Aaron Hernandez Trial Day 2: His lone courtroom supporter

Shayanna Jenkins sits in the front row of the ninth-floor courtroom of Suffolk Superior Court. Physically it is the closest possible spot – maybe 10 feet, on the other side of the bar – she can be from Aaron Hernandez, who is at the defense table for his double homicide trial.

It’s coming up on four years since Hernandez was dragged by police out of the McMansion the two shared as a dream home in North Attleborough, Mass. He was charged that day with killing Odin Lloyd, Shayanna’s sister’s boyfriend, in a field near that house. Now Hernandez fights charges that he shot and killed Daniel de Abreu and Safiro Furtado in July 2012, in a drive-by in Boston after a brief encounter in a Theater District nightclub.

Whatever fairytale life they envisioned was over upon his first arrest. They were 23 years old and engaged to be married, parents to an 8-month old daughter, beginning a $40 million NFL contract. They were a young family with the world at their feet.

It’s been a long four years.

Hernandez traded a career as a celebrated and well-compensated New England Patriot for a small prison cell he’ll never escape. Hernandez is serving a life sentence without the possibility of parole for Lloyd’s murder. He could get two more life sentences here.

Jenkins has been left to raise their now 4-year-old on her own. Money dried up. Legal issues mounted. Creditors swarmed. The house would go up for sale.

Yet there she is, if not still standing by her man, then sitting as near to him as possible. At her side is her Boston-based attorney, Richard Gedeon, who specializes in family law.

Shayanna Jenkins sits in court for Day 2 of Aaron Hernandez's second murder trial. (AP)

At one point Thursday morning, Hernandez mouthed “I love you” to her. Her fingers hold no rings, engagement or otherwise. She sits quietly, politely and intently as the grind of dry testimony in the case drags on. She is, as always, fashionably dressed and made up.

Thus far, it is believed she is the only friend or family member of Hernandez’s to attend the trial, which on Thursday entered Day 2. Long after the roaring crowds and hometown hangers-ons faded into distant memories, she is, perhaps, his last and only fan.

This is ride or die loyalty.

Jenkins’ name appears on the prosecution’s potential witness list, but no decision has apparently been made as to whether she will be called to testify, according to her attorney.

In this case her role, if there is one, will be nothing like the murder of Odin Lloyd. In that, she had direct involvement, including asking Hernandez if he did it (he said “no” and she left it at that), being present in the house on the night in question and the days that followed, and her ferrying, on Hernandez’s orders, a box covered in clothing out of the house.

Prosecutors believed it contained the murder weapon. Jenkins said she never looked inside and threw it in a dumpster, the location of which she never could recall. The defense insinuated it contained marijuana and drug paraphernalia, something Hernandez might understandably want out of the house in case the inevitable police search was conducted and thus alerting the Patriots to his regular drug use.

Jenkins was granted immunity in the case for her testimony. Jurors later deemed her almost entirely unbelievable, her story riddled with ridiculousness.

One truth came, however, when Shayanna described her relationship with her younger sister, Shaneah, who during the Lloyd trial often sat heartbroken on the opposite of the courtroom. Shayanna said it was “estranged” at that time, the breaking up of two once extremely close sisters who grew up with a single mother in Bristol, Conn.

This spring, Shaneah is expected to finish her degree at the New England College of Law, a true success story. The school sits about a quarter mile from the Suffolk County Courthouse – the two of them on opposite sides of the legal system.

It is but one reminder of how the world, both big and small, has moved on without Shayanna Jenkins and Hernandez, even as the roads keep crisscrossing.

Boston’s Government Center sits even closer in distance to the court than Shaneah’s law school; it’s essentially across Tremont Street. It’s where less than a month ago Hernandez’s old Patriots teammates staged their second Super Bowl victory rally since he was locked up. A short drive down Tremont Street (by then renamed Shawmut) is also the location where prosecutors allege Hernandez gunned down Abreu and Furtado. Thursday’s proceedings were dominated by grim photos of the crime scene. The jury is set to tour it on Friday.

Why Jenkins still comes for Hernandez, now 27, is anyone’s guess. She declined comment through her attorney. She’s never spoken at length with the media. While exceedingly polite around the courthouse, she seeks to maintain whatever privacy she can.

Jenkins and Hernandez began dating in junior high school. Hernandez tried to impress her with grown-up style dates, dinner at a sit-down restaurant and a movie. They were 13. They were on and off throughout Bristol Central high school, where he starred in football and she in track. The relationship survived his time at the University of Florida, where the girl back home wasn’t always a romantic priority. She testified once that she understood dalliances were a reality of life with Hernandez.

When Hernandez was drafted by the Patriots, she soon followed, the couple first moving into a townhouse in Plainville, then a 7,000-square foot home in North Attleborough. It came complete with pool, three-car garage and affluent neighbors, a life that they may have dreamed of growing up, but never seemed fully feasible. The big house is now long gone. It’s been on the market for nearly a year for $1,299,000, or one grand less than they bought it for in 2012.

Police escort Aaron Hernandez from his home in handcuffs in 2013. (AP)

Jenkins now resides in Providence, according to court documents. Hernandez calls home a cell at a supermax security prison in Shirley, Mass. In January, there was a Latin Kings-led riot in a housing unit there. Hernandez lives in a different part of the prison and wasn’t involved.

Back in happier days, Jenkins and Hernandez put a couple of rocking chairs on the front porch in North Attleborough, a perch where they could sit and watch their new world go by.

That was then. This is their current recurring reality.

One sits at another defense table, the other on another hard wooden courtroom gallery bench – their interactions limited to quick glances, separated by murder charges and trial rules and court officers and prison bars and Hernandez’s life of wildness and violence that never needed to happen but left destroyed families, including their own, in its wake.

The trial is expected to take six weeks. She’ll almost certainly be back.