MICHELLE R. SMITH, Associated Press
FALL RIVER (AP) — Prosecutors in the murder trial of former New England Patriots player Aaron Hernandez yesterday played video surveillance that showed his fiancee removing a trash bag from the home and putting it in a car the day after the victim was killed.
Hernandez is charged with the June 2013 killing of Odin Lloyd, who was dating the sister of his fiancee, Shayanna Jenkins. Also charged are two Hernandez acquaintances, Carlos Ortiz and Ernest Wallace, who have pleaded not guilty. Ortiz and Wallace will be tried separately.
On several video clips played for the jury yesterday, Jenkins is seen leaving the basement of the home with the trash bag that contains what looks like a large box. She puts down the bag and rearranges what appears to be clothing on top. Then she walks through the backyard and is shown putting the box in the trunk of her sister’s car.
The .45-caliber Glock that investigators say was the murder weapon has never been found. Ortiz told police Hernandez put guns in a box in his basement after the killing, and prosecutors have said Jenkins disposed of a box from the basement after receiving a coded text message from Hernandez.
Jenkins’ sister, Shaneah, previously testified that Shayanna had asked to borrow her car the day after the killing so she could go to the bank to get cash to pay the housecleaners. But this week, the housecleaners testified that Shayanna did not pay them cash that day. Instead, one testified, she paid by check.
One of the housecleaners, Carla Barbosa, cried yesterday after she saw surveillance video of herself moving her car so Shayanna Jenkins could leave. She said Shayanna was gone for a while, then came back and seemed normal. A little while later, she said, she saw her speaking on the telephone and looking out the window.
“She was crying. She was nervous, and she was walking back-and-forth,” Barbosa said through a Portuguese translator.
Also yesterday, Lloyd’s mother, Ursula Ward, repeatedly mouthed the words “my baby, my baby” as photos of her son’s body in the morgue were shown in court. She finally broke down and had to leave the courtroom after photos of her son’s bare back with several bullet holes were shown. Shaneah Jenkins, who was sitting with Ward, also cried and wiped her eyes.
It’s the third time Ward has had to leave the courtroom when viewing photos of her son’s body. When she testified earlier in the trial, the judge warned her not to cry.
Earlier yesterday, she cried as the bloodstained shirts he was wearing the night he died were shown to jurors by a Massachusetts state trooper, who pointed out where the bullets had made holes. At least one juror occasionally glanced at Ward as she reacted to the evidence.
