Aaron Hernandez hangs his head during his arraignment for the murder of Odin Lloyd in 2013. (AP)

Jonathan (D.J.) Hernandez released a statement Tuesday. It was his first public comment since his brother Aaron took his own life on April 19. It was a tease, with the promise of new information to come. It was designed to increase interest in what Jonathan might be able to reveal.

“Many stories about my brother’s life have been shared with the public – except the story Aaron was brave enough to share with our mother and me,” Jonathan Hernandez said in the statement. “It’s the one story he wanted us to share with the world. It is Aaron’s truth.”

Only, Jonathan chose not to share that story.

Maybe the promise of it wrings more money out of a television show. Maybe it scores a personal media deal. In the interim, it only enflamed interest in why Hernandez, the former New England Patriots star serving a life sentence without the possibility of parole for murder, who hanged himself with a prison bed sheet last month.

Even after that “truth” is revealed, we may never fully know why Hernandez decided to take his own life. His death came just five days after being found not guilty of a 2012 double homicide in Boston. He was still serving a life sentence without the possibility of parole for the 2013 murder of Odin Lloyd.

His death stunned his family and attorneys, who say they saw no indications of pending suicide. Letters left behind offer varying hints. Speculation has ranged from a plot to enrich his fiancée and their 4-year-old daughter via some lost bonus money from the Patriots (still a long shot) to the hiding of personal secrets (still lacking any proof). Jonathan’s statement certainly only fuels the latter theory.

The release in recent weeks of hundreds of pages of records detailing Hernandez’s time behind bars in Massachusetts, however, may point to a far more likely motive.

Hernandez’s life was awful. About as awful as maximum security prison should be for a convicted murderer. And it was unlikely to improve with 50 or 60 years still to serve.

That prison is hard is not news, but Hernandez entered into incarceration with a cocksure attitude and tried to present a hardened edge throughout his nearly four years in custody.

“This place ain’t [expletive] to me,” Hernandez once told officers at the Souza-Baranowski Correctional Center in Lancaster, Massachusetts, according to an incident report. “I’ll run this place and keep running [expletive]. Prison ain’t [expletive] to me.”

His truth on this matter was not so bold – his life was marked by violent fights, attempts by other inmates to extort and intimidate him and outbursts of frustration at the arbitrary strictness of inmate life.

Hernandez, who traded in a 7,100-square-foot mansion and a $40 million NFL contract for a 7-by-10-foot cell was not running anything in prison.

He was surrounded by danger, pressure and, at times, just pathetic ridiculousness.

On the night of Nov. 20, 2013, Aaron Hernandez received a delivery from the jail commissary to his cell in Bristol County [Massachusetts] Jail, where he was housed as he awaited trial for the murder of Odin Lloyd in near by North Attleborough, Massachusetts. (He would be convicted of that crime). The delivery included some cakes, breakfast bars, cosmetics and a whole bunch of honey buns, two dozen in total.

Hernandez was on Disciplinary Detention Status at the time, a common occurrence during his imprisonment. This one was 30 days for possessing 15-feet of “fishing line” used to pass notes, and threatening to beat up the officer who discovered it if the two ever met outside the jail.

Hernandez knew part of his punishment called for a prohibition of commissary. He also knew the mistake – he shouldn’t have received the delivery – would soon be discovered, and corrections officers would confiscate his food. So Hernandez, who once lived a life where he could, and often did, have anything he pleased, sat alone in the middle of the night, as the 20th turned into the 21st, and began to eat, desperately stuffing his face before he lost what little he was allowed to possess.

He ate one honey bun and then another. And another. And another. Each was individually wrapped, so the trash began to pile up, as Hernandez plowed through his order. He alternated sleep with more and more of the pastries. This was Man vs. Food, Bristol County House of Corrections Edition.

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