Aaron Hernandez’s Alleged Gay Lover Describes Years-Long Relationship in Netflix’s ‘Killer Inside’

If you think you know everything about Aaron Hernandez, think again. On Wednesday, Netflix released their new Aaron Hernandez documentary, Killer Inside: The Mind of Aaron Hernandez, a three-part deep dive into the life and career of the convicted murderer and former NFL player. In the first episode, high school quarterback Dennis SanSoucie alleges that he and Hernandez were in “an on and off-relationship from seventh grade to junior year of high school,” and during that time, they “experimented” with one another. “You mean to tell me that the quarterback and the tight end, he’s gay? He sleeps with other men?” says SanSoucie. “We had to hide what we were.”

In Killer Inside, SanSoucie describes his years-long friendship with Hernandez, which first began on the football field. The duo attended Bristol Central High School in Connecticut, where they dominated with SanSoucie at quarterback and Hernandez as tight end; off the field, they smoked weed together and played around. “We used to horseplay, that was our thing. We used to love horseplaying and having fun with each other because we were just kids full of life,” says SanSoucie.

SanSoucie claims that his friendship with Hernandez soon turned romantic. “Aaron and I had an on and off-relationship from the seventh grade to junior year of high school,” he alleges. “Aaron participated with many people. I was a small piece of Aaron’s sexual activity.”

“At that time frame, the girls didn’t really hang out with the boys after school, so, you know, me and Aaron experimented,” continues SanSoucie. “And it was something that, I’ll be honest, that we continued because we probably enjoyed it. Um, hello?”

“If I look at it now in the year that we’re in, yes we were in a relationship back then. But at the time you don’t look at it like that,” he says, adding that there weren’t many “kids out of the closet” at their high school. “Here I am the football player — I was in such denial, such denial because I was an athlete. You mean to tell me that the quarterback and the tight end, he’s gay? He sleeps with other men? No, it doesn’t sit right with people. It doesn’t sit right within our own stomach at that time.”

SanSoucie goes on to describe his alleged relationship as Hernandez as “weird,” particularly because both of their fathers were openly homophobic. “After doing it, it was like, ‘F***, did someone catch us? Did someone know? Dude, if we get caught, it’s ruined. Our parents are going to disown us,'” he recalls.

Hernandez was especially “terrified of his father finding out.” SanSoucie describes Dennis Hernandez as “a man’s man” and “a father that slapped the f*ggot right out of you.” He says that Hernandez was always on his best behavior around Dennis, as his father was allegedly abusive. “He knew he had to be on a different set of behavior around his father. And I was very similar. So it was something that — we just had the ability to turn it on and turn it off. We had to hide what we were,” says SanSoucie.

While The Killer Inside is ultimately focused on explaining Hernandez’s murderous turn — he was convicted of murdering Odin Lloyd in 2015, and in 2017, he committed suicide in prison — the question of his sexuality is a major point of the docuseries. The Aaron Hernandez Netflix documentary suggests that the former New England Patriot repressed his queer identity throughout his lifetime, both as a young football player and later in prison, and that the stress of hiding his true self contributed to his downfall. As former Patriot Ryan O’Callaghan, who came out as gay in June 2017, puts it, “If he was able to to be himself and have some of these negative things not in his life, what kind of difference would that have made?”

Killer Inside: The Mind of Aaron Hernandez is now available to stream on Netflix.

Watch Killer Inside: The Mind of Aaron Hernandez on Netflix