On the heels of former Patriots tight end Aaron Hernandez committing suicide and at the outset of an effort by his family and lawyers to ask tough and pointed questions about it, someone in law enforcement has decided to begin leaking inflammatory allegations about Hernandez. And multiple media outlets are embracing it.
We weren’t going to write about the Newsweek report that Hernandez was bisexual; that he left a suicide note for his “prison boyfriend” and that Hernandez may have killed Odin Lloyd to conceal that Hernandez was involved in an intimate relationship with a man. Hernandez’s sexuality isn’t relevant or newsworthy, especially at this point.
But then, as MDS and I traded emails regarding how to handle this one, the light bulb flickered: The “law enforcement sources” who are leaking this information on an anonymous basis apparently believe they are smearing Hernandez, possibly as a warning to those who plan to challenge whether prison officials failed to take steps aimed at preventing Hernandez from committing suicide.
If Hernandez was motivated to kill Lloyd because Lloyd was going to “out” Hernandez, wouldn’t that have come up at some point between the discovery of Lloyd’s body in June 2013 and the conviction of Hernandez for the killing in April 2015? The biggest weakness in the Lloyd murder (other than the failure to discover the murder weapon) was the absence of a clear motive.
So now law enforcement sources claim anonymously that this was the motive, even though over the past four years there had never been a hint that this was the motive?
Regardless of the true motive for leaking this information about Hernandez, it’s shameful that law enforcement sources are doing it, and those reporting it merit criticism and scrutiny. This isn’t about having sympathy for the murderer; this is about family members who are trying to get to the truth and who now have to brace for any and every kind of ugly accusation to be leaked to Newsweek or other publications if they dare to ask too many tough and pointed questions about the circumstances surrounding Hernandez’s death.