FALL RIVER, Mass. (AP) – Texts and phone records shown to jurors Friday in the murder trial of former New England Patriots player Aaron Hernandez showed that several messages he exchanged with a co-defendant before the killing were deleted from his phone.
Evidence presented to the jury Friday also showed multiple calls placed from the phone of co-defendant Ernest Wallace to the victim, Odin Lloyd, in the hours before he was killed, including the same minute that Lloyd was seen getting into a car outside his home about an hour before he died early on June 17, 2013.
The records showed that Hernandez, at times using his lawyer’s phone, called Wallace repeatedly the night of June 17 after police had gone to his home and asked him to come to the station while they investigated Lloyd’s death.
Ricardo Leal, who works for the phone company Sprint, testified for 3.5 hours Friday.
Prosecutor Patrick Bomberg went through dozens of nondeleted text messages Hernandez exchanged with Wallace in the days surrounding the killing. Prosecutors have previously said Lloyd sent his last text to his sister at 3:23 a.m. and was killed within minutes, shot to death at an industrial park near Hernandez’s home in North Atteborough.