New England Patriots tight end Aaron Hernandez

Photo by Debby Wong (Shutterstock)

"What is your definition of being happy?"

In the second episode of Netflix's latest true crime docuseries, Killer Inside: The Mind of Aaron Hernandez, Stephen Ziogas, Aaron Hernandez's childhood friend, can't imagine what drove his friend to commit first-degree murder. He says, "I think the biggest misconception is he was someone who had everything and threw it all away. From what we know now, can you ever really define that he was happy?" In June 2013, the New England Patriots tight end had fame, wealth, a devoted fiancee, and his first child on the way. Looking back on what followed, Ziogas adds, "He did everything that, in that storybook setting, would make you happy, but obviously he was still hurting."

The three episodes of Killer Inside create a rare, objective look at Hernandez's life, mostly built from audio recordings of Hernandez's phone calls while in prison, security footage from his own home, testimonies from his criminal trial, and interviews with his close friends and former teammates. While those close to him describe him as playful, teasing, and full of life, they also discuss his childhood traumas from his physically abusive father, his long history of anger issues and violent outbursts, and his struggles with his sexuality.

In June 2013, the body of Odin Lloyd, a 27-year-old semi-professional football player, was found in the street with wounds from six gunshots. In what was described as a particularly messy crime, Hernandez murdered Lloyd with motives that are unclear to this day. At the time of his trial in 2015, prosecutors argued that Lloyd was targeted because he'd spoken to people disliked by Hernandez while at a bar in Boston. But friends and photographs paint a friendly relationship between Lloyd and Hernandez, who were respectively dating sisters Shayanna and Shaneah Jenkins. The men bonded over their love of video games and smoking (Lloyd's nickname was the "blunt master").

Why did the beloved New England Patriot murder Lloyd, who was set to become his brother-in-law? The docuseries doesn't offer a clear answer, because those answers ultimately died with Hernandez when he hanged himself in his jail cell in 2017. Hernandez killed himself with his prison bed sheet on the same day his former NFL team visited the White House to celebrate their fifth Super Bowl win.

The series taps into the power of personal testimony mixed with compelling video and audio evidence to unfold a mind-boggling backstory, including a second criminal charge Hernandez faced on top of first-degree murder. He was charged and tried for fatally shooting two men in a car outside of a nightclub in 2012; his lawyer, Jose Baez (noted for defending Casey Anthony), successfully cast doubt on his involvement, resulting in a not guilty verdict. In fact, Hernandez was described as having high spirits prior to his death, with the double-murder charges dropped and an appeal of his life sentence with no parole in the works.

In the larger picture, however, Hernandez was clearly at odds with his own identity, with jarring contradictions causing rifts in both his personal and professional lives. He complained that the Patriots organization "try to ruin all your fun because that want you to only be business [sic]," even asking to be traded in 2013 and struggling to bond with his teammates, who viewed him as impulsive and "immature." He idolized his abusive father, Dennis Hernandez, as "a good man" who was "also really wild," but he resented his mother, whom he felt abandoned him after his father's death. He makes a belligerent call from prison, yelling, "I was the happiest little kid in the world, and you f***ed me up. I had nobody. What'd you think I was going to do? Become a perfect angel?" He grew up attending a safe, "typical American high school" but fostered a bad boy image, keeping company with violent criminals while professing his love for the Harry Potter series to his fiancee and close friends.

And then two issues are weakly covered–disappointingly so–in the third episode of Killer Inside: Hernandez's sexual history, which involved allegations of childhood molestation and represssed homosexuality, and its connection to his perpetual anger; and Hernandez's confirmed brain damage incurred from playing in the NFL. The series' tepid handling of the issues create an abrupt ending, with more emphasis on humanizing Hernandez, a convicted murderer of at least one man, while giving incomplete consideration of how trauma impacted Hernandez's psychology.

Rumors about Hernandez's sexuality persisted both during and after his life, with one inmate coming forward after Hernandez's death to allege that they were lovers in prison (he is not interviewed in the series). One childhood friend recounts discovering his own bisexuality when he and Hernandez would sexually experiment in high school. He affirms, "He [Aaron] wasn't ashamed of who he was. Aaron was proud of his sexuality. It was just, he couldn't say anything—at the time, there was no one in the NFL that had ever broke this news."

However, throughout the docuseries, Dennis Hernandez's severe homophobia is starkly outlined next to his son's admiration of him, underlining the recurring theme of troubled and toxic masculinity in Hernanez's violent outbursts. Additionally, one of Hernandez's lawyers, George Leontire, says that Hernandez confided in him about being molested by a male babysitter as a child (his older brother, DJ Hernandez, has publicly corroborated the story of abuse). Leontire says that he, as a gay man, felt bad for his client: "Aaron asked me if I felt or believed that someone was born gay...Aaron had a belief that his abuse as a child impacted his sexuality. That was one of the things that he held onto as to why he, in his mind, has this aberrant behavior." And then, most egregiously, in 2017 one reporter named Michele McPhee published an unconfirmed story that Odin Lloyd was targeted because he'd caught Hernandez with a man. She was interviewed on a popular Boston sports radio show, where the hosts openly mocked Hernandez about being the Patriots' "tight end." Two days later, Hernandez hanged himself.

Aaron hernandezNetflix

In the last minutes of the Killer Mind, we learn that Hernandez's family donated his brain to science with shocking results. In 2017, the same year of Hernandez's death, former NFL player Fred McNeill became the first living patient to be accurately diagnosed with chronic traumatic encephalopathy (C.T.E.), a form of severe brain damage resulting from repeated head traumas. As the disease develops in four worsening stages, symptoms range from memory loss, confusion, depression, and dementia to violent mood swings and suicidal ideation. Shortly after Dr. Bennet Omalu first discovered the disease in professional football players, a study examined the brains of 111 deceased players; 110 were confirmed to have CTE. Examination of Aaron Hernandez's brain showed "the most severe case they had ever seen in someone of Aaron's age," with degeneration well into stage three, comparable to a player well into his 60s.

