May 16 (UPI) -- Shayana Jenkins-Hernandez says she knew a different Aaron Hernandez than the one publicly portrayed. She discussed her late fiancé Monday and Tuesday on Dr. Phil.
She told host Dr. Phil McGraw that she believes Hernandez was innocent of murder and doesn't believe he committed suicide.
Hernandez was serving a life sentence after being convicted for the death of Odin Lloyd. Hernandez was found dead on April 19 in his prison cell at Souza-Baranowski Correctional Center, just five days after he was acquitted of a separate double-murder charge.
The Massachusetts Department of Corrections said the former New England Patriots tight end hanged himself.
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"I don't know what to believe, to be honest with you," Jenkins-Hernandez told McGraw on Monday. "It's just not the Aaron that I know. I think that if he would have done something like this, it would have been at his worst, and I felt like it was looking so bright. We were going up a ladder, in a sense, to a positive direction," she said. "I don't think this was a suicide, knowing him. I don't know. I don't know."
Jenkins-Hernandez has doubts that a suicide note left behind was written by Hernandez, telling Dr. Phil that the note "wasn't personal." She also said someone could have duplicated his handwriting.
A Massachusetts judge vacated Hernandez's murder conviction after his death.
On May 5, a court revealed part of Hernandez's suicide note.
"Shay, you have always been my soul mate and i want you to live life and know I'm always with you," the letter stated. "I told you what was coming indirectly."
Jenkins-Hernandez said she did not know what Hernandez meant when he said "you knew what was coming." She also said that Hernandez did not signal to her that he wanted to commit suicide.
Authorities said in an official death report that Hernandez belonged to the Bloods street gang, but Jenkins-Hernandez said that she didn't think Hernandez was in a gang.
Jenkins-Hernandez told Dr. Phil that Hernandez wasn't a gang member to "her knowledge." McGraw asked if she felt "uncomfortable" around his friends.
"Everyone has their own choice in friends. He didn't have the best choice in some friends, but that didn't make him a bad person," she said.
"I wouldn't say I felt uncomfortable in my home. I separated myself...I pick and choose my battles, and there's some things that I pressed on and some things I didn't."
Hernandez got into a prison fight in 2015. He also had a Bloods gang tattoo, according to ABC News.
His fiancé said the couple enjoyed listening to "slow jams," like songs from the band Savage Garden. He ended his suicide note, writing: "I KNEW I LOVED YOU = SAVAGE GARDEN."
"We are both very into slow jams," Jenkins-Hernandez told McGraw. "Not necessarily a special meaning, but I of course have listened to it. I know the song. It puts me in a place where I feel he may have been then. If that's the case, I was just trying to. When reading it and listening to the music you know, you try to put yourself in his frame of mind."
Lloyd dated Jenkins-Hernandez's sister. Hernandez signed a five-year contract in 2012 with the Patriots, worth up to $40 million.
"It wasn't necessarily my money. It was his," Jenkins-Hernandez said on Dr. Phil.
The 27-year-old was picked by the Patriots in the fourth-round of the 2010 NFL Draft.
Hernandez's family plans to donate his brain to scientists to examine if he had Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy. The former football star left behind a 4-year-old daughter. Hernandez-Jenkins still wears her engagement ring and said she will eventually hand it down to her daughter, whom she says didn't know her dad was in prison.
