There are several questions about Aaron Hernandez that Netflix’s chilling new docuseries, Killer Inside: The Mind of Aaron Hernandez, attempted to answer. The show gets to the bottom of his abusive upbringing, severe brain injury, and drug use, making sense of Herndandez’s past while investigating what led the former New England Patriot to allegedly murder his friend. One person uniquely entangled with the case is Hernandez’s ex-fiancée, Shayanna Jenkins-Hernandez, who appeared to address the doc in a post on Instagram on Thursday.
“I wanted to let all of you sweet sweet souls know that I have tried to read every message sent on IG and through email (positive and negative)...The amount of support and positive energy is again unreal,” she wrote. However, she added, she would be logging off: “I’m sure you will all understand how imperative it is to take some time away from social media.” She didn’t directly address the documentary, but also shared an uplifting post about resilience the day of its release, writing, “Give me the strength.”
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Jenkins-Hernandez first started dating Hernandez in high school. They broke up for a period of time, but got back together when Hernandez started playing for the Patriots in 2010, and welcomed a daughter just months before Hernandez’s 2012 arrest. They were engaged at the time of Hernandez’s suicide in 2017.
To make matters more complicated, the man Hernandez was convicted of killing, Odin Lloyd, was dating Jenkins-Hernandez’s sister at the time. According to an interview with Oxygen, the relationship between the two sisters became strained when Jenkins-Hernandez chose to testify on her fiancé’s behalf. “I wasn’t going to let him experience it alone,” she said. “I was going to stick by his side every step of the way.’’
Killer Inside: The Mind of Aaron Hernandez is now streaming on Netflix.