‘Killer Inside’ probes rise & fall of NFL star
‘Meet the Press’
BOSTON, Dec 21, (AP): More than two years after he killed himself in his prison cell, former NFL star Aaron Hernandez’s story still fascinates - and now it’s heading back to the small screen.
Netflix is releasing “Killer Inside: The Mind of Aaron Hernandez” on Jan 15. The three-part documentary examines the meteoric but troubled - and violent - rise and fall of the late New England Patriots tight end.
A teaser for director Geno McDermott’s film opens with chilling audio of a collect call Hernandez made to his fiancee, Shayanna Jenkins. Hernandez can be heard saying: “My whole body’s shaking right now.” Jenkins asks, “What happened?” and Hernandez responds: “You know my temper.” In July, Hernandez’s estate settled a wrongful death lawsuit brought by the families of two men he was acquitted of killing. Prosecutors alleged Hernandez fatally shot Daniel de Abreu and Safiro Furtado in 2012 after a confrontation at a nightclub. Hernandez killed himself in prison in 2017 while serving a life sentence for the 2013 murder of semi-professional football player Odin Lloyd.
Hernandez’s death came just a few days after he was acquitted of most charges in the double murder case. After his death, doctors found the 27-year-old Hernandez had advanced chronic traumatic encephalopathy, a degenerative brain disease linked to concussions and other head trauma commonplace in the NFL.
Transcripts the Bristol County sheriff released last year of more than 900 jailhouse telephone conversations Hernandez had with family and friends showed he expected to be released from jail and resume his football career shortly after his arrest for Lloyd’s killing. Hernandez had a five-year, $40 million deal with the Patriots at the time of his arrest.
Hernandez
Conviction
McDermott and producer Terry Leonard say the latest film will feature some of those phone calls as well as courtroom footage and interviews with those closest to Hernandez and Lloyd. The project, they said in a statement, “examines the perfect storm of factors leading to the trial, conviction, and death of an athlete who seemingly had it all.”
Filmmakers and authors have had no shortage of material to work with in recounting the story of the handsome, polite athlete from Bristol, Connecticut, who was a high school standout and an All-American at the University of Florida before his three seasons with New England and subsequent fall from grace.
A state police report of the investigation into Hernandez’s death said the player wrote “John 3:16,” a reference to a Bible verse, in ink on his forehead and in blood on a cell wall. The verse says: “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.”
A Bible was nearby, open to John 3:16, with the verse marked by a drop of blood. And authorities said Hernandez was a member of the Bloods street gang and had been disciplined for having gang paraphernalia in prison.
Hernandez’s story has already inspired a documentary aired on Oxygen, a “48 Hours” special and books by bestselling author James Patterson and Hernandez’s defense lawyer, Jose Baez.
A special “Meet the Press” episode on disinformation in politics was in the works even before host Chuck Todd’s interviews with two Republican senators made its pertinence clear.
The deep dive, reminiscent of last December’s hour on climate change, is scheduled for Dec 29. Marty Baron and Dean Baquet, executive editors of The Washington Post and The New York Times, are scheduled to be interviewed.
“I’m not going to pretend to have the answers,” Todd said in an interview. “This is a spotlight. I hope my guests have good ideas. This to me is about sounding the alarm.”
Todd’s interviews with Sen John Kennedy of Louisiana (Dec 1) and Sen Ted Cruz of Texas (Dec 8) both grew contentious when the senators discussed disproven claims of Ukrainian interference in the 2016 US election. Intelligence officials have said Russia has been trying to spread these stories to take attention away from its own efforts.
Influence
Todd offered an incredulous “you do?” when Cruz said he believed Ukraine had tried to influence the election, and asked Kennedy whether he was concerned he’d been duped by Russia.
The interviews made Todd a target for Republican critics, including the nation’s twitterer-in-chief, President Donald Trump, who has given Todd his own derogatory nickname.
“It’s designed to make me more uncomfortable doing my job,” Todd said. “Let me put it this way. I probably let it get to me a lot a year ago.”
The challenge in covering the Trump administration was obvious from its third day, when presidential counselor Kellyanne Conway used the term “alternative facts” in a discussion with Todd about attendance at Trump’s inauguration. Todd said he tries to take the long view, reasoning his performance will be best judged years from now.
“I’m not kidding, I lose sleep over this at night,” he said. “I lose sleep. Let’s be honest, it’s been miserable covering this story. When you have to fight about what the set of facts are, it’s ridiculous. The fact that we’re here is just so intellectually dishonest, and is so frustrating.”
The post-Christmas “Meet the Press” will look at how an untrue story emerges and is spread throughout the media ecosystem, as well as examine how Russia perfected its own propaganda campaigns before spreading them to other countries.
Todd himself was subject to criticism for discussing Ukraine in his interviews with Kennedy and Cruz. Stories spread only when given oxygen, and he strapped on the tank.
“This is the dilemma of the, quote, ‘big lie,’” he said. “In order to explain why the big lie is a lie, you have to repeat the lie in some form or another. I am very mindful of this.”
But he’s not knowingly putting someone on the air to spread misinformation, he said.
The media has its responsibilities for enforcing the truth; one clear, unresolved issue is different standards for monitoring truthful statements in advertisements on television and social media. Young people need to learn media literacy. But public leaders will ultimately have to take a stand for the truth, he said.