New Aaron Hernandez Doc Set at ID Turns Focus on Connecticut Community
- Investigation Discovery is releasing a two-hour special focusing on the late footballer Aaron Hernandez and the dangerous men in Bristol, Connecticut, including two other athletes from his high school football team who also became murderers.
Warner Bros' Investigation Discovery has announced a two-hour special on the late fallen footballer Aaron Hernandez.
Aaron Hernandez and the Untold Murders of Bristol will focus on the circumstances in Bristol, Connecticut, that bred a community of dangerous men, including three athletes on the same high school football team — Hernandez, Alex Ryng and Nicholas Brutcher — who all went on to become murderers.
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It started with a photo of the men together on the football team and wanting to bring more attention to Murder Under the Friday Night Lights , said Jason Sarlanis, who oversees programming development and production at Investigation Discovery. He spoke during a fireside chat at Content London on Thursday while confirming the news of the special ahead of the show's fourth season.
"What's the common thread in the high school community? It so intrinsically worked with what we're doing with Murder Under the Friday Night Lights that it birthed this new project," he told reporters, including The Hollywood Reporter . "And to their credit, the producers were able to get incredible access to a new archive and people willing to speak for the first time. They've outdone themselves."
Hernandez had just earned a $41-million contract with the New England Patriots when he was arrested for the murder of Odin Lloyd , a semi-professional football player who was also the boyfriend of his future sister-in-law. He was charged with the murders of two other men and convicted to life in prison. During a legal appeal that was having notable success, Hernandez was found hanging from a sheet in his prison cell on April 19, 2017. His death was ruled a suicide, with some pointing to a radio show outing him as gay or bisexual as the impetus.
Ryng, once a fellow schoolmate of Hernandez at Bristol Central High School, was the culprit in a murder-suicide of his wife and three young children in 2014.
In 2022, Brutcher made a fake 911 call requesting the police and ambushed the three responding officers, Sergeant Dustin DeMonte, Officer Alex Hamzy, and Officer Alec Iurato, with a semi-automatic rifle. Brutcher killed Hamzy and fatally wounded DeMonte before he was then shot and killed by a wounded Iurato.
When probed by C21 editor Clive Whittingham on how Warner Bros. makes ethical and not exploitative true crime, Sarlanis said: "We have to put the victims and their families first. We allow our filmmakers to do that specifically as they see fit, but it's a line we don't cross. We take that responsibility for the genre we're in very seriously, but it's not just a responsibility to the people you know on camera."
He added, "It's a responsibility to people behind the scenes, whether they are working in our organization or with our producers. We want to make sure their mental health is strong as well. I mean, this is a dark subject matter, and it can trigger people, and so we really put that at the forefront of what we do as well. [And it's] a responsibility to our viewer as well."
Sarlanis and his team at ID are behind a recent slew of true-crime hits, including Quiet on Set : The Dark Side of Kids TV , which focused on former Nickelodeon producer Dan Schneider ; The Curious Case of Natalia Grace, which will release a follow-up chapter in January, 2025; and the recent Chris Brown: A History of Violence documentary . Also in 2025, the network has set a docuseries exploring the rise and fall of Sean "Diddy" Combs.
Aaron Hernandez and the Untold Murders of Bristol also follows the hit FX scripted series on Hernandez from prolific true-crime producer Ryan Murphy, American Sports Story: Aaron Hernandez , which concluded in November and dramatized the NFL star's story without letting him off the hook.
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