Serial - the podcast *spoilers*

+get really lucky that adnan is completely unable to muster any type of alibi. xpost

Adnan is a very smart dude and his claim of not remembering or mentally 'bookmarking' the events of that day is hugely contradictory to his character. SK does well to highlight this, and it bears a lot of repeating imo.

Anyway it's a travesty that Adnan was convicted, most of us seem to agree.

dating means frenching, hot tubs

was about to make adnaan/ariane joke remembered that ariane is a real person out there in the world

xpost I would agree that if a were a juror and the defense presented a year's worth of research dedicated to knocking holes into a case the prosecution seemingly spent a couple of weeks on, then, yeah, I probably would have ad reasonable doubt.

However, even without the benefit of a 12 part prosecution-biased investigative podcast I still believe that Adnan is guilty and am glad he was convicted.

i forgot about adnan saying "you're pathetic" to jay as he took the stand. that was really chilling and damning to me. feels like a mask slip.

am I crazy or was SK saying that this footage:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8OQ6Vlv9h-U

was shot the day that Hae was murdered? Surprising that no one is speculating about some camera crew guy as the real killer

I think it shown that day, not shot that day.

i forgot about adnan saying "you're pathetic" to jay as he took the stand. that was really chilling and damning to me. feels like a mask slip.

The reason I mentioned relationships is like, is their friendship such that, if Adnaan frames Jay or vice versa, that's going to be difficult, or are they dispensable to each other. In other words the depth of their friendship seems like it affects the likelihood that they would frame one another

Another thing is - you know how if you're innocent, but you plead guilty, you get less prison time than if you plead innocent. And therefore, why would a guilty Adnaan maintain his innocence?

That's been bugging me, but then if you're Adnaan and the community is a big part of your life, once you've admitted guilt, your reputation in that community is shot and though you might get out of prison sooner, you've basically got no life?

Adnan said he wanted a plea deal but his lawyer never pursued it

I'm still struggling with this venn diagram of burglars, porn stores, dudes who buy weed, serial murderers, honor student lacrosse players conveniently driving up while an accessory happens to have their boyfriend's car/phone.

If someone could even come up with a semi-reasonable fantasy for why Jay would either kill Hae or assist someone else in killing Hae and then blame Adnan I'd be willing to at least consider it, but until that occurs all these "well maybes" about "serial murderers" and "lost DNA" strike me as a bit ridiculous. It's the one thing Koenig doesn't even try to explain because there is really only one credible explanation....

Two possible explanations:

1) His family and friends would be hurt.

2) His community contributed a lot of money to him and would be betrayed.

Also I think it's highly unlikely that if Adnan confessed now it would benefit him much vis-a-vis parole (given that this is 1st degree). The window for him being able to reasonably plea to a lesser sentence ended up being pretty small.

Dealers on the strip need friendly faces in high schools so they can sell weed to the wealthier but more timid suburban high school kids

Adnaan and Jay get enlisted in this

Something goes wrong

???

At trial they don't mention it because that would be snitching, they could get not just sent to prison but stabbed whilst there?

xp

I don't buy this innocent people always say they're innocent thing either sadly. Maybe I've followed too many true crime things, but it feels like there are enough people who are probably guilty who continue to say they're innocent to the bitter end (Jeffrey MacDonald springs to mind to return to Fatal Vision) that this is far from the truism the Innocence Project would have you believe.

"Something goes wrong"

I liked the story earlier where Jay did it all by himself and was the master criminal better.

xps to cardamon:

adnan and hae and some other key ppl like krista were all in a small magnet program and were close friends. jay was a year older and out of school, but dating steph, who was also in that same program and friends with them all. jay and adnan were basically just weed-smoking buddies, not close friends.

xp I mean, I've got nothing that properly adds up. However, even in my own life I've known very 'ordinary nice people' go from sometimes taking drugs, to doing a little bit of 'friendly face' dealing for a serious gang, to getting in way over their heads and either they are endangered or people in their life are endangered

justin thanks, that's cleared it up a lot

the speculated motive for jay being the murderer, that SK never brought up bc obv there was no evidence for it, was that Hae knew jay was cheating on steph and was going to tell her. IF there was evidence that this was true, i'd find it a compelling motive.

My favorite part of the episode:
Is this just a routine case were applying intense scrutiny to? We asked a guy we're paying to look into it and he said no.

xp Motive for a confrontation that becomes violent and results in killing, rather than motive to want to kill someone though right?

the story that the co-worker told got me thinking that maybe it wasn't adnan but someone else/some others in adnan's religious community who killed hae and enlisted jay's help. it's totally far-fetched, but the way jay kept talking about these "people" who were after him and being so terrified... it just seemed weird.

if that was the motive, the murder must have been reasonably premeditated, considering all the circumstantial evidence.

xp

the speculated motive for jay being the murderer, that SK never brought up bc obv there was no evidence for it, was that Hae knew jay was cheating on steph and was going to tell her. IF there was evidence that this was true, i'd find it a compelling motive.
--just1n3

Speculated motive on reddit.

the speculated motive for jay being the murderer, that SK never brought up bc obv there was no evidence for it, was that Hae knew jay was cheating on steph and was going to tell her. IF there was evidence that this was true, i'd find it a compelling motive.
--just1n3

Speculated by reddit.

