Episode 15: We the people of the jury 08/09/2015 Speakers: Bob Ruff, Ann Brocklehurst, Becky Ruff EPISODE DESCRIPTION

Transcription

1 Episode 15: We the people of the jury 08/09/2015 Speakers: Bob Ruff, Ann Brocklehurst, Becky Ruff EPISODE DESCRIPTION In this episode, Bob interviews/debates author and blogger Ann Brocklehurst. Bob and Ann present opposing sides of the case. Today s episode of The Serial Dynasty is sponsored by Shaun T Fitness. Shaun T is always looking for ways to keep you motivated. So for a short period of time, Shaun T has made available a free, 40 minute music mix. To download, go to ShaunTFitness.com/music. For those of you who download the mix, Shaun will soon after be sending a written workout that will go along with that music. You know he s always looking for ways to make you dig deeper. Hello everybody and welcome back to The Serial Dynasty. For this special episode of The Serial Dynasty where we will be exploring the possibility of Adnan s guilt, I m going to recommend to all of you at this point, maybe hit pause and pack a lunch, because this is going to be a long episode. As I ve mentioned in previous episodes, my investigation method revolves around examining evidence, developing a theory from that evidence, and then going back to the evidence and looking deeper to see if there s a way to disprove my theory. This method has led me to the place where I stand today which is that I now believe that Adnan Syed is innocent. In order to keep true with my method, I ve done a lot of reading and a lot of researching trying to find actual evidence that actually points to Adnan s guilt. And I ve been unable to do so. The State was able to convict Adnan based on the testimony of Jay, supposedly corroborated by cell phone records. And then they piled on with some circumstantial evidence. At this point, all of us know that Jay is, let s say, less than credible. The testimony that he gave that the jury heard at trial, was a polished version that had

2 changed multiple times over the preceding months leading up to the trial. Most of those changes revolved around new information that was obtained by the police regarding cell phone evidence. This has led me to believe that the idea of the cell phone evidence corroborating Jay s testimony no longer holds up. When you look at cell records and then create a narrative afterward based on those cell records, those two things no longer corroborate each other. So what we re left with is circumstantial evidence and personally, and I ve been challenged on this, but I would not even consider these things evidence. Things like the fact that Hae was upset with Adnan one time because he was mad at her for not returning a phone call or wanting her to spend time with him rather than her, that s not evidence in my mind. That s a situation that can describe probably a lot of relationships that you re familiar with or that you may actually be even be in. So last week on the show, I took my search for conflicting evidence that would disprove my theory of Adnan s innocence to the world. At least the part of the world that listens to The Serial Dynasty. So I sent out a call out, so to speak, to all of you to send me in evidence that would prove that Adnan is guilty. I ll tell you up front that this has been the lightest week that I ve had since the inception of this program back in May of I did receive several s, but nowhere near the volume that I typically receive preceding an episode. Surprisingly, I got more s from listeners who believe Adnan is innocent who were attempting to find evidence to the contrary than I received from listeners who believe that Adnan is guilty. About the time I was getting ready to just scrap this idea and start preparing for a different episode this week, a listener ed me and let me know about a conversation that was going on in the Serial podcast subreddit. This listener was in a way stuck in the middle of things as he was relaying messages to me from the Reddit thread and from me back to the Reddit thread. So eventually I decided I should probably check out this Reddit thread and maybe the information that I m looking for lies there. What I found was a lot of users arguing with each other about unrelated topics, as well as this program. I read through all 72 comments that were on the thread at the time and I did not find one single piece of evidence presented there. Most of the discussion revolved around people saying that, If I want to know what they think then I should go to them, that they re not going to waste their time ing me. There were a lot of, Who cares what Bob thinks? Or Bob is nobody. Amidst these arguments, some users were asking, nearly begging, the users that they believe might have some information to send it along so that the show could present the other side of the argument. And the general consensus seemed to be, Well I know, but I m not going to tell you. There were several comments saying that they have evidence but they re not going to send it to me. That I need to do my own research, so on and so forth. I did however engage in a few discussions with listeners that were reasonable enough to have a conversation with me about some things. However there was no evidence drawn out of those conversations that showed guilt. The most common evidence of guilt that was present in that thread when we were discussing this was, Well Adnan s guilty because he was found guilty. 2

3 My premise in the discussions were that now that we know that the majority of the evidence that the prosecution used to convince the jury to convict has been proven to be false, the guilty verdict means nothing to me now. And those conversations went back and forth and like I said, there were some reasonable discussions on there. If you re interested to see the actual context of all the conversations, because of course, I don t want you just to take my word for it, I posted a link to that Reddit discussion on the Serial Dynasty.com webpage. Just go to SerialDynasty.com, click the link s tab and they are several links at this point that are all regarding this episode. The spine of this country s justice system is the idea that everyone is innocent until proven guilty. Now you may say Adnan was proven guilty but as I ve mentioned, in my opinion, that conviction means nothing. So where do we go from here? We go back to the beginning. Adnan is a suspect. He s innocent until he s proven guilty. We ve put confirmation bias aside and we look at the facts. We look at the evidence and that s how we determine whether we believe that Adnan is guilty or innocent. Through my discussions on that subreddit thread, one poster stepped up to the challenge. A woman by the name of Ann Brocklehurst sent an and said that she would be willing to come on the show and present what she described as the twelve reasons why we know Adnan is guilty. Ann s bio says that she is a journalist, a private investigator, an author, and a blogger. She s written an e-book that you can find on Amazon called On Trial for Rape and she may be known to a lot of you from her blog posts where she made the statement about the twelve elements of Adnan s guilt and the follow up post where she published Rabia Chaudry s personal that she had sent to her and responded via the blog. Links to both of those posts can also be found on the links page on SerialDynasty.com. Now listeners, I ll warn you up front that again, this is going to be a long episode. The interview with Ann is about two hours long. And what I m asking you to do is listen to this interview, or debate as it were, as though you were a juror. We re back to presuming that Adnan is innocent until he s proven guilty. We all have already the background information that Jay has testified that Adnan murdered Hae. And we are all already fully aware of the cell phone records. So assume those elements are brought in in this trial and now for the next two hours, you, the people of the jury, will hear both sides of the case presented by myself and Ms. Ann Brocklehurst. [00:08:00] Start of Interview with Ann Brocklehurst Welcome, Ann. Hello. Thank you very much. It s a pleasure to be here. All right and it s a pleasure to have you on the phone. And just some background, most of you listeners know that my theory on the case has developed over the time of going through the evidence and walking through this process for the past several months has been that I believe that Adnan is innocent at this point. And I believe Ann 3

4 has the opposite view. Ann do you want to kind of briefly describe your view on the case? Yeah, I started out listening to Serial thinking that Adnan was probably innocent and I had some questions about his innocence. I really did not like Jay at first, the first I heard from him. And over the course of Serial my opinion changed. I was also doing background research, taking advantage of a lot of the information available on Reddit and now I am fully convinced that beyond a reasonable doubt that Adnan is guilty. Okay, thanks Ann. And so in the course of our correspondences, I asked Ann to send me a kind of a summarized as far as why she believed that Adnan is guilty and she set me a nice with twelve bullet points that she believes indicates Adnan s guilt. And so what we ve agreed to do today is the two of us are going to walk through the bullet points of that point by point and we re going to let Ann kind of go through her position on each point and then we ll have some discussion back and forth. All right, so Ann, a quick background question before we get going, just to kind of know the perspective we re both coming from moving forward with the discussion that we re going to have tonight. The first question that I would have for you is do you believe Jay s testimony? Yes. I do believe Jay s testimony. Okay, and it s. I guess a follow up question to that would be, which version You re speaking of his testimony at trial? Yes, that was the final version of his story. I think it is pretty well known among Serial aficionados that Jay gave the police several versions. He had a number of interviews with police and in those interviews crucial details changed which is not at all uncommon for witnesses to a crime. I m a journalist, I cover courts all the time, I see this all of the time. Witnesses stories change. Okay, thank you for that and so moving forward, just so you listeners know kind of our positions going forward with this which could possibly explain, or very likely explains, kind of our difference in opinion as far as innocence or guilt. Our belief in Jay s testimony differ as well because I personally don t believe I m not going to say that I don t believe all of Jay s testimony cause as I ve mentioned on the show before, I am not of the theory that Jay was completely uninvolved and was coerced by police to fabricate this whole thing. I believe that there are parts of the story that may be true or may be a version of what happened in a way, but I don t believe his testimony in its entirety and Ann does believe that his testimony at trial was accurate. Right, I do believe his testimony is accurate and I also understand I think that s a big, big, big difference between people who think Adnan is innocent and people who think he is guilty. It really hinges on whether or not you believe Jay. You know, to be honest with you, I ve never really thought about it in that simplistic of a way but in a way you re right. If you believe Jay, then you believe Adnan s guilty and 4

5 if you don t believe him, then of course you don t. With that being said, Ann, why don t we go ahead and start moving along with our twelve points of discussion. And I ll let you start with your number one point. [00:11:51] Point Number One So my first point is that the story that s framed in the first episode of Serial as a whole bunch of people, Adnan included, having to look back six weeks later and try to remember a normal day and that s why Adnan says he can t remember what happened six weeks ago. But the problem here is that it was never, ever a normal day for Adnan. It was the day Hae went missing, he was called by police that very same day. They asked him, When was the last time you saw Hae? Did you get a lift with her? We heard you were supposed to get a lift with her. Krista, who you interviewed on this show has said she remembers everything about that because it s the day that Hae disappeared. Don, who was also a suspect, said the first thing he did when it clicked that the police were interested in what he was up to was sat down and made a list of what he did and provided an alibi. And yet, here we have Adnan saying, Oh, first I heard six weeks later, of course I can t remember. Okay so there s several pieces to that, the statement you made. But the basic point is that you don t believe that Adnan doesn t remember the day because it was a significant event for him, right? Correct. Okay, first of all I guess we address the idea of it being a significant event. The actual scenario was that Adnan got a call from, I believe it was first Hae s brother, and then the police around they re saying the 6:00 hour so about three hours after she was supposed to show up and pick up her cousin. Saying they haven t seen her, had he seen her. So that s the significant event you are referring to? Yes, and it s significant because, you know, Hae was someone who he says he was close to. This was the girl he called three times the night before at midnight. So obviously someone he cares about and she s gone missing. That s, in my opinion, that s pretty significant. If that happened to me, it would be something that I d follow up with later that day, which Adnan never did. And what about you, Bob? I mean, someone who you ve cared about, you got a call they were missing, don t you follow up on it? Well, first of all, my personal belief is that everyone reacts and remembers things differently. For example, I just had, about four months ago, one of my firefighters actually, a young man, found out about 11:00 in the morning that his twin brother had passed away. I got a call, I went out to visit him of course right away and I remember sitting there discussing things with his family when they just got that, you know, that huge news. I was sitting with him and his parents and all of his friends and they were going back and trying to recall the day for me as far as what happened when they got called, who showed up where. And it was obvious from all of them, none of them 5

