With Ernest Wallace wanted as an accessory after the fact in connection with the murder of Odin Lloyd, it appeared that he wasn’t one of the other two men allegedly in a car with Aaron Hernandez and Odin Lloyd in the moments before Lloyd’s death. If, after all, Wallace were in the car and in turn with Hernandez when Lloyd was killed, Wallace also would be an accessory before the fact.
But Bristol County District Attorney Sam Sutter said Friday that he believes all three men in the car with Lloyd are now in custody. The three men known to be in custody are Wallace, Hernandez, and Carlos Ortiz (pictured).
There’s still something odd happening. When prosecutor Bill McCauley explained the facts at Wednesday’s arraignment, he listed things Hernandez allegedly said to Lloyd in the car, which helped show Hernandez’s motive to kill Lloyd. With Hernandez not talking and Lloyd not available, this strongly suggested someone else in the car already was cooperating.
But Wallace was at large and Ortiz was arrested on Wednesday in Bristol, Connecticut. It’s possible that Ortiz was arrested and interrogated before Hernandez’s arraignment and shared that information with police. But that’s a lot to coordinate between North Attleboro, Massachusetts and Bristol.
There’s still a chance, then, that the fourth person in the car was arrested or turned himself in before Wednesday (and is, to make Sutter’s comment truthful, “in custody”), and that police are hoping to gloss over that fact in order to dissuade the media from realizing that there’s still one more person who has not been accounted for, and in turn trying to figure out who the guy is.