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FALL RIVER, Mass. – The day after Odin Lloyd was killed, former New England Patriots tight end Aaron Hernandez stood in the basement of his spacious North Attleborough mansion and uttered a simple, four-word prediction about his future, a friend of Hernandez’s testified Wednesday.

“My endorsements are gone.”

Azia “Littleman” Jenkins, was at Hernandez’s house on June 18, 2013 – the same day Massachusetts authorities searched the home. Jenkins, a Bristol, Conn. native, is the uncle of Hernandez’s fiancée, Shayanna Jenkins, and her sister, Shaneah Jenkins, who was dating Lloyd.

In testimony Wednesday, Jenkins said that he, Hernandez, and his nieces’ paternal uncle, Donnie Smith, played pool that night in Hernandez’s basement – an area of the house that previously has been referred to as Aaron’s man cave. Game 6 of the NBA finals was on the television.

Following a commercial that aired during the game, Hernandez predicted his fate, Jenkins testified. A week later, Hernandez was arrested on murder charges, released from the Patriots, and dropped by numerous companies with whom he had sponsorship deals.

Most of Wednesday’s testimony in Hernandez’s murder trial focused on a chewed piece of blue bubble gum and a spent shell casing that a North Attleborough Enterprise Rent-A-Car employee found in a Nissan Altima that Hernandez returned less than 24 hours after Lloyd was shot. The night of his death, Lloyd was seen getting into the Nissan with Hernandez and two men from Bristol, Conn. who also face murder charges.

The Enterprise employee, Keelia Smyth, testified that Hernandez returned the Altima on June 17 and swapped it for a different car, a Chrysler 300. (Smyth said she first offered a Kia Soul, but Hernandez turned it down, telling her he couldn’t be seen in that.) While Hernandez was at Enterprise that night, Smyth said, he offered her a piece of blue cotton candy gum. She declined.

Bristol County District Attorney William McCauley asked Smyth if she remembered whether Hernandez offered her Bubblicious or Bubble Yum, as there are discrepancies in prosecution documents about which brand Hernandez purchased at a gas station the night he is accused of killing Lloyd. She could not remember.

She did, however, remember finding a piece of paper with a child’s painting on it, a chewed piece of blue bubble gum, and something that looked to her “like a bullet” when she cleaned the Nissan Altima. Using the paper, she picked up the bubble gum and the spent shell casing, crumpled the items into a ball, and disposed of them.

A couple days later, police dug through the Enterprise Dumpster and found the gum and shell casing stuck together. The shell casing was .45 caliber – a match to other spent shell casings found near Lloyd’s body. Prosecutors say they have identified both Hernandez’s and the victim’s DNA on the shell casing retrieved from the Dumpster.

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In cross-examination of a Massachusetts State Police forensic scientist Wednesday, defense attorney James Sultan established that the DNA could have been transferred onto the shell casing when it was stuck to the gum. Part of the defense strategy is to convince jurors that Hernandez was in the wrong place at the wrong time, and that one of his co-defendants is guilty of the crime.

Sultan asked crime lab forensic chemist Allana Frederick to confirm that DNA can “transfer readily from one surface to another.”

“I wouldn’t say readily, but it can be transferred,” Frederick replied.

“So using my gum example,” Sultan said, “If I chewed the gum, then I spit the gum out and the gum adhered to another surface – then the DNA that I spit out on the gum is then on the other surface?”

Frederick said that was possible.

“And if that occurred, then the DNA from my mouth, my DNA, would be found on that item that the gum attached to?” the defense attorney asked.

“Potentially, yes,” Frederick replied.

Prosecutors also say they have identified Hernandez’s DNA on a marijuana blunt found near Lloyd’s body. The murder weapon, a Glock .45 pistol, was never recovered.

Bristol County Superior Court Judge E. Susan Garsh on Wednesday denied a prosecution motion to add another witness to the government’s list of more than 300. Prosecutors asked the court to allow testimony from a Bristol Central High School friend of Hernandez’s because they said it could prove that the former Patriots tight end owned a .45 caliber weapon.

But when the witness was questioned during a hearing Wednesday after jurors went home for the day, it quickly became apparent that he could offer few details about what guns Hernandez had in his possession. Robert Paradis flew out to California to visit Hernandez in April 2013. During that trip, Paradis said Wednesday, Hernandez “referenced heat or fire.”

When McCauley pressed him to explain what that meant, Paradis just repeated himself.

“Why did you assume he had a gun instead of heated seats?” Hernandez’s defense attorney, Michael Fee, asked.

“Because he said it was under his seat,” Paradis replied.

Paradis also testified that he stayed in California for a day after Hernandez left, and during that time, Hernandez called and asked him to check his nightstand for “it.” Paradis said he opened the top drawer of the nightstand, picked up a black shirt, and felt a gun inside. He said he never actually saw the gun.

At one point, Paradis’s testimony was so muddled that the judge interrupted Fee’s cross-examination to question him herself.

“What do you remember him saying about a .45?” Garsh asked.

“That he had one,” Paradis said.

“And when did he say that?”

“Sometime in the four or five days I was there.”

Garsh said Paradis testified “in a radically different way” during direct examination and cross-examination. She ruled that his testimony would be prejudicial, and mentioned that no evidence in the case suggests Hernandez went back to California to retrieve the gun and use it as the murder weapon.

Hernandez is accused in three murders in Massachusetts. He is standing trial for murder and two illegal firearms charges in Lloyd’s death.