All-American Murder

by James Patterson

  King and Elliott secured the Altima, inspecting it and taking photographs. Then, Elliott drove down to Corliss Landing, where Odin Lloyd’s body had been found.

  First, he went to Metalor—a gold refinery with barbed wire around it, and 24/7 security, that stood at the entrance to the park. Detective Elliott knew the company well: North Attleboro PD kept a close watch on the premises. If there was video of an Altima going into the park, Metalor would have it.

  It turned out that Metalor did. So did the North Attleboro Electric Department, on the far side of the clearing. Paul Belham, who owned Bell’s Powder Coating, was a selectman in town. His daughter was a dispatcher for North Attleboro PD. He was happy to cooperate.

  Belham told the investigators that Bell’s had video, too, in high resolution.

  All in all, there were seven videos of a Nissan Altima pulling in, and then out of, the clearing.

  Piece by piece, the case against Aaron Hernandez was starting to come into focus.

  Chapter 61

  On Tuesday afternoon, a few hours after Detective Elliott’s visit to the industrial park, Trooper Michael Cherven, Sergeant Paul Baker, Assistant DA Patrick Bomberg, and several other police officers drove down to Aaron and Shayanna’s house.

  Shayanna answered the door. Aaron was inside, on the couch. He did not bother to get up when the police entered.

  This time, they had brought a search warrant with them.

  Rumors about the murder had already gotten around. “The Patriots tight end isn’t believed to be a suspect in a murder investigation near his home in North Attleboro,” CBS Sports had announced. For the moment, other media outlets were playing the news the same way.

  Now, while the police were searching his house, Hernandez went down to the basement—the “man cave” as Shayanna called it—and started to play pool with Shayanna’s uncle, Littleman. The television was on. Game six of the NBA finals was about to start. During a commercial break in the pregame, Aaron turned to Littleman and said, “My endorsements are gone.”

  When they left the house, the police took several evidence bags with them. Those bags contained a white iPhone 5 with a bedazzled case, one BlackBerry, one iPad tablet, two iPad Minis, a DVR with surveillance footage from fourteen cameras Aaron had installed around the house, and a one-terabyte hard drive.

  On Wednesday morning, Hernandez drove to Gillette Stadium. There were news trucks parked in the parking lot. News helicopters hovered overhead. But Aaron made his way to the weight room, where he stayed until Robert Kraft came down to meet with him.

  In an office adjoining the weight room, the Patriots’ owner voiced his concern and asked if Aaron was involved in any way with the murder. Hernandez gave Kraft a hug and a kiss and said he’d had nothing to do with it.

  Aaron also met with Mike Briggs, the team’s director of security, who wanted to hear from Hernandez himself that he was not involved in the murder.

  Hernandez assured Briggs that he was not, swearing on Avielle’s life he was telling the truth.

  Hours later, a car drove up toward Aaron’s house and parked next to the news vans that had started to gather. The man who got out spoke to a state trooper, then made his way to the front door. He’d come from a law firm, and carried a manila envelope. A reporter called out to him: “Who’s it for?”

  “Mr. Hernandez himself,” the man said. Inside the envelope there was a summons: “A lawsuit has been filed against you.”

  The summons was from Waks and Barnett, a Miami firm known for representing passengers injured in cruise ship accidents.

  Waks and Barnett was the law firm that Alexander Bradley had retained.

  Bradley had not cooperated with the police investigation. Hours before Odin Lloyd’s murder, he had agreed to withdraw the civil lawsuit he’d been threatening. But in the wake of Odin Lloyd’s murder, he had gone ahead and filed it.

  That same evening, the results of Odin Lloyd’s autopsy were released. The death had officially been ruled a homicide, and reporters were telling their editors that Hernandez had “ties” to Lloyd.

  Now, the media outlets began to report that Hernandez “‘hasn’t been ruled out as a suspect.” TMZ broke the news of Alexander Bradley’s civil suit. Several reporters dug up Hernandez’s 2010 NFL Scouting Report and wrote articles with headlines like “Aaron Hernandez’s NFL entry: What did scouts know back then?”

