Dominick Reuter/Reuters
Aaron Hernandez, the former NFL star whose violent fall from grace has raised new questions about traumatic brain injuries in football players, reportedly left three suicide notes for loved ones before hanging himself in his prison cell last year. According to Jose Baez, Hernandez’s attorney during the murder trial that saw the former New England Patriots tight end hit with a life sentence, corrections officials handed over three letters found in Hernandez’s cell after his death, the New York Post reports. One was addressed to Baez himself, while the other two were meant for Hernandez’s daughter, Avielle Jenkins-Hernandez, now 5, and his fiancee, Shayanna Jenkins. While the letter to Baez mostly expressed gratitude for his help during the trial, Hernandez’s notes to his fiancee and toddler daughter were far more haunting. Urging Jenkins to “love life,” he wrote, “I told you what was coming indirectly!” He ended the note with biblical references and the phrase, “Not much time. I’m being called.” Speaking to his daughter, Hernandez wrote, “Daddy will never leave you. I’m entering to the timeless realm in which I can enter into any form at any time because everything that could happen or not happened I see all at once!” “Never fear me, but love me with all of you,” he said. Shortly after he was discovered dead in his cell, a brain scan revealed that the late football star had suffered from one of the most severe cases of CTE ever seen by doctors.