Shayanna Jenkins Says She Doesn't Believe Aaron Hernandez Death Was Suicide

Speaking publicly for the first time since her fiancée Aaron Hernandez’s death, Shayanna Jenkins-Hernandez expressed doubts about what actually happened inside his prison cell that day. In an interview with Dr. Phil McGraw, Jenkins-Hernandez said she didn’t think he killed himself, despite authorities confirming it as his official cause of death.

“She does not believe he killed himself, surprisingly, because the evidence is pretty overwhelming,” McGraw told Today in a preview of the interview Friday.

McGraw’s interview with Jenkins-Hernandez on “The Dr. Phil Show” is set to air in two parts on May 15 and 16. The former New England Patriot’s star’s fiancée said he showed no signs of preparing to commit suicide in the days before his death.

Read: Everything We Know About The Death Of Aaron Hernandez

“He was very positive, so excited to come home,” she told McGraw, according to Today. “I spoke to him the night before and he was so, you know, ‘Daddy’s going to be home,’ and ‘I can’t wait to sleep in bed with you guys,’ and ‘I can’t wait to just hold you and love you.’ I just know the feedback that I was getting from our last talk had nothing to do with suicidal thoughts.”

She also said she didn’t believe he was dead when she first received the call from prison officials.

“At first I thought it was a hoax,” she said. “I thought that, you know, this was some cruel person. I thought it was a cruel person playing a trick on me.”

Hernandez was found hanged by a bed sheet in his prison cell at the Souza-Baranowski Correctional Center in Massachusetts April 19. He was serving a life sentence there for the 2013 murder of semi-professional football player Odin Lloyd. In a suicide note from Hernandez to his fiancée released by prosecutors, he implied that she would not be surprised by his death.

Read: Aaron Hernandez's Full Suicide Note To Fiancee Shayanna Jenkins

“I told you what was coming indirectly!” he wrote. Jenkins-Hernandez, however, said she was blindsided.

“I felt like we were looking so bright,” she told McGraw. “We were going up a ladder to a positive direction.”

Jenkins-Hernandez isn’t the only one who has expressed doubts about the former football star’s death. His lawyer, Jose Baez, said investigations into his death, as well as conversations with his loved ones, showed no indication he was considering suicide.

Read: Shayanna Jenkins Net Worth After Aaron Hernandez's Murder Conviction Dismissed

“I have no indication from any conversations with Aaron or any conversations anyone has had with Aaron that we’ve investigated that makes that true,” Baez told TMZ in April, noting that the family wasn’t “buying the suicide story.”

“I think that it’s such a long shot of a theory that I don’t give it a shred of credibility at this point,” he said.

During the hearing Tuesday in which Hernandez’s conviction for the murder of Lloyd was vacated, his appellate attorney, John Thompson, again brought up doubts about the nature of his death.

“After a judge ruled that a long-standing legal principle in Massachusetts requires the vacating of Hernandez’s conviction, Thompson told reporters he still has doubts about whether Hernandez killed himself,” the Boston Herald reported. “Thompson says he has recent correspondence from Hernandez in which the former New England Patriots tight end said he was interested in pursuing an appeal.”