All-American Murder

Football coaches, players, and fans called Aaron Hernandez unstoppable. His four-year-old daughter called him Daddy. The law called him inmate #174594. He was a college All-American who became the youngest player in the NFL and later a Super Bowl veteran. He was a star tight end on the league-dominant New England Patriots, who extended his contract for a record $40 million. Aaron Hernandez's every move as a professional athlete played out in the headlines, yet he led a secret life-one that ended in a maximum security prison. What drove him to go so wrong, so fast? Son of a University of Connecticut football hero known as "the King" and brother to a Huskies quarterback, Hernandez was the best athlete Connecticut's Bristol Central High had ever produced. He chose to play football at the University of Florida, but by the time he arrived in Gainesville, he was already courting trouble. Between the summers of 2012 and 2013,...