Less than a month after Aaron Hernandez’s shocking suicide, his fiancée, Shayanna Jenkins-Hernandez, will speak out for the first time in a sit-down interview with “Dr. Phil.”
In a two-part exclusive, set to air May 15-16, the inquisitive TV personality quizzes Jenkins-Hernandez about the motive behind her fiancé’s decision to take his own life.
“Did he kill himself so that you could collect $6.5 million?” Dr. Phil McGraw poses in the yet-to-air episode.
On Tuesday, Superior Court Judge E. Susan Garsh tossed Hernandez’s murder conviction, citing a Massachusetts legal doctrine, in which convictions are essentially erased after an inmate’s death if the appeals options have not been exhausted.
It sets up an intriguing legal battle that could have the Patriots paying Jenkins-Hernandez $6.5 million in unpaid salary.
Hernandez, 27, was serving a life sentence for the 2013 murder of semi-pro football player Odin Lloyd. Five days after he was acquitted in a 2012 double homicide, the former Patriots tight end was found dead in his prison cell, hanging by bedsheet with a Bible verse, John 3:16, written in marker on his forehead.
“I thought it was a hoax,” Jenkins-Hernandez said of the phone call she received about Hernandez’s death, “that this was some cruel person playing a trick on me.”
While it had been previously reported Hernandez had planned his suicide for weeks, leaving behind suicide notes for his fiancée and their 4-year-old daughter, Avielle, Jenkins-Hernandez believed their future wouldn’t be cloaked in darkness.
“I felt we were looking so bright,” she shared of her final conversations with Hernandez. “We were going up a ladder to a positive direction.”