Latest / Crime Stories with Nancy Grace / Is Aaron Hernandez suicide note real or was NFL star murdered?

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Is Aaron Hernandez suicide note real or was NFL star murdered? · Crime Stories with Nancy Grace

0:05
Speaker 1: The former NFL player Aaron Hernandez has killed himself inside
0:09
Speaker 1: his prison cell. Hernandez was found hanged with a bedsheet
0:12
Speaker 1: on the window area of his cell. That twenty seven
0:15
Speaker 1: year or former Patriots player was just acquinted of a
0:18
Speaker 1: double murder last week, but he was serving a life
0:20
Speaker 1: sentence for a separate murder. This is Crime Stories with
0:24
Speaker 1: Nancy Grace. The state just releasing one of three suicide
0:28
Speaker 1: notes that he left. In one of his ten final
0:31
Speaker 1: sentences for Shannah Jenkins Hernandez, he asks, tell my story fully,
0:36
Speaker 1: but never think anything besides how much I love you.
0:39
Speaker 1: He ends his final message, writing, this was the Supremes
0:43
Speaker 1: the Almighty's plan, not mine. How about the handwriting? Did
0:46
Speaker 1: it look like the handwriting was similar? But I feel like,
0:50
Speaker 1: again you have nothing but time in there, so I
0:53
Speaker 1: feel like it's easily duplicated or could be Superstar air
1:00
Speaker 1: her Nandez suicide note a fake? What after all we
1:06
Speaker 1: have been through? He was a suspect in multiple murders.
1:11
Speaker 1: This after a forty million dollar football contract, just right
1:18
Speaker 1: down the crapper. There's really no nice way to put it.
1:22
Speaker 1: He allegedly murders one person after the next, just always
1:26
Speaker 1: the same m O modus operendi method of operation. Finally
1:31
Speaker 1: kills himself behind bars after writing John three six on
1:37
Speaker 1: the walls and blood on his forehead. He leaves a
1:42
Speaker 1: suicide note to his fiance, the mother of his little girl,
1:47
Speaker 1: and now claims that suicide note is a fake. That
1:52
Speaker 1: can only lead to one conclusion. If the suicide note
1:57
Speaker 1: is a fake, then that strongly suggests someone believes erin
2:03
Speaker 1: her Nandez was murdered. I, Nancy Grace, this is crime stories.
2:09
Speaker 1: Let's get right down to it. Joining me the Duke, Alan,
2:13
Speaker 1: Duke out of Hollywood. Alan, Let's start with the fiances
2:19
Speaker 1: allegation and her reasoning behind why she believes erin her
2:23
Speaker 1: Nandez suicide note is a fake? Roll it Did that
2:29
Speaker 1: note strike you odd in anyway? No? I thought it
2:33
Speaker 1: was a note of of love. I did see that
2:38
Speaker 1: it was addressed to Shay instead of you know, babor Obey,
2:43
Speaker 1: the way he would refer me as um that that's
2:48
Speaker 1: a little odd to me. But as far as the
2:51
Speaker 1: content seemed to be his loving self, it was addressed
2:57
Speaker 1: to Shay, you would have thought it would have been
3:00
Speaker 1: a term of endearment. More close more intiments. The absolutely
3:06
Speaker 1: How about the handwriting? Do it look like him? The
3:08
Speaker 1: handwriting was similar, but I feel like, again, you have
3:11
Speaker 1: nothing but time in there, so I feel like it's
3:17
Speaker 1: easily duplicated or could be. I'm gonna pause and thank
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5:12
Speaker 1: She tells Dr Phil that her Nandez note was odd,
5:17
Speaker 1: claims the handwriting could have been easily easily duplicated. But
5:23
Speaker 1: we are posting for you on Crime Online today a
5:29
Speaker 1: handwriting analysis that we have been able to obtain. We
5:33
Speaker 1: have obtained a known sample of erin her Nandez writing,
5:39
Speaker 1: a known hand written note by erin her Nandez. Cannot
5:44
Speaker 1: reveal our sources, but we have obtained his writing and
5:48
Speaker 1: we know it to be his writing. To compare to
5:51
Speaker 1: the suicide note, Let's go to the likelihood before you
5:56
Speaker 1: analyze the known writing and compare it to the suicide note.
6:00
Speaker 1: It Alan how likely is it that he could have
6:03
Speaker 1: been murdered behind bars? It would have been very difficult
6:08
Speaker 1: in my opinion, because of the way that the cell
6:11
Speaker 1: door was blocked, the way that he was found hanging.
