We Need and Are Going to Talk About Aaron Hernandez

I suppose, perhaps, if I still lived in Miami, where I know this name will resonate among people I know and who are actually into football, then I’d be more…excited – I know, I know, that’s hardly the right word – about Killer Inside: The Mind of Aaron Hernandez, which is coming to Netflix in a week, on Jan. 15.

A three-part docu-series, Killer Inside explores how a young, promising athlete from Bristol, Ct., shot from high school to the NFL at a breakneck pace (it’s what happens when a kid’s prowess is prioritized over his welfare – like, duh), and how, about halfway through a lucrative multi-year contract with the New England Patriots in his early twenties, it all came tumbling down in a cloud of scandal.

Murder tends to have that effect. Especially an alleged few of ’em.

See, first, Hernandez was indicted for the 2012 double homicide of Daniel Jorge Correia de Abreu and Safiro Teixeira Furtado, two immigrants from Cape Verde who had been living in Dorchester, Boston. Then, he stood trial for the brutal June 2013 killing of semi-professional player Odin Lloyd, for which he was found guilty in 2015. Another indictment (for witness intimidation in relation to another shooting, that of Alexander Bradley in the Magic City), and a couple of years later, Hernandez was acquitted of the double homicide in the spring of 2017. Finally, though, not five days after catching that break, he was found dead by apparent suicide in his cell.

These legal processes sought to uncover everything that led to Hernandez’s fall from grace and to his eventual infamy. There was the tumultuous and oft-abusive upbringing, the growing fascination with gang life, stories of deeply internalized homophobia and homophobic rants…. It was a maelstrom of probable motivation behind his violence.

Featuring exclusive courtroom footage, Hernandez’s phone calls from prison, and interviews with those who knew him and Lloyd, Killer Inside will pour over all that led to the trial, conviction, and death of an athlete who seemingly had it all but could not manage it at all.