Third Person with Ties to Hernandez Dies Since Arrest

(AP) Conn. woman with ties to Aaron Hernandez dies
By PAT EATON-ROBB
Associated Press
HARTFORD, Conn.
Police are investigating the death of a 27-year-old woman with ties to Aaron Hernandez, the former New England Patriots player charged with murder.

Tabitha Perry was found unconscious and not breathing inside a Southington home. She died Monday.

Perry, of Bristol, survived a car accident in June that killed Hernandez’s friend Thaddeus Singleton III. Police say she and Singleton, who was married to Hernandez’s cousin, had a child together.

The state medical examiner’s office said Tuesday that Perry’s death required further study, and police said they were waiting for the results of toxicology tests.

“There were no suspicious circumstances found at the time of the investigation,” Sgt. Jeffry Dobratz said in a release.

Hernandez, who grew up in Bristol, is charged with murder in the shooting death of 27-year-old Odin Lloyd, whose body was found June 17 not far from Hernandez’s mansion in North Attleborough, Mass. He has pleaded not guilty.

Several people with ties to Hernandez have died in the past six months.

Robert Valentine, a brother of Aaron Hernandez’s mother, died in a crash in August. Singleton died June 30 when the car he and Perry were in went off a road in Farmington, went airborne and became lodged inside a country club building.

Police have ruled that both crashes were accidents.

Investigators have said that Singleton introduced Hernandez to Ernest Wallace and Carlos Ortiz, the two other defendants facing charges in Lloyd’s death.

Wallace and Ortiz spent time living in the home of Singleton’s wife, Tanya, according to police. The men returned to that house, which is owned by another Hernandez uncle, after Lloyd was killed, according to court filings.

Lately, Tanya Singleton has been staying in a Massachusetts jail. She faces charges of criminal contempt and conspiracy to commit accessory after the fact in the Lloyd shooting.

Another relative of Thaddeus Singleton III, John Alcorn, testified in September before a Hernandez-related grand jury in Massachusetts. Alcorn, whose nickname is “Chicago,” is the man mentioned in a Massachusetts police report in June as the possible owner of a .38-caliber gun seized from a car after an accident in Springfield, Mass.

Authorities have been investigating whether Hernandez is linked to a 2012 double homicide in Boston that reportedly involved a .38-caliber gun.

While investigating Lloyd’s death, police searched the home where Singleton lived in Bristol and found an SUV rented in Hernandez’s name that was wanted in connection with those killings.