KILLER BRAIN DRAIN
A DEGENERATIVE disease brought on by repeated head trauma left former Patriots tight end Aaron Hernandez’s brain nearly as dark as his heart.
Postmortem X-rays showed the convicted murderer suffered the worst case of chronic traumatic encephalopathy ever seen in a 27-year-old, likely affecting his memory and impulse control, officials said Thursday.
Yet Boston University CTE Center director Dr. Ann McKee said she could not draw a straight line between Hernandez’s brain trauma and the violent behavior that landed him in prison.
“We can say . . . in our collective experience, that individuals with CTE — and CTE of this severity — have difficulty with . . . inhibition of impulses and aggressions, emotional volatility and rage behaviors,” McKee said.
Hernandez committed suicide behind bars in April while incarcerated for the 2013 murder of semipro football player Odin Lloyd.
A Massachusetts jury convicted Hernandez of executing Lloyd with a half-dozen bullets inside an industrial park. He was sentenced to life without parole.
The images of Hernandez’s brain showed large portions of the black spots created by the broken-down protein Tau — the result of repetitive pounding to the head.
Large holes were found in the brain’s membrane, and the inside of his brain was riddled with the disease.
“In every place we looked, it was classic CTE,” she declared.
Hernandez was also born with a genetic marker that possibly made him a more likely candidate for the brain disease.
There was atrophy in the brain’s hippocampal area, associated with memory, along with visible damage in the front lobe. He was diagnosed by researchers with Stage 3 CTE — out of four stages.
“These are very unusual findings to see in an individual of this age,” McKee said. “We’ve never seen this in our 468 brains, except in individuals some 20 years older.”
McKee, a top expert in the field of CTE investigation, emphasized that she could not “connect the dots” between Hernandez’s condition and his behavior.
CTE can only be diagnosed after death, and its symptoms include aggression, volatile mood swings and depression.
Hernandez hanged himself in 2017, only days after his acquittal in a double homicide case where prosecutors charged the former University of Florida star with killing two men over a drink spilled in a nightclub.
After those killings, Hernandez was tattooed with the image of a handgun and the words “God Forgives” — with prosecutors claiming the ink was meant to memorialize the murders.
Within hours of his suicide, many of Hernandez’s former teammates with the Super Bowl champion Patriots were visiting with President Barack Obama at the White House.
Lawyers for Hernandez sued both the NFL and football helmet manufacturer Riddell for their respective failures in alerting the athlete about the health dangers of the sport.
Hernandez played with the Patriots in the team’s second Super Bowl defeat to the Giants after the 2011 season. He would play only one more season of professional football.
The late NFL players Junior Seau, Andre Waters and Dave Duerson, after taking their own lives, were all diagnosed with CTE.
Other NFL greats afflicted by the disease include former Giants Hall of Famer Frank Gifford and Super Bowl-winning Oakland Raiders quarterback Ken Stabler.
McKee co-authored a Boston University study this past summer revealing that 110 of the 111 brains donated for examination by former NFL players showed evidence of CTE.