In 2012, when he was 22 years old, Aaron Hernandez signed a record $40 million contract with the New England Patriots. Only five years earlier, Hernandez had been working menial jobs in his hardscrabble hometown Bristol, Conn., where he drove through fading neighborhoods in a $300 used car he had bought with money borrowed from friends.
That was before Hernandez racked up scoring records in high school and rocketed to the University of Florida as a top recruit. It was before he became a collegiate All-American, and then the youngest player in the N.F.L. and finally a rising star on the most successful professional football team of the century.