Abramovich Alex - All-American murder: the rise and fall of Aaron Hernandez, the superstar whose life ended on Murderers Row

Copyright 2018 by James Patterson
Cover design by Anthony Morais
Cover photograph by Getty Images
Cover copyright 2018 by Hachette Book Group, Inc.

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First Edition: January 2018

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ISBN 978-0-316-41268-1

E3-20171212-NF-DA

To Bill Robinson, who got this thing cooking

Matthew Kent ran track and played football at a high school in Attleboro, Massachusetts. After school, he worked out at a gym called Answer is Fitness. Then he would run, two miles north, to his house on Homeward Lane. The route went through an industrial park and into a clearing. The path turned to gravel, then dirt. On the far side of the clearing, at Landry Avenue, it turned into pavement again.

On June 17, 2013, Matthew did not get as far as the pavement.

It was a Monday. The day before the last day of school. Matthew had gotten to the gym at four. By the time he got out, an hour later, the weatherwhich had been beautiful all dayhad started to turn. Clouds were gathering. The wind had started to gust. Matthew was running through the industrial park.

Suddenly, at the far end of the clearing, he stopped.

There was a man, lying on his back near a dirt pile.

Matthew called out to him: Are you all right?

The man did not answer. Matthew walked a bit closer, until he was about twenty feet away.

Are you all right? he asked again.

Once again, there was no answer.

Detective Mike Elliott was nearing the end of his eight-hour shift at the station when the transmission came over the radio: A guy down. A possible sudden behind the Corliss Landing industrial park.

Lieutenant Michael King, of the Massachusetts State Police, was coaching his sons little league team when he got the callhe was already on his way down to the clearing. Assistant District Attorney Patrick Bomberg would arrive shortly after, along with uniformed police officers and members of the North Attleboro fire department. But North Attleboro PD Captain Joseph DiRenzo beat everyone else to the scene.

The captain had left work at four. He was less than a mile away from Corliss Landing when the call came in, and he showed up, in shorts and a T-shirt, at 5:38.

DiRenzo saw right away that they were dealing with a homicide.

There were rounds, and what appeared to be bullet wounds to the torso, he says. When I knelt down and touched the body, I could clearly tell that rigor mortis had set in.

The man on the ground was lying faceup. His left fist was clenched over his chestone of several places he had been shot. He was young. He was black. His eyes were half-open.

Flies were buzzing around the mans nostrils.

DiRenzo made note of the sneaker prints that had been left in the dirt. He saw a baseball cap, a white towel, and a partially smoked marijuana blunt lying on the ground. When he looked up, he saw something else: Dark, menacing clouds. A storm coming in from the west.

Soon, it would rainheavy rain, which would wash away crucial pieces of evidence.

It could not have come at a worse time, DiRenzo recalls. We have the body itself, tire marks, shoe prints, and rounds. All of a sudden you could see the trees bending over, clouds moving in in slow motion. It was a moment of, Holy shit, weve gotta do something here!

The fire department had brought tents and tarps that the police could use to cover the crime scene. The cops worked quickly, trying to stay ahead of the storm. They measured, logged, and photographed as much as they could. But they also had to be careful not to contaminate the location.

Everyone had to park one hundred yards away from the body, in order to preserve the tire tracks. Everyone, including the firemen, had to wear boots and gloves, or have the bottoms of their shoes photographed for comparison purposes in preparation for the eventual homicide investigation.

The man had been standing when the first shot hit him. The detectives made note of the dirt the mans heels had kicked up as he fellit was the kind of detail that a rainstorm would wash away.

The man had been shot several more times after falling.

Boom, he goes down, the cops thought. Then, when hes down: Boom, boom, boom. You could definitely tell, somebody wanted to make sure he was dead. And the shell casings are right thereone in the dirt and three more in a little indentation in the ground right next to the body. Theyre all right there. Whoever did this was brazen. Its crazynot even bothering to pick up the brass?

The police put tarps over the tire and sneaker prints, set a tent up over the body, and covered the body itself with a tarp, placing rocks around the tarps circumference to keep the wind from blowing it away.

There was nothing more they could do before the storm passed.

The rain lasted for twenty minutesa half hour at the mostbut it was heavy. Forty-mile-an-hour gusts shook the trees that stood around the clearing. The temperature dropped by twenty degrees. When the rain stopped, a state trooper named Michael Cherven removed the tarp and went through the dead mans pockets:

Sixty-four dollars and seventy-five cents in cash. Two sets of keys for an Enterprise Rent-A-Car. A cell phone.

His cell phone? one of the officers said. For Christs sake, youre gonna kill someone, take his cell phone!

In the mans wallet, they found an ID: Odin Lloyd. Twenty-seven years old. The face in the photograph matched the victims.

Back at the North Attleboro police station, Detective Elliott and Elliotts colleague, Detective Daniel Arrighi, waited outside of the room as a state trooper named Eric Benson called the car rental company and spoke with a manager named Edward Brennan.

Im investigating an apparent homicide in North Attleboro, Benson said. Weve recovered two sets of keys to a black Chevy Suburban, Rhode Island registration 442427. We have reason to believe that the person who rented it may be in danger.

Brennan looked up the number.

Oh, no, he said.

Outside of the room, the detectives strained to hear Trooper Bensons side of the conversation. A few moments went by.

Benson opened the door.

Youre not going to believe this, he said when he saw Elliott and Arrighi. The car was rented by Aaron Hernandez.

I t was November 23, 2006, and Aaron Hernandezs high school football teamthe Ramswas suiting up for the Battle for the Bell.

Played annually on Thanksgiving mornings, the Battle was a grudge match between Aarons school, Bristol Central, and its crosstown rival, Bristol Eastern.

Bristol, Connecticut, is a working-class townfootball country in the middle of a state where soccer and crew are the suburban sportsand the Battle drew thousands of people to Muzzy Field, an ancient, minor-league baseball stadium that had hosted Babe Ruth at one time, and had been scouted as a film location for