Aaron Hernandez

The couple married in 1986, divorced in 1991, and remarried in 1996.

Aaron Josef Hernandez (November 6, 1989 – April 19, 2017) was an American professional football player who was a tight end.

He played in the National Football League (NFL) for three seasons with the New England Patriots until his arrest and conviction for the murder of Odin Lloyd.

Hernandez was born in Bristol, Connecticut, on November 6, 1989, and raised on Greystone Avenue.

His parents are Dennis Hernandez, of Puerto Rican descent, and Terri Valentine-Hernandez, of Italian descent.

As an adult, Hernandez remembered his mother throwing his father out of the house on multiple occasions, but always letting him back in.

In 1991, they filed for bankruptcy.

Hernandez later stated there was constant fighting going on in the home.

Both parents would be arrested and involved in crime during their lives.

Hernandez had an older brother, Dennis Jonathan Jr., known as D.J. Their father pushed them to excel, including through sports, but was often abusive towards both the boys and their mother.

The beatings Hernandez's father gave him and his brother were sometimes for no reason at all or were alcohol-related, but often came when their father believed they were not trying hard enough in school or athletics.

D.J. and Hernandez lived in constant fear of their father, but also revered him.

Hernandez once came to school with a bruise around his eye, and his coach believed that the injury resulted from his father attacking him.

His father once punched Hernandez's youth football coach after a dispute about coaching methods.

Publicly, their father projected an image of someone who had some run-ins with the police but turned his life around to become a good father and citizen.

In January 2006, when Hernandez was 16, Dennis died from complications from hernia surgery.

According to his mother, Hernandez was heavily affected by his father's death, and he acted out his grief by rebelling against authority figures.

Those who knew him said he never got over his father's death.

Hernandez became estranged from his mother, and largely moved in with Tanya Singleton, his older cousin.

Following Dennis' death, the family learned that Terri Hernandez and Singleton's husband, Jeff Cummings, had been having an extramarital affair.

After the affair became public, Singleton and Cummings divorced, and Cummings moved in with Terri.

This "enraged" Hernandez.

It was while he was living with Singleton that Hernandez became more involved in criminal activity.

In a jailhouse conversation, Hernandez accused his mother, Terri, of failing to obtain medication for his ADHD, which he said caused him to struggle in school.

In another call, he told her, "There's so many things I would love to talk to you [about], so you can know me as a person. But I never could tell you. And you're gonna die without even knowing your son."

According to Hernandez's brother D.J., Hernandez was also sexually molested as a child.

A teenage boy in his babysitter's house forced Hernandez to perform oral sex on him beginning when Hernandez was six years old and continuing for several years.

Hernandez attended Bristol Central High School, where he played for the Bristol Rams football team.

He was also an exceptional basketball player and track runner.

Hernandez played college football for the Florida Gators, earning first-team All-American honors and winning the 2008 BCS National Championship Game.

Due to concerns towards his size and off the field incidents, he was not selected until the fourth round of the 2010 NFL Draft by the Patriots.

Alongside teammate Rob Gronkowski, Hernandez formed one of the league's most dominant tight end duos, becoming the first pair to score at least five touchdowns each in consecutive seasons for the same team.

He also made an appearance in Super Bowl XLVI.

While on trial for Lloyd's murder, Hernandez was also indicted for the 2012 double homicide of Daniel de Abreu and Safiro Furtado; he was acquitted after a 2017 trial.

Days after being acquitted of the double homicide, Hernandez was found dead in his cell, which was ruled a suicide.

During the 2013 offseason, Hernandez was arrested and charged for the murder of Odin Lloyd, a semi-professional player who was dating the sister of Hernandez's fiancée.

Following his arrest, Hernandez was immediately released by the Patriots.

He was found guilty of first-degree murder in 2015 and sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole at the Souza-Baranowski Correctional Center.

His conviction for Lloyd's murder was initially vacated under the doctrine of abatement ab initio because Hernandez died during its appeal, but was reinstated in 2019 following an appeal from prosecutors and Lloyd's family.

Hernandez was posthumously diagnosed with chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE), which has led to speculation over how the condition may have affected his behavior.