massachusetts District Attorney Joseph D. Early, Jr. in a statement on Thursday.
“An investigation into the death by the State Police Detectives assigned to the District Attorney’s Office and Department of Correction investigators found cardboard jammed into the door tracks of his single-inmate cell to impede entry into the cell.”
The report went on to state: “There were no signs of a struggle, and investigators determined that Mr. Hernandez was alone at the time of the hanging.”
“Mr. Hernandez was locked in his cell about 8 p.m. and no one entered the cell until a correction officer observed him at 3:03 a.m. and forced his way through the impeded door to render aid.”
As previously reported on The Root, Hernandez was acquitted of a double murder charge on April 14. He was already serving time after being convicted of the 2013 murder of Odin Lloyd and was in the process of appealing that conviction when he took his own life sometime late Tuesday night or early Wednesday morning.
According to a statement issued Wednesday from Christopher Fallon, the assistant deputy commissioner of communications for the Massachusetts Department of Correction, Hernandez attempted to block his cell door from the inside by “jamming the door with various items.”
There has been no official word from prison officials on the alleged suicide notes, but the Daily Mail claims to have a source “close to the investigation.”
We can take this report with a grain of salt, but if there is any validity to it and some other prisoner was distraught enough after Hernandez’s death to be put on a suicide watch, it’s safe to say that person could have been a lover.
I love all of my friends dearly, and if any of them suddenly committed suicide, I would be sad, but I wouldn’t be considering following in their footsteps.
That’s something only a lover would consider doing.
But again, this is the Daily Mail we’re talking about, so take this information as you will.
Read more at the Daily Mail.