6:15
Speaker 1: It would have been a massive conspiracy among the staff
6:19
Speaker 1: at the jail and the inmates, I would think, in
6:22
Speaker 1: order to pull that thing off. It it just physically.
6:27
Speaker 1: I just don't see how it would have happened. And
6:29
Speaker 1: what Alan means I think is Aaron Hernandez's door to
6:35
Speaker 1: his cell, his private cell was barricaded from the inside,
6:41
Speaker 1: So how do you barricade the door on the inside
6:44
Speaker 1: and managed to shut the door now? But on the
6:46
Speaker 1: other hand, it is the jail personnel, the c I
6:50
Speaker 1: Correctional Institute personnel saying it was barricaded. So I guess
6:54
Speaker 1: if you want to go down this rabbit hole, you
6:58
Speaker 1: could a mad jen You could argue if it was
7:02
Speaker 1: a fake and they set it up, then why would
7:04
Speaker 1: we believe in the barricade. Also, there was apparently soap
7:09
Speaker 1: or some type of substance, slick substance on his self
7:13
Speaker 1: floor that he had allegedly smeared on the floor to
7:17
Speaker 1: make it harder. If anyone was trying to stop him
7:20
Speaker 1: in his suicide to get to him. He was hung,
7:24
Speaker 1: That's how he died, with a lot of self markings.
7:29
Speaker 1: His hands and feet were marked with the stigmata when
7:34
Speaker 1: Christ was crucified. And who would do that? Who would
7:39
Speaker 1: turn the Bible to John three sixteen? Who would write
7:41
Speaker 1: John three sixteen on his forehead? But let's just go
7:44
Speaker 1: down the rabbit hole. Let's just play it out. How
7:46
Speaker 1: could it have occurred. He is not a snowflake. You
7:50
Speaker 1: cannot just go in and kill Aaron Hernandez. He usually
7:54
Speaker 1: does the killing. Let's just get that straight. How would
7:58
Speaker 1: you kill him? At him into the position that he
8:02
Speaker 1: was found in without him struggling mightily, making a lot
8:05
Speaker 1: of noise and causing you a lot of pain. I
8:08
Speaker 1: just don't see that happening. I don't see it happening either.
8:13
Speaker 1: But if you want to play out the theory that
8:16
Speaker 1: he was killed in the suicide note is a fake.
8:19
Speaker 1: He could have been asphixiated some other way from behind,
8:23
Speaker 1: caught unawares, asphyxiated and then set up to look like
8:28
Speaker 1: this easily. But do I think that's likely. I think
8:31
Speaker 1: it's highly unlikely. So where is she going with this
8:35
Speaker 1: is there some insurance policy out there that precludes recovery
8:40
Speaker 1: if the person commits suicide, because remember in his note,
8:44
Speaker 1: he says you are rich, you're rich. The reference to
8:48
Speaker 1: your rich followed his requests that she'd take care of
8:52
Speaker 1: a couple of people who were his, his boys, if
8:55
Speaker 1: you will. The names of these boys were redacted from
8:59
Speaker 1: the letter. It She was aggesting, Hey, you're gonna have
9:01
Speaker 1: plenty of money to take care of my boys, so
9:04
Speaker 1: please do it, you know. Um. She also says that
9:08
Speaker 1: he was extremely positive just before his death that there
9:12
Speaker 1: was no hint he was going to commit suicide. To me,
9:15
Speaker 1: that's a much stronger argument than the suicide. Handwriting doesn't match.
9:20
Speaker 1: You know what, I remember my first handwriting analysis, Alan,
9:25
Speaker 1: you're gonna laugh. I was so thrilled because they got
9:28
Speaker 1: a bank robbery case to prosecute, and state prosecutors violent
9:33
Speaker 1: felony prosecutors rarely got those. They were usually federal cases
9:36
Speaker 1: because of the f D. I C okay, so we
9:40
Speaker 1: rarely got a bank robbery. So I was all set
9:43
Speaker 1: to do the bank rob But here's the problem. Nobody
9:45
Speaker 1: could identify the defendant, including me. That's a problem. Now
9:50
Speaker 1: they didn't have They did not have bank surveillance. They
9:53
Speaker 1: had surveillance, but you could only see it in steal photos.
