BOSTON — Family, not football, dominated Aaron Hernandez’s final hours as a lifer in prison.
As the hour of his death approached, the former NFL star chatted on the phone with his longtime fiancee, Shayanna Jenkins-Hernandez. Authorities say the pair stayed on the phone until the 8 p.m. lockdown at the maximum-security prison where he was serving a life sentence for murder.
Alone in his cell, the ex-New England Patriots tight end scribbled three notes. He laid them carefully next to a Bible.
Then he turned his bedsheet into a noose and hanged himself.
Those cryptic details emerged Thursday as authorities ruled Hernandez’s death a suicide and turned his body over to a funeral home so his family could lay him to rest.