Aaron Hernandez's innocence rests on jury believing amazing coincidences

NORTH ATTLEBORO, Mass. – There are two wholesome white rocking chairs on the front porch of the dream home here that Aaron Hernandez owns but no longer lives in.

One chair is sized for an adult, the other for a child. As a cold, heavy wind swept through on Wednesday afternoon, the chairs rocked quickly, as if a couple of ghosts were sitting in them, pushing them back and forth.

Two is all that's needed now in the house where Hernandez's fiancée Shayanna Jenkins and the couple's 2-year-old daughter reside, what with dad off in jail.

It's a heck of a place Hernandez bought back in 2012, dropping $1.3 million on its 7,100 square feet, five bedrooms, six baths and of course the pool guarded by thick woods out back. All of it sits in the upscale Westwood Heights subdivision, seemingly far from whatever old life and old dangers Hernandez should have been leaving behind in Bristol, Conn.

An ADT Security sign sits ironically in a front flowerbed, an effort to scare off any criminals before they  think of invading this slice of upscale, three-car-garage, cul-de-sac America.

Thirty-five miles south of here, at the Fall River Justice Center, the murder trial of Hernandez churned on Wednesday, with the evidence and alleged events zeroing in back here, a setting seemingly too placid to be the focus of such alleged wickedness.

Wednesday's testimony centered on the murder scene and footprints left behind there. These are perhaps two of the most damning pieces of evidence against – and thus dumbest supplied by – the former New England Patriots star, who stands trial for the June 17, 2013 murder of Odin Lloyd.

First, there's the murder scene itself, an out-of-the-way, undeveloped patch of sand at the end of an industrial area that sits less than a quarter-mile jog from Hernandez's front door.

Lloyd grew up and lived on the gang-torn streets of Dorchester, just east of Blue Hill Avenue, 40 miles north – and a world away – in Boston. The Antiguan immigrant survived that, was trained as an electrician at community college, became a landscaper and then, at 27, turned up dead from six middle-of-the-night gunshot wounds.

And it happened all the way out here?

About the only place more suspicious would have been Hernandez's own backyard. The location alone all but begged police to make him the primary suspect.

After all, late on the evening in question, Hernandez and two associates picked Lloyd up at his house in Boston. To get to the industrial park all they needed to do was follow Hernandez's traditional commute home from the city, past Foxborough where the Patriots play, and just before getting to his mansion, wheel into that dark empty lot.

If Aaron Hernandez had nothing to do with Odin Lloyd's murder, as his defense contends, well, that's an all-timer of a coincidence.

Second, there's the detailed testimony of shoe prints found in the soft dirt of the industrial park. They were easy to identify as size-13 Air Jordan Retro 11 Lows – a rare, exclusive and expensive sneaker released in 2013.

If you were trying to get caught, that's the kind of shoe you'd troop through dirt just begging to take your print.

There were just 93,000 pairs total in circulation in all of America back in June of 2013, according to testimony from a Nike consultant. A small portion of that specific brand and style were size-13s – one of the larger sizes made, and thus an even less common purchase.

What is Hernandez's shoe size? Try 13. Is he a sneaker enthusiast with dozens of pairs of collectables, including a proclivity for Jordans? The overstuffed shelves of his walk-in closet say as much.

Worse for him, the jury has already seen surveillance footage from that night, taken at a gas station en route to picking Lloyd up, in which the Nike expert said Hernandez is wearing those distinctive sneakers, with their impossible-to-miss white patent leather.

Then there is a police-evidence photo of Hernandez's closet, where a pair of just those shoes is clearly visible.

The cops didn't grab the Jordans when they took that picture because they hadn't gotten the footprint evidence back. When they eventually returned months later, the sneakers were gone. It hardly mattered. Whoever removed the shoes, they didn't take with them the empty Nike box with the label declaring they were once inside of it.

This is the legal peril Hernandez is in.

Forget all the other circumstantial evidence piled up against it; Hernandez's defense team has a nightmare just trying to explain away the location of the body and the shoe prints in the sand. If the prosecution just focused on that, they'd have a solid case.

Could it really be that while, yes, Hernandez did pick Lloyd up in Dorchester and cell phone records show he did drive immediately back to North Attleboro and tire marks do show his rental car did pull into that empty, secluded lot, and shoe prints do conclude that the rare sneaker Hernandez was seen wearing that same night were imprinted right near where the body was shot … it was actually someone else, unassociated with him, who committed the murder?

Like there was just another random guy?

So after Hernandez left Lloyd in perfect health in a darkened lot, someone else just happened by, in the middle of the night, to step out of the peaceful, quiet woods here, coincidentally wearing size-13 Air Jordan Retro 11 Lows, and killed Odin Lloyd?

Standing in that empty field Wednesday, a place the jury personally toured earlier in the trial, staring at all the pines and all the remoteness and all the big, fancy houses nearby, the scene is surreal, in many ways even more powerful than precise expert testimony back in Fall River.

This is a murder sight? This random, tranquil spot?

This is somehow a coincidence?

This place that Aaron Hernandez and Shayanna Jenkins and so many other rich, successful people rightfully envisioned as the ideal setting to embrace a dream-come-true life, spending their afternoons peacefully rocking in front porch chairs with their kids?

The sun was out, but that cold wind just kept blowing through.