Aaron Hernandez’s brother says whether or not he’s guilty is ‘irrelevant’
D.J. “Jonathan” Hernandez, the older brother of former New England Patriots star and convicted murderer Aaron Hernandez, has never asked his brother what really happened to Odin Lloyd.
“Whether Aaron did or did not do it, I don’t know,” he said. “And honestly, it’s irrelevant. It really is. He’s in a situation because he decided to be in the wrong place at the wrong time, with the wrong people.”
The comments come amid a sober, complex profile of Aaron Hernandez’s brother in Sports Illustrated on Thursday morning. The story tracks how D.J. Hernandez—or as he’s now known, Jonathan—has reacted to his brother’s dramatic fall from Pro Bowl tight end and beloved brother to convicted killer and prison lifer.
Jonathan Hernandez clarified to SI that his brother’s guilt is not “irrelevant” to the families of the dead. But it is irrelevant to their brotherly relationship and to how closely Jonathan follows his brother’s trials, he said.
“I’m done with it. My days are too busy to stay at home and watch trials,” Jonathan Hernandez said. “We’ll talk. I still love him. That’s not going to change. If I see him out here one day, the first thing I’m going to do is give him a hug and a kiss, just like we used to do with my father.”
Aaron Hernandez was arrested in June 2013 and charged with the murder of Odin Lloyd, whose bullet-riddled body was found at a North Attleboro industrial park near Aaron Hernandez’s home. Though the murder weapon was never found, evidence placed Hernandez and two associates at the scene of the crime, and surveillance video showed him carrying a gun in his home on the night of the murder.
Aaron Hernandez was convicted of Lloyd’s murder in April 2015, and he has been sentenced to life in prison.
His days in court are far from over, though. Aaron Hernandez also faces a double murder charge for the 2012 drive-by shooting deaths of Daniel Abreu and Safiro Furtado in Boston’s South End. Prosecutors say he shot and killed the two Cape Verdean immigrants after Abreu bumped into him and spilled his drink at a nightclub.
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Like his younger brother Aaron, Jonathan Hernandez was himself a star football player in Bristol, Connecticut, and he later became the starting quarterback for the University of Connecticut. At the time of Aaron Hernandez’s arrest, his older brother had a potential career ahead as a football coach.
But the attention associated with his brother’s murder trial has meant those days are over, and he now works as a roofer in Texas, Sports Illustrated reports.
So where did it all go wrong for Aaron Hernandez? His associates have said that the death of his father deeply affected the then-16-year-old, and Jonathan, too, wonders how things might have been different.
“That’s the million-dollar question, how my father—if he was still alive, how everything would have changed,” Jonathan said. “I think it would have been completely different. But I don’t know. That’s a fairy tale.”
You can read the full story at Sports Illustrated.
Former New England Patriot Aaron Hernandez seen in court May 21.
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