Court documents indicate the search of a secret “flop house” leased by former New England Patriots tight end Aaron Hernandez has turned up what police say could be key evidence in the murder case against him.
Search warrants records indicate that police searching the Franklin, Mass., condominium Hernandez had rented found the same caliber ammunition used in Lloyd’s slaying and a white hooded sweatshirt similar to what Hernandez was allegedly wearing that night Odin Lloyd was killed.
Authorities also found a cranberry-colored cap with “society” written backward in white lettering, similar to one Hernandez was seen wearing outside a nightclub in Boston on June 14. Video of Hernandez wearing the cap was shown on WHDH-TV in Boston, according to court records.
A state trooper wrote that the clothing could help place Hernandez at the crime scene and establish his location before the killing.
“The white sweatshirt could be used to assist in linking Hernandez to the scene of the crime,” Michael Bates, a detective with the Bristol County District Attorney’s Office, wrote in his affidavit.
“The baseball hat could help provide the whereabouts of Hernandez on the Friday night before the homicide. This night, in particular, is a critical aspect in the timeline of events leading up to the homicide,” Bates wrote.
Hernandez, 23, is accused of orchestrating Lloyd’s execution-style shooting June 17, after Lloyd angered Hernandez by speaking to certain people at a nightclub. His attorneys say the evidence against Hernandez is circumstantial and he’s eager to clear his name.
Bristol County Sheriff Thomas Hodgson, meanwhile, reiterated on Wednesday that he won’t allow Hernandez to marry his fiancée while he is jailed on his murder charge.
“We’re not going to revamp our entire security system to perform marriages inside our prison. If you want to get married, what you do is, you stay out of jail,” he told the NFL Network on Wednesday in an interview with the “NFL AM” show, adding he’s taken away many privileges from inmates, such as weights, televisions in cells and coffee.
By law, Hernandez’s fiancée, Shayanna Jenkins, who is also the mother of his 7-month-old daughter, would not have to testify against the former New England Patriots tight end if they were married. Prosecutors said last week that investigators had been speaking with Jenkins until she received a telephone call from Hernandez telling her to stop talking to authorities.
Hernandez is acclimating well to jail and was moved Monday from the medical unit, where he’s been closely watched since arriving, to a different unit. Hernandez will remain in a cell by himself, but now instead of having one hour a day outside that cell, he’ll be allowed three hours. In part because of his notoriety, Hernandez won’t have contact with other inmates for at least another week.
The jail’s gang intelligence unit has finished its evaluation of Hernandez, and Hodgson told ESPN on Monday he’s not as concerned as he expected to be when he saw the number of tattoos on Hernandez’s body. Hodgson told the NFL Network on Wednesday that they are now monitoring how other inmates react to Hernandez in Phase 2 of their evaluation.
“Now he’s in a unit where the inmates, although only one person in that unit can be out at a time, he would still be, for example, in the common area where inmates can walk up to their cell door and see from inside their cells through a glass window and can speak through that door.
“We want to see what reaction we’re going to get from those inmates in that unit and how he reacts to that.”
Hodgson said Hernandez won’t be able to walk up to cell doors to have a conversation with other inmates, “but he could hear them if they decided to yell out.”
Also, police in his hometown of Bristol, Conn., said Tuesday that Boston police asked for their help with a double homicide investigation linked to the former NFL star.
Bristol Police Lt. Kevin Morrell said the request was based on evidence developed through the investigation of Lloyd’s slaying. He said police were asked to search the same home in Bristol for both investigations, and they seized a vehicle at the address Friday. Two men died in the shooting in Boston’s South End on July 15, 2012, and a third man was wounded. Witnesses reported seeing gunfire coming from a gray SUV with Rhode Island license plates.
Authorities said 29-year-old Daniel Jorge Correia de Abreu and 28-year-old Safiro Teixeira Furtado were killed, but police didn’t identify the third victim. Boston police have declined to comment on whether Hernandez is being looked at as a possible suspect in that case.
Over the weekend, a man who is married to Hernandez’s cousin was killed in a car crash in Connecticut.
Thaddeus Singleton III, 33, of Bristol, was driving the car when it went airborne early Sunday and crashed into the wall of the Farmington Country Club, becoming lodged 5 feet above the ground, police said. They said the car was registered to a man, reportedly Hernandez’s uncle, whose home has been searched several times, most recently on Tuesday, and from which the vehicle was seized on Friday. A 27-year-old female passenger was injured.
Authorities said the investigation into the crash would take a significant amount of time, but Farmington police said they had no knowledge that it was linked to the Hernandez case.
Story courtesy of espn.com
Information from ESPN’s Bob Holtzman and The Associated Press was used in this report.