Aaron Hernandez's Sexuality Was a Huge Struggle: Ex-Teammate

A teammate of Aaron Hernandez's at the University of Florida tells People the football star, who went from the Florida Gators to the NFL before ultimately killing himself in prison in 2017 at age 27, was dealing with a lot. "Everything about Aaron was a struggle," the person says. "He had these really angry outbursts a lot, over insignificant things. And when he started, he couldn't stop." Hernandez's father had died in 2006, the year before he arrived at the school, and Hernandez had conflicted feelings about the man, who he said was abusive. He also had a rocky relationship with his mother. "One minute she was dead to him, the next minute, he wanted to call her to see how she was," the teammate says. In addition to two violent incidents in his first year at the school, the teammate says Hernandez struggled with his sexuality, as has been rumored for years.

"He wanted to be the big man on campus who was having sex with a lot of women, but then he'd find guys on the down low," the teammate says. "The girls were public, the guys were not." The interview comes ahead of Netflix's Wednesday release of the three-part documentary Killer Inside: The Mind of Aaron Hernandez, which the Daily Beast says also delves into Hernandez's sexuality and includes interviews with Hernandez's alleged secret male lover. Per the DB, the docuseries contends "Hernandez’s screwy psychological state was due to a domineering father who never would have accepted his son's sexuality, and ... a football career that didn't grant him the opportunity to be out and proud." Another documentary, Aaron Hernandez's Killing Fields, debuting Saturday on REELZ, addresses how Hernandez's sexuality may have played a role in his murder of Odin Lloyd, per Us. (More Aaron Hernandez stories.)