Former NFL player Aaron Hernandez broke down sobbing while admitting he was gay, his former lawyer has said.
Jose Baez detailed the final days of his client in a new book, Unnecessary Roughness.
The attorney has written that he told Hernandez that prosecutors were planning to question his fiancee during his double murder trial.
He said that prosecutors intended to discuss Hernandez’ extramarital affairs, supposedly with one woman and one man, during her questioning.
Baez said this caused the former athlete to break down sobbing as it would out him as gay in front of his fiancee, the Daily Mail reports.
‘But Jose, she’ll be devastated. I never meant to hurt her. I know I keep disappointing her. But she is my soul,’ Baez said Hernandez told him.
‘She is all I have and will ever have.’
‘Hernandez was clearly gay’
Rumors have circulated for years over whether Hernandez was gay or bisexual.
George Leontire, another former attorney of Hernandez, said the sports star was ‘clearly gay’, The Boston Globe reported.
‘[I] acknowledged the immense pain that it caused him. I think that he also came out of a culture that was so negative about gay people that he exhibited some self-hatred,’ Leontire said.
Leontire also said that Hernandez was concerned about how his supposed homosexuality would affect his fiancee, Shayanna Jenkins-Hernandez.
In a 2017 interview with TV personality Dr. Phil, Jenkins-Hernandez said she felt there was no indication he was gay. ‘I had no indication or any feeling that he was [gay],’ she said. ‘He was very much a man to me. I don’t know where this came from.’
Hernandez played as a tight end with the New England Patriots for three seasons from 2010 to 2012.
His football career came to an abrupt end in 2013 when he was charged with the murder of Odin Lloyd, a semi-professional player who was dating the sister of Hernandez’s fiancee. He was later found guilty and sentenced to life imprisonment for the murder.
The week before he died, Hernandez had been found not guilty of the 2012 double homicide of Daniel de Abreu and Safiro Furtado.
Hernandez was publically outed on The Kirk & Callahan Show radio show. He committed suicide in his cell two days later. He was 27 years old.