9:57
Speaker 1: The bank robber that I prosecuted had on a wig,
10:01
Speaker 1: a big wig, a hat, a fake mustache, sunglasses, in
10:05
Speaker 1: a suit, and a beard. I forgot that part, so
10:09
Speaker 1: very difficult to identify. He had a bank robbery note
10:12
Speaker 1: alan he was dyslexic, and the note said, don't touch
10:16
Speaker 1: the al ram, this is a roby. Okay, don't touch
10:20
Speaker 1: the alarm, this is a robbery. And there were all
10:24
Speaker 1: sorts of It's like he had heard the al ram,
10:27
Speaker 1: don't touch the al ram, this is a roby, and
10:31
Speaker 1: it was willing this, don't comma touch apostrophe comma, comma
10:35
Speaker 1: comma the comma al ram, apostrophe, apostrophe period comma, this
10:40
Speaker 1: comma is comma a apostrophe, roby period. It's like he
10:45
Speaker 1: had heard of punctuation but didn't really understand how to
10:48
Speaker 1: use it. You know, if I were the teller and
10:50
Speaker 1: he handed me that note, I would die laughing. He
10:52
Speaker 1: wouldn't have to shoot me. Well, she did take a
10:55
Speaker 1: long time looking at it, and anyway, he got the
10:58
Speaker 1: money and left. Well, nobody could find him. Nobody could
11:01
Speaker 1: identify him, but in the alleyway, long after police had
11:07
Speaker 1: arrived and tried to process the scene for prints, which
11:09
Speaker 1: they didn't find. In the alleyway was a suit, a wig,
11:14
Speaker 1: a mustash, a beard, and a hat. What he did
11:17
Speaker 1: was he had a bicycle part there. He had a
11:20
Speaker 1: breakaway suit as we called it at the time. He
11:23
Speaker 1: basted it up the back and underneath the add on
11:25
Speaker 1: shorts and a shirt and tennis some tennis shoes and
11:28
Speaker 1: he just drove pedaled off on his bicycle with the money.
11:30
Speaker 1: As the cops came in the front door. It was
11:32
Speaker 1: Keystone cops. Anyway, where do you go when you can't
11:36
Speaker 1: find your guy? The jail? So I started snooping around
11:40
Speaker 1: the jail. Finally come upon one person. I showed the
11:43
Speaker 1: bank where ibery picture and I said, does this look
11:45
Speaker 1: like anybody you know? And he goes, yeah, it looks
11:47
Speaker 1: like my old roommate a little bit. And I said, well,
11:50
Speaker 1: when's the last time you saw him? He said, well,
11:52
Speaker 1: we got in a fight because he wouldn't pay me
11:54
Speaker 1: my rent. I said, well, what was he doing when
11:57
Speaker 1: you last saw him? He goes, he was sewing the
12:00
Speaker 1: back of a suit. Okay, I knew, right then I
12:04
Speaker 1: have my man. But in order to really prove it,
12:08
Speaker 1: because you know what, was I putting up on the
12:10
Speaker 1: stand another doper or convicted felon you know, So I
12:14
Speaker 1: didn't want to hinge my case on him. So I
12:18
Speaker 1: did a handwriting analysis, and sure enough, he put all
12:22
Speaker 1: the letters backwards and put apostrophes. I mean, that was
12:26
Speaker 1: my first handwriting analysis case. So there you have it.
12:29
Speaker 1: It also helped that he was duck footed, slew footed.
12:32
Speaker 1: And so when this guy took the stand, the whole
12:34
Speaker 1: jury hung over the railing to see how he walked.
12:37
Speaker 1: Sure enough, he walked just like a duck. That helped,
12:41
Speaker 1: so um, I got the conviction. Long story short, That's
12:45
Speaker 1: when I first learned the importance of handwriting samples, and
12:49
Speaker 1: I guess I've lived through several hundred of them by now.
12:54
Speaker 1: This handwriting sample to in my mind, looking at all
12:58
Speaker 1: of the similarities, there's no doubt this is Aaron Hernandez
13:01
Speaker 1: handwriting in my mind. I mean, look at it, for
13:04
Speaker 1: pete sake, and look at some common words. Here we
13:08
Speaker 1: have four sentences, four lines. Here, it's the actually the
13:12
Speaker 1: same kind of paper. I guess that's what you get
13:14
Speaker 1: in jail, he uses me. It's you can't help and
13:19
Speaker 1: and even Shanna acknowledged it looks like his handwriting. But
13:22
Speaker 1: her point was somebody in jail had all the time
13:25
Speaker 1: in the world, and they could have gone and they
13:27
Speaker 1: could have duplicated his handwriting. That is really a far
13:32
Speaker 1: fetched conspiracy. Wait a minute, Look at this, Look at this.
