By scoring a touchdown in 2012’s Super Bowl XLVI, New England Patriots tight end Aaron Hernandez achieved a childhood dream. One year later, he was arrested for murder. What followed was one of the most highly publicized and puzzling crimes of the past decade, dramatized by Ryan Murphy on the FX limited series American Sports Story: Aaron Hernandez.
Though the athlete never spoke about his motivations for the murder of his friend—former football player Odin Lloyd—reporting from The Boston Globe and Netflix’s three-part documentary Killer Inside: The Mind of Aaron Hernandezpainted Hernandez as a figure plagued by unimaginable troubles. Throughout his life, he faced a history of childhood abuse, drug problems, the fear of the world learning about his sexuality, and a posthumous diagnosis of what doctors called one of the worst cases of CTE in an athlete as young as twenty-seven years old.
Since Hernandez’s conviction and shocking suicide, his story has been pulled in every direction. It uncovered the world of homophobic locker-room culture, the lack of support from his team’s staff, and even the dangers of football on the brain. He was called a “monster” (and worse) by the press. Talking about the new Murphy-created series, executive producer Stu Zicherman told the Los Angeles Times that he viewed Hernandez’s story as “a Shakespearean tragedy.” Instead of trying to solve why the athlete killed his friend, the series sought to follow the American Crime Story formula by “taking a crime or event and making it about something much bigger in the fabric of America.”
Naturally, that involves dramatized depictions of Hernandez’s early life in an abusive household, his struggles within professional athletic programs, and the murder of Lloyd. To separate fact from fiction on the series—which premieres its first two episodes on Tuesday, September 17—follow along below.
Aaron Hernandez was born in Bristol, Connecticut, on November 6, 1989. His father, Dennis Hernandez, was a former star football player for Bristol Central High School. Dennis often got into physical fights with Hernandez’s mother, Terri Valentine-Hernandez, a public school administration assistant who allegedly ran a bookkeeping operation on the side. Both of his parents were arrested several times during his childhood, amid countless separations and recouplings. His father was abusive toward Aaron and his older brother, DJ, as well as reportedly homophobic.
But Hernandez still sought the approval of his father, taking after him by playing football at Bristol Central. He was named Gatorade’s Football Player of the Year in his home state and began dating his future fiancée, Shayanna Jenkins. Hernandez then went to the University of Florida after head coach Urban Meyer convinced the star player’s high school principal to let him graduate early.
“He had graduated high school more than a semester early—not because he was a great student but because he was a great football player,” The Boston Globe reported after Hernandez’s death. “The athletic gifts were obvious, but behind them was an angry teenager struggling with an abusive upbringing, a growing dependence on drugs, and questions about his own sexual identity.”
The prognosis was largely correct. Chronic drug use and partying nearly got Hernandez kicked off the team, with the athlete later telling the Globe that he was high “every time I was on the field.” If he wasn’t drafted into the NFL, then his days on Florida’s football team were over. But the New England Patriots selected Hernandez in the fourth round of the 2010 NFL Draft, right behind tight end Rob Gronkowski.
American Sports Story depicts Hernandez’s relationship with Patriots head coach Bill Belichick as tenuous, with the six-time Super Bowl–winning team threatening to cut its losses if Hernandez proved to be too difficult. But he developed into a reliable offensive player alongside Gronkowski and star quarterback Tom Brady. When the Patriots reached the 2012 Super Bowl, Hernandez scored a touchdown, though the team lost to the underdog New York Giants. He was arguably the most effective player on the field that day besides Brady, earning himself a five-year, $40 million contract extension. Then the troubles began.
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