Footballer’s deadly downfall

The most striking details from the Aaron Hernandez series on Netflix

A MUCH-anticipated docuseries on Aaron Hernandez hit Netflix on Wednesday, and over three episodes it traces his shocking and seemingly incomprehensible downfall.

Between the ages of 16 and 27, the Connecticut native went from being a fun-loving high school star to a well-paid tight end for the Super Bowl-minded Patriots, only to end up committing suicide in prison after being convicted of one Boston-area murder and heavily implicated in two others.

Members of Hernandez’s family declined to participate in the series, the executive producers of which are a pair of sports writers, Dan Wetzel and Kevin Armstrong, who appear frequently in the episodes to recount events.

Here are some of most striking details that emerged from Killer Inside: The Mind of Aaron Hernandez.

His high school quarterback said they were in a sexual relationship.

As with many other aspects of the series, those who followed Hernandez’s saga closely or who happened to catch a relevant headline may already have been familiar with the claims made by Dennis SanSoucie, his quarterback and close friend at Bristol Central High. Those unfamiliar with the claims, however, may well be taken aback to hear SanSoucie say they “experimented” sexually. “We continued because we probably enjoyed it.

“Yes, we were in a relationship back then,” SanSoucie tells the camera, “but at the time, you don’t look at it like that.”

SanSoucie’s father, Tim, sits next to his son and says at one point that he was “homophobic” years ago, just as Hernandez’s father was.

While the series is understandably incapable of fully explaining what drove Hernandez to forfeit his lucrative athletic career in favour of the criminality that eventually led to at least one homicide, Killer

Inside posits at several points that his discomfort with his sexual inclinations, or at least the way they might be viewed by others, manifested itself in angry and occasionally violent outbursts.

Other potential factors, such as his brain being posthumously discovered with a stunningly advanced case of chronic traumatic encephalopathy, as well as his father’s abrupt death when he was 16, are also explored.

The series also notes that Hernandez’s older brother, DJ Hernandez, wrote in a book that there was a time when Aaron, inspired by female cousins, wanted to become a cheerleader.

Their father ended that quickly, DJ claimed.

Everything changed, according to several interviewees in the series, after Dennis unexpectedly died in 2006 while undergoing hernia surgery.

Testimony from Robert Kraft helped convince jurors of his guilt.

During Hernandez’s trial for the murder of Odin Lloyd, the boyfriend of his fiancée’s sister, the Patriots’ owner took the stand to divulge what he discussed with the tight end shortly after Hernandez was connected to Lloyd’s death.

Hernandez hanged himself in his prison cell in 2017, despite being acquitted four days earlier for the murders of Daniel de Abreu and Safiro Furtado, two strangers whom Massachusetts prosecutors argued were shot in a 2012 drive-by after a brief altercation with the Patriots player at a Boston club.

The defence attorney, Jose Baez, said a day after the suicide that Hernandez’s family would donate the tight end’s brain for study by Boston University researchers.

Boston University’s Ann McKee said at a news conference that Hernandez had unusually extensive deterioration in his frontal lobes, which are critical for judgment and decision-making.

“This would be the first case we’ve ever seen,” she said at the time, “of that kind of damage in such a young individual.”