I think maybe the implication was that Adnan had tried to scare Jay by invoking this kind of Pakistani community mafia that would come after him if he betrayed Adnan

xp

Another thing I'm not clear on - who is driving whose car when

Speculated by reddit sure but thats what Adnans lawyer was getting at with all that "stepping out" stuff in the clip from the trial

How does Hae know this again? And why would she confront Jay about it? And when in this timeline? This strikes me as nearly as fantastic as Jay meeting a serial murder during a drug buy.

I thought lawyer was getting at him being dishonest but who knows wasn't exactly clear.

Jay was cheating on Stephanie with Don duh

Maybe jay just a joe Jackson fan

my overall takeaway from this was

1 -- it was a cool podcast, v engaging and I enjoyed listening to it.

2 -- I had a hard time with how hard they leaned on storytelling when they didn't have any investigative angles to cover. so many useless pointless cul d sacs that I could have done without. and i could live without SK's livejournaling re: Adnan. But that's just me. I kinda wanted a liiiiitle bit more objectivity somehow? it just felt a bit too creepily invested

3--- my personal unsubstantiated theory is that I have no idea who killed Hae. But Jay and Adnan seem both to be covering up something else that they were doing together that day, that they don't want incriminate themselves or someone else in. Something that perhaps did not even involve Hae's murder. Whether's w33d or whatever else. But the inconsistencies in both their stories just seem to be pointing people's noses in weird, unusual directions that feel like some kind of awkward subterfuge. Like, I don't think that they worked out a story together, but they just both really want the focus not to be on [x] whatever [x] is.

4---I don't hate the serial killer theory. And I don't blame them for at least pursuing it as something to rule out. Granted Hae's murder was not tied to a burglary and seems a bit too convenient to fit this other dude's mo, and if it was this guy then it just underlines even more like what the everloving fuck were jay and adnan even doing/saying/talking about this whole fucking time. But a helicopter view of this is refreshing! it gets too myopic to just be picking over phone records all the time and talking to the same 5 people you've talked to 20 times...a fresh perspective can show you what the case is not, and bring new details forward that weren't being looked at before. And some kind of dna testing at least helps with scientific evidence which, I mean the fact that they hardly have anything really puts this case in the shitter investigatively, if we're going to be really real here.

But yeah. This was an engaging exercise. I feel v sad for the irl people involved, ie adnan's family and hae's family and generally having to deal with all the nerd-detectives who are going to want to solve this for them

i thought it was sweet that don said adnan was the kind of guy hed be friends w/ if he went to my school

By which he must have meant grad school
Wasn't he like 26?

Some people on redditors are saying someone involved with the video interview could have done it, or someone who saw the interview on TV, can't remember if we've discounted that

Yes brilliant.

3--- my personal unsubstantiated theory is that I have no idea who killed Hae. But Jay and Adnan seem both to be covering up something else that they were doing together that day, that they don't want incriminate themselves or someone else in. Something that perhaps did not even involve Hae's murder. Whether's w33d or whatever else. But the inconsistencies in both their stories just seem to be pointing people's noses in weird, unusual directions that feel like some kind of awkward subterfuge. Like, I don't think that they worked out a story together, but they just both really want the focus not to be on x whatever x is.

Same here

If your alibi is, you were doing something illegal, and giving your alibi also makes you a snitch, maybe you just say you don't know what you were doing

pretty much

I try to avoid getting too out there with my speculation, but I remember there being a detail that stuck with me about Adnan dating a girl in another city, like I think Philadelphia? I thought that just seemed unusual for a high school student, I mean Philly is like almost 2 hrs drive from Baltimore.

I don't know what that would mean exactly, but it just made me wonder if he was involved in dealing or something beyond the range of typical high school kid activities, although it's kind of hard to imagine how his seemingly strict parents and other religious friends and relatives wouldn't have noticed if he was.

Regardless of that, I'm not even sure anymore that I couldn't convict based on the evidence. The problem is we're not getting the evidence the way the jury got it, so it's really hard to say what we'd do in their shoes.

And we know what happens when kids from Baltimore visit Philly

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s66z5sK2Hbk

ha! probably a subconscious association there

man Baltimore-Philly-Drugs-NPR, the circle is complete

i had friends who dated friends in the city 120mi away when i was like 17 or 18

That doesn't answer question of whether there were drugs involved, gr8181.

tbh they were all straight edge lol

That was their story, but really who knows. Truth is elusive.