Retaliation fears torment Ortiz’s mom

Sit on the couch in Elba Ortiz’s living room, and it hits you: Hanging on the wall, above the flat- screen television and among a dozen other pictures of smiling family members and friends, is a framed color photo of Aaron Hernandez, breaking a tackle in a New England Patriots uniform.

She jokes that she would take it down if she could — “It’s too high, I can’t reach it,” she says — but that’s not the real reason. She’s had more than two months since Hernandez’s arrest on first- degree murder charges to get rid of it. So, incredibly, the former NFL star — who Ortiz says pulled her son, Carlos, into a murder plot he told family members he knew nothing about — still holds a place in her home.

“That’s my boy,” Carlos used to say whenever he passed that photo. “That’s my boy, Aaron. He’s a superstar.”

But now, because of Hernandez, Elba Ortiz fears for her life and the lives of those around her, she told USA TODAY Sports in an exclusive two- hour interview. She can’t eat or sleep, she says. She suffers panic attacks, takes several medications and has twice- a- week therapy sessions as she tries to understand how her life

has been changed forever by a text message in late June that persuaded her son to leave Bristol, Conn., and head to North Attleborough, Mass.

Prosecutors say Carlos Ortiz, 27, was one of the four men in the car the night Odin Lloyd, a 27- year- old semipro football player, was shot and killed in an industrial park near Hernandez’s home. Hernandez, 23, has been indicted for murder and will be arraigned Friday in Fall River Superior Court. Ernest Wallace, 41, another alleged accomplice, has been indicted as an accessory after the fact, and Ortiz has been charged with illegally possessing a firearm. All three have proclaimed their innocence and remain incarcerated.

Ortiz told authorities he did not get out of the car with the three men and did not witness the slaying. But he said Wallace told him the next day that Hernandez killed Lloyd, according to an affidavit.

Elba Ortiz is worried that Hernandez loyalists, who might think Carlos Ortiz is a snitch who will take down a Bristol football hero if he tells authorities what he knows, could try to retaliate. And because they can’t get at her son in jail, they might try to harm her or her family, she fears. USA TODAY Sports has not used a dateline or details that might reveal their location.

For Hernandez, Elba Ortiz has just one question: Why?

“I’m mad. I’m very angry about it,” she said. “I have a lot of emotion toward Aaron, because he was supposed to be our friend, Carlos’ friend.

“I’m trying to forgive him, but why did Aaron do this? We don’t know. That’s the question we want answered.

“You’re supposed to be friends; why did you need to include my son?”

Elba Ortiz came out of seclusion to set things straight, she says in Spanish with her daughter, Carmen, interpreting. She wants the world to know her son, while no angel, is “a good boy.”

But before the mother takes on news media reports — which painted Carlos as a street punk and reported that his mother was dead and he was adopted — she gazes at the photo of Hernandez, and as she talks it becomes clear why it’s still there.

Carlos hung it, and Elba Ortiz, like a mother who leaves a son’s bedroom untouched when he goes off to war, keeps the photo there to honor Car- los, or “Charlie” as he is known to family and friends. It’s a symbol that Carlos eventually will come home, and she wants his things, even the Hernandez photo, as he left them. The other reason? Elba Ortiz holds out hope that ultimately Hernandez will tell the world that Carlos had no part in the killing, that Carlos didn’t even know it was going to happen.

Carlos has a rap sheet for nuisance crimes, but Elba Ortiz says he is certainly no killer.

“There were four guys. Three guys are in jail, and one is dead. If I didn’t do anything wrong, I wouldn’t take the blame,” said Carlos’ sister, Carmen. “I’m not spending the rest of my life in jail for you because you have money and can get a better lawyer. If my brother didn’t do anything, he doesn’t need to stay in jail for you.

“If Carlos is guilty of anything, he’ll be guilty of whatever he did. He’s not going to take the blame for anyone else. He told the police what he saw and what he heard. It’s like when anyone gets arrested, they tell their side.”

‘ NOT HOMELESS’ Elba Ortiz was sitting on the sofa when she learned her son was linked to a murder. She was watching the news when his mug shot appeared on the huge screen in her one- bedroom apartment after his June 26 arrest.

The news had reached Carmen, who was visiting a friend in New Haven, Conn., a few minutes earlier. She contacted her sister, who lives in England, and together they tried frantically to warn their mother and to find a neighbor to get to the apartment to be with her.

“And someone to shut off the TV!” Carmen said.

They were too late. Elba Ortiz let out a shriek and has been crying for the last 68 days.

She had known something was wrong. Carlos hadn’t come home in about a week, and their attempts to reach him always went to voice mail. When Hernandez was handcuffed, removed from his home and charged June 26, they tried to reach Carlos again.

“When they got Hernandez, we were saying, ‘ Oh, my God, that’s his friend. Call ( Carlos), find out what’s going on,’ ” Carmen said. “We were calling and calling, and we couldn’t get in touch with him. He wouldn’t answer. ‘ Has anyone seen him?’ No. “And then he was on TV.” Since then, they have been in a fog. They say they have tried to get answers from Carlos’ court- appointed attorney, John Connors, but say he has yet to speak to them about the

“I have a lot of emotion toward Aaron, because he was supposed to be our friend, Carlos’ friend.”

Elba Ortiz, mother of Carlos Ortiz

case. Numerous attempts to reach Connors for this story were unsuccessful. The family makes plans to go to court when Carlos is scheduled to appear, but the hearings keep getting postponed.

Over the last two months, as her daughter read her online stories about her son, Elba Ortiz finally grew desperate to tell people the truth, she says. So she granted her first interview.

