An investigation into a double-murder in Boston with links to ex-New England Patriot Aaron Hernandez is heating up as two Connecticut men have been ordered to appear before a grand jury in Suffolk County Massachusetts.
On Tuesday, Hartford Superior Court Judge Joan K. Alexander issued an arrest warrant for Alexander S. Bradley, of East Hartford, for failing to appear at a hearing to answer a subpoena to testify before the grand jury in Boston. A second man, John Andrew Alcorn, known as ``Chicago,'' around Bristol, Conn., the hometown of Hernandez, unsuccessfully tried to fight the subpoena.
Alexander ordered him to appear before the Suffolk County grand jury on Thursday.
Det. Lt. Kevin Morrell, of the Bristol, Conn. police, said that investigators in his city are actively searching for Bradley who has a child with a woman in the city about 20 miles southwest of Hartford.
The flurry of court activity comes just days after Hernandez, 23, was arraigned in Fall River Superior Court on a charge of first-degree murder for the June 17 execution-style slaying of Odin L. Lloyd, 27, in North Attleboro, Mass. The body of Lloyd, a semi-pro football player from Boston, was found in an industrial pit about a half mile from Hernandez's $1.3 mansion in Westgate Estates.
Hernandez was arrested at his mansion on June 26 and has been held without bail at the Bristol County House of Correction in North Dartmouth, Mass. In early July, Bradley, 33, testified before the Bristol County (Mass.) grand jury investigating the Lloyd murder.
A longtime associate of Hernandez, Bradley burst onto the scene in June after he filed a lawsuit in federal court in Florida seeking more than $100,000 in damages from the football star. He claimed that Hernandez shot him in the eye on Feb. 13 during an argument they had after they left Tootsie's, a strip club in Miami.
He contends that he was dumped in an industrial park in Riviera Beach, Fla., about an hour north of the city and left to die. The complaint states that Bradley lost sight in his right eye and underwent reconstructive surgery that required the insertion of screws and plates into the right side of his face.
Hernandez has not been criminally charged with shooting Bradley.
An investigator in Connecticut told The Journal last month that a video system captured Bradley with Hernandez at Cure, a Boston nightclub, in the hours before the double, drive-by murder of Daniel Abreu, 29, and Safiro Furtado, 28. They were in a BMW sedan that had been idling at a traffic light not far from the nightclub.
Earlier this summer, the authorities seized a Toyota 4Runner with Rhode Island plates from a garage in Bristol, Conn., that may have been used in the double murder. The garage is owned by Hernandez's uncle, Andres ``Tito'' Valderrama.
The police executed several warrants at that address and seized the Toyota sports utility vehicle.
Alcorn's name first surfaced in the Hernandez investigations last month. The Journal and other news organizations reported that the Massachusetts state police had recovered the murder weapon used in the double-murders -- a .38 caliber handgun -- in the trunk of a car that was involved in a car accident outside Springfield, Mass.
The driver was Jailene Diaz-Ramos, 19, of Bristol, Conn. and she was charged with three weapons violations for having the gun in her car. The state police said in a report that a few days before her arrest, Diaz-Ramos gave a ride to several of her friends, including one nicknamed, ``Chicago.'' She told the police that they young men are football players and they left their belongings in her trunk. The belongings included a briefcase with the handgun.
The Bristol police identified ``Chicago,'' as Alcorn, who was friends with Thaddeus L. Singleton III, the late husband of Hernandez's cousin, Tanya Cummings-Singleton. She has been jailed in Massachusetts since Aug. 1 for refusing to testify before the Suffolk County grand jury investigating the double murder.