13:35
Speaker 1: Look at the comparison. I this is the one I
13:38
Speaker 1: guess we're going to post on crime online. If you
13:40
Speaker 1: look at the first words shay, look at the Y.
13:45
Speaker 1: Now look down at the yse. In his known handwriting,
13:50
Speaker 1: he alternates between putting an upper curl at the bottom
13:54
Speaker 1: of the Y and then a straight down daring from
13:56
Speaker 1: right to left. Look at the US. There's always a tail.
14:01
Speaker 1: Look at the oh, and look at the word always.
14:04
Speaker 1: Look at the word always. And look at the S.
14:08
Speaker 1: Look at the S at the end. There are so
14:09
Speaker 1: many you can you can just dissect this word for word,
14:13
Speaker 1: stroke by stroke, and come away with a very clear
14:16
Speaker 1: idea that this was him. All these start top to bottom,
14:21
Speaker 1: then they go left to right. They're always slanted, usually
14:26
Speaker 1: downward to upward. The A A big giveaway is how
14:30
Speaker 1: you make your a's believe they're not in your s
14:33
Speaker 1: is as you identified. Also, the ends exactly al in
14:39
Speaker 1: the ease. People make their ease in a lot of
14:42
Speaker 1: different ways. Look at the W on the bottom sample,
14:46
Speaker 1: the one from two thousand fifteen that we know was
14:48
Speaker 1: him I want. Look at the W and want and
14:51
Speaker 1: then look up at the suicide note, and there are
14:56
Speaker 1: several wars like on the bottom sentence, whereas to t
14:59
Speaker 1: w oh compare those two. There are identicals saying that
15:05
Speaker 1: you would have to be really good to forge this
15:07
Speaker 1: really good. Now she believes that people were behind bars,
15:10
Speaker 1: they have plenty of time to forge or even trace
15:14
Speaker 1: or copy. That's gonna be a tough sale. So let's
15:16
Speaker 1: talk about motivation. What's in it for her? If he
15:20
Speaker 1: was murdered versus suicide, there may be some insurance clause
15:24
Speaker 1: that would not be triggered if there's insurance floating around
15:27
Speaker 1: out there. But also this whole battle with the NFL
15:31
Speaker 1: because of the abatement app initio. It sounds like a
15:34
Speaker 1: Harry Potter Hicks, but abatement app initio is that if
15:39
Speaker 1: you die in about seven states in the Union before
15:43
Speaker 1: your criminal conviction is confirmed on appeal, then you're automatically
15:48
Speaker 1: an innocent person. That would mean to some people the
15:52
Speaker 1: NFL owes her all of his money because he was
15:55
Speaker 1: never convicted. The NFL is going to argue Alan that
16:00
Speaker 1: we let him go when he was first arrested for
16:02
Speaker 1: conduct unbecoming an NFL or not when he was convicted.
16:06
Speaker 1: That's going to be their argument. It's going to be
16:09
Speaker 1: quite a debate on that. And then there is also
16:12
Speaker 1: will her fortune that if she does get this money,
16:15
Speaker 1: will it then you have to go to the victims
16:17
Speaker 1: in a civil suit a wrongful death suits. Yes, it
16:21
Speaker 1: will the courts OJA styles, Yeah, the court's gonna side
16:24
Speaker 1: with the victims unless right now, well, she doesn't have
16:27
Speaker 1: the money to hide like O J did. O J.
16:30
Speaker 1: Simpson hit everything, including his highstman. He hit everything. That's
16:33
Speaker 1: gonna be the issue. Does she have money that she
16:36
Speaker 1: can hide? If not, will the victims families get the
16:41
Speaker 1: money before her? And my argument would be yes. So
16:45
Speaker 1: her claiming this is not a suicide, note, how does
16:48
Speaker 1: that benefit her other than for her peace of mind?
16:52
Speaker 1: I think it's a peace of mind thing, and I
16:54
Speaker 1: think it's a perfectly natural thing. I'd love to ask
16:57
Speaker 1: Karen stark about this. Why would somebody try to rationalize
17:02
Speaker 1: the suicide of a loved one? Well, I think there
17:05
Speaker 1: are a lot of really deep emotional reasons to do this.
