Hernandez's cousin again gets probation after another guilty plea

A cousin of former football star Aaron Hernandez – accused of refusing to cooperate with authorities in two murder investigations – pleaded guilty on Tuesday to a contempt charge stemming from her refusal to testify before a grand jury.

Tanya Singleton, 38, was indicted on the single count after she refused to cooperate in the investigation of the July 16, 2012, killings of Brian de Abreu, 29, and Safiro Furtado, 28, and the wounding of a third man at a South Boston intersection.

Singleton, who is battling terminal cancer, was sentenced to two years of probation with home confinement by Suffolk County Superior Court Judge Thomas Connors.

Hernandez, a former star tight end for the New England Patriots, faces murder and assault charges in the deaths of de Abreu and Furtado and murder and weapons charges in a separate slaying, the June 17, 2013, murder of Odin Lloyd, 27, in North Attleboro, Mass.

Singleton, who has described Hernandez as like a brother to her, refused to testify before grand juries in both investigations.

In Tuesday’s hearing on the de Abreu and Furtado killings, prosecutors sought jail time, but Singleton’s attorney said that locking her up would only hasten her death. The attorney, E. Peter Parker, has said repeatedly that Singleton simply chose family loyalty over her civic responsibility to testify before a grand jury.

It was the second time she has faced jail for her decision not to answer any questions before a grand jury.

In August, Singleton was ordered by a judge to be confined to her home for a year and to spend two years on probation after she pleaded guilty to contempt for refusing to testify before a grand jury investigating Lloyd’s death.

In that case, Bristol County Superior Court Judge E. Susan Garsh made it clear that absent the fact Singleton was facing terminal cancer she would have been sent to jail for as much as 2½ years.

Singleton continues to face a pending charge of conspiracy to commit accessory after the fact to murder in Lloyd’s death, an allegation based on the contention that she helped one of the alleged accomplices in Lloyd’s death flee the Northeast and travel to Florida.

Prosecutors have alleged that Hernandez, angered at Lloyd after an incident at a nightclub in Boston, summoned two friends from his hometown of Bristol, Conn., to his mansion in North Attleboro late the night of June 16, 2013. At the same time, according to court documents, Hernandez allegedly contacted Lloyd and arranged to pick him up at his home in the Dorchester section of Boston for a night out.

Hernandez, joined by Carlos Ortiz, 28, and Ernest Wallace Jr., 42, allegedly drove to Boston, picked up Lloyd, and then returned to North Attleboro, pulling into a secluded field in an industrial park that was surrounded by trees and piles of gravel and asphalt.

There, Lloyd was gunned down with multiple shots from a .45-caliber handgun.

Ortiz and Wallace have also been charged with murder in Lloyd’s death, but prosecutors have not disclosed who they think fired the fatal shots.

Hernandez is scheduled to go on trial Jan. 9 in Lloyd’s murder.

In the South Boston case, prosecutors have alleged that Hernandez, angered that de Abreu bumped him on a nightclub dance floor, spilling his drink, seethed for more than an hour before he saw the men leaving the club. At that point, Hernandez allegedly circled the block several times waiting for them to emerge from a parking garage, followed them several blocks, and then opened fire on their vehicle as they sat at a traffic light.