  As the day drew to a close, Ted Daniel of Boston’s Fox affiliate took to Twitter with a series of breaking announcements:

  9:26 PM: LAW SOURCE places Hernandez and victim in two locations.

  10:12 PM: LAW SOURCE: Aaron Hernandez was driver of a vehicle Odin Lloyd and 2 others in. Lloyd found dead one mile from Hernandez home.

  10:15 PM: 2 LAW SOURCES: Homicide victim Odin Lloyd sent text to a friend that included a reference to Aaron Hernandez.

  10:18 PM: LAW SOURCE: 4 men together in vehicle. Only 3 return to Aaron Hernandez’s home. Odin Lloyd NOT one of them.

  Chapter 62

  By daybreak on Thursday, the streets around 22 Ronald C. Meyer Drive were packed with news vans from Boston, Providence, and Hartford. National media outlets were present, along with ESPN, which had its headquarters in Aaron’s hometown of Bristol.

  Camped out across the street with cameras, large reflectors on C-stands, umbrellas, and coolers, the reporters looked like they were having themselves a tailgate party.

  By now, the news stations were saying that Aaron was directly tied to the homicide.

  The police had their own questions for Aaron. They wanted to know why his security system looked like it had been destroyed intentionally. They wanted to know why Aaron’s cell phone had been “in pieces” when his attorneys had finally given it to investigators. They wanted to know why cleaners had been called out on June 17 to scrub the house down.

  None of Aaron’s actions seemed to be those that an innocent man would have taken.

  But, for the moment, Aaron was still a free man. Climbing into Shayanna’s SUV, he drove past the reporters and headed out to Gillette Stadium. From the air, a news helicopter traced his movements, reminding viewers of OJ Simpson in his white Bronco.

  Upon his arrival at the stadium, at 11:23 in the morning, Aaron ran into Mark Briggs.

  The director of security told him to leave, immediately. Aaron’s being there was “bad for business,” Briggs said.

  Hernandez took the news well enough. He finished up the phone call he was making, shook Briggs’s hand, and headed for the door.

  That afternoon, media outlets began to report that the Patriots had barred Aaron from their stadium. Then, on Saturday, state troopers and North Attleboro PD returned, with yet another search warrant and several police dogs.

  “During the search, he just sat there and talked to us like he was talking to any other person,” an officer recalls. “He had no expression on his face. He knew we were there for a murder. But he didn’t show any nervousness. He’d lay on the couch watching TV, playing with his daughter, smiling, laughing. He didn’t care. He thought he was above the law.”

  That day, after a four-hour search of the house, the police left with a dozen evidence bags, a 7.62x39mm caliber semiautomatic Hungarian-made AK-47, and a Sentry Safe that contained a box of .22-caliber ammo.

  Chapter 63

  Keelia Smyth hadn’t thought much about the shell casing she’d found in the Altima that Aaron Hernandez had rented. The days that followed had been so busy, she’d simply forgotten.

  “Honestly,” Smyth says, “people leave some of the strangest, weirdest, most ridiculous things in rental cars. I’ve found things that I’ve called the cops about. One town I worked in, I found needles in the car. I know there’s a protocol for the disposing of needles. But when I called the cops, they said, ‘What do you want us to do? Drive it to the state line? Take it and toss it in a dumpster yourself.’

  “I’ve lived in Attleboro for a long time. I know there’s a gun range in North Attleboro. At the time that I
found the bullet, I didn’t know about a crime. There’s no issue. I’m not going to call the cops for every little thing that I find.

  “The only reason I had even noticed it was, there was a chunk of gum on my rug. I was annoyed by that. You can’t get gum out of the carpet. There was a child’s picture back there, too. I didn’t want to touch the gum with my hands, so I used the child’s picture. I moved the seat forwards. I saw what I thought was a bullet. I took all that together—the gum, the child’s picture, the bullet, and tossed it into a dumpster. But a few days later, I thought, ‘Oh, my god. What if this is important? What if it’s not there anymore? I don’t arrange when the dumpster gets dumped. That’s when I called the police.”

