Aaron Hernandez
(Photo : Reuters)

Netflix documentary claims that Aaron Hernandez was gay and that he suffered from chronic traumatic encephalopathy, NBC News reports.

The arrest of the former NFL star Aaron Hernandez in 2013 was surrounded by many questions and speculations. His arrest dominated headlines and stunned sports fans. 

In the Netflix docuseries titled, "Killer Inside: The Mind of Aaron Hernandez" light is shed on Hernandez's sexuality, chronic traumatic encephalopathy, and the culture of football that may have prompted him to commit suicide. 

The three-episode series of the documentary is an addendum of director Geno McDermott's 2018 documentary "My Perfect World: The Aaron Hernandez Story". The documentary premiered on Wednesday and it began with the familiar details of Hernandez's case. 

Details in the documentary were very clear on how Hernandez and two others, Ernest Wallace and Carlos Ortiz, fatally shot and killed Odin Lloyd near the residence of the former NFL star. Hernandez was then convicted with first-degree murder without any possibility of parole.

According to the investigation of the police, Hernandez commited the crime because he was upset about what he heard Lloyd say in a bar. The police added that Hernandez and two others planned the execution of the victim. They dumped the body of the victim in an industrial park about a half-mile from the Hernandez residence. 

The news about Hernandez stunned sports fans nationwide because he was just in his second year as a young football star after he signed a $40 million contract with New England Patriots at the age of 20. 

The docuseries offers everything that sports fans and those who aren't familiar with him and the story of how he lost everything. 

There have been many speculations about Hernandez's sexuality. In the new documentary series his sexuality was revealed through his lifelong friend, Dennis SanSoucie. The "Killer Inside" shows how Hernandez struggled with his sexuality through most of his life. 

SanSoucie admitted that he and Hernandez had a sexual relationship since they were in seventh grade that lasted into their junior years of high school. He also said that both of them experimented, and if he were to describe them today, he would still consider them to be in a relationship.

SanSoucie also revealed that Hernandez was not able to come out as gay because he was afraid of his abusive father. He even revealed that he and Hernandez were always worried that someone would catch them and that they were always in denial of their sexuality because they were top tier athletes.

Meanwhile, Ryan O'Callahan, a former NFL player who did come out, said that living as a closeted gay professional athlete might cause Hernandez inner turmoil. O'Callahan said that he felt what Hernandez felt.

Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy (CTE)

CTE is a degenerative brain disease that leads memory loss, depression, and dementia. This documentary series links Hernandez to Junior Seau. They are both NFL players with the same condition and both of them committed suicide; Seau in 2012 and Hernandez in 2017. According to the researchers, CTE might lead Hernandez to such behavior as having it can result in poor judgment, lack of inhibition of impulses, paranoia, and emotional volatility.

NFL Football Culture

The series shows how Hernandez believed that football gave him a celebrity status and made him invincible. It was also shown in the series that when he was still a student at the University of Florida, Hernandez was involved in an incident where he punched a bar manager after he was confronted for not paying his bar tab. However, the manager refused to press charges against Hernandez.

Meanwhile, NFL teams were also wary of recruiting him because of his reputation of drug use. Before he entered the draft, and was later drafted in 2010, he wrote letters to the Patriots and other teams that he is willing to subject himself to drug tests as frequently as they saw fit, but he routinely failed the drug tests.

According to Dan Wetzel, a Yahoo columnist, Hernandez was operating on himself. He also said that the NFL was complicit when he was drafted even though his score for maturity and behavior is the lowest possible.

Stephen Ziogas, a childhood friend of Hernandez said, "I think we all want to be apologetic. Anyone close to Aaron wants to say, 'This is why, this is why," but at the end of the day he made these decisions and we can't sit here and say that this is why he made these decisions."

The docuseries of Aaron Hernandez is a cautionary tale that everyone must watch and pay close attention to every detail.