Police missed chance to investigate Aaron Hernandez after 2012 murders

BOSTON

Police detectives working a 2012 double murder ignored critical surveillance footage in their possession for more than 11 months — a lapse that may have stymied their investigation of the inexplicable shooting now tied to former football star Aaron Hernandez, a FOX Sports investigation has learned.

That footage included images of a clearly identifiable Hernandez and a close confidante — and it showed the silver Toyota 4Runner driven by the then-NFL star with enough clarity that the numbers on its Rhode Island license plates could be easily read. At the time, the best lead detectives had came from an eyewitness who said the killer was in a silver sport-utility vehicle with Rhode Island plates — an automobile police officials appealed to the public to help find.

The critical section of footage, captured in a Boston parking garage down the street from a nightclub the victims visited, began about 2½ hours before the killings and was obtained by detectives within a week of the July 16, 2012, murders.

But it wasn’t carefully examined until Hernandez was implicated nearly a year later in another murder: the June 17, 2013 slaying of Odin Lloyd. Hernandez, at the time of both shootings the tight end for the New England Patriots, was convicted of murder in that case and sentenced to life in prison.

Court documents on file in Connecticut suggest the footage was not watched until after Lloyd’s killing, more than 11 months after the slayings of Daniel De Abreu, 29, and Safiro Furtado, 28, and wounding of another man.

Boston police Lt. Michael McCarthy, a department spokesman, disputed that inference.