  “You’re gonna kill me,” Smyth said when Detective Elliott picked up the phone.

  “What’s the matter?” the detective asked.

  It was Thursday. Aaron Hernandez had just been barred from Gillette Stadium.

  “I forgot to tell you: I found a bullet.”

  “Say that again?”

  “I found a bullet in the car! I put it in this piece of paper with all this coloring on it. It looked like it had been done by a kid.”

  “Where is it now?”

  “I threw it in the dumpster.”

  “Is the dumpster emptied yet?”

  “No. I checked and there’s not much in there at all.”

  The police had already seized guns and ammunition from Aaron’s house, along with surveillance tapes that showed Hernandez holding a gun on the morning of Odin Lloyd’s murder.

  The police believed that Aaron had destroyed several hours of surveillance footage taken by his own security cameras, and had their own surveillance footage of Aaron taking the battery out of his cell phone. They had shell casings recovered from the murder scene. But a shell casing recovered from the Altima would tie the whole case together.

  “Hang up,” Detective Elliott told Smyth, “and go to the police station now. Someone will meet you out front.”

  It was the sort of break detectives live for. With his police lights flashing, Elliott rushed to Enterprise to secure the evidence.

  Chief Reilly and Captain DiRenzo, of the North Attleboro Police Department, and Lieutenant King and Sgt. Paul Baker of the state police, met Elliott on the scene.

  Baker jumped into the dumpster and started to root around. Within a few minutes, he’d emerged—not with a bullet—but with a shell casing stuck in a wad of Bubblicious that had been wrapped in the child’s drawing that Keelia Smyth had mentioned.

  The drawing looked a lot like a child’s drawing detectives had seen in Aaron’s kitchen—a drawing by Tanya’s young son, Jano, who called Hernandez “Daddy Aaron.”

  The shell casing looked exactly like ones that detectives had found at the scene of Odin Lloyd’s murder.

  Part Eight

  Chapter 64

  On Monday, June 24, police officers in wet suits searched a stream in the woods by Aaron’s house. They did not find any weapons. But that same day, acting on a tip, detectives drove to 114 Lake Avenue in Bristol to interview TL Singleton, who had married Aaron’s cousin Tanya.

  Singleton was not at home. But the police returned to Bristol the following day to meet with members of Bristol PD, and discovered that Detective Pete Dauphinais’s wife, Jodie, was Carlos Ortiz’s probation officer.

  A few weeks earlier, Ortiz had admitted to the officer that he was a daily user of PCP, alcohol, cocaine, and marijuana. She had put him in a drug program. Ortiz had failed to show up. But Ortiz had bigger problems to worry about: The probation officer knew about his relationship with Aaron Hernandez, the New England Patriot who had just become the leading suspect in a murder investigation. Now, detectives knew about the relationship, too.

  Ortiz was due to check in with the Jodie Dauphinais on that very same day. He ended up meeting, instead, with the police.

  In a basement conference room, Detective Elliott and Sergeant John Moran of the Massachusetts State Police told Ortiz that they wanted to speak with him about what had happened on the night of Odin Lloyd’s murder.

  “First,” Elliott said, “it’s just your Miranda rights. You’ve heard them before?”

  “Huh?” said Ortiz.

  “You’ve heard Miranda before, your rights? You’ve never been arrested or anything?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Okay. It’s just basically that’s all I’m doing. You’re not under arrest or anything. I’ve just got to read them to you.”

  Ortiz consented, but denied any knowledge of the shooting.

  “I didn’t do anything,” he said.

  Sergeant Moran took his turn. He told Ortiz that they were investigating a homicide that Aaron Hernandez and Ernest Wallace seemed to be connected to. He said that the police had text messages and surveillance footage. They knew that Ortiz had gone to Hernandez’s house on Sunday night.

  “Hernandez’s like family,” Ortiz explained. Once again, he denied any wrongdoing.

