Less than 24 hours after Aaron Hernandez committed suicide on April 19, Worcester County district attorney Joseph D. Early Jr. revealed that Hernandez had left three suicide notes in the prison cell where he was found dead.
One note was written to his fiancée and one note was written to his four-year-old daughter, but it's still unclear for whom the third note was written.
The contents of that final note have become somewhat controversial because of what Hernandez might or might not written.
According to a report from Newsweek that came out on April 21, the final note was intended for Hernandez's prison boyfriend, a 22-year-old man named Kyle Kennedy.
In a statement released Tuesday, Hernandez's lawyer, Jose Baez, blasted that report while also adding that authorities were leaking information to "tarnish" his client's reputation.
"Rumors of letters to a gay lover, in or out of prison, are false," Baez said, via Pro Football talk. "These are malicious leaks used to tarnish someone who is dead."
Baez also blames Kennedy and his lawyer for the spread of the rumor.
"Notwithstanding my unambiguous statement that there were no such letters, representatives, on behalf of an individual named Kyle Kennedy, continues to advise the media such a gay love letter exists," Baez said. "Accordingly, on behalf of the family of Aaron Hernandez, I am reaffirming, unequivocally, no such letter to Mr. Kennedy, or any other individual, in or out of prison, exists. l urge anyone continuing to spread these malicious untruths to cease immediately."
Despite Baez's statement, there's still plenty of mystery surrounding the third suicide note. For one, Kennedy's lawyer, Larry Army, did say that the note was intended for his client.
"My client is obviously saddened by the loss of his friend Aaron Hernandez," Army said in a statement on Monday, via WBZ, the CBS affiliate in Boston. "We will be requesting that the letter be turned over to my client as soon as possible."
Although Army insists that Hernandez did leave a letter for Kennedy, the lawyer never mentioned whether the two men had a romantic relationship.
"I'm not at liberty to discuss the nature and the extent of that relationship," Army said Wednesday, via WBZ. "My client has made it very clear that he will, in fact, talk about that relationship in nature and extent, but he wants those words to come directly from his mouth to the world."
Adding more mystery to the third letter is the fact that the Worcester County District Attorney's Office wouldn't confirm the addressee of the letter. Although the DA's office did say the first two letters were intended for Hernandez's fiancee and his 4-year-old daughter, they were mum about the contents of the third letter.
"The information I have is unclear," a spokesman told NBC News this week when asked who the third letter was addressed to.
Army's explanation for the confusion is that the third letter -- intended for Kennedy -- is written in a prison code that outsiders wouldn't understand.
"I was told by a source that the letter and parts of the letter didn't make a lot of sense," Army said. "When I explained that to my client he said there's a language that's spoken and in written form in a prison that is made that way so that it appears incoherent and so that others don't understand what the meaning is."
The truth of the letters could eventually be coming out soon and that's because Baez will not have access to them. Just before Hernandez was buried this week, a judge in Massachusetts ruled that authorities would have to turn over copies of the notes to Hernandez's fiancée.
In other Hernandez news, his legal team filed Tuesday to have his murder conviction vacated. Hernandez was in jail because he was serving a life term for the June 2013 shooting death of Odin Lloyd. Thanks to a Massachusetts legal principle known as "abatement ab initio," a defendant can have a conviction vacated if they're not alive to have their appeals heard.
Hernandez was buried Monday during a private funeral in Connecticut.