Former Patriots Tight End Is Charged With Murder

George Rizer for The Boston Globe, via Getty Images

Aaron Hernandez was taken into custody at his home in Massachusetts, less than a mile from where a 27-year-old man was found dead.

ATTLEBORO, Mass. — An agitated and armed Aaron Hernandez complained that he could not trust anyone. Calling from his suburban home, Hernandez, a tight end for the New England Patriots, summoned two accomplices from out of state, and together they embarked on a middle-of-the-night, 45-minute drive to Boston to pick up his friend Odin Lloyd, who, prosecutors said, had angered Hernandez for talking to the wrong people during a long visit to a nightclub two nights earlier.

Their trip in the early hours of June 17 included a stop at a gas station to buy, among other things, blue bubble gum that would factor into the murder investigation.

Within hours, Lloyd was dead, shot five times and left in an industrial park less than a mile from Hernandez's home.

These accounts were laid out Wednesday by prosecutors in Attleboro District Court, where Hernandez was charged with murder and five gun-related offenses. He is believed to be the third N.F.L. player charged with murder while active, and he was, until Wednesday morning, a member of the league's most celebrated team over the past decade.

But about an hour after Hernandez, 23, was arrested Wednesday morning — and before he was arraigned on murder charges — the Patriots released him, calling it "the right thing to do." Less than a year ago, the Patriots had signed Hernandez to a $40 million contract extension.

In court, Hernandez, who pleaded not guilty and was held without bail, showed no emotion as the charges against him were read. He rarely looked at the packed rows of seating in the courtroom and did not seem to notice when there was a commotion as members of Lloyd's family were escorted from the court crying.

One of Hernandez's lawyers, Michael K. Fee, described the district attorney's case against his client as, "at bottom, a circumstantial case; it is not a strong case."

Hernandez, dressed in the same white T-shirt and red athletic shorts he was wearing when he was arrested at his elegant home Wednesday morning, was led away in handcuffs, pausing briefly to wipe sweat from above his eyebrow. He was ordered to appear in court again July 24 for a probable cause hearing. On the murder charge, he faces a life sentence without parole.

Hernandez's arraignment came on the same day that the Cleveland Browns rookie linebacker Ausar Walcott was charged with attempted murder after he reportedly punched a man in Passaic, N.J. The Browns released Walcott on Wednesday.

The killing of Lloyd, according to the prosecutor William McCauley, was a protracted drama, and it included Lloyd's apparently growing nervous about Hernandez's intentions as he sat in a car with him. In his final moments alive, Lloyd texted his sister to alert her. When she asked whom he was with, he answered, "NFL," and added, "Just so you know."

The murder on June 17, the prosecutors said, was gruesome. Lloyd, a semipro football player, was shot multiple times, with the two final shots fired by someone standing directly above him. Hernandez, the prosecutors said, felt betrayed; Lloyd, who had been dating his fiancée's sister, had talked to some people Hernandez "had troubles with" when the men were out together on June 14.

The motive for the killing might have been age-old, but the police used a variety of modern investigative methods and relied on the technology of connected and interactive devices to build their case against Hernandez. Piecing together cellphone tower tracking, text messages and surveillance tapes — including video recorded by 14 cameras trained on the outside and inside of Hernandez's home — the police constructed a timeline and concluded, in the words of McCauley, that Hernandez "orchestrated the execution" of Lloyd, 27.

Prosecutors said that home surveillance videos from Hernandez's house showed him in possession of firearms before and after Lloyd was killed; that Hernandez was observed picking up Lloyd at 2:30 a.m. on the night he was killed; that a silver Nissan Altima — the same make of vehicle Hernandez had rented — was seen going to and coming from the site where Lloyd's body was found; and that Hernandez was seen leaving his vehicle with a gun at his home at 3:29 a.m., shortly after the authorities say Lloyd had been murdered.

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