Aaron Hernandez did not leave a suicide note for his rumored prison lover, the former NFL star’s fiancee said in an interview with Dr. Phil McGraw on Tuesday, and also denied rumors that he was gay.
Shayanna Jenkins-Hernandez spoke about the rumors on “The Dr. Phil” show on Tuesday. She said that Hernandez himself told her that he wasn’t gay.
“I don’t know where this came from,” she said. “It’s embarrassing in a sense. It’s hurtful, regardless of if it’s true or not.”
Dr. Phil asked Jenkins-Hernandez if she brought up the rumors about his sexuality with Hernandez in passing or if she pressed it, accusing or confronting him of being gay.
“You never approach any situation by accusing,” she said. “So I asked, he told me [that it wasn’t true] and that was it.”
After it was reported that Hernandez had an affair with his prison mate, 22-year-old Kyle Kennedy, a lawyer for Kennedy said that the inmate believed one of the multiple suicide notes found in Hernandez’s cell was addressed to him.
“My client believes one of the letters was written to him,” Kennedy’s lawyer, Larry Army Jr., said during a news conference in April. “This is coming from his own knowledge of the relationship that he and Hernandez shared, and from someone on the inside who indicated to him that the letter was for him.”
Army declined to name the “person on the inside.”
In her interview with Dr. Phil on Tuesday, Jenkins-Hernandez said that no note was left for Kennedy.
“According to Kennedy’s lawyer, Aaron reportedly wrote Kyle a note. Is that true?” Dr. Phil asked.
“A suicide note, in a sense?” Jenkins-Hernandez responded. “No, that’s not accurate.”
“What is accurate?” Dr. Phil asked.
“It’s accurate that he doesn’t have one,” she said. “There’s nothing for Kyle Kennedy.”
Jenkins-Hernandez said that there were notes left for her, her and Hernandez’s daughter and Hernandez’s lawyers. She said that Hernandez had never mentioned Kennedy and she never heard of him at all before those reports.
In a statement sent to reporters Tuesday evening via his lawyer, Kennedy said that he wanted to “be clear that at no time have I seen a note addressed to me from my close friend Aaron Hernandez but I have reason to believe it was in fact intended for me.”
Kennedy acknowledged that the story about who the letter was sent to “has changed several times” but reiterated that he believes “it is highly likely that it was in fact intended for me.”
Hernandez, 27, was found hanged in his cell at the Souza Baranowski Correctional Center in Shirley, Massachusetts on April 19. His death was ruled a suicide by authorities, but in an earlier segment from her two-part interview with Dr. Phil, Jenkins-Hernandez said that she did not believe he killed himself.