6 could remember the details. Mike couldn t remember what time he went to work. He didn t remember what time he got the call. He said he doesn t even remember driving there, that his mother was talking about when the police came and she couldn t remember exactly what happened. So and I m not saying that s the case with Adnan or that s the case with anyone. For at least some people, I would hope you would agree, maybe some people, when they get a significant news they kind of going into a shock and just kind of blank out and forget everything. I mean would you agree that Sure. some people would have that reaction? Absolutely, but here we have Adnan who s saying, No, it wasn t significant, it was just a normal day. And then he s saying well then he can t say well, he blanked out cause he got such big news. I mean, it s either one or the other, and the news he was getting wasn t that someone died. It was that someone had gone missing and at that point it may have been serious or it may not have been but it s certainly the type of thing I would think about again. You know, if a friend of mine went missing, someone I was very close to and I got a call about it at 6:00 what am I doing at 10:00 at night? I m phoning either the family of the friend to say, Is she back yet? Or if I m worried that the family might be off, and too emotional, and too into dealing with it, then I m calling a third party who would perhaps know what the family is up to and saying, Hey, did she ever come home? Well, I would agree that that s certainly a fair response. Personally, I don t think that that s enough to put that response onto Adnan, that he should have responded that way. And going back to what you said, that you know, you can t have it both ways, it has to be one way or the other. You know, what I described was a very significant event and like you said, well, you know, he says this wasn t a significant event but well if it wasn t a significant event, then I mean, I feel like, and maybe I m misunderstanding you, that that sort of defeats the premise here. That if we re saying that it wasn t significant because it was just her missing, then how do we tie that with him following up on everything? Or if it truly was a significant event, it s possible that he forgot everything. And I ll tell you, personally, and of course, none of us know, but I don t think that he took it as a significant event. I think that when he got the call that she hadn t shown, I mean, it had been three hours and she hadn t shown up to pick up her cousin, or showed up for work, and that s all he knew. Being a high school kid, I think it s possible, and not for sure, but certainly possible, that he just thought exactly what he said: that she s probably in trouble, maybe she s with Don. And sort of to follow that up, for us to put that scrutiny simply on Adnan, I don t think is necessarily fair when you consider the statements from all of the other friends; the statements given to police by Becky, and by Aisha. Hae s mother thought that she was with Don, you know, that they all thought it was no big deal. They weren t concerned. They all thought that she had went with Don. Later this California rumor surfaces, which I know we ll discuss on another point that you had here, on the California rumor. But from all of the trial transcripts, all of the police interview statements, none 6

7 of Hae s friends were concerned on that night. I mean would you agree with that, have you seen those documents? Overall, I would agree with that, but I would also add that, you know, they weren t concerned that something terrible had happened to her but they had very clear memories of the day because it was an exceptional day. And that is in fact what Krista said. She still remembers it to this day and she did go back over everything that had happened the last time she d seen Hae, etc., and what she d done, and when she got the call. So yeah, I m with you, there is something a little bizarre with how people reacted to Hae s going missing in my opinion, too. Of course, we re all looking back on this sixteen years later and I know I tend to have the problem sometimes and I have to step back, you know, when you re reading documents and you re really trying to go through a logical process and I have to kind of step back sometimes and remind myself, Okay, put yourself in the mind of a high school kid that got that call. But as far as, you know, like you said, Krista remembered, and remembered the accounts of that day. That s maybe true of Krista but you mentioned that the other friends did, but I ve never seen any of evidence of that. Matter of fact, most of their statements about the day were all over the place. They re all conflicting each other. But also there was the subtle difference with Krista because Aisha had talked to the family, that s, you know, Aisha being Hae s best friend, and her and Krista were speaking, and they were together kind of recalling the events of the day and trying to piece things in, wondering where she was at. But it s also noted later in the police interviews that Aisha was not concerned. There was teacher statements that said that, her statements that she wasn t concerned at that point. They were just sort of discussing the day. Yeah, it s hard to know based on the police notes and what everyone says. I mean, listen, I m with you, there was sort of a bizarre nonchalance about Hae s disappearance, but that was in many people s take combined with them still knowing what they did that day. It wasn t necessarily blanking out what happened that day and I think Adnan, based on what we know about his relationship with Hae, I find his behavior in light of all of those facts funny. But I mean obviously this isn t a smoking gun. None of my twelve points are individually a smoking gun. It s when you put them all together that I believe they form a very compelling picture of Adnan s guilt. Okay, and I can understand you know, when it comes to cause most of these things are circumstantial that I think what you are saying is that one piece of this circumstantial evidence doesn t mean anything, but when you put them together that maybe it means more. And in regards to, you know, your statement about his relationship with Hae and the fact that he called her three times the night before, and then all of a sudden doesn t call her again or he s not worried, obviously that that indicates his closeness to her. I think it s at least fair to point out that he attempted to call her three times, finally connected with her, where he gave her his new phone number which she wrote in her journal. I just want to make clear if anybody wasn t aware of those phone records, but I m sure everybody listening is, but it s not like he called her and had three long conversations with Hae. 7

8 So, I guess as far as that one is concerned, your first point there, in my mind, and you tell me if you agree with me, that point could possibly be a point of concern combined with something else. But I don t think that there s anything definitive there. There is nothing there for me, from my perspective, for the reasons that I ve laid out there that several other people that were very close to Hae, including her very best friend, weren t concerned. We don t know if anybody else remembered their day. For me, it s fair to think that Adnan did not think that this was a big deal when he got that call because of the fact that no one else thought it was a big deal when he got the call too. So, I wouldn t chalk this up in the category of evidence against Adnan, I would maybe put it in the category of something to maybe consider later. Would you agree or disagree with that? Yes, I m fine with that interpretation. I think that what interests me about it is that Adnan tries to frame this as a normal day, and of course that s now talking to Serial, but he tries to frame it as a normal day six weeks ago and I disagree that it was normal and you have a different opinion. I think it s a fair difference of opinion that we have. The one other detail that I would add is that Adnan was beginning to read about Hae s disappearance ten days to two weeks later, so again, you know that s a lot closer than six weeks ago. It s still pretty difficult to remember what he did on a normal day ten days ago, but it s easier than six weeks ago. I ll agree with that. Certainly it s a little bit closer, I may have trouble recalling what I did last Wednesday but it certainly would be easier to do that than six weeks later, I would certainly agree with that. So I guess I would ask you this, and I may ask you similar questions to a lot of these points, just for a point of perspective. Do you think, and I m not saying, I m not asking if you believe if this is the case or anything like that, but do you think that if Adnan was completely innocent and really did have nothing to do with this crime, and again, I m not saying that you believe that. But if that was the case, would it be more reasonable to assume that it really was a normal day with that phone call and that he wouldn t remember anything? I find his reaction bizarre, innocent or not. I mean, if a friend of mine went missing, I would be worried but it is true what you said before, not just Adnan, but a lot of the students at Woodlawn High did seem to take this in stride. So, there is that to consider. Okay, and with that, let s move on to your second point. Now again, I ll let you explain that one. [00:24:29] Point Number Two Well my second point is a pretty easy one and that s that I just see no reason whatsoever for Jay to frame Adnan or for Jay to be sticking up for some mysterious third party. And when we get into the mysterious third party theories, I think it s very important to note that Deirdre Enright of the Innocence Project has picked as a potential third party who may have done this a guy called Ronald Lee Moore. And 8

9 Rabia Chaudry in her last and only to me, suggested that a possible third party was a guy named Roy Sharonnie Davis. So we ve got these people who are advocating for Adnan s innocence and suggesting that a third party did it and they can t even agree on who the third party is Well I m going to cut you off real quick there Ann and have you kind of go back to the beginning because what I want to keep our focus on Adnan s case, not what Rabia or anybody else is doing, but the facts of the case, so I ll so you had basically said at the beginning if I understand your point was that Jay has no reason for framing Adnan or for protecting some other possible third party. Yes. Okay. I got to be honest with you, Ann, I really disa I actually had a hard time really understanding that. Do you not think that the fact that the police when they questioned Jay told him that if he didn t start talking that they were going to charge him with murder? That wouldn t be motive to frame someone else? Or to blame it on someone else? Sure, it would be motive to blame it on someone else and that when you have two people involved in a crime or a murder and they both blame each other, there s even a name for that a cutthroat defense. But I have to tell you, and again, people have different reactions to these things. The first time I heard the police interviewing Jay, I got the feeling they were as stunned as I was by his story. You know, here is this guy coming in, telling this story that s almost unbelievable. They re asking him why didn t you do something? Why didn t you report it ahead of time? Did you consider going to anyone? They just seemed stunned by it. And there s absolutely no motive for Jay being involved in this, or anything, which is why I do think he is telling the truth and I don t think he yes, he may very well be trying to lessen his role, that s a possibility, but I just see no reason for Jay to be involved in that. I guess I say maybe I m confusing your point, you re talking about you don t see any reason for Jay to be involved in what? In the crime or in the framing of Adnan? I guess if you could just clarify that In the actual crime and therefore the framing of Adnan. If he s not involved in the crime, he really has no reason to frame Adnan. Okay and to be clear, do you believe, well you said you believed, Jay s testimony. So you do believe Jay was involved? Correct? Yes, I do. Okay, so, and you and I agree on that. And I know that there s a lot of other theories out there, but I personally also believe that Jay was involved in the crime. And that s one thing that, you know, if you believe Jay s testimony then you sort of have to make that conclusion. So if we believe Jay was involved in the crime, to me, to make a statement as this was framed, as evidence against Adnan, that it doesn t make sense for Jay to blame Adnan, I just, I feel like it does. You know, and that s whether Adnan 9

10 was truly involved and Jay was trying to lessen his role or if Adnan was not involved and Jay either way was trying to lie his way out of this. I think it makes perfect sense for him to blame Adnan. And as far as the possibility of him blaming Adnan for it, certainly it could be that he was involved and so therefore he was blaming it on him or trying to lessen a role, but I also think that if Adnan was not involved at all, and that s an if, if he had no involvement at all in this crime and Jay was involved, I think that it makes absolute perfect sense that Jay would blame Adnan. And it s not because of I don t necessarily believe these grand conspiracy theories I do believe there was certainly some corruption to some extent, but the reason I think that it makes perfect sense that Jay would frame Adnan is because if you believe that what the police And I guess let me ask that, let me preface with that. Do you believe that the way the police documented this is the way it actually happened? Meaning, the police went and talked to Jenn, Jenn told them to talk to Jay, or Jenn gave her story, they talked to Jay, and then Jay talked to the police and confessed and said that Adnan did it. Do you believe that s the way that scenario went down cause I know there s a lot of other theories out there. I do believe that s the way the scenario went down. Yes, I do. And you know I believe there were some things that happened in the police interviews that shouldn t have happened, such as turning the tape recorder off and don t think at least in Toronto where I live, they don t happen anymore. Someone goes into the police station to make a statement and the video camera goes on right away. But, that didn t happen here back then and it probably didn t happen in Baltimore back then and I think we d all know a lot more if the rules had been the same then as they are today. I agree with that and I believe that that has been remedied in Baltimore if I m remembering correctly. They now do have to have the recorders on for all interviews, even the pre-interview. So moving forward, so if you believe that they got to that point where they re interviewing Jay by the way the police said that they did, meaning that they spoke with Jenn, Jenn told them to talk with Jay. Jay s interviewing with them and they re telling Jay that they re going to charge him with murder if he doesn t come clean and they told Jay, and we know they did tell Jay, that they think that Adnan was the culprit. So, it makes absolute perfect sense in my mind, and tell me if you disagree, that if that was the scenario, that they brought him in for questioning, they re accusing him of being involved in a murder, or knowing about a murder, or being a murder, and they tell him that their suspect is Adnan, they tell him the reason they got to him was because they looked at Adnan s phone records, they saw that he called Jenn, they talked to Jenn. Jenn said it was actually Jay they were talking to who led them to them but Adnan was their target. In my mind it would make perfect. Well, we don t know all this. I mean that seems probable. I m not saying that that s not a very probably situation but I don t think we know that as a fact, that that what s they said to Jay in questioning. 10

