Aaron Hernandez: Netflix series Killer Inside offers chilling look at NFL star turned convicted murderer
A new Netflix docuseries will examine the true story of how a star athlete fell from grace after being convicted of murder.
Killer Inside: The Mind of Aaron Hernandez attempts to piece together the double life of NFL player Aaron Hernandez, who played for the New England Patriots until being arrested in the summer of 2013 for the murder of Odin Lloyd.
Hernandez began his football career in high school, where he broke several state records and went on to play at university, first in Connecticut and then Florida.
He became a star tight end at the University of Florida, before becoming the youngest player in the NFL at the time when he joined the New England Patriots – winning a five-year contract extension worth $40 million in 2012 as a result of his performance.
This all came to an end when Odin Lloyd, a semi-professional football player, was shot and killed on 17 June 2013. His body was found in an industrial park around a mile from Hernandez’s mansion in Massachusetts.
The 27-year-old had been dating Shaneah Jenkins, sister of Hernandez’s fiancee Shayanna Jenkins (with whom he had a daughter), at the time of his death.
Hernandez and two others were arrested and charged just over a week later. He was convicted in April 2015 and sentenced to life without parole – he was found dead in his cell, having taken his own life in 2017. At the time he had just been acquitted of the murder of two other men in Boston in 2012, and was waiting to appeal his murder conviction.
Killer Inside is the most comprehensive visual account yet of Hernandez’s story, and examines issues including his sexuality, abusive upbringing, celebrity, and post-morterm diagnosis of chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE), a degenerative brain disease associated with repeated head trauma.
Over the course of three episodes, which were directed by Geno McDermott, those involved offer testimony from “a tapestry of perspectives... from every walk of life in which Aaron was involved”.
These include Dennis SanSoucie, Hernandez’s high-school quarterback and secret lover, and former Patriots offensive tackle Ryan O’Callaghan, who discusses the pressure to remain silent as a gay man in football, The Guardian reports.
Journalist Dan Wetzel, one of McDermott’s partners on the project, says there is no single answer as to what went wrong with Hernandez: “I think it was a perfect cocktail of problems. And there were many, many times when this could have gotten a walk-back or he could’ve gotten off the rails. He just never had the help or just made terrible decisions.”
Killer Inside: The Mind of Aaron Hernandez is available to watch now on Netflix.
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