Hernandez's turmoil over his sexuality is not framed as an excuse for his actions, but overall, the series' tepid handling of the issue creates an abrupt end to the matter, with incomplete consideration of how this impacted Hernandez's psychology. In all likelihood, the combination of childhood trauma, internalized shame, and brain damage created the double loss of life surrounding the Aaron Hernandez case. Odin Lloyd's family has forgiven Hernandez, but the senselessness behind the crime makes its unsettling loss feel frozen in time. In a suicide letter addressed to his lawyer, Baez, Hernandez wrote, "Wrong or right — who knows — I just follow my natural instincts and how it guides me."

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Netflix's Losers Celebrates Our Favorite Failures

The Netflix documentary series Losers focuses on sports' greatest losers and the lessons we can learn from them. It tells the stories of eight of the most unfortunate runners-up. It's about the human drama in losing, and the personal, physical and societal challenges athletes face.

Everyone loves a good loser, don't they? We admire them for their perseverance, their willingness to get back up and keep going in spite of the obvious.

But we don't celebrate them as we do victors. Usually, we pity them, their misery and misfortune, desperately wanting to avoid the same fate. Winners are bolded and underlined in the history books, not losers.

A recent Netflix documentary series titled Losers challenges this narrative, instead focusing on sports' greatest losers and the lessons we can take from them. Losers tells the stories of eight of history's most unfortunate runners-up. It revels in the human drama of losing and the personal, physical and societal challenges athletes face. The episodes range from stories of squandered talent and the most grueling of obstacles to gut-wrenching collapses and personal tribulations. It's about crumbling in the face of enormous odds, yet finding the strength to dust yourself off and try again.

Some of the stories are of athletes once on top but experience a sudden fall from glory like the case of Michael Bentt. Michael was a young boxing star in New York City, winning the heavyweight title in 1993. But in his first match after, he got a massive blow to the head and suffered a career-ending brain injury. Following his failure, he fell deep into depression, eventually attempting suicide.

Other losers covered squared off against monumental physical and mental struggles. Mauro Prosperi, an Italian marathoner, enters a 150-mile race in Morocco through the Sahara. During the race, he gets lost in a sandstorm that throws him off course. He must wander with no way back, surviving by drinking urine and eating raw bats. After days and hundreds of miles of wandering, he's miraculously found by soldiers in Algeria. Mauro survives but he's unable to adjust back to normal life.

Then there's the story of American musher Aliy Zirkle. She finished second in the Iditarod three consecutive years, but those losses pale in comparison to what she faced in 2016. She is hit from behind by a man on a snowmobile who then decides to come back toward her, severely injuring her and her dogs. The man, drunk at the time, is charged with reckless endangerment and attempted murder. Aliy not only must face him in court but also struggle with her own trauma, wondering if she'll compete again.

French figure skater Surya Bonaly fails not for misfortune brought on by her own miscues but from social pressures. As a black figure skater in an overwhelmingly white sport, she's held to a higher standard of skill and elegance. In the 1994 World Championships, Surya dominates her routine, and the gold looks certain. But in a shocking turn of events, she finishes second in a completely subjective choice by the judges. In the medal ceremony, she refuses to congratulate the gold medal winner and rips off her silver medal in disgust. It's not the image of a sore loser but one of frustration that she can't overcome a biased institution that will never see her as worthy of gold.

These stories form the emotional core of the series. All their feelings come off as raw and honest in a way we can earnestly empathize with. They're all strong distillations of the behind-the-scenes turmoil we rarely have access to.

An element that stands out, distinguishing Losers from most sports documentaries, is the series' use of animated reenactments to make the moments not caught on camera spectacularly come alive. This animation is best when highlighting the most dramatic scenes, notably Mauro eating bats, and the attack on Aliy. The animated reenactments serve a single purpose; they elicit a strong emotional response from the viewer. One can't help but feel disgusted for Mauro, or terror and anger for Aliy.

Losers is a subtle reprieve of American culture's fixation on winning at all costs. For many, it took facing serious hardship to realize winning wasn't everything. And when that's realized, they could compete again, or excel in other aspects of life not wholly concerned with sport. Mauro and Aliy dealt with the pain of almost dying, yet both found the strength to race again. To this day, neither has finished first, but it's the love of their sport that keeps them motivated. Surya moved on from competitive figure skating to inspire girls of color to participate in the sport. Michael became a writer, actor and boxing trainer for actors in boxing movies.

It's also a rejection that picking oneself up after losing isn't some Herculean accomplishment of individual grit that defines so much of sports storytelling; it's instead a product of hard work, luck, and strong support from people in your corner – for everyone profiled, overcoming the heartbreak and trauma after losing isn't a solitary effort. Aliy got the support of her fellow mushers and her beloved dogs. Michael and Jack needed all the help they could get from the tight-knit boxing and basketball communities. Their stories and the stories of everyone in this series are poignant reminders that life continues after losing and that there are some rewards greater than victory.

But, ultimately, Losers is a reminder of what makes sports so unique, and why we always come back to our favorite teams through the bad times. For those of us who aren't athletes at the top, it's a lot easier to identify with losers than champions. It's easier to place yourself in their shoes, to feel their heartbreak than it is to revel in someone else's glory. In a time and place where we're told winning is all that matters in sports and in so many other aspects of life, it's refreshing to hear from the much-maligned losers and how they learned to keep trudging forward.


Danis a writer and thinker in this crazy, chaotic, stupid world. You can follow him on Twitter @danescalona77.


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