Jury Watches Video Of Hernandez's Fiancee Removing Trash Bag Day After Murder
FALL RIVER (CBS) - When court began Tuesday, the seat behind Aaron Hernandez was empty. His fiancee, Shayanna Jenkins, has not been in the spot reserved for his family and friends in five days. She did show up in surveillance video prosecutors played for jurors.
It shows Jenkins hauling a large black trash bag with an outline of a box inside the day after the murder. Several camera angles show it, including one that has her stuffing it into the car trunk of her now estranged sister, the victim's girlfriend, Shaneah Jenkins.
Shaneah has testified her sister asked to borrow her car that day to get cash for the house cleaners. That story doesn't add up, since the head cleaner has testified she was paid by check. Her assistant, Clara Barbosa, described through an interpreter, how Shayanna acted the day she saw her with the trash bag. "She was crying. She was nervous. She was walking back and forth."
The jury also heard from a sports trainer Hernandez hired to get him primed for Patriots training camp. Hernandez canceled appointments the day of the murder, and again the next day. "...Something serious came up," he texted him.
It was the same day Massachusetts State Police Sgt. John Moran called a number found on the victim, Odin Lloyd's cellphone. Hernandez, who was at the North Attleboro Police Department awaiting questioning, answered the phone. "He said hello," Moran testified. "When he said hello, what did you do?" asked Prosecutor William McCauley. "I hung up," answered Moran.
Prosecutors don't have a murder weapon, but they did have a State Police crime lab worker show a mattress cover with impressions of a gun in it. Hernandez's maids have testified they saw a gun hidden under a mattress in a guest bedroom where his alleged accomplice Ernest Wallace stayed.
Lloyd's mother stayed in the courtroom, watching even as graphic autopsy photos of her son were shown. "My baby," she mouthed. Eventually, she became overwhelmed and had to leave, openly weeping.