A few hours after she learned her boyfriend, Odin Lloyd, was dead, Shaneah Jenkins visited her sister, Shayanna, in the mansion Shayanna shared with Aaron Hernandez, who is currently on trial for his role in Lloyd's murder.
The visit was a difficult moment for the Jenkins sisters, and as Shaneah described it for jurors Tuesday, her testimony became the most dramatic and most important in the trial thus far.
Shaneah told the jury that as she and her sister visited in Hernandez's mammoth living room, Shayanna received a series of texts and phone calls. Although the sisters had always been close, according to Shaneah's testimony, Shayanna began to act strangely and turned "secretive" as the calls and texts continued. On two or three occasions, Shayanna went to the basement of the house without telling Shaneah why or what she was doing.
On the final trip to the basement, Shaneah said, her sister carried a large, black garbage bag. A few minutes later, she saw Shayanna walking through the back yard without a word of explanation.
When she returned to the living room, Shayanna asked to borrow Shaneah's car, something she had never done before, and claimed she had to go to the bank to get "money to pay the housekeepers," something that had not been mentioned previously when Shaneah had been in the house.
Shaneah testified that Shayanna returned to the house in approximately 30 minutes.
What was Shayanna doing in the basement? What did she put in the car? Where did she go? The answers to these questions are likely critical in the prosecution of Hernandez. In a pretrial court filing, prosecutor William McCauley included the language of a text message Hernandez sent to his fiancée, with McCauley asserting the language was a coded message for her to do something important.
In that text message, Hernandez said to Shayanna, "Go in back of the screen in the movie room when u get home [it's in the basement of the house] an there is the box avielle [their infant daughter] like to play with in the tub jus in case u were looking for it!!!! Member how u ruined that big tv lmao WAS JUST THINKIN about that lol wink wink love u TTYL .... K."
Shaneah's account of the texts, the phone calls, the garbage bag and the sudden borrowing of her car was the first indication of how the prosecution will attempt to fill the gap of the missing murder weapon. Shaneah offered the important testimony with absolute confidence and calmly introduced the jury to a crucial turning point in the case. She was a picture of veracity. She will face cross-examination from Hernandez's legal team Wednesday.
There is clearly more to come on the issue. It's important to remember Shayanna, who continues to live in Hernandez's mansion, is facing a perjury charge in this case -- prosecutors have said she lied dozens of times during her grand jury testimony. But even that charge is in play during this trial: McCauley filed a motion to grant immunity from the perjury charge to Shayanna, a maneuver that could lead to her testimony in court. Judge E. Susan Garsh has not made any public ruling on the request, though it appears she has discussed it with the prosecutors and the Hernandez lawyers.
Two sisters who were close seem to be on opposite sides of a courtroom. One is a witness offering important evidence about her sister, and the other must decide whether she is willing to offer important evidence about her fiancé.