Within a few days, one of those inmates had given Aaron a new tattoo.
Tattoo guns at the prison were primitive: Motors came from typewriters. (In the absence of motors, inmates sometimes used homemade waterwheels.) Hollowed-out BIC ballpoint pens served as shafts. Needles were just straightened-out paper clips. Ink (always black) was made from pages torn out of thin-paged Gideon Bibles. Inmates burned the pages, caught the soot, scraped it together, and mixed it with water—a painstaking operation. But in Aaron’s case, the process resulted in an elaborate, professional-looking five-pointed star on his neck. The words written across it—LIFETIME LOYALTY—were commonly associated with the Bloods.
Out of the prison’s 1,100 inmates, 750 were confirmed gang members. When a corrections officer was asked how prisoners were supposed to survive in such an environment, the officer thought for a moment, then said, “Affiliate.”
Prison officials spotted the new tattoo quickly, and disciplined Hernandez for getting it. But in most respects, Aaron presented himself as a model prisoner. After a month in Orientation Block, he was eager to find his place among the regular inmates.
Aaron wrote the administration several letters pleading his case.
“I have been here over a month and have no yard, $30 canteen, no gym etc,” he wrote in one letter. “I know I really cant be bunked…because people could easily steal my shit, letter, law paperwork, and sell it and could do anything to get money and publicity which will continue to kill my cases like media has already done.”
All that Aaron wanted to do was get comfortable, “start his bid,” and find his proper place in the prison, he said. Since entering prison, in 2013, he had been trying to enter general population. He had no enemies at Souza-Baranowski. In fact, he knew and trusted a few inmates he’d known on “the streets.”
With no further infractions on his record, Aaron’s request was granted and he was moved into “pop.” But despite his appeals and assurances, Aaron was soon reverting to his old ways.
Chapter 91
Aaron’s first fight at the prison was a “two-on-one” fight.
According to prison officials, Hernandez was part of the two. According to another source, the fight was gang-related.
Afterward, Hernandez was taken to a segregation cell. A corrections officer visited him to check for marks and bruises, only to find that Hernandez had blocked the door.
When the officer finally managed to enter, he saw that Aaron’s knuckles and one of his elbows were red.
As he put Aaron in restraints to take him down to see medical staff, Hernandez became “agitated and insolent.”
“You just making up shit,” he said to the officer. When the medical check was complete, Aaron became agitated again. “This place ain’t shit to me,” he told the guards. “I’ll run this place, and keep running shit. Prison ain’t shit to me!”
All in all, between May of 2015 and October of the following year, Hernandez racked up a dozen disciplinary offenses. The list included three fistfights, two offenses related to smoking, two prison tattoos, and the possession of a sharpened, six-inch metal shiv.
But, for Aaron, there was more to the prison than fighting. There were books to check out of the library. K2, synthetic marijuana, wasn’t too hard to get in the prison. It was odorless, colorless. It didn’t show up in urine tests. K2 could cause paranoia, hallucinations, and psychotic episodes. But it also created a feeling of euphoria. If Aaron was using the drug, it would have helped him face the anxiety of his upcoming trial for double murder.
Aaron was a “normal” inmate—“which was weird,” a corrections officer at the prison recalls. “He fit right in.”
Before long, he had made a few friends.
A petty criminal named Kyle Kennedy was one of them.
Kennedy had used a butcher knife to hold up a Cumberland Farms in Northbridge, Massachusetts. He walked out with $189, but crashed his getaway car. Arrested immediately, he was put into an unlocked cell at the local sheriff’s station—at which point, Kennedy simply walked out.
He got three blocks down the road before the police picked him up once again. Now, Kennedy had an escape on his record—a crime that would ultimately land him in the federal prison system. “He was brought down to a local police department in Central Mass, these small little police stations,” Kennedy’s attorney, Larry Army, explains. “The police, when they arrested him for that, didn’t lock his cell the right way or they didn’t lock it. The kid’s all fucked up, realizes it, and basically opens up his door and walks out the front door of the police station. ‘He’s like, “What’s your problem? Nobody told me I couldn’t leave.”’ So, because of this ‘escape,’ he’s classified as a Level 1 security risk. Out of 120 guys in his cell block, one hundred were in for life. The other ones are there for twenty-plus years. Then there’s Kyle, this kid who’s there for two or three years. And then enter Aaron…”
Hernandez had heard about Kennedy when Kennedy was imprisoned at Cedar Junction, the prison Aaron had spent a few days at after his trial. “There was an issue that occurred,” Army says. “Kyle was in the middle of taking care of it. Aaron had heard about it. So, Kyle does something over here. Aaron hears about it over there. He writes a letter and basically gives his respect. Then, all of the sudden, Kyle is transferred to Aaron’s prison. Completely happenstance. But nothing happens that shouldn’t happen.”
Though the pertinent prison records have been redacted, it appears that, not long afterward, Aaron petitioned prison officials to make Kyle Kennedy his bunkmate.
Chapter 92
Aaron’s friends and his family adjusted, as best they could, to his incarceration.
Though they had never married, Shayanna changed her name to Jenkins-Hernandez. She continued to raise Aaron’s daughter, Avielle.
Despite their fights, and the fact that he had stabbed her, Terri continued to live in Bristol with Jeffrey Cummings.
DJ, who had started in on a promising career as a college football coach, found his opportunities dwindling after his brother’s arrest.
Although he refused requests to be interviewed for this book, DJ did spend several days with Michael Rosenberg, a writer for Sports Illustrated. In July of 2016, SI published a long profile.
By then, DJ had given up on the coaching career and started a roofing company in Texas. Now going by “Jonathan,” DJ came off as responsible, sober, and thoughtful. Photographs that accompanied the profile underscored his physical resemblance to Aaron. But the similarities seemed to end there.
DJ/Jonathan did not have his brother’s freakishly outsized talent—or his dark side.
“No one but Aaron Hernandez will ever fully grasp how a millionaire tight end came to gun down a friend three summers ago,” the tagline that ran with the article read. “But Aaron’s older brother Jonathan was there from day one, and witnessed all the little moments, all the poor choices, all the unwise associations that led to murder. That perspective cost Jonathan his way of living—but that’s O.K. He understands.”
DJ/Jonathan really did seem to understand. The profile described the tattoo over his heart—
D&A
THERE’S NO OTHER LOVE LIKE THE LOVE FOR A BROTHER
THERE’S NO OTHER LOVE LIKE THE LOVE FROM A BROTHER
—and went on to describe that love in detail.
“He had a very big heart,” Jonathan said. “That’s what’s craziest about all this. There is a disconnect. He would open up his arms to anyone.” But Aaron’s brother admitted that, although Aaron had sworn to him that he was innocent, he had been “involved,” at the least, in Odin Lloyd’s murder.
“Drugs, and people who don’t have the best intentions for you,” DJ explained.