17:08
Speaker 1: First of all, Also for that little girl, that daughter
17:11
Speaker 1: of theirs, it would be better for her not to
17:13
Speaker 1: think her dad didn't want to live to see her
17:16
Speaker 1: grow up with me. Well known psychologist Karen Start joining
17:20
Speaker 1: us from New York. Karen, why do you believe? First
17:24
Speaker 1: of all, thank you for being with us, But Karen,
17:27
Speaker 1: why would hernandez fiance desperately want this not to be
17:33
Speaker 1: a suicide. The thing is, Nancy, that people have problems
17:38
Speaker 1: when someone dies, no matter what. It's very hard to
17:42
Speaker 1: accept the loss and not look for some kind of
17:46
Speaker 1: blame and um in this situation with somebody killing themselves,
17:52
Speaker 1: it's very painful and shocking, and it leaves the worst
17:57
Speaker 1: part of suicide. One of the worst parts is that
17:59
Speaker 1: it leaves the people that survive hurting and feeling responsible.
18:06
Speaker 1: It's it's in some ways a very angry thing to
18:08
Speaker 1: do and leave people with that kind of unresolved situation.
18:12
Speaker 1: And so in this case, she would think, how could
18:16
Speaker 1: I not have known? What could I have done to
18:19
Speaker 1: stop that from happening. It seems so improbable that I
18:24
Speaker 1: can understand why someone would think, well he was he
18:28
Speaker 1: was murdered, or can't be him? Karen. What do people
18:31
Speaker 1: go through when their loved one commits suicide? A lot
18:35
Speaker 1: of self blame. So it's not just regularly sorrow that
18:41
Speaker 1: you have the way you would when somebody normally dies.
18:44
Speaker 1: This is much more painful because you do under what
18:49
Speaker 1: could I have done to stop this? It just seems
18:53
Speaker 1: so unlikely and difficult to accept that somebody would take
18:57
Speaker 1: their own life that you can on help reviewing and
19:02
Speaker 1: thinking I should have done this, or I should have
19:04
Speaker 1: seen the signs, or he's telling me that he he
19:08
Speaker 1: communicated it to me indirectly, How did I miss that?
19:12
Speaker 1: So it's it's worse than somebody dying under normal circumstances.
19:18
Speaker 1: What will the little girl go through in her later years? Well,
19:23
Speaker 1: I say this all the time, and I hate to
19:25
Speaker 1: sound redundant, but the truth is she needs some help
19:28
Speaker 1: because she's not just in a situation having to deal
19:32
Speaker 1: with the father who killed themselves, which um makes you
19:37
Speaker 1: feel like maybe that's going to happen to you too,
19:40
Speaker 1: that you'll wind up killing yourself because sometimes it just
19:44
Speaker 1: runs in families, but kind of history. But she has
19:47
Speaker 1: to deal with the fact that he had been so
19:49
Speaker 1: successful and then kind of self destructed, and um was
19:54
Speaker 1: accused of murdering somebody. And that's a terrible stigma to
19:57
Speaker 1: have to carry when you're a child, wild growing up,
20:01
Speaker 1: and an inheritance that nobody would really want to have.
20:05
Speaker 1: He's already going to be cleared of the convictions, not
20:08
Speaker 1: necessarily in every jurisdiction, but what will that mean for
20:11
Speaker 1: his estate and in order to believe this was not
20:15
Speaker 1: a suicide. I agree with you on the conspiracy thing.
20:18
Speaker 1: If more than one person knows about it, the cats
20:20
Speaker 1: side of the bay that nobody can keep a secret.
20:23
Speaker 1: There will be plenty of snitches in that jail to
20:25
Speaker 1: call them on it. So that's the last place you
20:28
Speaker 1: want to try to keep a secret. The next thing,
20:31
Speaker 1: I think we're gonna have a civil lawsuit trial and
20:34
Speaker 1: that's going to probably, just like with the o J thing,
20:37
Speaker 1: it's going to reveal more than the criminal trial did
20:40
Speaker 1: because there's less restrictions on the evidence. So for right now,
20:43
Speaker 1: the issue is was the suicide note a fake? If
20:49
Speaker 1: it is a fake, why and how will it be determined.
20:54
Speaker 1: I hate the heartbreak that hernandez fiance is going through.
21:00
Speaker 1: I hate the heartbreak his daughter will go through when
21:04
Speaker 1: she's old enough to understand. But I also hate the
21:09
Speaker 1: heartbreak that his murder of victims families have gone through
21:15
Speaker 1: and what they will go through for the rest of
21:17
Speaker 1: their lives. There's no good outcome to any of this.
21:22
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Speaker 1: That's simply save dot com slash Nancy. Thank you, Simply
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Speaker 1: safe Nancy. Grace crimes story signing off, goodbye friend,