Killer Inside: The Mind of Aaron Hernandez

This doco series is a stand out. Brilliantly delivered and produced. It hit a nerve with me however, and I can't help but feel deeply emotional and upset. Same way I felt after watching the Paradise Lost trilogy.......the US judicial system is defective and sometimes, downright idiotic. This poor kid took the wrong turn in life but I can't help but feel empathetic towards him. A tragic story but an excellent documentary.

An interesting approach to a murderer who is a complete boggle-- if ever there was a person who simply did not need to do what he did, it is Hernandez. The lack of direct input from everyone most directly involved leads to a mosaic approach to the narrative, much of it carried by inference or the build-up of circumstantial opinions.

There are no answers, and none are given, but the parade of people trying to protect themselves from proof of knowledge or shared culpability becomes a source of fascination in its own right.

Like everyone else I knew the headlines, but getting a detailed view of the whole case was interesting. There's no way to know if Hernandez made his decisions because of abuse, desperation to keep his sex life secret, CTE or was he simply a sociopath? Maybe all of the above. Unlike most documentaries this didn't seem to be driving an agenda, just presenting the facts. They didn't lock in on one reason it could have happened, they detailed many possibilities through their research, Hernandez's jail conversations and interviews with people that knew him. I highly recommend this documentary.

So I am not American, didn't know who Aaron Hernandez was before watching this and needless to say don't watch American football. Nevertheless I really found this to be very interesting and very well presented by the makers of this documentary mostly due to the legal aspects of the story. Like with many other murderers and especially with serial ones, it almost always takes the perfect storm to create one. Because of that I appreciate when portrayals of murderers are nuanced like this one. Understanding why people commit the crimes they do is important for a society in my opinion and I believe this documentary did a good job at presenting facts as well as personal stories about him without taking a stance on the matters. The stories told by his friends and acquaintances should of course be taken with a grain of salt, especially the ones told by his former "best friend" since nothing was presented from Hernandez' side to corroborate those anecdotes. But I liked how they very vividly painted the picture of his whole childhood and the aspects of what it means to be a professional football player.

The missing part for me, or what could have made this more interesting, is if his fiancé would have participated in this and told her side of the story. That way this could have been more balanced. But I can understand why she would decline to do so.

I give this an 8/10 for execution and would recommend it to anyone regardless of one's interest in Hernandez or American football. It is an interesting case on it's own.

As a psychologist myself, I feel I need to question the angle this documentary takes. It tells of an NFL player who commits a murder and the director attempts to find some explanations for his actions. There were also questions about his sexuality and it was spoken of a few times, but this still doesn't lead to an explanation for his motives. Then they talk about his sporting head injuries and propose this as an explanation. The documentary is a bit scattered and sometimes deviates from the central mystery of motive. But never the less, it's a compelling Netflix documentary and a lesson that we shouldn't assume that our sporting icons can't have a dark side.