The body of Aaron Hernandez will be moved to a funeral home in Bristol this weekend, according to sister station NBC Boston.
The former NFL player's body is currently being held in Watertown, Massachusetts at Faggas Funeral Home and is expected to be at the O'Brien Funeral Home on Saturday.
The death certificate listed the body's "immeidate disposition" will be to the Brookside Crematory in Berlin with April 25 listed as the date.
The former New England Patriots tight end's death was officially ruled a suicide. The state medical examiner said the cause of death was axphyxia by hanging, Worcester District Attorney Joseph Early Jr. said in a statement Thursday.
Authorities said investigators found three handwritten notes next to a Bible in Hernandez's cell. The contents of those notes have not been released.
Hernandez, 27, was serving a life sentence for murder and just last week was acquitted in two other killings before he hanged himself with a bed sheet attached to his cell window at the Souza Baranowski Correctional Center in Shirley, Massachusetts.
About an hour after he was found, Hernandez was pronounced dead at UMass-Memorial Health Alliance Hospital in Leominster, according to a statement from the Massachusetts Department of Correction. He was in a single cell in a general population unit in the maximum-security state prison.
Investigators say Hernandez blocked access to his cell from the inside by jamming cardboard into the door tracks. They said there were no signs of a struggle and Hernandez was alone at the time of the hanging.
Questions have been raised over whether guards carried out the proper hourly cellblock checks.
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Hernandez was locked in his cell around 8 p.m. Tuesday and no one entered until a correction officer observed him at 3:03 a.m. Wednesday and forced his way in, investigators said.
Law enforcement sources tell NBC Boston that Hernandez was found with the words "John 3:16" written on his forehead. The Bible passage reads “For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.”
Another of Hernandez's lawyers said Friday that he will ask a court to have his murder conviction erased. John Thompson said he would file the necessary paperwork in Bristol County, the jurisdiction where Hernandez was tried and convicted in 2015.
Thompson didn't say when he'll file the request. The district attorney would be able to challenge it.
Courts in Massachusetts and a number of other states customarily vacate the convictions of defendants who die before their appeals are heard.
All first-degree murder convictions in Massachusetts trigger an automatic appeal. Hernandez's appeal was still in its early stages and hadn't yet been heard when he hanged himself.
In addition to the suicide, there was a fight over the 27-year-old's brain for CTE testing. Hernandez's family wants his brain to be studied by the Boston University CTE Center for a brain disease found in some football players. While state officials have now said they would release the brain to the family, that announcement wasn't made until after accusations from the former New England Patriots tight end's lawyer.
