Yesterday I finished the “Killer Inside” the Aaron Hernandez docu series on Netflix, and I’ve got to say, it was pretty eye opening.

I’m a football fan, one of the many people who root against the Patriots, and I knew of the story involving Hernandez and the murder of Odin Lloyd. This series shouldn’t have felt new to me, but I learned so much more than I thought I knew. I knew of him being convicted, that he was accused of a double murder, of which he was acquitted, that he got in trouble with fights in college and that he had pretty violent tendencies when he entered the NFL.

What I didn’t know, well, there was a lot of stuff. I had heard rumors that he was bisexual, and this series confirmed it. The QB from his high school team was featured a good amount in this, and he confirmed that they had some sexual encounters in high school. There was also another theory tossed around that he had a lover while in prison. What I found eye opening in this docu series was how much he, his high school friend and another pro player who stayed in the closet until he retired, tried to suppress this. I mean, who cares? Why was Hernandez so afraid to be his true self? Why was he so opposed to revealing this?

Another thing I learned from watching this that I never knew, that may explain why, his father was pretty abusive, not accepting of that lifestyle and that Hernandez, according to his older brother, was sexually abused as a child. I knew none of this. Also, that doesn’t make it okay to do what he did, quite the opposite, but it may explain why he was so violent. He had all these inner demons he couldn’t let out, and instead of seeking therapy, or just accepting who he truly was, he acted out with violence. He wanted to be a gangster, but he was a phony gangster. He tried so hard to hide who he was because of his past, that he went the exact opposite way of what he should have done.

I also found out that he had a fractured relationship with his mom because, after his father died, she almost immediately hooked up with another guy who tried to be his dad. Hernandez didn’t like this, so he started staying with his aunt, who let him do whatever he wanted. That was bad. That was when he fell in with the wrong crowd. I also didn’t know that he grew up in a fairly affluent town in Connecticut. This was a total assumption on my part, but from what I saw, I gathered he grew up in a not so good town. I couldn’t have been more wrong. Granted his parents were violent, but he grew up in a home with two parents and a brother. He had tons of friends in high school, excelled at sports and seemed like he had a normal enough childhood, at least on the surface. So, I guess this is where the whole wannabe gangster thing came from.

After he left Connecticut and went to Florida, that was when he started to change it seems. What I already knew was how slimy and robotic and mechanical people like Urban and Shelley Meyer, Rob Gronkowski, Tom Brady and Tim Tebow are. All of them had interviews shown during the doc, and they all had the same cliche, “I won’t comment on that”, “he seemed like he changed” or, “I’m going to leave if you keep asking me questions” answers to everything. They offered absolutely nothing, yet they spent the most time with him. In fact, the only people who kept it real were his high school friends that appeared in the doc. They laid it all out there, bare bones, and I was glad they did.

I also learned that, even in death, he was impulsive, stupid and selfish. He thought he could clear his name, and take care of his fiancé and child if he offed himself due to some archaic rule in Massachusetts. And while it worked for maybe a year, Odin Lloyd’s mom, who is a saint, was able to convince the courts to overturn this rule, and get the conviction back on Hernandez’s record. Odin Lloyd’s mom wanted her son to be remembered, and she achieved that goal.

I highly recommend this 3 episode series on Netflix. Each ep is about an hour long, it’s eye opening and you don’t have to be a football fan to enjoy this. This ranks right up there with any true crime series that is on TV right now. It’s good stuff with very solid reporting. Check it out.

Ty

Ty is the Pop Culture editor for SeedSing and the other host of the X Millennial Man Podcast.

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