(Reuters) - Former New England Patriots star Aaron Hernandez told his fiancée that he had gotten drunk and taken a man he is accused of murdering to an apartment he rented near the team's stadium, according to a text message shown in court on Tuesday.
Hernandez, 25, is accused of killing semiprofessional football player Odin Lloyd, who was dating his fiancée's sister, and is on trial at Bristol County Superior Court in Fall River, Massachusetts, on murder and firearms charges. If convicted, he faces a maximum penalty of life in prison.
Prosecutors contend the former NFL star and two friends, Ernest Wallace and Carlos Ortiz, picked up Lloyd at his Boston home in the early hours of June 17, 2013, and drove him to an industrial park near Hernandez's house in North Attleborough, Massachusetts, where his bullet-riddled body was found later that day.
Wallace and Ortiz have also been charged with murder and will be tried separately.
On Tuesday, Assistant District Attorney Patrick Bomberg showed jurors a text message on Lloyd's cell phone that prosecutors have said was sent by Hernandez to his fiancée, Shayanna Jenkins, two days before the murder, referring to Lloyd and saying he had made a mistake.
"I didn't mean to but got drunk ... and O took care of me an somehow tol him bout my other spot and I just woke up buggin im sorry and on way home," the message read.
Jenkins was listed in Lloyd's phone as "Boss Lady."
The "other spot" was a reference to an apartment Hernandez rented in Franklin, Massachusetts, where police also discovered five boxes of .45-caliber cartridges during their investigation of the shooting.
Lloyd was killed with a .45-caliber handgun, but the weapon used in the murder has not been recovered.
On Monday, a woman who babysat Hernandez's and Jenkins' daughter testified that the former tight end drove her and a friend to the Franklin apartment after they bumped into him while leaving a Boston nightclub around 2 a.m. on June 15, 2013.
Jennifer Fortier said Lloyd was riding in the passenger seat of the SUV driven by Hernandez, and that they said they were going to "the spot." At the apartment, Fortier said Hernandez kissed her before she asked him to stop.
Hernandez's defense team has argued their client had no reason to kill Lloyd because the two were friends.
