New England Patriot No. 81 became prisoner number W106228 in April of 2015 for the killing of Odin Lloyd. Aaron Hernandez began serving life in prison that month. At 27 years old, he's dead. He took matters into his own hands Tuesday night, stripping a prison bed of its sheet, fashioning a noose, barricading his cell door in case corrections officers caught on too soon, and tied the noose to a window. He was found shortly after 3 o'clock in the morning, and pronounced dead shortly after 4.

Some will see this as the final step in a tragic life. Some will cite angel dust at the time of the murder. Some will ignore the specter of two other murders he was just acquitted of. Some will see any suicide as a tragedy. I see his as a blessing.

Aaron Hernandez was a convicted killer. He riddled his fiance's sister's boyfriend with bullets. Hernandez did not deserve to live. He was sentenced to life without the possibility of parole. Let's do the math.

It's sadly expensive to house, feed, care for a prisoner year after year. The Souza-Baranowski Correctional Center is in Massachusetts, where in fiscal year 2014 it cost $53,040.87 per prisoner per year. Multiply that by the 50 years Hernandez was likely to live being only 27 years old at his death, he just saved Massachusetts $2,652,043.50.

Here in New Jersey it would have been even worse. The annual cost to incarcerate one prisoner in the Garden State is $54,865. Some will say Aaron Hernandez took the coward's way out. Whatever. He was never getting out of prison. What was the sense in spending this money year after year to keep a murderer alive. That two and a half million dollars can do a lot more good over the decades for people who truly deserve it. He applied his own death penalty, just as I wish all incarcerated killers would do.

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