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.
Aaron’s agent, Brian Murphy, believes in Aaron’s innocence to this day. But he, too, sees no way around the fact that Aaron was there, on the night of Odin Lloyd’s murder.
During the call Aaron had made, on the day after Father’s Day, with the police stationed outside his house, Murphy had asked him if he’d seen Odin Lloyd.
“Well, I partied with him a couple nights ago, but I hadn’t seen him since then,” Aaron had said.
“Is he missing?” Murphy had asked. “Is something wrong?”
“I guess they can’t find him. I don’t know.”
“All right. If your friend’s missing, why would they wait outside your house?”
“I don’t know, man,” Aaron had said. “They’re tripping. But I think they’re waiting for a search warrant.”
“I have to tell you,” Murphy says today. “That conversation, I’ve never repeated it to anyone. He was so unbelievably crystal-clear to me that he had done nothing wrong—which obviously wasn’t true, because he admitted he was there. And as I told Aaron, ‘I believe in my heart that you did not shoot Lloyd, but what the hell were you thinking leaving? And going back to your house?’ I never understood why he did that.
“Aaron’s smart as hell. He’s super-smart. He’s a survivor. A hustler. If he was going to kill someone, he would never drive up to Boston, pick the guy up, come back to a clearing a mile from his house, shoot him, and leave him where he would be found. That’s the clumsiest murder of all time. That’s why I personally don’t believe that he did it. Because if he wanted to kill Lloyd, and I can’t imagine why he would…It’s insane. He got the best blunts of his life from Lloyd. And even the homosexual angle, which I don’t buy—I’m not saying whether he was or not, but I don’t think he’d kill Lloyd over that.
“I don’t see it happening. I don’t see a motive. But even if he did, even if he wanted to kill him, he’d do it in a much smarter way. What I believe is that Carlos Ortiz was high as a kite on angel dust, showing off for Aaron—some argument ensued—and Ortiz shot Lloyd. At that point, Aaron’s code kicked in and, as much as I disagree with it, Aaron lived and died with that code. He would never rat someone out.”
DJ said that he had been open with Aaron about his distrust of certain characters Aaron had gathered around him. He also described Aaron’s reaction to the concerns that he voiced about each of those characters.
“What’s the worst that can happen?” Aaron had told his brother. “He’s my friend.”
“I don’t know,” DJ explained. “I just know he cared about people. And some of the people he cared about, I wasn’t too fond of. I didn’t think they were the best for him at that stage in his life. But he cared so much. He really did. It’s very interesting, how much he cared.”
If not for a few crucial choices, Aaron’s life might have turned out differently. If only he’d accompanied DJ to UConn. If only he had managed to pull away from the bad elements in Bristol. If only Dennis Hernandez had lived to see his son succeed in college, and the NFL, and keep him on the straight and narrow.
“That’s the million-dollar question, how my father—if he was still alive, how everything would have changed,” DJ told Sports Illustrated. “I think it would have been completely different.
“But,” he added, “I don’t know. That’s a fairy tale.”