FALL RIVER — In a stunning reversal of fortune for a man who once sprinted into end zones as an NFL star, Aaron Hernandez was convicted Wednesday of first-degree murder in the shooting death of a friend who had angered him. He was sentenced to life without parole.
The former New England Patriots tight end was found guilty by a seven-woman, five-man jury of the June 17, 2013, murder of Odin L. Lloyd of Boston. The jury in Bristol Superior Court took seven days to render its decision. It found he merited the conviction by “reason of extreme atrocity or cruelty.”
Hernandez showed little obvious emotion, but shook his head as the verdict was announced. He looked at his mother and fiancee in the gallery, who were holding each other, engulfed in tears.
Hernandez, 25, and two accomplices picked up Lloyd, 27, a landscaper who played semiprofessional football, at his home on the pretext that they would party together. Instead they drove through the darkness to an industrial park in North Attleborough near the football player’s spacious home, where Hernandez shot Lloyd several times with a .45-caliber Glock pistol, including two kill shots to Lloyd’s chest as he writhed in pain on the ground.
“Odin was my first, best gift I ever received. I thank God every second and every day of my son’s life that I spent with him,” Ursula Ward said, weeping, in a victim impact statement during the sentencing hearing, which came shortly after the verdict was announced.



“I miss my baby boy Odin so much, but I know I’m going to see him someday again, and that is giving me the strength to go on,” she said.
The verdict capped a 10-week trial that included testimony from 132 prosecution witnesses, including Patriots owner Robert Kraft; Hernandez’s fiancée, Shayanna Jenkins; and a former friend of the athlete who had claimed in a lawsuit that he was shot in the face by Hernandez in Florida four months before the execution-style slaying of Lloyd. The defense called only three witnesses.
The millionaire player, who was heading into his fourth season with the Patriots, had summoned his associates Ernest Wallace and Carlos Ortiz to help him murder Lloyd, prosecutors said. Wallace and Ortiz face separate trials for first-degree murder.
Ironically, surveillance footage from Hernandez’s home security system formed a key part of the prosecution’s case. The footage, taken minutes after Lloyd’s slaying, showed Hernandez returning home and holding a black object that an expert witness said appeared to be a Glock handgun.
Prosecutors faced serious challenges. The murder weapon was never found, and there was no eyewitness to testify to the murder. They built a circumstantial case against Hernandez, weaving together surveillance footage, cellphone records, and DNA and other evidence found at the crime scene to tell the story of Lloyd’s final ride. The prosecution also called witnesses who described a pattern of suspicious behavior by Hernandez before and after the murder.
Jenkins, who faces a perjury charge connected to the case, was compelled to testify for the prosecution under a grant of immunity. She said Hernandez had instructed her to remove a box from the couple’s basement after the murder, and to provide money to one of his accomplices.
Authorities believe the box contained the murder weapon. Jenkins said she threw the box in a dumpster but could not remember where.
The trial pitted Jenkins against her sister, Shaneah, who dated Lloyd at the time of his death. The siblings frequently sat on opposite sides of the cramped courtroom, Shayanna with Hernandez’s family and Shaneah with Lloyd’s relatives, including his mother, Ursula Ward.
Ward maintained a regular presence in the front row throughout the trial, often staring hard at Hernandez or turning her head away from graphic crime scene photos of Lloyd’s body. At times, she rushed from the courtroom in tears, flanked by victim-witness advocates.
While they never pinpointed his motive, prosecutors portrayed Hernandez as a young man who, despite his good looks, sizable fortune, and apparently bright future, was secretive, thin-skinned, and easily provoked by perceived slights.
Witnesses testified Hernandez and Lloyd went to a Boston club two nights before the murder and Hernandez appeared angry after Lloyd began talking with other people. Hernandez stormed out of the club and went back to his vehicle to retrieve a handgun, witnesses testified.
Jurors also heard that Hernandez, Lloyd, and two women continued from the club that night to an apartment that Hernandez leased in Franklin, and that Hernandez had texted Shayanna Jenkins on Lloyd’s phone the following day, telling her that he got “f----- up” and “O” took care of him.
In the same message, Hernandez sounded a note of concern, indicating that he had somehow shown Lloyd “my other spot” and “woke up buggin.”
Prosecutors suggested the text might hold another key to the motive for the killing, arguing that Hernandez may have panicked after betraying details of his personal life, including his infidelity to Jenkins.
After that night, prosecutors said, Hernandez began to orchestrate Lloyd’s slaying with Wallace and Ortiz.
Alexander Bradley, Hernandez’s former friend, bolstered the government’s portrayal of Hernandez as paranoid, telling jurors that his former friend had difficulty trusting people and preferred to keep his personal affairs private.
Bradley claimed in a pending lawsuit that Hernandez shot him in the face in Florida in February 2013, but he was barred from mentioning that incident on the witness stand. He testified instead that he saw Hernandez with a pistol resembling a Glock in Florida four months before Lloyd’s slaying.
The testimony of Kraft, who was formerly so close to his star tight end that he greeted him with a kiss whenever they crossed paths at Gillette Stadium, riveted viewers who have followed Kraft’s teams through four Super Bowls.
Kraft said Hernandez proclaimed his innocence when they spoke in the weight room at Gillette Stadium, the team’s home base, two days after the murder. Hernandez also said he hoped the time of the killing would become public, since he was at a nightclub then, Kraft testified.
Prosecutors seized on the latter comment during closing arguments, asking how Hernandez would know when Lloyd was killed when the information had not been publicly released.
The defense claimed the investigation was biased and incompetent from the start, as police fixated on Hernandez and declined to follow up on evidence pointing to other suspects.
In his closing argument, defense attorney James Sultan suggested that Wallace or Ortiz may have killed Lloyd in a drug-induced state, and that Hernandez could have taken the murder weapon from them when they returned to his home, to protect himself.
The defense also said prosecutors had failed to present a compelling motive for Hernandez to kill Lloyd, describing the men as “future brothers-in-law” who dated sisters, chased other women together, smoked marijuana together, and socialized at family gatherings and nightclubs.
The defense also said that the box Hernandez’s fiancée removed from the house contained not the murder weapon but compressed packages of marijuana.
But in the end, the jury agreed with prosecutors that Hernandez was guilty.
Hernandez was also convicted of two weapons charges. Judge E. Susan Garsh told jurors after they rendered their verdict that “there are few things more important that citizens of a free and open society can do than serve as jurors for our peers.”
The Bristol County murder conviction is not the only legal trouble Hernandez faces. Hernandez also has pleaded not guilty to first-degree murder charges that he killed two other men, Daniel Abreu and Safiro Furtado, in Boston in July 2012 in a drive-by shooting. He faces trial later this year. Suffolk County prosecutors claim in that case that he flew into a murderous rage after Abreu bumped into him at a nightclub, causing Hernandez to spill his drink.
The Suffolk County allegations raise the disturbing possibility that Hernandez played an entire season with the Patriots, catching five of his 18 career touchdowns, after allegedly killing two people.
In August 2012, Kraft signed Hernandez to a five-year, $40 million contract extension, and Hernandez returned the favor with a $50,000 donation to a Patriots charitable foundation
At the time, Kraft called the gesture one of the “touching moments” of his tenure as the team owner. Later, after Hernandez’s arrest, Kraft said the franchise had been “duped.” Hernandez has pleaded not guilty in the Boston killings and will be tried later this year.