BOSTON (AP) - Court records show the estate of former NFL star Aaron Hernandez currently has a dollar value of zero.
The former New England Patriots tight end took his own life last week in prison.
Hernandez’s fiancee and her lawyer said in an affidavit filed Wednesday in probate court that Hernandez’s estate is currently worth “$0.00” with “no monies available and no identifiable personal assets.” The Boston Herald first reported on the affidavit.
But there is an offer to buy Hernandez’s house - worth nearly $1.3 million. The mother of a man Hernandez was convicted of killing in 2013 has filed a wrongful-death lawsuit seeking any proceeds from the sale. Odin Lloyd was a semi-professional football player who was dating the sister of Hernandez’s fiancee when he was fatally shot.
Hernandez was serving a life sentence in Lloyd’s killing when he hanged himself April 19, five days after he was acquitted in a 2012 double slaying.
His house in North Attleboro has been on the market for over a year. The Colonial-style house includes a pool with a waterfall, a movie theater and a sauna.
On Wednesday, the court approved a request by Hernandez’s fiancee, Shayanna Jenkins Hernandez, to expand her authority over the estate in order to sell the house. The pending sale price was not disclosed in court filings.
Jenkins Hernandez is seeking to preserve whatever she receives for the house to cover any damages awarded in the Lloyd case “and any potential future actions arising out of decedent’s death,” the court documents state.
Lawyers for Jenkins Hernandez and Lloyd’s mother, Ursula Ward, asked Thursday that the name of the potential buyer be kept sealed. Ward’s lawyer also filed paperwork changing the defendant listed in the lawsuit from Hernandez to his estate.
Also Thursday, lawyers for Hernandez’s estate, his fiancee and their young daughter wrote to prison officials and the prosecutor’s office investigating Hernandez’s death, asking them to stop leaks to the media about letters and other writings by Hernandez found in his cell and certain details of the investigation.
The letter said the dissemination of the information “continues to cause the family severe emotional distress during an already difficult period.”
A Department of Correction spokesman said the agency had no comment on the letter. A spokesman for the Worcester District Attorney’s Office did not immediately return calls seeking comment.
On Monday, state Secretary of Public Safety Dan Bennett, responding to comments made by one of Hernandez’s attorneys in court, said the state will do “everything we can … to find out who is producing this information, because some of it clearly is coming from agencies.”
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