Fatal car crash link to NFL suspect Aaron Hernandez's murder investigation

A MAN married to former NFL star Aaron Heandez's cousin was killed in a car seized just days earlier by police investigating Heandez for murder.

Thaddeus Singleton III, 33, of Bristol, Connecticut, was killed early on Sunday when the car he was driving slammed into the Farmington Country Club, police said.

They said the car was registered to a man, reportedly Heandez's uncle, whose home has been searched several times, most recently on Tuesday, and from which the vehicle was seized on Friday. The crash remains under investigation.

It is the latest in a string of twists in the Heandez case who was arrested on suspicion of murdering his girlfriend's sister's boyfriend, Odin Lloyd, and then was fingered for a separate double-murder.

When Aaron Heandez first went before a judge to face a murder charge, a defence attoey said the former New England Patriots tight end had never been accused of a violent crime. But Heandez is apparently no stranger to violence.

Since he was arrested last week in the shooting death of Lloyd, whose body was found a kilometre away from Heandez's home, a portrait has emerged of a man whose life away from the field included frequent encounters with police that started as long ago as his freshman year at the University of Florida.

An acquaintance sued Heandez, claiming he was shot after a fight in a strip club earlier this year. A 2007 bar fight left a restaurant worker with a burst eardrum. An unsolved double killing at a Boston nightclub last summer. All violent incidents, all with possible ties to the once-dominating athlete who now sits in a private cell for his own protection.

Heandez has pleaded not guilty in the shooting death of 27-year-old Lloyd, whose body was found June 17 not far from Heandez's North Attleborough, Massachusetts, mansion. His defence team has called the case circumstantial and said Heandez looks forward to clearing his name.

But even before the 23-year-old's recent arrest, public records and interviews show he had been involved in police inquiries in the past, first in Florida and then in the Boston area.

A swo court complaint from Florida's Eighth Judicial Circuit details Heandez's apparent involvement in an April 2007 fight at a restaurant called The Swamp in Gainesville. The partially redacted document says the restaurant worker told police that Heandez, who was then 17, punched him in the head while he was escorting the subject out of the business after a dispute about payment of a bill.

Tim Tebow, now a member of the Patriots and at the time Florida's star quarterback, is listed as a witness. The report said Heandez asked him to intervene in the verbal dispute before the assault.

The complaint classifies the offence as "felony battery." It wasn't clear on Tuesday how the case was resolved.

Also in 2007, Heandez was among three Florida football players and another who had gone on to the NFL who were questioned by Gainesville police after a double shooting that happened after a Florida loss. Police said the players provided the information investigators wanted. No charges were filed.

A request for comment left on Tuesday evening with a spokesman for Heandez's legal team was not immediately retued.

Although Heandez is facing a murder charge, his current legal troubles may not end there.

Police in his hometown of Bristol, Connecticut, said on Tuesday that Boston police asked for their help with a double homicide investigation linked to the former NFL star.

Bristol Police Lt. Kevin Morrell said the request was based on evidence developed through the investigation of Lloyd's slaying. He said police were asked to search the same home in Bristol for both investigations, and they seized a vehicle at the address Friday - the very vehicle that was involved in the fatal car crash on the weekend.

Two men died in the shooting in Boston's South End on July 15, 2012, and another was wounded. Witnesses reported seeing gunfire coming from a gray SUV with Rhode Island licence plates. Authorities said 29-year-old Daniel Jorge Correia de Abreu and 28-year-old Safiro Teixeira Furtado were killed, but police didn't identify the third victim.

Boston police have declined to comment on whether Heandez is being looked at as a possible suspect in that case.

Heandez has been connected to still more incidents involving guns, although none has resulted in criminal charges against him.

A man who claims Heandez shot him in the face in February after an argument at a Florida strip club filed a civil lawsuit days before police arrested Heandez.

Plaintiff Alexander Bradley claims Heandez shot him with a handgun, causing him to lose his right eye. But after someone found the Connecticut man bleeding in an alley behind a Palm Beach County store following the sound of a gunshot, he told police he didn't know who shot him and gave only a vague description of possible assailants.

Bradley's lawyer, David Jaroslawicz, wouldn't comment on Tuesday about the nature of the alleged dispute between his client and Heandez. He said the two flew to South Florida together before getting into a dispute at a Miami club.

The attoey said Bradley, who worked for Stanley Steamer before the shooting, had done some work for Heandez and that the two also hung out socially a few times and had known each other for several years.

"Whether or not Heandez shot him deliberately or accidentally only Heandez can tell us and right now he's not doing too much talking," Mr Jaroslawicz said in a phone interview.

Authorities have also linked Heandez to a May 18 fight outside a bar in Providence, Rhode Island, that involved a gun.

A prosecutor with the Bristol County district attoey's office has said that a man who matched the description of a man seen on video with Heandez on the night of Lloyd's slaying was seen putting a gun under a car during the Rhode Island incident.

Authorities traced that gun to a Florida gun shop.

Then following Lloyd's death, police said they recovered a .22-calibre gun near the defendant's home - a weapon authorities said was traced to the same store.