Attorneys for Aaron Hernandez are expected to make the fact that authorities have yet to find a weapon connecting the former NFL star to the killing of Odin Lloyd a major point of emphasis during trial.
CNN reported Lloyd's body was riddled with seven bullets in a killing investigators charge the 24-year-old Hernandez orchestrated and served as the impetus for, yet they have been frustratingly unable to locate the .45 caliber gun that ties the former New England Patriots tight end to the crime.
"That's a hurdle," attorney and sports analyst Michael McCann told CNN. "To be sure, someone can be convicted without a murder weapon. We know that. But it's harder."
Hernandez, Ernest Wallace and Carlos Ortiz have all been charged with first-degree murder in the June 2013 slaying and are expected to go on trial over the next year after all pleaded not guilty. Investigators have speculated Lloyd may have been killed because of his knowledge about other violent crimes Hernandez is suspected of having been involved in.
According to CNN, despite extensive searches of Hernandez's home, his apartment, his cars, an uncle's home, the crime scene, woods, dumpsters, and a lake in Hernandez's hometown of Bristol, Connecticut, investigators have been unable to find the weapon used to kill the 27-year-old Lloyd.
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Surveillance video since retrieved from from Hernandez's North Attleborough home shows him returning to his home on the night Lloyd was killed with a gun in his hands. Police suspect that gun is the weapon used in the execution.
"He's last seen with the firearm before he goes down to the basement door," Bristol County District Attorney William McCauley told a judge at a June 16 hearing. Investigators added the day after Lloyd's body was discovered, Hernandez sent girlfriend Shayanna Jenkins a coded message instructing her to remove something from their basement.
"Go back in back of the screen in movie room when u (sic) get home an (sic) there is a box...jus (sic) in case u (sic) were looking for it!!! ... WAS JUST THINKIN bout that lol wink wink love u....K."
Police have since retrieved surveillance video that shows Jenkins leaving the home with a "rigid box" and later returning not carrying it. The items have never been recovered and Jenkins has since been charged with perjury by prosecutors based on her testimony about it.
"I mean, who knows?" James Sultan, one of Hernandez's attorneys told the court of what could have been in the box. "It could be drugs, it could be something that was connected to this crime that he knew about, that he was covering up for somebody else after the fact. There are all kinds of possibilities. But that's not probable cause that he committed murder."
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