11 Well, we know that they told Jenn that they had contacted her because of Adnan s cell records, right? We would agree on that? Yes. And we know that Jenn said she spoke with Jay between there. Yes, yes. All that, I believe and accept, I m just saying that we don t know that the police said, Hey, we believe Adnan is the murder suspect in this. Okay, I ll agree with you there because... that was that would have been in the prerecorded section so I will concede that, but I m fairly convinced that Jay knew that they got to him based on Adnan s records, his cell records. And so that being said, if that s the scenario, do you not think that it could possibly be, or I mean, you said there s absolutely no reason for him to blame Adnan, don t you think that could be an argument for that would be exactly why he would blame Adnan? I think that the police definitely applied pressure to him and I think that they told them that, you know, he had to talk if he wanted to get the best deal possible for himself, I don t really think that happens all the time. I just am really, really far from convinced that Jay had more to cover up than what he admitted to beyond maybe playing lookout in the murder, etc. and then we come to my third point is that if Jay was just framing Adnan, why on earth would Adnan have not spoken up? Meaning what? I guess we re moving on to the third point, can you kind of explain in detail your third point? What do you mean by Adnan didn t speak up? [00:33:31] Point Number Three My third point is that Adnan has no explanation whatsoever as to how he landed in this position. And I also say here that, yes, Deirdre Enright of the Innocence Project said that Well, you know, innocent people can t always help themselves because they don t know what s happened and then she gives an example of a guy in a field who can t say where a body is buried and that s absolutely true, can t quarrel with that. But, I write a lot about guilty people. People with piles and piles of evidence against them and I deal with defense lawyers and crime attorneys all the time and they will all tell you that guilty people obfuscate all the time. They re very vague, they think they re being framed, there is some conspiracy. So yes, you can be innocent and not have information that helps you but you can also be very guilty and have no information that helps you because you know that anything you may say is going to land you in deep trouble. Okay and so, you almost kind of made the point that I was going to make in regards to that, being that this is presented as a point of evidence of Adnan s guilt and I ll read your first sentence in this point. It says, Adnan has no explanation whatsoever as to how he landed in this position. Which is what you just said. And I guess I don t see that as evidence of guilt because I do believe now you can say that, or we can say that some people who are guilty act in this way and some people act in this way but 11

12 would you also agree, and again, this is I told you I would ask, I would kind of frame this question a few times as we go through. Again, not saying that you believe this, but if it were in fact true that Adnan was innocent, that he literally had nothing to do with this. If that was the case, would it make sense to you that he has no idea how he got in this position or why he d been framed? No. No. So if he was It wouldn t So you re saying let me just clear that up. So you re saying that if he truly was innocent and had nothing to do with this and knew nothing about the crime, you think that he would know why he was being framed? Yes, and if he didn t know right away at that point in time now sixteen years later he would sure know. I mean, I guess I would say I disagree with you but I don t quite understand. Maybe you could expand on that a little bit because I don t quite follow the logic there. I mean to me, and maybe I misstated what I was trying to state. I guess to be more clear, if I m sitting here today and all of a sudden the police show up and they tell me, This man says that you murdered this person and I didn t, well of course I would have no idea why he did that because I wasn t involved. So that s all I m saying. I m not saying for you to agree that he wasn t involved, I m just asking if he had nothing no involvement in this whatsoever if he truly was innocent, I don t see how he would possibly know why he had been framed. Other than the fact what he does know is the fact that Jay had his car and Jay had his phone and the police were looking at him as a suspect. I mean, he does know that and so Jay blamed him. Well, okay, hypothetically if is he innocent, he has this lawyer, who, I mean we can quarrel about whether she was at the peak of her game, but she was a very seasoned criminal attorney. She hired a private investigator who was an ex-cop who also, you know, was very seasoned and they re both out Adnan s behalf if he s innocent, right? And they both draw blanks so I mean, they re all getting together and saying, If Adnan is innocent, then who can help us with this, who can explain? And they find nothing. Which is again very, very unusual. I mean, when you people talk, right? And we re talking about a bunch of high school kids and Jay s family where, you know, they re not all fine, upstanding, law-abiding folks, so these are people that talk. And, there s still nothing. From any of them. And now we re sixteen years later and you know, in periods of sixteen years, snitches come out if there are snitches. People who ve been hiding secrets agree to talk, and nothing. So, yeah, I mean, if he was an innocent guy who was framed and when he was first confronted with this he had no idea, sure I get that, but you know, once his lawyer and the PI are on the case and they d been questioning and he d been sitting in jail for sixteen years thinking about it and no one said anything. We ve got Innocent Project, This American Life, Rabia, his lawyers, the PI, nothing. That s a little weird. 12

13 What do you mean by nothing, that there s no evidence of innocence? Is that what I feel like we kind of shifted gears here, is that what you re referring to when you say that they found nothing? No credible alternative theory. That s what I mean by nothing. No credible alternative theory of what could have happened. Okay, no credible alternative theory. Would you agree that there s been more evidence uncovered that may help point towards his innocence? That may discredit some of the testimony and the State s case at this point? Or do you still think that the State s case back in 2000 at the trial still holds true? I still think it holds true. I mean, I have a hard time with what I hear people say all the time, Oh, there s significant new evidence that s been uncovered since and my question is, Well, what is that significant evidence? Okay, well that will there s a long list that I would consider considerable evidence. Not that 100% exonerates Adnan, but certainly I think dismantles the State s case at least in some way and personally I believe it pretty much completely blows up the State s case. But maybe we ll discuss that at the end after we get through these bullet points if we still have time left. So, to button up number three, where you said he has it s a point of evidence towards his guilt that he has no explanation as far as how he landed in the position. Did I hear you right that you did say that you don t believe that was the case? But that if he was truly, completely innocent then he wouldn t know why he s in the position, other than what he does know because it s a little misleading to say that he has no idea to say he has no idea how he landed in the position. He doesn t know why Jay chose him or what his motive for doing that is what he stated on the interview on Serial but he does know that they had connected Jay to his cell phone and his car, so he does know that. But other than that, I think that if he s innocent, then he wouldn t know. And you re right, if he s guilty than he probably would know. By your theory, that would me that, by him saying that he doesn t know, that he is lying about that, is what I assume your point is, correct? Yes, and I mean if he was truly innocent, I think everyone working for him and with him by now would have found would have found evidence pointing to another theory and would be able to articulate a third party theory. I think Deirdre Enright, I don t agree with her, but she has a very simple theory. It was Ronald Lee Moore who did it, let s test the DNA and find out. Well, I, maybe you know more than I do but I can t speak to the fact that that s her exact theory. I think that is she presented that as a possibility and a reason to get the DNA tested and I believe she even said on Serial, What if we get the DNA tested, that they never tested, and it does come back to someone else, some other serial killer or someone else? And it may be, but I don t know for sure that that s her absolute theory that Ronald Lee Moore did it. I personally don t buy into that theory. 13

14 Sure, but it is a simple, easy to grasp alternative theory and there s a way of finding out whether it s correct or possibly correct. I mean, it s not a 100% method but certainly if the DNA under Hae s fingernails were tested and it was found to be Ronald Lee Moore s, well, case closed. My biggest stance on this is: test the evidence that was never tested before and if we able to do that, if the State would be willing to test those things, then it would certainly prove things one way or the other. Cause on the same side, and I wasn t aware Well it wouldn t necessarily prove anything, it might. It might just leave us with the same questions. Well, yeah, we don t know though unless we unless it actually gets tested. I wasn t aware of DNA evidence being uncovered from under her fingernails, you know, there were hair follicles on her body in the grave that were tested microscopically that do not match Adnan s hair. So it would be really interesting to find out who s hair that is, you know, and then there s of course the DNA on the brandy bottle which could mean or not mean anything but who knows if that was there. I mean it was right by the burial site but that doesn t necessarily mean it s relevant but certainly I would agree that what I want to happen, or what I would love to see happen, is to test a lot of this untested evidence and let s paint a brighter picture. Maybe they test the DNA evidence found around there and they find Adnan s DNA on it. That would certainly be case closed. But maybe they test it and they find someone else s DNA, maybe someone s DNA who is known to have murdered another 18 year-old Woodlawn student by strangulation and dumping her in a park in the same neighborhood nine months before that. Well if you found that DNA there then that would, I think that would give us a pretty solid conclusion of who did it. But we won t know that unless it ever gets tested. I agree and then of course we one of the other possibilities is that we find neither Adnan s nor a serial killer s DNA, nor anyone else s identifiable DNA. Right and you re exactly right, that would still leave us wondering. All right, let s move on to your point number four and again, I ll let you go ahead with that. [00:44:05] Point Number Four So, I ve always found it very perplexing how Adnan has minimized the reaction to Hae s disappearance. Now that said, it s not only Adnan who did that, it has been noted by in the police notes and by other people that there wasn t the type of alarm that I would expect when a girl disappears off the face of the earth in the middle of her senior year at high school planning to go to university, planning to go on a school trip to France, involved in a new relationship with a boyfriend she s crazy over. I would certainly never see, Well, she s gone to California so I m very perplexed why Adnan bought into that rumor and why other people did. 14

15 And one of thing that seemed to contradict that is an that was sent by a good friend of Adnan s, a guy called Imran. And he got an inquiry from a friend in California of Hae s who d heard she d gone missing, this was around five days after she d gone missing, and was looking for information, saying, What s going on? Which to me, is the normal reaction you have when your friend goes missing. You re in a panic. And this fellow, Imran, wrote back and said, Haha, Hae s dead. She was stabbed. And, don t bother getting in touch anymore and asking for information. I m paraphrasing here but essentially he was discouraging this friend from asking for more information on the basis that Hae was dead and stabbed. And the only explanation I ve had from Adnan s advocates about this is that it was a sick joke and he later apologized. Well, you know, when someone makes a bad joke or a sick joke, you at least usually see where the humor was supposed to be. But in this case, I don t even see what was supposed to be funny. We haven t seen any evidence of the apology and the police found the when they got word about it three or four weeks after it arrived suspicious enough that they went out and subpoenaed all the IP address information and traced it to try and find out who sent it and why. Well, in regards to that, the police actually, surprisingly, this one thing, you are right, they did investigate it very thoroughly. They searched out IP addresses and they called him in for questioning. And for the listeners that aren t aware of it, properly paraphrase the but it was actually much more in depth in the fact that it said that Hae had been stabbed several times and they took her to the emergency room and she had lost too much blood and she was dead and that they shouldn t look for her again because she s dead. But a lot of the other statements that you made, as far as I understand are quite inaccurate and I ll explain why I think that and then I ll let you sort of rebut here. First of all, the statement that he was Adnan s close friend. What evidence do you have that he was a close friend of Adnan s? So, I m a journalist. I have a sources and I can t always name who they are and I ve been told by people who went to Woodlawn High at the time that this Imran was in fact Adnan s close friend. There s some confusion about it because there was another Imran in the class and this is all very hard to discuss and sometimes hard to follow because we don t want to give the people s last names and dock [?] them or out them on a public podcast. So, I ll try and explain it in a way that listeners will understand. This Imran is Imran H., the guy who wrote the . And the point has been made by Susan Simpson that Imran H. was not Adnan s close friend, it was a guy called Imran A. Well, so, first reason, I have been told that it was indeed Imran H. who was Adnan s close friend. Imran H. also goes by Imran A. on Facebook. He has a Facebook account, he s friends with Adnan s family, still Facebook friends. Raybia, uh Rabia rather, has offered, well, she s now revoked her offer, but she did at one time offer to put me in touch with Imran. Imran was on this list of people that there was a number of people that received this and they were all the close friends in the Magnet Program and Adnan s circle. The other guy named Imran A., the different Imran A., he was not a good friend of Adnan s. He s off in New York, has nothing to do with this. That s why I say it. And I don t take it lightly. I mean it is confusing and I understand why someone 15

