Fame, as a star tight end with
the New England Patriots, which took him to the Super Bowl. Fortune,
with a $40 million NFL contract. Family, with a fiancee and baby
daughter.
But his future? A lifetime
behind bars after being convicted Wednesday of first-degree murder in
the 2013 slaying of Odin Lloyd, who was dating the sister of Hernandez's
fiancee.
After more than nine weeks of testimony, 135 witnesses and 439 exhibits, the question remains: Why did he do it?
Former NFL player David Nelson,
who played with Hernandez at the University of Florida, summed up the
thoughts of many Wednesday after the verdict.
"That's not the guy I knew. How could that happen. WHY did that happen," he wrote on Twitter.
Even the jurors, when asked how
somebody with that much talent and that much money could throw it all
away, said they didn't have an explanation.
"You'd have to ask the
individual," juror Sean Traverse said during a post-conviction news
conference as other jurors nodded their heads. Hernandez didn't testify
at his trial.
Hernandez is also accused in two
other shootings, a 2012 double homicide in Boston and a 2013 shooting
in Florida. In both cases, he is accused of doing it for the most
trivial of reasons.
In 2012, prosecutors say,
Hernandez killed two men after one of them accidentally bumped into him
at a club, causing Hernandez to spill his drink. Hernandez has pleaded
not guilty. In the Florida shooting, former friend Alexander Bradley has
sued Hernandez, saying he was shot between the eyes after he and
Hernandez argued and Bradley insulted him.
Those who knew him say
Hernandez, now 25, was deeply affected by the death of his father when
he was in high school. At 17, while at the University of Florida,
Hernandez was accused of punching a bar employee who was trying to get
him to pay for two drinks. Before the Patriots signed him in 2010, a
scouting report ranked him at the bottom of the scale for social
maturity.
Lloyd and Hernandez were
introduced in 2012 by their girlfriends. The couples would spend time
together on weekends and at family gatherings, occasionally going to the
movies or a club. The two men would often peel off from the group and
smoke marijuana together.
Lloyd was described as a loving
and devoted family member and friend, a hardworking landscaper who biked
20 miles roundtrip to his job, making it there on time at 7 a.m. On
weekends, he had fun playing football in what a friend described as a
Pop Warner league for adults.
There were some hints during the trial that not all was well between Hernandez and Lloyd but never an explanation of why.
Bradley testified that one time
he was at Hernandez's home and Lloyd came in without saying hello.
Bradley said Hernandez told him it was rude.
A friend of Lloyd's testified at
trial that Hernandez seemed angry with Lloyd when he saw them at a club
together the last Friday night of Lloyd's life. After Hernandez left
the club, he was seen by a hotel valet with a gun tucked in his
waistband, but then Hernandez left with Lloyd and three other people,
and nothing happened that night.
Lloyd was dead two nights later.
There has been some speculation
that Hernandez told Lloyd about the 2012 killings or that Hernandez
thought Lloyd knew something about them, prompting him to kill Lloyd to
keep it quiet. But there's no specific evidence that was the case.
At the Lloyd trial, Bradley said
Hernandez was unreasonably suspicious, thinking helicopters were
following him and being paranoid that his conversations could be
recorded. Bradley was not allowed to say that in front of jurors but was
allowed to testify that Hernandez had a hard time trusting anyone.
Prosecutors did not have to prove a motive or explain why Hernandez
did it, just that he did. William McCauley, the lead prosecutor on the
case, told jurors in his closing arguments that there was a reason, but
it just might not be a valid one.
"Whether it's a good motive or a
bad motive," McCauley said, "he believed he could kill Odin Lloyd and
nobody would ever believe he was involved."
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