Aaron Hernandez friends, family turn out for private funeral
BRISTOL, Conn. — Aaron Hernandez’s family and friends bid farewell to the former NFL star at a private funeral Monday, and a judge ordered that three suicide notes he left be turned over to his fiancee by the time he is buried.
Dozens of mourners turned out for the invitation-only service in Hernandez’s hometown of Bristol, including his mother and fiancee, several of his defence attorneys, and friends from his playing days with the University of Florida and the New England Patriots.
Hernandez, who was serving a life sentence for a 2013 murder, hanged himself in his cell in a maximum-security prison in Massachusetts on April 19. Only days earlier he had been acquitted of murder charges in the shooting deaths of two men in Boston in 2012.
At the request of Hernandez’s fiancee, Shayanna Jenkins Hernandez, a Massachusetts judge ruled that the district attorney must provide the family with copies of three notes Hernandez left next to a Bible before killing himself. An attorney for Jenkins Hernandez said authorities had refused to share the contents of the notes until the investigation into Hernandez’s death was complete.