New court records were unsealed Friday in connection with the case against former New England Patriot Aaron Hernandez and state police were told the former New England Patriot stored the gun allegedly used to kill Odin Lloyd in a box in his basement.
Hernandez is being held without bond in a Massachusetts prison, charged with the murder of the 27-year-old semi-professional football player whose body was found in an industrial part not far from Hernandez’s Massachusetts house.
He has pleaded not guilty.
Warrants state that Lloyd was with Hernandez, Carlos Ortiz and Ernest Wallace early on the morning of June 17, before he was found shot to death.
Prosecutors allege that Hernandez orchestrated an execution-style killing because Lloyd talked to the wrong people at a nightclub.
Ortiz is being held on a weapons charged and Wallace was charged with accessory after the fact.
According to the newly unsealed records, Ortiz told police that Hernandez placed the gun allegedly used to kill Lloyd in a black plastic box in his basement. Officials located the box, but the weapon was not inside.
Local
The court documents also state that Ortiz and Wallace spoke with Hernandez’ cousin, Tanya Singleton, about the murder when the two returned from North Attleboro to her Lake Avenue home in Bristol.
Singleton’s husband, Thaddeus, was killed in a car crash in Farmington in June, just hours after police towed an SUV from their home that was sought in connection to a double murder in Boston in July 2012, authorities said.
For the past five days, authorities have been investigating in Bristol, where state police divers have searched the murky waters of Pine Lake in Bristol for evidence connected to the murder case.
That search has not revealed any weapon.
Law enforcement sources told NBC Connecticut that a tip led investigators to Pine Lake, but would not say who the tip was from.
Before the divers left on Friday, they said authorities in Attleboro planned to meet this afternoon and plan the next steps in this search.
Local law enforcement sources said no decision has been made yet, but it is likely that the search will continue in the lake on Monday.
