Court documents indicate that the search of a secret “flop house” leased by former New England Patriots tight end Aaron Hernandez has turned up what police say could be key evidence in the murder case against him. Police say they learned about the apartment from Carlos Ortiz, a friend of Hernandez’s whom prosecutors say was with the ex-player the night he allegedly arranged the shooting of Odin Lloyd.
They then searched the $1,200-a-month apartment in Franklin on June 26, according to search warrant records at Wrentham District Court. Among the findings were a white hooded sweatshirt and a cranberry-colored cap in a bedroom, the documents said. Surveillance video showed Hernandez, 23, wearing a similar sweatshirt the night Lloyd was killed on June 17, the records say.
He was wearing the cap in a picture shown on a local news station taken outside a nightclub June 14, the Friday before the killing, the documents said. Prosecutors say Hernandez was upset at Lloyd for talking to certain people at the nightclub.
“The white sweatshirt could be used … to assist in linking Hernandez to the scene of the crime,” trooper Michael Bates wrote in an affidavit in support of one of the search warrants. “The baseball hat could help provide the whereabouts of Hernandez on the Friday night before the homicide.”
The search also turned up several boxes of ammunition, including .22-, .45- and 7.62-caliber ammunition.
Lloyd’s body was found in an industrial park near Hernandez’s North Attleborough home. Prosecutors say Hernandez, Ortiz and another man drove there with Lloyd that night, though they haven’t said who shot Lloyd. Hernandez’s attorneys say the evidence against him is circumstantial and that he’s eager to clear his name.
