Surveillance video 'incriminating' in murder case against ex-NFL star Hernandez

I've written here before about news reports saying that security cameras in the home of former New England Patriots tight end Aaron Hernandez recorded him with a gun both hours before—and minutes after—his friend was shot to death.

Now a recent story about Hernandez in Rolling Stone magazine details other surveillance and cellphone information that the article says constitutes “a honey pot of incriminating evidence” against Hernandez, who is charged with murder in the death of Odin Lloyd, a 27-year-old Boston semi-professional football player.

Lloyd's body, riddled with bullets, was found June 17 in an industrial park about a mile from Hernandez's home.

Among the claims made in the fascinating Rolling Stone article is that “according to family friends, Hernandez was using angel dust and was so paranoid he always carried a gun.”

The article also says that surveillance video captured Lloyd and Hernandez arguing outside a nightclub two days before his shooting. Hernandez was angry that Lloyd spoke with another man at the club who was at odds with Hernandez, according to the story.

“… Hernandez was enraged," the article said. “Club security cameras allegedly capture the two men squabbling, showing Hernandez, six-two and a rippled 250, facing off with the five-11 Lloyd. The friends stopped short of throwing punches, though cameras mounted outside the club show the argument resuming in the street.”

Here's what happened next, according to the article:

... Two days after the spat with Lloyd, [Hernandez] was nursing his rubbed-raw grievance. “You can't trust anyone anymore!” he's heard screaming on the footage of his home-security system. Sometime that night, he reached out to a couple of Bristol [Connecticut] goons, Ernest Wallace and Carlos Ortiz - two stumble-bum crooks with long sheets of priors and no job or fixed address to lay their heads - and ordered them to take the two-hour drive to Boston on the double, telling one of them, Hurry ur ass up here …

… Around 1:10 a.m., Hernandez set off with Wallace and Ortiz in a rented Nissan Altima to pick up Odin Lloyd. Hernandez's security cams show him with what looks like a Glock .45 in hand, pacing in his living room. On the 30-mile drive to Fayston Street, a war-zone block in the Dorchester neighborhood of Boston, where Lloyd lived with his mother and younger sister (he'd been forced to move home after losing his job at the local utility company), the three men stopped to buy a pack of blue cotton-candy Bubblicious and a cheap cigar, the type used to roll blunts. Usually, that was Lloyd's job - Hernandez fondly called him the Bluntmaster. Making do without him, they got to Lloyd's house at 2:33 a.m., where a surveillance camera posted across the street showed Lloyd getting into the back seat of the Nissan. It fast became clear to Lloyd, though, that this wouldn't be a night of hot-sheet fun. He began firing texts off to his sister, sending distress flares every few minutes. U saw who I'm with... Nfl... just so u know...

The last one reached her at 3:23 a.m. Minutes later, Lloyd got out of the car in an industrial park in North Attleborough. He seemed to know what was coming, but decided to make a stand: The driver's side mirror of the Nissan was broken off, a sign that he might have gone down swinging. On a sand-and-gravel patch, Lloyd raised his arms in defense of the first shot, and was then hit in the back twice as he turned away and fell to the ground. The gunman pumped two more rounds into his chest for good measure. The next day, cops lifted tire tracks near the body that matched the Nissan. Tracing the car back to the rental agency, police would eventually recover a .45 shell case and a wad of cotton-candy Bubblicious. And though Hernandez would monkey with his home-security system, getting rid of six hours of key recordings, and smash up the cellphone he'd turn in to cops, he'd neglect to scrub all the data they contained, handing police a honey pot of incriminating evidence.