DEVIL QUOTES SCRIPTURE
Killer NFLer hangs self with ‘John 3:16’ written on face
Aaron Hernandez, the former New England Patriots tight end serving a life sentence for murder, hanged himself in his cell Wednesday. Marked on his forehead was “John 3:16,” which says, “For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son.”
It was his suicide note — and his last tattoo.
Before he hanged himself in his prison cell Wednesday, disgraced NFL star Aaron Hernandez took a red marker and scrawled “John 3:16” on his forehead, a reference to a Bible verse that promises eternal life, a local TV station reported.
“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 verse reads.
The final jailhouse tattoo, first reported by the CBS-TV affiliate in Boston, joined the permanent tats on the 27year-old tight end-turned-murderer’s body — including a drawing of a firing gun and the words “God Forgives.”
The rise and fall of Aaron Hernandez started in his teens on the streets of Bristol, Conn.
A star football player and an ace student with a penchant for getting himself into trouble, he entered college early at the University of Florida.
During his time there, he excelled on the gridiron, becoming an All-American and winning a BCS National Championship.
But he found trouble off the field. Hernandez allegedly slugged a waiter at a bar on campus with such force that he broke the man’s eardrum. The matter was settled out of court.
More trouble followed: In September 2007, Hernandez was questioned after two men with whom he had been fighting at a nightclub were the victims of a drive-by shooting.
In 2012, the New England Patriots threw a total of $40 million in pay and bonuses at the talented, versatile rookie, in a contract that would have stretched to 2018.
It was August 2012, Hernandez was just 22 years old and he seemed to have a bright future ahead of him.
“I just hope I keep going, doing the right things,” he told Sports Illustrated at the time. “Making the right decisions so I can have a good life and be there to live a good life with my family.”
Hernandez became one of quarterback Tom Brady’s most reliable tight ends, sharing the duties with fan favorite Rob Gronkowski.
Shortly after the Patirots picked Hernandez in the NFL draft, however, it was revealed that he had failed multiple drug tests at Florida.
Nevertheless, he scored 18 touchdowns and had 2,000 pass-catching yards in his two seasons with the Gators.
In 2013, however, his world in the sports limelight came to a sudden end when he was arrested in the killing of semipro football player Odin Lloyd, who was dating the sister of Hernandez’s fiancée.
Hernandez was immediately cut by the Patriots and eventually convicted of murder. He was sentenced to life in prison without parole.
Last week, Hernandez was acquitted of a separate crime: the 2012 fatal drive-by shootings of two men in Boston.
As the jury was deliberating, cameras spotted Hernandez blowing kisses to the young daughter he had fathered with fiancée Shayanna Jenkins.
Prosecutors claimed he gunned down the two men after one accidentally spilled a drink on him in a nightclub — and he later got a tattoo of a handgun and the words “God Forgives” to commemorate the crime.
Investigators suggested Hernandez shot Lloyd dead to shut him up about the two earlier killings.
On Wednesday, as the Patriots were preparing to visit the White House, Hernandez began his day before dawn in his one-man cell in a Massachusetts prison where he was serving his life sentence.
There — just an hour’s drive north but a world away from the Patriots’ Gillette Stadium, where he had once been a rising NFL star — Hernandez barricaded his cell door from the inside with what little furnishings he had, attached a bedsheet to his cell window and used it to hang himself, according to prison officials.
“To have this situation end this way is nothing short of a true American tragedy,” ESPN football commentator Adam Schefter observed.
In November 2012, Hernandez’s fiancée had given birth to their daughter, Avielle.
But the following June, Hernandez was in handcuffs for
shooting Lloyd dead, leaving the corpse riddled with bullets in the gravel of an industrial park near Aaron’s five-bedroom mansion outside Boston.
Hernandez left a bread-crumb trail of incriminating evidence — including his own cellphone near the body.
“Aaron’s out of his mind,” one family friend told Rolling Stone magazine in a 2013 profile. “He’s been twisted on [angel] dust for more than a year, which is when all of this crazy s--t started.”
Less than a week after his acquittal in the fatal 2012 drive-by shootings — and after a night in which he smoked synthetic marijuana, according to CBS Boston — Hernandez killed himself.
And he may have had a larger plan in death, as the suicide could have ramifications for his victims.
By hanging himself in his prison cell, Hernandez may have just cheated Lloyd’s family out of possibly collecting any civil damages, thanks to a centuries- old snippet of Massachusetts case law. Hernandez had been in the midst of appealing his conviction in the slaying.