She is hurt by reports that say Carlos was homeless. “He slept here,” she said. “He had a home.” She cooked him meals and often gave up her bed so he didn’t have to scrunch his tall frame on the couch. He did not come home every night, she said. A single guy with a lot of friends, he likes to have a good time. He has three children with three women.

“But he was not homeless,” she said.

Elba Ortiz also rebutted reports that Carlos was adopted. “I’m his mother,” she said. “I’m the only mother he’s ever had. I’m still alive, and he’s not adopted.”

She gave birth to him in Puerto Rico and brought him to the USA when he was 10, she said. She worked several jobs at a time to support her four children, because the two men who had fathered them were no help.

She is a simple woman with a neatly kept apartment that still showcases Carlos’ middle school basketball trophies ( which he won alongside D. J. Hernandez, Aaron’s older brother).

Carlos got into trouble, she says, but it wasn’t because he was unloved. In her view, it was usually because he wanted everyone to love him, including people he never should have let into his life.

Elba Ortiz tells a story of the time two of Hernandez’s relatives — she doesn’t recall their names — came to her apartment for dinner with Carlos. They wanted to adopt him, in a way.

“They said they were going to bring him into their home, that they would get him away from the bad people he was hanging around,” Elba Ortiz said.

She locks eyes with the interviewer to make sure the irony is understood.

‘ TELLING THE TRUTH’ Last Tuesday, Elba Ortiz made her first trip to the correctional facility to see her son. The family doesn’t own a car, but she finally made it there with the help of one of Carlos’ friends, only to be refused entry into the visiting room, she says, because she didn’t have government- issued identification.

So she waved at him from behind a large glass window. She cried. He cried.

“I love you, Mama,” she could hear him say. “I love you, son.” Carmen went inside, sat with Carlos for 45 minutes and then reported back to her mother: His weight is OK, but he still appears to be in a daze. He feels betrayed by Hernandez, who she says not only put him in lockup but hasn’t contacted him or offered help, even though prosecutors have detailed how the ex- football star has been Wallace’s sole source of financial support. So what happened that night? “We asked him the same question,” Carmen says. “That’s what we want to know. He feels like he doesn’t know. He said, ‘ I wish I could go back in time, because I don’t know what happened.’ He’s still in shock. I said, ‘ This is serious,’ and he just looked at me. It’s crazy, but this is for real.

“People can hate on him for being a snitch, but he’s told the same story over and over. He is telling the truth.”

According to court documents, Ortiz told investigators that Hernandez and Lloyd had an argument in the car about Lloyd talking to some people Hernandez didn’t like the previous night at a club.

But the beef appeared settled before the car stopped in an empty industrial park and the other three got out to urinate, Ortiz said.

Ortiz said he heard shots fired in the early- morning darkness and only Hernandez and Wallace returned to the car, which sped to Hernandez’s home about a half- mile away.

The next day, Lloyd was found dead, shot five times. Within two weeks, Hernandez, Wallace and Ortiz were in custody.

Ortiz told police he didn’t see who fired the shots but said Wallace told him the day after the killing that Hernandez was the shooter.

“Hernandez said, ‘ Get up here,’ and Carlos just went along for the ride,” Carmen said. “Maybe Wallace knew what was going to happen, but Carlos? Murder? No way. What happened was going to happen whether Carlos was there or not. He just happened to be there.”

The jailhouse visit did not answer the family’s many questions about the case, his sister said. Police have yet to recover the weapon used in the killing, and Carmen said her brother said he didn’t know what happened to it. Ortiz told authorities that Wallace asked him to retrieve a gun from the car minutes after the shooting. He said he gave it to Hernandez, who put it in a box in his basement, according to an affidavit.

Ortiz’s sister said he also told her he knew nothing about two other shootings authorities say they are investigating to determine whether Hernandez or others were involved.

‘ WE CRIED’ Carmen and Carlos spent most of the visit talking about the good times, she says — such as last Christmas, when the entire family was jammed into mom’s apartment.

“He asked, ‘ How is Mama doing?’ and, ‘ How are ( my) kids doing?’ ” Carmen said. “We talked about, ‘ Remember when we used to do this? Remember when we used to do that?’ We cried, wiped away our tears, and I said, ‘ I’ll see you in court.’ ”

She is sobbing now. Carmen has a photo on her phone of the two sisters and Carlos on New Year’s. In the photo, he is crying — “because we’re finally all together,” she says.

As she listens, Elba Ortiz cries, too. She says her son has been addicted to two things: using drugs and befriending the wrong people. She constantly warned him, but she never expected that Hernandez — a guy with a mansion and a $ 40 million NFL contract — could turn out to be an alleged gunman in a murder plot. With Hernandez also from Bristol, she thought her son was safe with him.

She didn’t realize that Carlos likely would have to testify in court or that Hernandez’s high- priced attorneys would be able to use his criminal record and drug history to discredit him. David Meier, Wallace’s attorney, has alleged that prosecutors have made a deal with Ortiz, who faces the least serious charges. To create reasonable doubt, Hernandez attorneys might even suggest Carlos did the killing. She listens and stares. When the interview is over, Elba Ortiz says something in Spanish to her daughter. There is an awkward silence. Then she says it again. The daughter nods.

“She wants you to do a favor,” Carmen said. Sure, what is it? “Can you take down the photo?”

JOHN MUNSON Elba Ortiz holds a picture of son Carlos Ortiz as daughter Carmen weeps. “Carlos? Murder? No way,” Carmen says.

POOL PHOTO BY ANGELA ROWLINGS Carlos Ortiz, shown July 9 at a hearing, got into trouble not because he was unloved but because he wanted to be loved by all, his mother says.

POOL PHOTO BY TED FITZGERALD Elba Ortiz, mother of Carlos Ortiz, has a question for Aaron Hernandez, shown June 27: “Why did you need to include my son?”