Unnecessary Roughness

1.

THE BEGINNING OR THE END

This was the part Aaron Hernandez hated most: having to say goodbye. The telephone calls with his high school sweetheart and devoted fiancée, Shayanna, were never long enough. Their talks were his chance to escape the confines of prison and connect to a life outside the walls that kept closing in on him. “Babe, they’re locking up now,” Aaron said after a guard gave him that nod to end his call.

Shayanna Jenkins-Hernandez also hated this part. Outwardly, she was free to live her life. But she was in bondage too. The telephone calls to her fiancé were their only communication now, until she and her daughter, Avielle, could make their next visit. Each phone call had meaning; a couple sharing their day like any other couple would.

“I love you,” Shayanna whispered.

“I love you too,” Aaron said. “I’ll call you tomorrow.”

Shayanna would later speak of how their talk had been a good one. They dared to dream about a day when Aaron would be out of prison and free to be the father and husband he hoped he could be. He had been acquitted of double murder charges five days earlier, and now his previous conviction for the death of Odin Lloyd in 2013 would be appealed.

Home to Aaron for now was Souza-Baranowski Correctional Center in Lancaster, Massachusetts, located about an hour’s drive west of Boston. The maximum-security prison is where he was inmate W106228 serving, in what seems like a hopeless existence, life without parole. He would be there for two years. Handcuffed and dressed in the white and red wardrobe for prisoners, Aaron would be escorted back to his cell as he always was. Any guard, in a test of strength, would be no match for the younger, stronger, former Pro Bowl tight end. But as Aaron liked to say, “Those days are over.”

As they reached the second floor of the G2 housing unit the guard yelled, “Open cell 57.” Those heavy metal doors separate slowly, often squeaking like a pig in pain.

This was the kind of night Aaron often told Shayanna about. The nights when his trademark smile is gone and it’s back to his reality: the loneliness, the solitude, and the bright light through the window.

Aaron would often describe how he’d sit down on his bunk and rub his temples. His friends knew of his frequent migraines that began with a dull ache in his head. They had become more frequent of late. He would lie down and throw a T-shirt over his eyes to block the light shining through the small, barred window about eighteen inches wide and three feet long.

“My head is going to explode” is how he once described it to Shayanna.

The migraines came with hot flashes. That’s what he called them. He would then strip off his T-shirt and jailhouse pants until his six-foot-two tattooed body was naked. He had mentioned doing this a lot in recent days, going from hot to cold, cold to hot. He would pace, holding his head.

Aaron said it took three steps to pace from one end of the cell to the other. Back and forth he would pace, trying to concentrate on the steps to help keep his mind off his pain.

He would think all kinds of things. If you knew Aaron, there was only one thing that brought him comfort in times like this: a picture of his four-year-old daughter, Avielle. She always made him smile. She always made him feel better. Avielle, born on Aaron’s birth date of November 6, looks just like Shayanna; she has brown cocoa skin and gorgeous hazel eyes just like her mother. To Aaron his daughter and her mother are symbols of strength, beauty, love, and better times.

“How is it possible to love someone so much,” Aaron would say. “Did I fuck it up?”

Prison is scary quiet at night except for the sounds of an occasional cough, or a scream. No one really knows what Aaron was thinking on this night, or even if he was in his right mind. No one knows what kind of pain he felt.

When did Aaron decide this would be his last night on earth? Maybe the disease CTE knows. He was upbeat when he talked to me on the telephone earlier in the day. “I’m so happy,” he said. “I can’t remember the last time I was this happy.”

One moment he is lost in love and thankfulness, looking forward to a future as a free man again. Then the depression and the pain must have come back.

Prison was his reality; the reality behind the smile. The past, the present, the pain, the paranoia had taken Aaron from the highest high to the lowest low; from playing in front of thousands of cheering fans to being alone in a prison cell.

Aaron became religious in prison. He had learned from his college coach Urban Meyer that the Bible was the word of God, and those who believed would have everlasting life; an everlasting life free from judgment, free from pain, and free from depression.

Aaron reached for the Bible on his final night. Perhaps he was searching for a promise. At some point he turned to the New Testament, John 3:16: “For God so loved the world that He gave his only begotten Son that whosoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life.”

Prison had been a constant battle: fighting the justice system, fighting inmates, fighting officers, and fighting the depression caused by his choices. A drop of blood falls on the scripture and John 3:16 would be scribbled in blood on Aaron’s forehead. Somewhere during this time, Aaron must have decided that life was no longer worth living.

VARIOUS CORRECTIONAL and law enforcement reports detail a timeline account of the final hours of Aaron Hernandez’s life. He deserved a better ending than this. Here’s what’s believed to have happened.

It’s 3:00 A.M. on April 19, 2017. Corrections Officer Gerard Breau is making his normal rounds at the G2 housing unit at Souza-Baranowski Correctional Center. He is working the 11:00 P.M. to 7:00 A.M. shift. As he slowly walks the unit’s second floor, Breau looks into inmates’ door windows to make sure they’re where they’re supposed to be. It’s normally a boring routine.

Breau reaches cell 57 and stops. There is a cloth or curtain of some sort blocking the window, preventing him from seeing into the cell. A lifelong Patriots fan, Breau knows it’s a private cell for Aaron Hernandez, the former football star. Breau knocks on the door. There’s no response. He knocks again with more force. Again, there is no response.