Because that appeal can now never be resolved, Hernandez gets the posthumous benefit of the doubt.
His legal clock gets reset, thanks to an obscure doctrine known as “abatement ab initio.”
Because Hernandez died in mid-appeal, it’s as if his prosecution, trial and guilty verdict never happened, Martin Healy, the chief legal counsel to the Massachusetts Bar Association, told The Boston Globe.
“Aaron Hernandez will go to his death an innocent man” in the eyes of the law, Healy said.
And whatever’s left of his NFL millions, including his $1.5 million mansion in a Boston suburb, will now likely go to his 4-yearold daughter and her mother.
THE LAST image we will have of him is the only one that hinted a human heart actually beat inside the murderous shell of Aaron Hernandez — who killed himself in his jail cell Wednesday morning, ending one of the most terrible chapters in the history of American celebrity.
Last week, just before he was acquitted of double murder, cameras captured Hernandez — already serving life for the 2013 killing of Odin Lloyd — blowing kisses to his 4-year-old daughter, Avielle, from across the courtroom in Suffolk County, Mass., where he awaited the jury’s verdict.
Hernandez, the former tight end for the Patriots, smiled as he did this, and for a fraction of a moment, it was possible to see Hernandez as something other than a character sprung to life from the imagination of the writers for the old “Oz” television series, the little girl wearing a polka-dot top, a pink skirt and a white sweater and clearly affecting her 27-year-old father.
A day later, in what passes for happy news only when compared with the terrible timeline of Hernandez’s descent from world-class athlete to homicidal convict, the jury decided Hernandez was not guilty of killing Daniel de Abreu and Safiro Furtado — whom prosecutors had alleged Hernandez gunned down in a drive-by shooting, payback for one of the men accidentally spilling a drink on Hernandez at a Boston nightclub.
For a fraction of a moment, Hernandez was something other than the cold-eyed, cold-hearted, cold-blooded killer we had seen sitting in court for longer than we ever had seen him splitting NFL secondaries. But only for that fraction. It is why, if there is any genuine sorrow generated by this latest twist in a twisted tale, in the wake of him hanging himself in that jail cell, it is for Avielle, who was destined to know her father only through the thick glass of a prison visitor’s room anyway, but who, nonetheless, was capable of melting the heart of a man who we might otherwise assume had none.
There was some irony attached to this news breaking on the day Hernandez’s old team, the Patriots, were scheduled to visit the White House to commemorate their victory over the Falcons in Super Bowl LI in February, but the Pats had long ago acknowledged their mistakes in selecting and employing Hernandez, and had moved on.
That never was more in evident than on the morning of Jan. 27, 2015. In a hotel ballroom in Chandler, Ariz., the Patriots were gathering to talk about their upcoming Super Bowl date with the Seahawks. The next day, Hernandez’s first murder trial would commence some 2,703 miles to the east, in the working-class town of Fall River, Mass.
Rob Gronkowski, the Patri- ots’ free-spirited tight end, had entered the NFL the same year, in the same 2010 draft as Hernandez — Gronkowski with the 42nd pick, Hernandez at No. 113. Together they made an immediate impact, a new two-headed option for Tom Brady to experiment with. Gronkowski, No. 87, became a legend for his tough- ness on the field and his ceaseless pursuit of fun off it. Hernandez, No. 81, went another way.
“Rob,” Gronkowski was asked in that ballroom, “as focused as you guys are about the business at hand, will your thoughts at all be with your former teammate who’s going to stand trial for his life starting tomorrow?”
Gronkowski pawed a bottle of water, pondered an answer, thought better of it.
“Next question, please,” he said, politely but firmly.
The Patriots have won two Super Bowls since Hernandez traded in his football uniform for prison grays. They handled this awful story as well as it can be handled. But the fact is, the only reason anyone ever knew about — or was remotely interested in — Aaron Hernandez was because he had played 38 games for them, caught 175 balls and 18 touchdown passes from Brady.
He was the football player who broke as bad as a man possibly can break. Who already was doing life for murder. And who was found in his cell at 3 o’clock in the morning at SouzaBarankowski Correctional Center in Shirley, Mass., a bedsheet fastened to a window on one end, tied around his neck on the other.
He leaves a trail of broken lives in his wake, and also a 4-year-old daughter, who had begged for weeks to make what turned out to be one last visit to see her father. Keep her in your thoughts today, and in the days ahead. She was Aaron Hernandez’s last victim.