Aaron Hernandez 'Didn't Have Best Choice In Friends,' Fiancee Says
BOSTON (CBS/AP) — The fiancee of former New England Patriots tight end Aaron Hernandez is speaking out publicly for the first time.
The first hour of a two-part interview with Shayanna Jenkins-Hernandez aired on the "Dr. Phil " show on Monday, and the second part will hair Tuesday at 3 p.m. on WBZ-TV.
Here are a few of the highlights from Monday's interview.
HERNANDEZ'S FRIENDS
In the interview, Jenkins-Hernandez told host Dr. Phil McGraw that Hernandez, "didn't have the best choice in some friends."
"But that didn't make him a bad person," she said. "As far as the relationships he had with outsiders, I don't necessarily know too much about that. I invited everyone into the home that he brought there, I was never rude."
When McGraw asks her if he was a gang member, she replied, "Not from my knowledge," adding that she may not have known if he was.
"Probably not, to be honest with you, but that's not the Aaron that I know," Jenkins-Hernandez said.
She also said she didn't hang out with the people Hernandez brought to their home, claiming she was just was a good host, made them food, and then would go do her own thing.
"I pick and choose my battles," she said. "There are some things that I pressed on and some things that I didn't."
She repeated her claim that she doesn't believe Hernandez was involved in the 2013 murder of Odin Lloyd.
"I've said it over and over. He may have been in the wrong place at the wrong time, but I don't think that what is said to be out there is actually accurate," she said.
But if she were to eventually decide he really did it, McGraw asked her if that would change how she felt about him.
"It's a hard question," she replied.
"I think if when I asked him if he had some involvement he said 'yes,'" she continued. "I think that I would think differently in terms of what I should be doing for my child and for myself ... I had asked him if he was involved and he said no. That's all I needed."
SUICIDE NOTE
As for the suicide note Hernandez left her in prison, his fiancee remains skeptical.
"I did see that it was addressed to Shay instead of Babe or Bae, the way he would refer me as that, was a little odd to me, but as far as the content, he seemed to be his loving self," she said.
"The handwriting was similar but I feel like, again, you have nothing but time in there, so, I feel like it's easily duplicated or could be," she told McGraw.
"It screamed love, but it wasn't personal, it wasn't intimate, it was I don't know there were some odd parts where it just didn't make sense, it wasn't clicking in my head as far as what he may have been thinking or what he was trying to say. It was very short. I wanted more. I wanted him to explain."
"I can read it over and over and over again and I'm still at the same place where I read it, I don't feel like there's any progression."
In excerpts released last week, Jenkins-Hernandez said she does not think that Hernandez's death in his prison cell on April 19 was a suicide, as authorities have ruled.
She says he was upbeat in their last telephone conversation just hours before he was found hanging in his cell, and told her and their daughter that "Daddy's going to come home."
He referenced a Savage Garden song in the note. McGraw asked Jenkins-Hernandez in the video clip released Monday if the group has any special meaning to her or to Hernandez.
"We're both very into slow jams," she said. "I of course have listened to it, I know the song. It puts me in a place where I feel he may have been then if that's the case."
As for the line in the note that says, "I told you what was coming indirectly!" McGraw said that seemed to him Hernandez told his fiancee he was going to kill himself.
Jenkins-Hernandez said she doesn't know what the line means.
"I wanted him home more than anyone, I would have stopped it. I would have gotten him help, I would have told someone," she said.
Hernandez's suicide came just five days after he was acquitted in a 2012 double slaying.
He was still serving a life sentence for Lloyd's murder.
In tomorrow's segment, Jenkins-Hernandez will respond to
(© Copyright 2017 CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved. The Associated Press contributed to this report.)