16 might misinterpret the information but I really would not have said that if I didn t have the facts to back it up. Well, I know you say you have a source, but I m looking at in front of me right now, the police interview notes and in every single one of them, it says that Imran H., that wrote the , was not Adnan s close friend. The teacher s statements say that Adnan was close friends with Imran A. He was not close to Imran H. Imran s statement to the police says that they were not close. So, and I can go on and on and I can post on Twitter these source documents, but there s I would love There s five or six different documents here that all say that Imran H. was not close to Adnan. Including him in his own words and the teachers statements, that that was their not his close friend. He knew him. They went to the same school together. But Adnan was close friends with Imran A. So you re back... Where did you get those documents Bob? They ve been posted on Reddit. I m not sure where the original source was and then they ve been from there they ve been spread all over the Internet. Let me read you, well first of all, let me back up a second. So I guess, my and I will post these so people can review them but my position is, first of all, this was absolutely not Adnan s close friend. According to police statements, according to him in his police statements, this was not the Imran that was close. And according to the teachers statements to the police, this was not the Imran that Adnan was close to. Also Well Sorry go ahead. Oh, I ll just say one thing. I mean, I ve looked very, very hard for background information on this. The only thing that I know of that s being released and I mean, yes, I very well could have overlooked something but I don t think so. The only thing I saw was a snippet of a police note that did indeed say, Imran H. wasn t the, um, according to one teacher, wasn t the guy who was close to Adnan and I believe Imran A. was straight edge or something. That s all I ve seen. You know, one snippet, too lines So that s And all I can tell you, again, here is, yes, that contradicts the information I heard from my other sources, definitely. And it does support the view that Imran H. wasn t the good friend. But that s one little piece of information against ten other pieces of information and police notes aren t fallible. Teacher s notes aren t what the teachers say isn t infallible. I mean we had teachers saying that Hae and Stephanie were best friends which has been contradicted elsewhere. So, yes, you re right, that piece of information, that one piece of information that I ve seen, does contradict the idea that Imran H. was the good friend but, there s a lot of other information out there. 16

17 I guess I ll have to take your work for it. I mean all I have to look at are these documents and it s not wishy-washy, it s not back and forth, every single piece of evidence says every interview from everyone spoken to all says that they weren t close but I ll digress on that because, and I ll get further into this, as far as why I still don t see that as someone sending that , telling a completely different story has anything to do with, even if he was friends with him, Adnan s guilt. But I ll get into that in a moment because there was some other things. You said that that this was in response to an from a friend in California and Mm-hmm. And so he sent that back. Where did you get that information? Oh, it was on when the original s were posted, I can t remember all the details but someone replied to oh, I know what happened. Imran is obviously replying to an that was sent by someone, and then the sender, a guy named Vu, does a reply all. And it s one of those cases where the original was sent to a group, you can pretty much tell, and then he just replied to the sender as opposed to reply all. And then when the original sender replies to Imran, he brought everyone back in again and replied to the whole group. Right, what had happened [Speaking over each other] It s complicated. You might not understand [laughs]. No, I understand it. It was, cause what had happened was, Hae s brother had sent an out to, my understanding, everyone in Hae s contact list saying, actually, it s here in the police note, it says, looking for sister Hae, if you have any answers, me, know anything about her whereabouts, Hae s brother s . And all it says in the notes was time was around the beginning of her being missing, is the way that it was documented there. But yeah, it was that that he got from Hae s brother and then he replied back to this person, this person in California didn t him specifically asking for this, he got that off of the list and then he sent the out so his statements you had mentioned that there s been claims that he apologized. He actually apologizes in his police statement right here. It says his statement to the police says Bob, can I just interrupt you? I d absolutely love to see the stuff that you have. Well, let me read to you what the document says and then I ll post it so that you can get a look at it and confirm what I m reading. In his interview with Imran H., he says, he sent an back, thought it was a joke. Totally regrets it now. ed him again to apologize. And then it says, then a couple weeks later she was found dead and he came into the guidance office and says, No one prompted me to send it. He ll check for a copy of the . Don t know if Adnan part of forward list. Meaning he doesn t know from the original list if Adnan would have gotten that message too. So, there s 17

18 credibility to the statement that he was not Adnan s close friend, it was the other Imran. There s also the fact that, I Where did he say that? That he s not Adnan s close friend? Actually, I m thinking maybe I shouldn t get into a back and forth with you over this because I haven t actually seen the information, Bob, so it doesn t really make sense for me to, really, question it when I ve never seen this before. But the one thing I will say, you know, that Imran was trying to cover up in this and then the police call him in. What s he going to say? Yeah, sure, my friend Adnan did it. Or is he going to lie and say, I don t know why I did it. You know, I m sorry, I apologize. With that being said, I just don t see how writing an in response to something that was a mass , telling people in California to stop looking for Hae because she was stabbed and bled to death, how exactly does that cover anything up for Adnan? I don t follow the logic there. Yeah, no, I mean, I think for my interpretation of it would be that this guy was not acting particularly rationally. He knew that Adnan was in trouble and he just did something stupid that he thought was going to help his friend who was in trouble and it wasn t a particularly rational act. That s my interpretation of it. Okay, and I guess I would say it just doesn t seem rational to me to think that that would do any good. So, if your position was that Imran is Adnan s close friend and so and you think, the insinuation we re making is that he knows Adnan killed her. Is that kind of what you re thinking? Yes. Okay, so, if he is Adnan s very close friend and he knows Adnan killed her, he sends an to the people that were on this list telling her she s been murdered Wouldn t that in fact draw attention to him, who is Adnan s close friend? I mean, I don t see how that could be [Ann and Bob speaking at same time] I don t see how that could be used and it did I mean the police were all over him. And the police conclusion was that he wasn t close to Adnan. Adnan had no connection to this and that it was a sick joke. He apologized for it. His words were that it was a sick joke. So that wasn t something that Rabia made up. Those were his words in the statement. That it was a sick joke or he thought it was a joke. So I don t see how in any way that could be thought to believe that this is how I m going to help my friend is by drawing a bunch of attention and creating a story that had now, if he had sent an saying, Stop looking for her, she s been strangled and she was buried somewhere. That would certainly make me wonder, like, okay, well obviously, how did he know that. But he obviously didn t know anything or didn t present himself as though he knows anything. I guess we ll have to agree to disagree that I don t believe that in any way, shape, or form, is evidence against Adnan and neither did the State or the prosecution because 18

19 they didn t use it as evidence against Adnan after they investigated it and I don t think there s I can t even agree with the theory that maybe it could have been used if he was his close friend to try to cover things up. Because I think it would have done the exact opposite. So I guess that is my position and I think we just have to agree to disagree on this one. Okay, we can and I really want to see this stock image where the police conclude that the guy wasn t close to Adnan. I will agree with you it was a really stupid thing to do, and even if he was intending to help Adnan, it had the exact opposite effect. One other thing I would say, is just because something is not entered into evidence, doesn t mean that it doesn t have a certain amount of meaning. I mean, you don t always put everything into evidence, and this was just so complicated that it at a trial, it just complicates things. So the fact that it s not entered into evidence, to me, is neither here nor there. Well, and I would agree with that, if it was solely that it was not entered into evidence. It s the preponderance of the other evidence, but which, agreed, you haven t seen this stuff yet. I guess, let me ask you this, and then I ll get this stuff to you later, so you can confirm what I m telling you. But, if what I m telling you is correct, and all the police interview notes and the teacher statements and all that everyone says they weren t close friends, he says that he had no involvement with Adnan, that he thought it was a joke, that he s apologized profusely, and by all accounts, he was not Adnan s close friend If those things that I m telling you I can confirm to you with these source documents, would you then agree that this really isn t any evidence towards Adnan s guilt? I would agree and I would eat a very big slice of humble pie. [Laughter] Okay, well, we ll wait and see if there s pie dished up here, shortly. I ll try to get that stuff out. I ll it to you directly so you have it and then I will post it. Yes. And can you FedEx me the humble pie? [Laughter] All right. Will do. Let s move on to your next point. We kind of covered four and where are we at we covered four and five at the same time. And actually we kind of skipped over four. You started talking about it and then kind of went into number five. Number four is where you had said Adnan consistently lied about how people reacted to Hae s disappearance, claiming it was no big deal, which is completely implausible. Hae had a new boyfriend, a class trip to France booked, and university to look forward to, there was no way she would take off to California. So and your assertion here is that Adnan is lying about people s reaction to the disappearance, and claiming it was no big deal, which you find completely implausible. Am I reading that right? Am I getting your sense of that? Yes, and I do think, you know, obviously there were a bunch of people who were talking about this California theory. But I think as time went on, fewer and fewer believed it. And you know, you had Aisha, and other friends of Hae who Adnan said when Sarah Koenig asked him, Listen, why didn t you ever try to call or page Hae? He said, Well, her other friends were doing it. We had this idea she was in 19

20 California. I just thought that was pretty strange. I mean, even if the California story had been circulating in the first few days after her disappearance, phone California, and it s obvious she s not there, you start to worry and you wonder where she is. And that s why her friends were trying to phone her and page her and find out where she was. For the record, all of the police notes and the journals that were filled out by the students, there was one that I have a copy of, where Becky wrote. They all said that when they got back to school, that Adnan actually, it was before they got back to school, they said that Adnan was extremely concerned when she didn t show up to Krista s party on Friday. There was a couple different accounts of that. I never, ever heard that. So if there s any evidence of that, I would love to see it. Let me make sure I have it in front of me. If I can read from Becky s journal entry that she was asked to fill out. The question was, Adnan s reaction to Hae missing, and this is Becky s journal entry. It says, At first he thought, like all of us, that she d gone to Don s house. Maybe she was mad at her mom or something. He became concerned when he realized she hadn t gone to work and didn t come to Krista s party. Still tried to figure out where she was, maybe she d gone to California to see her dad. She mentioned that if things got really bad, she would go to her dad s in California. When she didn t show up at school Tuesday, January 19, he was very concerned. He stayed after school for track practice and came to Mrs. I can t quite read it Muse s? M-U-S- E-S room. So that was Becky s journal entry when asked about Adnan s reaction. And there are several other statements from other students that are right along those same lines. [Pause] Are you still with me? Okay, so yeah, no, sorry for the long pause. Those have not been made public as far as I know. They re out there, you just have to search for them. So based on that, from the research that I ve done, that I have sitting in front of me, kind of your statement here just doesn t add up to me. About how he consistently lied about people s reactions to Hae s disappearance. I mean, just in this one statement this is just one Becky states that he, like all of us, thought she had gone to see Don or ran off with Don. Until after Krista s When she didn t show up to Krista s party, which was Friday, two days later, that s when he got very concerned. So I guess I can say we can disagree on this or whatever, I just want to point out that my position on that comes from this, from these source documents. Right. Okay, well, until I see those source documents, I am going to decline to say more than I have. I will say that, you know, I think to a certain extent, all the reactions of the students in Hae s group to her disappearance were a little weird. Can I ask you though, as far as your point about the fact that he was lying about other people s reaction to this, where did you get that information? Because I ve seen people say things like that, on Reddit, but I ve never seen anybody support that with anything. Where did you source that to make that claim? 20

