Aaron Hernandez Was an All-Time Sociopath
I watched all three hours of the Netflix Aaron Hernandez documentary last night and it was riveting. I knew most of the story but it was still captivating all the way through. Pretty well done.
I think the filmmakers did a good job of presenting all the evidence that Hernandez allegedly (definitely) killed three people and shot another guy in the face while also showing some of the potentially mitigating factors such as his advanced case of CTE and some factors surrounding his upbringing.
One detail from the first episode that really stood out to me was a recorded phone call between Hernandez and his mother where he talks about how every time he leaves his cell, he turns around and looks at how clean and tidy it is and it feels good to him. One of the corrections officers interviewed marveled at how quickly Hernandez was able to adjust from living in a mansion to a 7x10-foot jail cell.
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His ability to compartmentalize things like that certainly shows how he could allegedly be involved in a double murder and then play an entire season in the NFL afterwards.
The other part that really stood out to me was a sound-less video the prosecution played during its closing argument from the morning after the murder of Odin Lloyd. It's Hernandez and the two others who helped him commit the murder in his basement playing with his 1-year-old daughter and just hanging out like nothing had happened. That's some of the most chilling stuff in the entire documentary. This guy was just able to shoot a guy six times and leave his dead body lying there and then wake up the next morning like nothing happened.
Honestly, the most shocking part was that if Hernandez had simply gotten rid of his own home security footage, there really wasn't that much evidence tying him to the crime in the Lloyd case — at least not enough to convict him of first degree murder. The police never found the gun and the home footage is the only thing showing Hernandez coming and going at times that tied him to the crime and shows him holding what appears to be a gun after coming home. The jury already deliberated for a week, so without that evidence, he might have actually gotten away with it.
This is obviously just a horribly sad story. And there were a few details in there that made me at least stop and think about what could have driven Hernandez to that point and made me feel a little bad for him — shout out to Teri Hernandez, one of the worst mothers of all-time.
But at the end of the day, this guy was just going out killing people and then pretending nothing happened. Maybe it's still too recent to be able to get a good gauge on how this story will be remembered historically, but I feel like it doesn't get the amount of attention it warrants for how absolutely insane it is. There was a star NFL tight end just going around killing people and then continuing to play for the New England Patriots.
What a tragic, awful story.