A few days prior to his suicide, Aaron Hernandez, a former New England Patriot, seemed victorious during phone calls from his prison. He had just been cleared of all charges in his double murder trial and was filled with optimism about life beyond prison walls. Hernandez’s fellow inmates had asked him, “Who you gonna play for?” and he responded with an optimistic message about playing football again. These recordings of Hernandez’s calls have been made public.
The 27-year-old prisoner was well-known: Hernandez was formerly a $40 million contract star tight end with the Patriots, but he also had savage killing skills. Even though he was found not guilty of the double murder of two individuals in Boston that he appeared to hardly know, a jury had previously found him guilty in 2015 of killing a friend for unclear reasons.
Hernandez has been talking on the phone for the past 36 hours, hopeful that he would be able to overturn the guilty decision and get out of his life sentence without the possibility of parole.
“Dude, I’m awesome. After a protracted battle for access to public records, California prison officials revealed an edited tape of Hernandez telling a friend, “One step closer.” He went on, saying that there is “light at the end of the tunnel.”
Hernandez would be dead in a few hours.
Hernandez committed suicide on April 19, 2017, leaving behind more than just a blood-stained cell covered in incoherent writings and spiritual references. Hernandez’s friends and family are still struggling to understand the irony of his last days: that a guy who appeared to be in high spirits and was arranging to see his daughter and her mother could have taken his own life without warning.
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