21 Well I wrote this two months ago, so my memory s a little foggy, but I will say right off, that the example on Serial in Episode 6, when he says, oh, you know, when he s asked why he didn t try to contact Hae, and he said, Oh, well, none of us were really worried. We thought she d gone to California. I would certainly say that that does appear to have been one of the reactions in the first days now, that she had gone to California or Don s. But after a few days, it was no longer the reaction. So, it s not an explanation for Adnan to answer it when Sarah Koenig said to him, Well, why did you never phone her again? Well, because we weren t really concerned. People were concerned. One of those points you mentioned that he never called her again, and to be fair, that statement that he made on Serial wasn t that I never called her again because I wasn t concerned about her, he said that he couldn t remember if he had called or tried to page her but his group of friends all knew that she was missing, they were all together, Aisha was constantly at the house, he knew she wasn t answering calls, so he was right there with them. They were all--he actually said the opposite of them not being concerned. He said they were all together, talking about it, and that s where he was getting his information from. So I think it s a little unfair to say that he claimed, because that was not what was said on Serial, that he said on Serial that he never tried to contact her again because he wasn t concerned when that wasn t the case, and that s not what he said. No, he didn t say he wasn t concerned, but he gave, I certainly took from that the impression that he wasn t concerned. But he didn t say it, you re right. I think the evidence would show that he was concerned well, I guess depending on your perspective on this, because you and I obviously have different perspectives he either, by all of the witness accounts was very concerned or was pretending to be very concerned, depending on your point of view here. I would say that s an accurate description. [01:08:36] Sponsor Shaun T Fitness: Interview with Becky Ruff All right, well, let s take a quick break from the interview so we can hear a word about our sponsor. Actually, I have a very special guest that would like to talk about her experiences with Shaun T. I would like to introduce my wife, Mrs. Becky Ruff. Becky: Hi. Okay, so, Becky, can you describe real briefly your experience with using Shaun T s products? Becky: It started back in January of Got really unhappy with myself, clothes weren t fitting right, and I had a friend who had had a lot of success with T25 so I decided to order it. I m 38 years old and I ve almost been doing Shaun s programs for two years now. I ve lost 30 pounds, I ve kept it off. I m in better shape now than I was when I was in high school. 21

22 And what is it about Shaun T that you like so much? I know I ve heard you from of course being your husband, heard you talk about all the different workout programs you ve done. Why is it that you like Shaun T so much? Becky: I really like the duration. I m busy, I work, I have four kids in the house. I can come home, I can do a 25 minute to 30 minute workout, and it s done for the entire day, and you get results with it. Also I love Shaun s videos because I love him. He is a great motivator. He keeps you going. When he says, Do one more, you actually want to do one more for him. Yeah, for me and my own experiences using T25, which Becky s been helping drive along through that, I m two weeks in now, and I m down 10 pounds. And I always feel like Shaun s not pushing you along, Shaun pulls you along with him. So you ve used more than just T25 over the past two years. What other products of Shaun s have you used? Becky: I ordered the Insanity Max30 as soon as it came out. And I plan trying out his new CIZE videos even though I cannot dance at all. Okay, well, thanks Becky, from taking time away from our children to talk to me for a few minutes. And again I want to thank Shaun T Fitness for sponsoring the program. And he has made a huge difference in Becky s life and in my life and he can absolutely change your life. So as Shaun T always says, Dig deeper. [01:10:56] Point Number Six Okay so let s go down to your next point, which I think is point number six. The story about why Adnan lent Jay his car because he wanted Jay to get a gift for Stephanie. That s a little hard to swallow. I think most of us believe there has to be more to it than that. None of us know that I certainly wouldn t consider it evidence that I don t believe someone would do that because people might do that. There s also the fact that you said you believed Jay s testimony at trial, and at trial Jay testified that Adnan had given him his car to go get Stephanie. They both, through their interviews, they both said that was the reason. Another piece of that is the fact that I don t believe Adnan only lent his car to Jay on this day. If you remember, you referenced Serial. On Serial, the track buddy of Adnan s, Will, when he was asked about Adnan being picked up by Jay at track practice in his car, Will said that I wouldn t know if it was that day, because that was a common occurrence. That it happened so often, for Jay to come and pick him up, that we wouldn t think anything of it. So I don t think that we can assume that that s the only time and I can t put it in the evidence column that we don t think someone would lend their car out to get a birthday gift, because how could we possibly know that? 22

23 Yes, no, I don t want to call this the evidence column, like these aren t twelve points of evidence. These are twelve reasons why I think Adnan is guilty. I do think that s one thing that we have to clarify, that in court you are presented with the evidence and then the jury is allowed to draw reasonable inferences from the evidence. So some of these are the inferences I draw from the evidence. Not evidence itself. Okay, that makes sense and I guess, still for me, I don t think any of us can possibly decide whether someone would or would not lend their car for someone to go get a birthday gift, but how do you feel, one way or the other, about my it s theory, I guess, because we ve never heard that definitively, we just know that one of his teammates on the track team said that Jay would pick him up on a regular basis. That it was normal. Do you believe or think that it s possible that he lent his car to Jay on a regular basis? I do believe it s possible, but I think that he sort of undermined that when he said that he and Jay didn t hang out that much. And weren t kicking it per se. I mean listen, it s all possible that he did lend Jay his car to get the birthday gift for Stephanie. I mean, stranger things have happened. But it seems like that wasn t the whole story. And, he is still not coming clean about it. That s more my point. So yes, I totally believe it s possible he could have been lending him his car regularly. Okay, and then we can move on to your point number seven. [01:13:59] Point Number Seven Point number seven. Adnan lied about asking Hae for a ride. So this was when he was interviewed in front of his father. And he said he hadn t asked Hae for a ride. As far as that goes, him lying about asking Hae for a ride, I honestly don t know exactly what to think about that. Because the statement to the police where, you know, people point that he lied was when he was being interviewed later and the police officer referenced and I don t remember the names of which police, there s too many right now but the police officer that was questioning him asked him if he had asked Hae for a ride back, at this point, it was six weeks before, and he said he didn t. And then he pointed to the copy of this report that the other officer had written and said, Well, you told him that you did. So that would certainly appear that he lied about it, and I m not going to say that he didn t lie about it. It s a little odd to me that that report, the first report was written weeks later. It was actually written after Adnan was arrested. It was dated when he wrote it, from an interview that had taken place six weeks before, so that leads me to believe there s a couple of different scenarios: Either a) Adnan did tell him that he asked for a ride and then in the second interview said no, he didn t; or Adnan was correct in saying I never told him that, and he didn t tell him that first time and it was confused maybe later when it was written six weeks later by the police officer. It could be either one of those things. But assuming that he did lie about it, like you said, this is not all necessarily evidence, but there are definitely things to consider that can be inferred by us or by a jury so to speak if it were in a trial. What do you think it would mean, say that that s 23

24 true, and a few days after the disappearance, he said, Yes, I asked her for a ride that day, and she turned me down. And then, after she s found dead and he s arrested, he s asked if he asked her for a ride and now he lies and says, No, I never asked her for a ride. What do you think that means? I think it means he s a guy who thought he had gotten away with murder and now it s looking like maybe he hadn t. And he s nervous and he s making mistakes. The way I sort of think about this is: If Adnan indeed murdered Hae, and it was just a couple of days later, the police are interviewing him, asking him about his events of that day. So seemingly he d be a suspect, right? Especially if he indeed had murdered her, he would certainly know he s probably in a little bit of trouble at this point, would you agree with that? Yes. Okay, so he s being interviewed in this scenario, he actually did murder Hae. It s ten days later, he s being interviewed and he s asked if he had asked her for a ride that day. Him knowing in this scenario that he did get a ride from her and then murdered her in her car wouldn t it make more sense for him to lie then? Why would he admit to asking her for a ride when he knows that he murdered her in her car after getting a ride from her? Why would he admit to the police officer that yes, he asked for that ride then but then later, change his story after he was arrested? Wouldn t it make more sense that he would have lied on that day? I guess, that s kind of where I m coming from. Yes, it absolutely would have, but the theory that I ve heard proposed is that he was not expecting that phone call at all, and he was totally thrown off-guard. The other, bigger point I d make is that people who commit crimes do stupid stuff all the time, and make mistakes and we look at them and say, Oh, my god, how could they have made that mistake? It happens. I ll concede the fact that neither one of us can possibly know what Adnan was thinking when he said that. My feeling I don t want to say theory but my feeling on it is there s a lot of little mistakes you could make, like, where you were driving around that day, and mixing that up. But if the entire point and this was supposedly a premeditated, planned event for him to get that ride and get in the car with her and murder her in the car it s the biggest key piece of evidence as far as what he did when they point-blank asked him if he asked for a ride. And he just says, Yeah. That s what we re saying here, is that he did, in fact, lie on that day. So he just says, Yes, I did. That would be, in my mind, it would be tough to believe that he would make that mistake. Maybe some mistakes, but not the mistake by telling them the one thing that would most likely get him caught, and the fact that You re right, it s a hugely stupid mistake to make. But when you take a few steps back and look at this whole murder plan, it s a pretty terrible plan overall. It really is not a good plan. And yet, had it not been for Jay, the police might never have caught Adnan. 24

25 That s true. It was an incredibly stupid plan. I think, for a premeditated murder, to plan to do it in an extremely short period of time, rely on her offering a ride, and then pre-meditatively choosing manual strangulation for your method, I would agree with you, that seems pretty crazy to me. So then, moving on Totally crazy. Yeah. Moving on to your point number eight. [01:19:50] Point Number Eight Eight. Oh, it s a very big one, and again I want to emphasize although I think that this is extremely important, I do not think it s that proverbial smoking gun. It s the I m going to kill written on Hae s breakup note to Adnan, which Sarah Koenig shockingly dismissed as a detail you d find in a cheesy detective novel. I m gobsmacked that she would have said that and gotten away with that. I mean, here is a breakup note from the girl who was murdered, on which Adnan writes I m going to kill and Sarah Koenig doesn t even ask Adnan about this. Well, we don t know if she asked him about it, but there was a lot of interview that we didn t hear. But agreed, it was never brought up on the podcast as far as his response to that. And, the number one cause of women s murders is being murdered by their partners. Okay. And she doesn t even think it s worth mentioning if she did ask him about it. That s pretty shocking, in my opinion. I would agree with that, and I think that you could probably chalk that up to maybe an entertainment value of the way it was presented. I would agree with her to that fact that you go into the killer s house and find I m going to kill written on a note, does sound like something you would see in a movie, but that doesn t make it any less relevant. It certainly could be relevant, I would agree with you that it s not a smoking gun of sorts, but it could be a couple of things. It could be that Adnan was that was not the breakup letter from when they most recently broke up. That letter was from back in November, another time that they had broken up for a period of time. And it wasn t written on the breakup note per se. That document is all over the place, you can find that all over the internet for anyone. So the breakup note was on one page, and then on the breakup note It was on the back of the breakup note. Right. And it was also just to put it in context, on the breakup note, him and Aisha were writing notes, back and forth, passing that note back and forth to each other. And I m not going to get into the context of what they were because it s pretty sensitive personal context as far as what they were writing the note back and forth 25

26 about. But I would say that writing I m going to kill in the middle of they started writing their notes back and forth on the front, it continued to the back, writing that know what, I m trying to dance carefully around this have you seen the document? I have. Yeah, so you know what I m talking about. Writing that note back and forth and writing I m going to kill, I m not saying it absolutely was, but it could fit in the context of what they were talking about in that note. I m not claiming that that s absolutely what it was about, it could be anything, who knows? It could be that he was planning to murder her back in November when that was going on. And decided to write I m going to kill on the back of that note in the midst of their notes back and forth. Or, he could have written that in January. That s true, too. We don t know when it was written. It could be that he just decided to write down that he was going to kill, but would you agree and I m not saying this is the case I m just asking you if you would agree, given the context of what they were writing back and forth and what the lecture that was going on during that time was, that it could also possibly fit into that context as well? Yeah, it could, I don t really see it being part of that conversation, but yeah. It could. Like I said, I don t think it s a smoking gun for the prosecution, it s not something that I can say definitively wasn t a plan to murder. But we also can t say definitively that it had anything to do with Hae or the breakup note. So, we don t really know, but And speaking journalistically, this topic absolutely should have been addressed. And I just feel it was a huge oversight of Sarah Koenig not to have dealt with it. Well, I think though, and I see your point there, too, but I think it could possibly be too that, how much can you address it? Given the fact that we don t really know what it was written about or why it was written. And we just had this note and a piece of paper and it was now, if it was like in big scribbled letters over the front of the note on the breakup letter, or around Hae s name saying I m going to kill, then I think this is definitely bells and whistles need to be going off. But being that it was written on the back of the page amidst the notes being passed back and forth on this topic, I don t know where you could go with it journalistically, other than just saying that it was there. And I m sure part of that was candor on Sarah Koenig s part as well, not to disclose the content of what they were talking about. So I see your point, there should have been, maybe should have been addressed more, but I can also on the same time see why maybe it wasn t. Because what could you really do other than maybe just speculate about what it meant. You know what I mean? Well, you could say, What were you thinking? Oh, I m sorry, you mean, in regards to asking Adnan about it. 26

