Aaron Hernandez Victims: How Many People Did He Kill?

It has been years since former National Football League (NFL) superstar took his own life inside his prison cell in Massachusetts but many of us still can’t wrap our heads around how a celebrated athlete could have transformed from an all-star tight-end player to a convicted murderer.

While Aaron Hernandez was on a single murder conviction at the time of his suicide, he was involved in at least four homicides and three non-fatal shootings throughout his life—something that didn’t unravel until his final years. His story was complex in every sense of the word—a mysterious tale of poor choices triggered by a rare mental condition and forlorn childhood that continues to baffle the world. All his life, he was a bomb waiting to detonate, and he did, but in holes and corners where nobody could suspect him of anything.

Here are all the shootings and deaths linked to the once-famed football player:

1. Odin Loyd

On June 17, 2013, a jogger found the semi-pro football player’s body with multiple gunshot wounds near Hernandez’s home. Loyd was a friend of Hernandez and was dating his fiancee’s sister at the time of his death. Two years after the crime, Hernandez was found guilty of first-degree murder and was sentenced to life in prison.

2. Daniel de Abreu and Safiro Furtado

A year before Loyd’s death, immigrant cleaners Daniel de Abreu and Safiro Furtado were killed in Boston during a drive-by shooting. While the two had no immediate connection to Hernandez, the police linked the NFL player to the case after he was convicted of Odin’s murder. Hernandez’s former friend Alexander Bradley also stepped forward to testify of his crime, saying that Hernandez had shot and warned him to keep mum about his murders. According to Bradley, de Abreu accidentally spilled a drink on Hernandez the first time they crossed paths so he gunned him and Furtado down.

3. Jordan Miller

Kyle Kennedy, a former cellmate of Hernandez, claimed in 2019 that while serving his time in prison, Hernandez had always joked about “dropping four bodies.” Hernandez allegedly told Kennedy that he unintentionally killed a man named Jordan Miller because the man looked like Odin Loyd. Miller’s death remains a mystery to this day.

4. Corey Smith and Justin Glass

In 2007, 17-year-old Hernandez was a person of interest in a double shooting in Florida. During the investigation, a witness described a shooter who happened to match Hernandez’s description. It was later found that Hernandez was not guilty, and that the man who opened fire was a black male.