According to the DA, Hernandez was asking forgiveness for having shot Bradley, having shot Furtado, having shot de Abreu.
“‘God Forgives.’ His statements. His words. That is a confession. But this is not a church, this is a courtroom. What matters in this room is the truth. What matters in this room is accountability. What matters in this room is a fair and just verdict based on the evidence, and not based on wild speculation, conjecture, and conspiracy theories. It has been five years since Safiro Furtado and Daniel de Abreu were gunned down in cold blood. Their lives matter in this room as well…The time for accountability is right now. His time is right now. Speak the truth through your verdicts and find him guilty.”
Chapter 97
The jurors deliberated for thirty-seven hours over the course of five and a half days.
On April 14, they returned to the courtroom.
Shayanna sniffled as the jurors entered. A few moments earlier, she had been crying.
Everyone stood. It was so quiet that you could hear the rustle of clothing as people swayed from side to side. One of the courtroom’s pool cameras panned over Aaron, who was wearing a gray suit, a blue shirt, and a blue tie. It lingered on the victims’ families, in the front rows. It found Shayanna, behind them.
Aaron pursed his lips. A clerk asked the foreperson if the jury had agreed on a verdict.
The foreperson said that they had.
“Will the jury and the defendant remain standing please?” the clerk asked. “All others may be seated.”
The judge took a long moment to review the verdict. Then, with a sigh and a grimace, he set the proceedings in motion: “What say you, Madam Foreperson, on Indictment 2014-10417, Offense 001, charging murder in the first degree, victim Daniel de Abreu? Do you find the defendant not guilty, guilty of murder in the first degree, or guilty of murder in the second degree?”
The foreperson’s voice was firm and even: “Not guilty.”
For the first time, in all of his hundreds of hours in court, Aaron allowed his feelings to show in his face. His closed his eyes, inhaled deeply.
The clerk continued: “What say you, Madame Foreperson, on Indictment 2014-10417, Offense 002, charging murder in the first degree, victim Safiro Furtado. Do you find the defendant not guilty, guilty of murder in the first degree, or guilty of murder in the second degree?”
“Not guilty.”
Aaron nodded, and continued to nod as the clerk continued to read and the foreperson answered.
There were eight counts in all. Hernandez was not guilty of witness intimidation. He was not guilty of armed assault and attempt to murder.
The one charge that Aaron was found guilty of was illegal possession of a firearm.
Members of the victims’ families broke down in tears. One by one, they rushed out of the courtroom. As they did, Aaron let his mask slip, a bit more. Dennis Hernandez had taught his boy not to cry in front of other men. But now, Aaron did cry. He cried in front of the judge. In front of the jury that had found him innocent—in front of the world that had doubted his innocence—Aaron Hernandez cried tears of joy.
He looked young, almost boyish. His other conviction was up for appeal.
With Jose Baez on his team, Aaron was halfway to freedom.
Coda
The phones in Souza-Baranowski’s G2 General Housing Unit all looked the same: mounted on columns, they were silver-colored with black handsets. To use them, prisoners punched in the PIN numbers that had been assigned to them on arrival. But prison etiquette had to be followed. By general understanding, each phone was claimed by a different gang. The Latin Kings had their phones. The gangs from Boston and Springfield had theirs.
Aaron Hernandez used phones that were claimed by the Bloods.
In the days immediately following his exoneration for the double murders in Boston, he spoke with his lawyers, with family members. He’d stay on the line with his fiancée, Shayanna, until the last possible minute. Then, as nine-thirty neared, a corrections officer would call time.
“Five minutes to count!” the CO would shout.
Every night was the same: The inmates in G2 would shuffle off, grudgingly, to their cells. Hernandez would climb a set of blue stairs to his cell—Cell 57, left of the corrections officers’ desk, located one level below. The CO would flick a switch that caused all the doors in the unit to slam shut and lock for the night. Then the prisoners would stand, facing the window in their cell door, and the CO would walk, slowly, past each cell, eyeballing the prisoners and physically checking to make sure that each door was locked.
Some COs walked the ground floor first, then climbed the stairs to count the second. Some COs did the opposite.
It was as much variety as the system allowed for.
For Aaron Hernandez, this had been the routine for two years. But the past few days had been different. According to an internal prison report, “He was positive and even happily emotional, which was not usual of Hernandez.”
Aaron told other inmates that he was looking forward to reuniting with his family, and with Shayanna. He was still young—twenty-seven. If Jose Baez could work his magic again, he might have a few years of football left in him.
“Since Friday’s verdict he had been talking about the NFL and going back to play even if it wasn’t for the Pats,” an inmate would say. “He talked about his daughter and spending time with her.”
Now, it was the evening of April 18, 2017. The Patriots, who had won the Super Bowl again that year, would be going to the White House the next morning to meet with President Trump. But, once again, Aaron stayed on the line with Shayanna, drawing out the last long minutes of the day.
Then the CO called time and Hernandez shuffled off to his cell, his dark brown eyes shining with purpose.
A few hours later, at around one in the morning, Aaron hung part of a bedsheet over the window cut into the door of his cell.
He jammed the rail the door ran on with ripped-up pieces of cardboard.
Then he opened his Bible to the Book of John and wrote “John 3:16,” in red ink, on his forehead.
Slicing into his right middle finger, Aaron used his own blood to mark that same passage in his Bible. He wrote “John 3:16,” in his own blood, on the wall of his cell, and drew a crude pyramid, like the one on the back of a one-dollar bill.
Beneath it, he wrote the word “Illuminati.”
Leaving several handwritten notes by the side of the Bible, he made large, stigmata-like marks, in blood, on both of his feet. Then, stripped naked, he poured several bottles of shampoo from the prison canteen all over the floor and picked up another part of the bedsheet, which he had twisted, tightly, into a rope.
Hernandez tied one end of the twisted sheet to the top of one of the vertical slats on the window across from the door to his cell. But the crossbar was just five feet from the floor. There was a metal desk directly beneath it, a metal chair next to it. Both had been bolted right into the wall.
What happened next took doing and determination on Aaron’s part.
First, he rolled up some towels and stuck them through the crossbar, so that the twisted sheet wouldn’t slide down the vertical slat. Then, he tied the other end of the sheet around his neck.
By the time the guards found him, Aaron Hernandez was cold to the touch.
Epilogue
Even in death—especially in death—Aaron Hernandez monopolized the news cycle.
Why had he done it? Had he even done it?
Brian Murphy and Jose Baez refused to believe that Aaron had committed suicide. “He was so positive, so excited to come home,” Shayanna said. “He was so, ‘Daddy’s gonna be home, and I can’t wait to sleep in bed with you guys, and I can’t wait to just hold you and love you.’”