Tattoos on the right forearm of former New England Patriots tight end Aaron Hernandez may provide clues to a double homicide in 2012 for which Hernandez has been indicted. Hernandez will be arraigned next week on two counts of first-degree murder in the slayings of Daniel de Abreu and Safiro Furtado.
Authorities said while the tattoo artists they are looking to interview are not considered suspects or witnesses, they may “have made observations of evidentiary value.”
“It’s the tattoo artist who gave him a tattoo on his right forearm, but we’re not saying what the tattoo was,” Jake Wark, a press secretary for the Suffolk County DA’s office, told USA Today on Wednesday. “We don’t want to influence the statements of anyone who might have this information. So we’re not being specific in which tattoo we’re looking at. What we hope to learn, really we want to get unvarnished, unrehearsed observations from any tattoo artists. It could provide information of an evidentiary value.”
Hernandez has also been charged with the first-degree murder of Odin Lloyd, and authorities are not sure if his tattoos are related to that slaying. When Hernandez first arrived in prison after Lloyd’s death, prison officials felt Hernandez could be in danger because of some gang-related ink on his body.
“We’ll be looking at his tattoos to see if there are any symbols that affiliate with gangs,” Bristol County Sheriff Thomas Hodgson told the Boston Herald last year. “We have to always be vigilant around security and not place him somewhere where there are rival gang members.”
According to the Associated Press, “authorities specifically mentioned several places in their quest for tattoo artists: Hermosa Beach, California; Bristol, Connecticut; Palm Beach and Miami, Florida; Massachusetts; and Rhode Island.”
COMMENTS
Please let us know if you're having issues with commenting.