FALL RIVER, Mass. -- A cousin of ex-new England Patriot Aaron Hernandez agreed to be held without bail on a contempt of court charge on Friday for refusing to testify before the grand jury investigating the murder of Odin L. Lloyd in North Attleboro two months ago.
Tanya Cummings-Singleton, 37, of Bristol, Conn. pleaded not guilty to the criminal charge. Her lawyer, E. Peter Parker, of Boston, said she agreed to be held without prejudice.
Superior Court Judge Frances McIntyre continued her case until Oct. 3. Cummings-Singleton, a heavy-set woman with close-cropped dark hair appeared in court for less than two minutes.
Hernandez has been charged and indicted for the execution-style slaying of Lloyd on June 17 in an industrial pit near his $1.3 million home in North Attleboro. He has been jailed since his arrest on June 26.
Tanya Cummings-Singleton, 37, of Bristol, Conn. was brought to Fall River Superior Court from the South Bay House of Correction in Boston where she has been held since August 1.
A spokesman for C. Samuel Sutter, the Bristol County District Attorney, said that Cummings-Singleton had been granted immunity to testify before the grand jury. Still, he said, she refused to cooperate.
Hernandez, 23, and Cummings-Singleton are first cousins who grew up in Bristol, Conn., about 20 miles southwest of Hartford.
Cummings-Singleton is the daughter of Andres "Tito'' Valderrama. Earlier in the summer, investigators seized a Toyota 4-Runner from his garage with Rhode Island plates. They say that the sports-utility vehicle was used to shoot and kill two men in a drive-by shooting in Boston in July 2012.
Hernandez is a suspect in that double homicide that has been the subject of a grand jury investigation in Suffolk County.
Cummings-Singleton and Hernandez's mother, Terri Hernandez, have both been married to Jeffrey D. Cummings, an ex-convict from Bristol, Conn.
They both divorced him. Cummings spent two years in prison for slicing Mrs. Hernandez's face with an 8-inch knife in 2010. Their marriage ended a few months later.
Cummings-Singleton's most recent husband, Thaddeus L. Singleton, 33, was killed in a single-car accident in Farmington, Conn,. Four days after Hernandez's arrest.
The authorities wanted to question Singleton, an ex-convict who served time in prison for a home invasion and drive-by shooting in Bristol.
Investigators said that Cummings-Singleton helped Hernandez co-defendant, Ernest Wallace, 41, also of Bristol, Conn., flee after the Lloyd murder. They said that she paid for a bus ticket in Georgia that allowed h to travel to his parents house in Miramar, Fla. He surrendered at the Miramar police station following a massive manhunt.
Prosecutors have said that Wallace and Carlos A. Ortiz, 27, also of Bristol, Conn., were with Hernandez when Lloyd was shot and killed.
Wallace was indicted on Thursday on a charge of being an accessory after the fact of murder. He is being held without bail at a Massachusetts jail. Ortiz, jailed on a gun charge in Massachusetts, has not been indicted.