27 Yeah. I remember, didn t she ask Aisha about it? And she just said she didn t remember that being on the note when they wrote it? Yes. Forgive me, I haven t listened to Serial in a while, and I guess I ll take your word for it because it sounds right to me that she never did ask Adnan about it. So, and it could be, that his response was, we were talking about the context of that note, and she didn t want to disclose that on the podcast too. For a number of reasons. I mean, we just don t know. So let s move on to number nine. [01:26:04] Point Number Nine So number nine is that there was some worrisome behaviors that Adnan exhibited toward Hae which I believe that Sarah Koenig minimized. One she didn t mention, an incident where Hae didn t want to see Adnan at school, so Adnan She was a teaching assistant to a French teacher, and she was supposed to be in her classroom but Adnan went there to try and find her. So, Hae phoned the teacher on the class phone and said, Don t let Adnan know you re speaking to me. I don t want to see him so I m not coming to class. That s a pretty extreme behavior in my opinion. She [Talking over one another.] Well, I was going to ask, because I ve read the trial transcripts where that account was made. And I think you got it pretty accurately. Hae had said that they were having a fight, and she called the teacher and said, Don t tell Adnan I m here. I don t want to see him right now, so, I m not coming in there, because we re fighting. I guess for me, I didn t see it. Maybe when you lump it with some other things that you sort of addressed here, maybe, but that just sounds like high school to me. I do the same thing when I m in the grocery store and I run into somebody I don t feel like talking to, and avoid them like the plague. When you re having a fight, and you don t want to talk to somebody, to avoid them like that, just sounds very high school to me. I mean, it s something, I guess, but it doesn t to me sound like this very big grand thing that it was a big indication of anything about Adnan, it was just Hae saying they were in a fight and she didn t want to see him right then. Well, I see it not quite like you ducking behind the Wheaties at the grocery store, it s serious enough that you re going to an authority figure, like your boss, saying, Oh my God, hide me from this stalker woman. I don t want to see her. So I mean she wasn t just, you know, ducking behind her locker. That to me bumped it up on the seriousness level. First of all, she didn t say he was stalking, but as far as contacting the authority figure: When I read the transcripts, it read to me like she was letting her know that she wasn t going to be in class. She wasn t, like, informing her that she was afraid of Adnan or anything. The way the trial transcripts read, she had called her because she was 27

28 supposed she had been in class with this teacher earlier in the day, and she was supposed to be in that class, and she was calling her to let her know, I m not coming in for this reason, because Adnan and I had a fight and I don t want to see him right now. So I mean, maybe we re splitting hairs here, but it didn t sound to me like I m reporting this to my authority figure. She was just telling her why she wasn t in class. And also that was the teacher if I m remembering correctly she had a very close relationship with, correct? That she was going to go to the France with her? I m not sure if they were very close, but they did seem to have a closer than just a regular teacher relationship, yes. Yeah, I think that was the teacher that she was planning her trip and I think that s spelled out in that particular part of the transcripts, that that was the teacher she was planning to take a trip to France with coming up soon. Yes, it was a class trip, yes. Was it a class trip, or was it a trip she was just taking with her? I don t think it was a class trip. It was to happen after graduation, unless I ve got my facts wrong. I m pretty certain it was a class trip. Okay, I don t know, so I guess I can t comment one way or the other. My understanding just from the transcript said that She and I were going to go to France, or had a trip to France planned. But I ll have to verify that. Okay, and then moving on to your number ten. [01:30:08] Point Number Ten We sort of discussed that already, that s the fact that Adnan didn t try to contact Hae after January 13. That s right, okay. Yeah, and I know we already hit on that, and Yeah, I think we pretty much covered everything. I ve made the comparison before to say that, you know, if we re going to hold Adnan to that scrutiny, and put this as far as some circumstantial evidence that he is guilty, then I think that you would have to make the same inference on the current boyfriend, who also never and as a matter of fact, I think that looks more guilty to me that her current boyfriend, who she had a date with that night that she never showed up for. He never attempted to contact her, he had no idea he didn t know any of these people, he had no idea what was going on, and never tried to contact her again. To me, that looks very more suspicious than the exboyfriend/friend who is around all of her friends not contacting her. And I don t know that we can draw I m certainly not saying that that means that her current boyfriend Don was guilty of it. I m just saying that if it s fair to judge Adnan based on that, then you have to kind of put that equally across the board. Oh, I totally judge Don for it. I mean, it doesn t make him look like he was a very caring guy. 28

29 Right. Either not caring or and that s one of the things that and again, I m not by any means accusing Don of this crime. But it just, it always struck me as odd that the police didn t really investigate him further or really lean on him a little bit to see what was I know, they did a few things: They questioned him, they went to his work, but for someone that had no idea what was going on and was supposed to have a date, to never contact her And like you said, oftentimes when women are murdered like this, it s the significant other. I mean, that s a statistical fact. It just, it shocked me that when they see that he never tried to contact her, in my mind and there was a time when I really was focusing on Don in my theories, and I m not necessarily there anymore. But at the time I was just thinking like, he wasn t contacting her because he knew she was dead. Of course, he s not contacting her, why else wouldn t he contact her? But in any case, I m digressing about Don and we re talking about Adnan, but I m just kind of making the comparison that neither one did and it s less suspicious to me that Adnan didn t, given that he was in you can see his phone records, he s calling this Nisha girl all the time, talking to Krista, and all the things that he had going on at the time, and she was the ex, and they weren t in school, and he wasn t seeing her, and then later he found out I mean, it s at least to me not that suspicious. It s something to think about, but it s not that suspicious. I could see why he wouldn t contact her or call her or page her. And also, the fact that we don t know. You know, he said he doesn t remember if he ever did, he didn t think he did, but we don t know if he did really or not, because we only have his cell records and not the home records. And we know that he paged people from his home phone on a regular basis after he had his cell phone. And Krista testified to that too, that he paged her many times. But there s only ever one instance of him paging her from his cell phone. So the majority of those came from his home phone. So he could have paged her from a home phone and we don t know. And he says he doesn t know if he did or not. I mean, he actually agrees and says, I kind of think I didn t, but I don t remember ever trying to because I was talking to all of her friends. My understanding is that Sarah Koenig had the pager records and they showed he hadn t, so because the way a pager works, you have to punch in your number so that someone could call you back there. It would have shown if he had paged her from his home phone number because he would have had to punch it in. Well, if Sarah Koenig has Hae s pager records, then we need to go find her right now. Because that is the largest missing piece of evidence from this case that no one has her pager records. Because one of the theories out there is that, you know, she told all of her friends that something came up and she had to go right away after school. And people s assumption is, whatever that thing was, somebody paged her, but we don t have those pager records. So I think you re wrong there, I know there s no way that Sarah Koenig has her pager records. I could be wrong there, but there was something on Twitter just after Jay s Intercept interview about the pager records. So, to be clarified. 29

30 Yeah, and that could have been and that s one of the difficult things in this case is, a lot of our opinions there s so much out there on social media, and on Reddit, and all that, and I have the same problem. I mean, I made a mistake on one of my episodes where I read a stat for the Baltimore Police Department you know, I spend days reading and researching before every episode and I had read it somewhere and I wrote it down, and then later found out it wasn t an official stat. It was somebody s blog post and it was wrong. So, you know, a lot of those things get put out on Twitter and you re reading through so much of it, you sort of it s easy to get mixed up on what was fact and what was somebody s opinion. But as far as the pager records, I m quite certain they don t have them, because like I said, that s been noted over and over again, that s the largest piece of missing evidence that neither her pager her pager was never found and her pager records were never recovered by the police. And now it s too late to get ahold of them. Apparently they re just gone and we can t get them. And there s a lot of people, myself included, think that those pager records would certainly help to paint a better picture of what happened on that day. Yeah, no, I very well could be muddled here. Alright, so that was our point ten. Moving on to your point eleven. [01:36:31] Point Number Eleven I mean, I just don t see another explanation for the Nisha call other than that he made that call. So you believe 100% that the Nisha call was Adnan making that call. Not 100%. But you don t see any other explanation for that. Why is that you think that? Can you elaborate on that a little bit? I just don t buy the butt dial information so I mean, yeah, of course it could be a butt dial. That happens. It s not beyond probability but when I take it and consider it along with everything else, to me, it just has to pretty much be him calling her. I absolutely don t think and in my mind this is one of the few facts that it, not that I m right all the time or necessarily right about this, but this is one of the few things in this case that I m 100% convinced that the Nisha call was not Adnan calling Nisha. I ll list out for you kind of my reasons why and then you let me know what you think and I guess first I ll start with you. You said at the beginning of the interview that you believe Jay s testimony, correct? Yes, I do believe his testimony. 30

31 Okay, in Jay s testimony, you re aware that, actually you know, I know the State closed the case by telling the jury that the come and get me call happened at 2:36. But No, they said that Adnan called at 2:36, but they didn t say it was the come and get me call. Okay. It could have been I don t have those transcripts in front of me but it could have been Adnan saying, Okay, I m leaving Woodlawn now, see you at Best Buy in 45 minutes, or whatever. The point I was making was: Jay never testified to that. In Jay s testimony, he was very clear, and this is one of there s few things that Jay was consistent on throughout all of his police interviews and his testimony at both trials and this was very few and this was the one thing that he was very, very consistent about, was that he was told to wait until 3:30 to get a call from Adnan to come get him after he had murdered Hae. That was the plan all along. Would you agree that s what he testified? My memory is a bit foggy but I m not going to contradict you on that. Okay, he has, and of course that s something you can look up and see. But he has consistently maintained, even to this day, that he was told that the call was going to come at 3:30 and both he and Jenn testify that he was and consistently that he was waiting at her house and Adnan didn t call at 3:30. He waited for I think it was another ten or fifteen minutes around 3:40, he says, 3:45, I think he says he left at that point. I think Jenn says he was still there, but says that he got the call from Adnan the quote come and get me call at 3:40, 3:45. Yes, that s what he says at the trial. Yes, so, I think, I mean, there s more here but just to stop there for a moment. If that s what he said at trial, and you believe his testimony, then the Nisha call could not have been Adnan. Just by that point alone because the Nisha call happened at I think 3:32. And Jay s Right, so Jay s consistent interview statements and testimony were that he did not get the come and get me call until after 3:30 and he specifically remembered that because 3:30 was the time and Adnan was late calling him cause he was waiting for him to call. So, I m definitely with you that he said he got the come and get me call at 3:45. I don t remember him ever saying that he lied. He specifically remembered it that way, certainly the prosecution never challenged him on that time. So I guess a few things: witnesses always have small inconsistencies, facts like this, in their testimonies. So that for me is, I mean, Jay could be misremembering it so when I believe him, I believe that he is telling the story as he remembers it. That he s not lying. I believe that, you 31

