A Massachusetts judge has granted the request of Aaron Hernandez’s fiancee and mother of his daughter to receive copies of the three notes the former NFL tight end left in his cell last week before he killed himself.
Attorney George Leontire told reporters around 12:25 p.m. that a Bristol Superior Court judge had ordered the notes to be released to the family after Leontire filed a motion Monday demanding that they be able to “know their loved one’s final thoughts.”
As previously reported, Hernandez reportedly wrote one note to his fiancee Shayanna Jenkins-Hernandez, one to their daughter and one to a man described as Hernadez’s jailhouse lover. The letters were left next to a bible.
The Boston Globe reports that Jenkins-Hernandez’s attorney, George Leontire, made the request to the judge Monday morning, hours before Hernandez’s funeral was to begin in Bristol, Connecticut.
“The family has the right, during this grieving process, to know their loved one’s final thoughts,” Leontire wrote in the motion. Leontire said Worcester District Attorney Joseph D. Early Jr.’s office had refused to share the notes’ contents.
The former New England Patriots tight end was serving a life sentence for the slaying of semi-pro football player Odin Lloyd, who was dating Jenkins-Hernandez’s sister.
He hanged himself in his cell in a maximum-security prison in Massachusetts last Wednesday. He had just been acquitted of murder charges in the shooting deaths of two men in Boston in 2012.
In a statement, Hernandez’s family asked for privacy as it mourns and thanked people for offering condolences.
After the Massachusetts medical examiner ruled the death a suicide, Hernandez’s brain was taken to Boston University, where scientists will study it for any signs of repeated trauma suffered during his years of playing football.
A judge on Friday ordered key evidence preserved, granting a request from Jenkins-Hernandez so the family can investigate the circumstances of his death.
