The day after Aaron Hernandez’s murder conviction was posthumously overturned by a judge, his fiancée has shared her shock over his suicide.
Shayanna Jenkins-Hernandez sat down with Dr. Phil to talk publicly for the first time since the former New England Patriots player was found hanging in his Massachusetts prison cell on April 19.
“I thought it was a hoax,” said Jenkins-Hernandez, who was not married to the ex-tight end but took his name after they had a child together. “That this was some cruel person playing a trick on me.”
Also in the two-part interview — which is set to air Monday, May 15 and Tuesday, May 16 — host Dr Phil McGraw asks the million dollar question: “Did he kill himself so that you could collect $6.5 million?”
The 2013 murder conviction (for the shooting of Odin Lloyd) against Hernandez was overturned on Tuesday due to a state law citing that defendants who die before their appeals are heard should have their convictions vacated.
The legal development now sets up a complex legal battle that could have the Patriots paying Jenkins-Hernandez $6.5 million in unpaid salary.
While her response to the question was not shared in advance by the “Dr. Phil” show, Jenkins-Hernandez is quoted as saying: “I felt like we were looking so bright. We were going up a ladder to a positive direction,” detailing her last conversation with Aaron.
According to the teaser on the show’s website, “in the revealing interview, Jenkins-Hernandez sets the record straight about her fiancé’s mysterious jail cell death, rumors about his purported secret romantic life, and if she thinks he killed himself so that she could collect millions of dollars.”
The couple had a four-year-old daughter named Avielle.
Along with writing a bible verse from John 3:16 on his forehead in red pen, Hernandez, 27, marked the page with the same verse in his bible in blood and wrote it on his cell wall before hanging himself last month.
He also cut his right middle finger and drew circular marks in blood on each of his feet, consistent with images of the feet of Jesus Christ after he was hung from the cross, according to Yahoo! Sports columnist Dan Wetzel.