32 know, that there s a margin of error within the times he s discussing as well and I don t think those two things are contradictory. First of all, I there s probably a reason that him and Jenn both continue to maintain that this happened after 3:30, but both of them, both state, it was 3:30. They both say that it was around 3:45 when he got the call however there s the inconsistency there where I think Jenn says he was inside and Jay says he was on his way out. So then he says he leaves there, and he goes, and there s a million stories as far as where he went after that to see the body in the truck. Which kind of going back to your point way back at the beginning about remembering significant events, I think seeing a body in trunk would be not something you d not forget, but He was lying. He was lying. Yeah. It s obvious. So, you know, so his final story he ends up at trial is that it s Best Buy. So he goes to Best Buy they get him, they drive around, and they re driving, I don t remember, they said that they were driving somewhere. I don t remember the exact location they said. So this is, now we re talking 4:15, 4:30, somewhere around there, when Adnan decided to call Nisha. And he doesn t know why he decided but he just decided out of the blue, right after murdering somebody, he decides to call Nisha and puts him on the phone. In another piece of his testimony that he consistently maintained, and the cell records do confirm this, is that he s always said that he called Patrick and then it was after he called Patrick that Adnan called Nisha. Well we know that the call to Patrick was made at 3:59. And again, the Nisha call was 3:32. So two things there: he says he didn t get the call, he wasn t with Adnan until well after 3:45. He says that he called Patrick and then later the Nisha call came. He says that they were driving down the road somewhere when he gets the call. And that was his testimony at trial and we can mix up details as far, you know, mixing up times and things like that, but do you believe him when he says at trial that that call happened while they were driving down the road? Which call are you talking about? The Nisha call? Yes. I believe that that s happened how he remembers it, yes. So then coupled with that, the fact that if we believe Jay s testimony and Jenn s testimony, then it s not possible for that call to have been Adnan with the phone. Then Well, I think there are inconsistencies with Jay s and Jenn s testimonies in terms of being that time, absolutely. 32

33 So then there s the part where he consistently says that they are driving down the road and the call occurs when Adnan calls her. Nisha testifies, very specifically, that she was talking to Adnan, just Adnan. And while she was talking to him he was walking into the adult video store where Jay worked. That he walked into his work and said, Here, say hi to Jay or Jay say whatever that was. Her recollection of the she was asked at trial, was there ever a time when Adnan called you and put you on the phone with his friend Jay? And she said, Yes, that happened exactly one time, only once, and it was while he was walking into the video store to visit his friend Jay at work. When he got into work, he hands Jay the phone. Jay says hi for a couple of minutes and Adnan takes the phone back. So, I mean, what do you make of that as far as Nisha s testimony? I think that peoples memories aren t as good as they think they always are. So I think that that s how Nisha remembers it. There may have been more than one occasion when she spoke to Jay and Adnan together. She may not remember all of those but I again, I think, like Jay, she s telling what she remembers and she believes that what she s saying is absolutely true. And it may well be or it may not be. Okay, um That s not a very satisfactory answer, is it? Well, no, I m [Laughs] I don t know. It s not an answer basically let me tell you and please don t take offense to this, but let me tell you how I m hearing that. In order to make Adnan be with the phone and make the Nisha call, we have to believe that Jay misremembered the details of the call. Jenn misremembered the details of the call. Nisha misremembered the details of the call. And they re all completely wrong and none of them cause she also testified that it would have been in the evening time they re all completely misremembering and none of them remember a call that actually fits the phone records. That s what I m hearing. In order for us to believe that Adnan made that call, we have to believe that everyone misremembered this. Well, all we have to really believe is that Jay got the time wrong and Nisha isn t 100% sure. Not that it was completely wrong. But, I guess what this whole conversation has clarified for me, Bob, talking to you about our different perspectives, and causing me to reflect on why we have such different perspectives. I think I look at in a much more big picture type way and the small inconsistencies don t bother me as much as they really bother you. I mean, I see a very imperfect murder with a bunch of people who ve done really stupid things, and misremembered things, and you see much more planning. And sort of people who should be thinking about it more and I guess that I m seeing as a result of this conversation that that s where our fundamental differences lie. Well that s I don t know if that s an entirely accurate depiction of me as far as my perspective. What my perspective is: is that I don t see these as little details. I mean, they re major pieces of evidence that were used to convict Adnan. Like the Nisha call, I mean the prosecution 33

34 Fair enough, and I didn t mean that in a pejorative way. Right, and that s why I m like picking apart you know these particular details because when the prosecution uses a piece of evidence like this call to prove that Adnan was with his phone at that time, when all of the evidence and testimony. I mean literally of it. There s literally not one shred of evidence unless you can tell me something that I don t know, that would hold true that Adnan made that phone call. Not Jay s testimony, not Jenn s testimony, not Nisha s testimony and Nisha wasn t wishywashy about this. She testified that she very clearly remembered that. Now of course there s the fact that there s two pieces of that testimony, or three. One, she said it would have been in the evening. Two, that we know Jay didn t work at the adult video store on January 13. He didn t work there until the 31 st and the evening thing would line up better because he worked in the evenings. When you piece all that together and then the fact that Nisha also never, ever testified that this happened on January 13. She was never asked, Did it happen on January 13? She never said that it did. All she said was that she thought that maybe there was that it was sometime in January, it probably would have been. So there s just, for me, if you re going to use a piece of evidence I m not saying you but the prosecution is going to use a piece of evidence as proof of something happening and a method to put a person away for the rest of their life for murder. You should have your facts straight. To me, I don t know, like I said, you can tell me maybe something that that I don t know but all of the facts, and I don t mean some of the facts, all of the facts point towards Adnan did not make that phone call. And I ve yet to hear one piece, and I m not saying again, from you, but just in general. No one s ever been able to point me to a reason to believe that Adnan made that phone call other than Jay said he did. But Jay s version of how and when he did it isn t physically possible based on the phone records and the rest of everyone s testimony around it. It s just doesn t work for that time. So I should say one thing, [inaudible]. I mean, the Nisha call has never been a huge deal for me which is why it was point eleven out of twelve. What I think happened is I think Jay was off on his times. The call to Nisha did take place 3:30. I think they spoke to Nisha and she s probably misremembering. That s a lot of ifs, I get it, I understand, why you re very skeptical. I also don t think that this particular call was that important to the jury. Well, I guess we don t know what was particular to the jury. It s one of those things that just frustrates me. And I ve said before, I believe after reviewing the evidence and digging as deeply into this case as I have, I believe Adnan is innocent. But I completely acknowledge the fact that I don t know that he s innocent. So I m trying to look at this from a perspective of a blank slate, and trying to be objective, and just really looking at facts. And that s what got me to where I m at right now, is things like this. And we can say that it may not have had a large effect on the jury. But if you read the transcripts, the prosecution made a huge point after questioning Nisha on the stand, and again at closing, that, We know Adnan s lying, we know he wasn t at track, because we know he had the phone, because we know he called Nisha. I mean I don t see how a jury ignored that. That was 34

35 Certainly I would think you could agree, maybe, that that was a piece of evidence that maybe not all by itself did a lot of damage. But piled on the other elements of the case that they were framing as their scenario, as their narrative, it certainly made a difference, and it certainly would add credibility to their other claims to convince the jury that he was guilty and that the narrative happened the way they said it did. When I look at the evidence, the Nisha call is big for me. And maybe I m wrong in thinking so, but I just don t see how it s possible. And then to further couple that with as far as evidence of it not being true, I actually owned that exact same phone in 1999 and I just So did I. Yeah, those Nokia phones? And so you remember how you program numbers into them. You had like your nine numbers on the keypad that you could program a number to each one, and if you just held it for one second it would call them. I blanked it out, I don t remember. [Laughter] Yeah, that s how that phone operated. Cause I remember that was my first I m not much older than Adnan, I wasn t in high school back then but that was my first ever cell phone. I remember going through, you know, getting it and going through the manual and of course plugging in my contacts and storing my favorite numbers. You know my girlfriend at the time, putting her number in the number one slot. And that s how it worked. All you had to do was hold that button for one second and it was not like smart phones that we have now that are all touch screens. You know, there was the big buttons that stuck up and if you held that button for one second, it would make the call. And I know I personally used to butt dial all the time. I would just setting it down in the passenger seat of my car would accidentally call people all the time. Now that s certainly not evidence that that absolutely was a butt dial. But like you ve mentioned with other things when I couple all of these things together surrounding this call, I just, I absolutely don t buy for a second that Adnan made that phone call. And in going even further with that, as far as, and that s getting a lot deeper, we re always a long ways into this. I was thinking this might be a 30 minute interview, Ann. We re a couple hours into this. [Laughter] You are going to have a lot of editing to do otherwise your listeners will be falling asleep. Yeah. [Laughter] But just briefly, like for me too, the track coach s statements about whether or not Adnan was at track. You know, I think that makes to me feel very likely that he was at track. So he still wouldn t have been able to make that call, but that s a conversation for another day. We re almost there, let s hit your last point, number twelve and then I ll let you go to bed. [01:54:17] Point Number Twelve Which I won t say much about beyond the fact that, you know, the cell records show that he was almost certainly or very probably depending on how much credence 35

36 you want to give, and how nerdy you want to get but he pretty much had to be in Leakin Park at 7:00. I m sure you saw this coming, but I would, I would disagree with you there. How do you feel about and I m kind of asking this to get to further down the line to my answer here I m sure as much as you have read and researched about this case, you re familiar with the lividity reports and all the buzz that s been all over the internet about the lividity report evidence that has been brought up lately. How do you feel about that? Okay, so, a few things I would say. One, that some of the research that s been done after the fact has been done with black and white photos which aren t acceptable quality to perform an analysis with. So there s that starting out. But let s say for the sake of argument, that the conclusion reached about the lividity and the positioning of the body are good. What I would say is that what it shows is that the body was moved sometime, and it could have been after burial. I ve seen one theory that, you know, I hate talking about this stuff that the body could have been disrupted by animals or that it is possible that Adnan or people have said other people went back there to put rocks on top, and that would explain the lividity as well. Okay. [Speaking over each other] Okay, so there s certainly a million theories that can go along with the and for those of you that aren t aware, and I m sure that you are real briefly, and you re right there were black and white photos. But there were also, if I m not mistaken, notes put into the lividity, or excuse me, the autopsy report where it was written that she had full frontal fixed lividity was written in there. So, regardless of the pictures, I think it s pretty clear that, you know, she had to have been laying flat on her face or flat on her in the prone position for a period of around eight to ten hours and give or take. Which would make a 7:00 burial on her right side impossible. But sure, the body could have been buried and then moved, or who knows. I ll agree with you that that doesn t necessarily mean that she wasn t put in Leakin Park later in the evening. And I guess let me kind of follow that up with: how do you feel about Jay s Intercept interview that he gave back in December where he now says that he lied at trial and she wasn t buried and they didn t go bury her until midnight? Well he didn t say he lied at trial. And I know when I read his interview I said, Oh no, Jay, you know, can t you stick to the trial story? at least, but what he said was that she was buried at midnight. So two possibilities, or a few possibilities. One is that he lied. The other is that he doesn t remember it clearly, that it s become midnight in his mind. A third possibility that I ve seen tossed around, which would indicate again that he wasn t telling the truth at trial, is that they could have dumped the body in Leakin Park at 7:00. And then come back and done the burial a few hours later. So, yeah, when I read the Intercept interview I felt, Oh no, Jay. Can t you just stick to one story, please? Frustrated 36