Breau, bald and stocky, looks up to see part of what appears to be a curtain sticking through the top of the door. It’s not uncommon for an inmate to do that. It’s their way of having some fun with the guards. Breau reaches up, grabs the cloth, and slides it to the side, allowing him to look into the cell. His eyes grow wide with shock.

Aaron Hernandez is naked, his tattoo-covered body dangling lifeless from a white bedsheet wrapped tightly around his neck. The bedsheet is attached to a bar in a back window, located a few feet higher than his six-foot-two, 240-pound frame.

“Oh shit. Oh fuck,” Breau says.

With adrenaline flooding his body, Breau reaches for his radio and clicks it on. “Code 99. Repeat, Code 99… Inmate hanging, G2 cell 57,” he yells. “Repeat, Code 99. It’s Aaron!”

Regulations for officer safety prevent Breau from entering without a supervisor’s approval. He begins to pace nervously as he waits for a response team to arrive. Seconds seem like minutes.

Breau wonders whether he missed something during his rounds earlier that night. At this point he realizes the screwup. He did not make his rounds in the last hour, contrary to policy making it mandatory to check on inmates every hour. There will be hell to pay for this.

At 3:05 A.M. Corrections Officers Shawnn Gyles, Mathew Way, and Nicholas Lawton arrive and give the okay to enter the cell. Breau hurriedly unlocks the door and tries to push it open. There’s resistance. It barely budges.

“Help me,” Breau says. “It won’t open.”

It takes the strength of three grown men—Gyles, Way, and Breau—to push the door open. Once inside they see that it had been blocked by various paper materials, including a piece of cardboard from the back of a notepad. They also quickly notice that the floor of the small cell is covered with a soapy substance, perhaps shampoo. It’s hard to keep their balance.

The corrections officers’ instincts are to save Aaron’s life. Breau rushes to grab Aaron’s nude body by the legs while Gyles follows regulations by handcuffing the inmate’s wrists. It seems like a useless exercise but it follows regulations. Gyles then helps Breau lift Aaron’s lifeless body upward to relieve the pressure from around his neck.

Officer Way, who is built like a power lifter, grabs a pair of shears brought into the cell and tries to cut through the bedsheet wrapped around Aaron’s neck. The sheet is tighter than wet rope.

Officers and medical personnel throughout the prison have been alerted. The whole prison is abuzz. Soon the cell has more people than it can hold. Sergeant David Lambert is next to arrive and begins assisting Breau and Gyles to hold up Aaron in case there is some chance for a miracle.

All are struggling with maintaining their leverage on the slippery floor. Way meanwhile is still having trouble cutting through the fabric. The shears are dull and the bedsheet is wound with knots meticulously tied in different locations.

“It’s just not cutting,” Way says in frustration.

Corrections Officers Tyler Courtney and Edmond Pavia, along with a medical team consisting of nurses Kelly Ryder and Coleen Narvaez, arrive at the cell. As Way struggles to cut through the sheet, Courtney stands on the bed and helps lift Aaron’s cold body by pushing under his arm, creating more slack in the bedsheet.

It takes nearly two minutes of frantic cutting before the dull shears finally slice through the bedsheet. It seems like it took forever. Once the material is cut, Aaron is lowered to the floor and Courtney loosens and then removes the noose from around his neck.

Is he still alive? Is he breathing? Ryder checks for a pulse. There is none. Aaron isn’t breathing. Breau, Gyles, and Lawton immediately begin CPR. There is still no response.

Ryder looks closer at Aaron’s body and sees he has defecated on himself. His body is cyanotic. He is cold to the touch and his ears and lips are blue: all signs of death.

As CPR continues, Ryder radios for a life support ambulance that will bring advanced life-saving equipment and an experienced paramedic.

Ten minutes after Aaron is first discovered, a stretcher arrives at his cell. Other inmates are straining through their small door windows to see what’s going on. Aaron’s body is placed on a stretcher, his hands still in restraints, and carried by corrections officers to a downstairs holding room where he is placed on a gurney where Courtney continues CPR at a rate of one hundred compressions per minute.

At 3:25 A.M. the ambulance arrives. Paramedics take over medical care and hook Aaron to a heart monitor. They also stick an intravenous line into his leg. Everyone is moving quickly. Time is of the essence. No one is ready to give up.

As Aaron is being placed in the ambulance, the gurney somehow gets stuck halfway in. This can’t be happening. Courtney continues CPR while an EMT officer struggles to unhinge the gurney. “Push,” he tells his team. After a hard shove, the gurney slides into the ambulance. The door closes. Aaron is leaving prison, but not the way he imagined.

He is transported to UMass Memorial-HealthAlliance Hospital in nearby Leominster, Massachusetts, where he is placed in emergency room one. Hospital personnel greet the ambulance and resume life-saving measures.

Among those working on Aaron is Dr. Evan Swayze, an emergency medicine doctor with seventeen years of experience. He knows it is hopeless. Aaron’s body, still in restraints, has shown no sign of life since it was discovered an hour earlier. Swayze takes a step back and pronounces time of death at 4:07 A.M.

Aaron Hernandez, the former high school standout, college All-American, and NFL football star, was pronounced dead while naked and in restraints. He was twenty-seven years old.