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A listener note, this episode contains descriptions of suicide and may not be suitable for a younger audience. From Wundery, I'm Lindsay Graham, and this is American scandal. In the early hours of April 19th, 2017, Corrections Officers at Susa Barrenowski Correctional

Center in Lancaster, Massachusetts, found Aaron Hernandez hanging naked from a bed sheet

in his cell.

He was serving a life sentence for the murder of

Odin Lloyd, a semi-professional football player who was also dating the sister of

Hernandez's fiance. He left behind three notes, one for his daughter, one for his fiance, and a third for his lawyer.

Aaron was taken to a hospital where doctors pronounced him dead.

He was 27 years old when he died by suicide.

News of Aaron Hernandez's death left the sports world reeling.

It was a sad end to a tragic fall from Grace for the former New England Patriots' tight end, and it left many people questioning how

someone who seemed to have everything could spiral so far out of control.

In the aftermath, the Hernandez family donated Aaron's brain to Boston University's chronic traumatic

encephalopathy center, which studies CTE, the long-term consequences of repetitive brain trauma,

the kind Hernandez sustained over a lifetime of playing football.

The doctors who studied his brain reported Aaron had the most severe case of CTE they had ever

seen in someone so young, and while they couldn't link his violent behavior directly to the damage in his brain,

they explained how the affected areas involved judgment, impulse control and social behavior,

which raised more questions about the safety of

athletes playing American football and how years of hits to the head can add up.

The entire story also called into question a seeming lack of a capability in the football world.

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