  “We know you weren’t the shooter, right?” Moran said. “But you got roped into this fucking thing.”

  “That’s bullshit, though,” Ortiz said.

  “Someone else is the shooter,” Moran agreed. “And guess who’s going to be left without a chair?”

  “I’m the only one in the bullshit.”

  “They think you’re going to be the patsy,” Moran said. “That’s what they think. You got eight million for an attorney? [Hernandez has] got eight million. They love him. You’re the throwaway guy, you know. You realize this. I’ve been doing this for twenty years…You’re the guy and you know why—because you’re all fucked up…So you’re in a bad spot here. You’re in a bad spot because they’re going to blame you. We can go to court if we want. Jesus Christ, we’ve got everything.”

  Ortiz protested. He didn’t know where Lloyd lived. He didn’t know where the industrial park was located.

  “I’m not even a violent person,” he said.

  “I know that,” said Moran. “Why do you think I’m talking to you?”

  Ortiz told the police, “I never went to the frigging scene.”

  What about the towel, the police wanted to know. What about the shell casings?

  “I don’t know why you guys didn’t clean the car before you brought it back. There was a shell casing in the car.”

  “That’s what I’m trying to tell you,” Ortiz said. “I don’t got no intention of harming nobody.”

  Ortiz said that he had been drunk on the night in question. The plan had been to go to a club, but Ortiz had crashed at Aaron’s Franklin apartment instead.

  “That’s a lie,” Moran told him. “I’m not disrespecting you. That’s an absolute lie.”

  “Honest,” Ortiz finally said. “I don’t want to be involved in this bullshit.”

  “We don’t want you to be involved in this, but you are,” Moran told him.

  Ortiz became agitated. He had so much on his plate, he said. He had four children to take care of.

  “And that’s how upset you got when you figured out what was going on,” Elliott told him. “We understand that.”

  The police showed Ortiz the surveillance footage they had. There he was—Ortiz could see himself clearly—with Wallace and Hernandez at the gas station that they had stopped at before picking Lloyd up in Boston.

  “I know you want out of this,” Moran said. “I know you want to get out of it, but you can’t. But you know something. We don’t think you did it…You’re a good person…You want to get help. You want to do better…But why the fuck did [Hernandez] do this? Why did he drag you in? Why did he drag you in?”

  “Why is he leaving you out to dry?” Elliott added.

  “Probably because I’m the only one with a good heart.”

  “Exactly,” said Elliott.

  The interrogation started at two in the afternoon. It went straight through into the evening.

  “You know what I’m scared of?” Moran asked Ortiz. “I’m scared of thi
s guy TL, because guess what?…I was scared that they would put one in you and dump you someplace. That’s what my fear was. So you’re out of the way, you’re shot, and it’s like, ‘Yeah, it must have been that kid. He’s gone. He disappeared.’ And you’re lying in some fucking swamp.”

  “All this is a fucking joke,” Ortiz said.

  “You know it’s a joke,” said Moran. “Except for this poor bastard who was killed five times.”

  Finally, Elliott and Moran got Ortiz to admit that he was in the Altima—asleep, he said. Then, he had heard shots. Ortiz was “shocked,” he explained. “Hypnotized.”

  Ortiz said that he’d never gotten out of the car.

  The cops had not given Ortiz anything to eat. Mentally and physically, he was exhausted. But the interrogation was not over yet. Elliott and Moran pressed for a polygraph test.

  “How about you do them a polygraph?” Ortiz asked, referring to Hernandez and Wallace.

  “What them?” said Moran. “We don’t care about them. I mean, I don’t care what they say.”

  Chapter 65

  Nine hours into the interrogation, Carlos Ortiz submitted to the polygraph test.

  When it was done, the test administrator asked Ortiz how he felt about it.

  “I think I did good,” Ortiz said.

  “You think you did good?”

  “Yup.”

  “Excellent,” the administrator said.

  “How do you think I did?”

  “I already know how you did. I already know. It’s pretty clear: you lied.”

  “What?” Ortiz sputtered.

  “You lied.”

  “Oh.”