37 Did that give you any with all the changes stories and then this one, does it make you question his credibility at all? Yeah, it does. Certainly, I do question his credibility on certain issues. And I do, but I just really I have the same attitude as the jurors that this, very succinctly I think, why would you say this if you hadn t been involved in this way? I just see no other explanation and Well, just to be clear, that juror followed that up with, Why would he say this if he had no involvement in it, it doesn t make sense. I mean after all, he had to go to prison too. Which was not the case. Right. So her perspective on that was, Why would he do that when he was going to prison anyway? There s no way he would have lied. What she didn t know was that in order to give that testimony, he d been given a deal where he wouldn t have to go to prison. No, no, that s wrong, Bob. The plea deal he had was for five years with three years suspended. So what the prosecutors were recommending, and what he was told he was going to have to do, was go to prison for two years and that was what he told the court. Because of course you have to explain that in court, that he was going for two years. And then at his sentencing the judge suspended the entire sentence. And so it was a judge, not the same judge that heard the trial, who probably surprised everyone including the prosecutor with that deal. And I can t imagine that the prosecution was happy about it either because I think we all agree that Jay should have gone to jail for his role in that crime. Well, maybe I m completely misremembering, but from what I ve read that I m remembering right now and from what we heard in Serial, the prosecution was not upset about this. In fact, the prosecution requested him not to do any jail time. No. Okay, maybe I m wrong and I ll have to fact check that and I ll post that. But, maybe I mixed that up somewhere else but, I feel certain in my mind that the prosecution requested this leniency to be a lower No. sentence than the plea deal. No. Okay, I ll check that cause I don t neither of us have it in front of us so... Oh, we were talking about, this all spun from the Leakin Park I think what you wrote here was, Adnan s cell phone records place him at Leakin Park burying Hae s body. And you rephrased that the way you said it here. And I think it was more correct the way you said it here. Because my response to that was going to be that cell phones can t put 37

38 anybody burying anybody. But your statement was that it was most likely that he was there. It s hard to, as we ve talked through this, we can say with the Nisha call that Jay is just misremembering times. And it s perfectly acceptable for him to misremember times, but we still believe him. But then we re going to take for gospel that the burial was happening at 7:00. You know, so it s kind of, doesn t work both ways. But so Jay says that it happened at 7:00. And he says that he remembers that because there were these two incoming calls from Jenn at that time while they were out while I think he s changed his story a couple times, or maybe it was the prosecution stated it differently at closing than he had testified to. But one way or another, they were burying the body, he gets these two calls from Jenn as confirmed by the cell phone records. It is fact that we know that that story about when they buried the body was given by Jay after the police showed him the cell phone records. And the police are on record at trial saying that they had shown him the cell phone records and then suddenly he remembered better what happened. So to say that his story is corroborated by the cell phone records is just incorrect in my mind considering the fact that he gave a story, they then show him the cell phone records, and then he changes his story to fit the cell phone records. And then they realize that they made a mistake in the cell phone records and they changed them, tower locations. And then he gives a miraculously another story that matches the new cell phone records that all lead up to these Leakin Park pings. We couple that with the fact that it s pretty clear that Hae was not buried on her side at 7:00 p.m. And then as we discussed earlier, that could mean a number of things. But she wasn t buried on her right side, in the grave, the way he described and the way she was found in the 7:00 hour, it s not possible given the autopsy report. And then we get to the and I think you were alluding to that when you said that it depends on how nerdy you want to get you were alluding to the cell phone data technology? Right. And I guess, I mean I guess, I m kind of nerdy. Because I, you know, it is very complicated to understand a lot of it and I certainly don t pretend to understand all of it. But there s a couple of things that would make me wary and I m wondering if they make you wary at all. Have you seen the source documents, the fax that AT&T sent to the police with the cell phone records? Yes. Okay, so you saw where AT&T, the ones that created the technology, the ones that own the technology, the ones that own the record. You saw that they wrote and said that in bold, all caps letters, Incoming calls cannot be used to determine location. Yes. 38

39 Okay, so like I said, maybe that s being nerdy to me. But the two calls that supposedly corroborate the story the Leakin Park pings that you are referring to AT&T says those incoming calls cannot be used to determine location. Yet, we re convicting and using them, I mean that was the major one at trial. And Urick even in his most recent interview, You can t get away from the fact that that phone pinged Leakin Park at the time when Jay says they were burying the body. Which now, of course, he says they were burying the body five hours after that. How do you reconcile that with your statement that you believe that the cell phone data accurately puts him in Leakin Park at 7:00? Okay, so I don t consider myself at all an expert on the cell stuff. But I have read a lot of the various opinions. I know a lot of the people that know way more about it than I do and I ve seen that fax sheet discussed. I ve seen explanations that it was just a standard legal disclaimer, it s meaningless. I ve personally worked in big bureaucracies where I sent things with fax sheets that had explanations like that that were absolutely not true, didn t apply, but were just still the fax sheet. So, I mean, listen what I can tell you? That fax sheet bothers me. I d like a really good final explanation for it. I ve seen a few that make sense to me but I certainly wouldn t stake my life on them being true. So that s where I m going to leave it at that. Okay, and like I said, I m not an expert either, but I ve researched it pretty thoroughly and as far as that memo, I mean, I ve read that stuff too, but I don t take someone s opinion about something to be facts as far as to overrule AT&T themselves. When they re saying you can t use it and then other people have an opinion and saying, Well yes you can, well okay, I guess it s who you want to believe. AT&T says you can t, but furthermore But hang on, AT&T didn t say that and we haven t heard their expert say it. His opinion, and the evidence that he gave, actually would seem to contradict that. It was an AT&T fax sheet that said that and that to me is different from someone being crossexamined on the stand about it. Well, Gutierrez, and I think you mentioned you have read the transcripts in the transcripts, you see where Gutierrez Oh, I have read the transcripts. Yeah. I don t remember them all accurately but I ve read them. Well, right, and I ll admit I haven t read all of them. I read a lot of them when I m researching stuff but there is a lot out there and I haven t gotten through all of them. But what I have seen is: when the cell expert was testifying that Gutierrez point blank asked the cell expert that the prosecution provided, Can you determine location based on these calls? And his response was, No, that you could not. And that s in the trial transcripts. So the cell expert did say you can t and part of the confusion for me, trying to figure out these cell phone records, and like I said, I do my best but I m not that bright but we ve continually referred to these, and they were referred to at 39

40 trial the tower locations that were put on the call records as pings and so they re saying that Adnan s phone pinged that tower. When in fact, those are not pings. What that tower location is on those records is the tower that the call originated from, which is partially why you can t rely on them on the incoming side for location. For example, and this is my understanding from what I ve read so you can take it or leave it. My understanding of how those records work is: I could be in Alaska and you could be in Toronto is that were you said you re from? I m sorry. And I could be in Alaska and if you call me, the originating tower would be the tower closest to you because it will grab that tower. That s the originating tower and it s not even necessarily the tower closest to you. It s one of the towers in your range depending on a million different variables, but it s going to grab a tower somewhere in Toronto and then route that call to find me in Alaska, but on my cell phone records, it will show the originating tower as the place where you placed the phone call from. The place where it first connected to the AT&T system, which would be where the caller is. Not where the receiver is. That s one of the reasons why it can t be used for location. So, to me, looking at the Leakin Park pings and this whole scenario, and I m trying to wrap this up here, I know we are getting to the point where we are rambling on a little bit, or at least I am. If you believe that that incoming call, or those two incoming calls, are an accurate way to pinpoint Adnan s location, then you would prove that he was in a location at a time when a crime wasn t being committed because we know the body wasn t buried there, unless like you said, some of those other scenarios, maybe it was buried and later moved. But there s nothing to support the fact that those incoming calls show where Adnan was when he received that call, at all. It s across the board that you can t use incoming calls for accurate data, or excuse me, for accurate location data. So to me, and this is not an expert this is just my opinion based on the little bit of information I have on this and I could be wrong on this to me, the more likely scenario is that the caller was in that area. Not that Adnan s phone was in that area. And that just happened to be just south of that Leakin Park area, and that tower that s facing south there, a little further south of the park. Patrick lives right there, there was a couple of other friends that all live right in that area. So that call could have originated there and Adnan could have been in Hawaii for all we know. Of course, we know he wasn t in Hawaii, he was in Baltimore somewhere, but that s my feeling on it based on the cell data, the lividity evidence. I just don t put much stock into these Leakin Park pings anymore and then couple that with the fact that Jay now says and by the way you said earlier that he didn t say he lied at the trial he actually specifically said he did lie at the trial and he did it to protect his grandmother or his family and what actually happened He didn t say at the trial, he said he lied in talking to the police, yeah. Okay, well, either way. He now says that it happened at midnight. So, at this point the Leakin Park, and I m air quoting pings, is not a piece of evidence for me to believe. I mean, I put more weight into some of the circumstantial evidence that we discussed earlier in this interview than I put into these pings because they just don t add up. 40

41 They don t mean what the prosecution claimed what they meant at trial. Or, what they were led to believe that they were at trial. Throw that along with the fact that Jay only said that they were burying her at 7:00 because the police showed him that there were these pings at Leakin Park at 7:00, and then he changed his story to say that was the case so. I guess to close all this up a good exercise in this, or a result of this exercise with the two of us having this discussion, if for nothing else, is to let people know cause there s a lot of you and I kind of connected on the Serial podcast Reddit, or the subreddit, and there s a lot of talk there that I m just completely biased and I just, I don t understand it. Frankly, I don t mind that people are biased as long as their open about their biases and fair. I would say that it seems to me that anybody that disagrees, and I m not saying with everybody, but these people that would for someone that would say that I m biased for example, if I I m biased. You re biased. We re both biased. I won t concede the fact that I m biased because bias is to me a preconceived notion of what happened that you re going to stick with no matter what else you hear. And in my case, I had no preconceived notion. I never even heard of these people before hearing this. I have examined the evidence and we ve spent two and a half hours on the phone of me explaining to you why I ve come to the conclusion that I ve come to and I don t think and you may disagree with them but I don t think that my conclusions are unreasonable. You and I may disagree on them I don t think they re unreasonable at all and I can understand perfectly well after having talked to you why if you were on the jury you would have had reasonable doubt. And I think that it s perfectly okay if someone would have sat on that jury and at the end of it said, I cannot convict, I have reasonable doubt. I totally get how that could happen. But that didn t happen with this jury and I also think that it s perfectly reasonable to come to the conclusion that Adnan was guilty beyond reasonable doubt based on the evidence presented. Well I mean, our legal system is not a perfect system. No system is. Well, that s definitely something that we can agree on and we ll close the interview out here. But I will tell you, Ann, it s been a pleasure speaking with you. You and I disagree on a lot of things but I think we can both respect where the other one is coming from. So I want to thank you one more time for joining us today and taking the time and it s a long time and I ll tell the listeners cause I don t know what this will end up being after edit, but right now Ann and I are two hours and thirty minutes into this conversation and it is midnight. So I 41

42 So, it s absolutely been a pleasure talking with you and thank you for giving me this opportunity. If I were you, based on my days in radio, I would edit this down to no longer than one hour and fifteen minutes and preferably one hour. Yeah, and I may do that, or I may just tell the listeners at the beginning to pack a lunch because [Bob and Ann both laugh] I think we ve had a good conversation and I d hate to lose a lot of it but I m actually getting a text message from my wife right now wondering where I m at so I m going to go upstairs and go to bed and I m sure you re tired too. Okay, thank you so much. It s been fun. Yeah, it s been great. Thanks, Ann, take care. Bye. Bye. [02:15:17] End of Interview All right, I m recording the closing remarks to this episode on Saturday. And the only reason that I m telling you that is to make clear that Ann and I recorded this interview on Thursday night. This is now Saturday evening at 6:00 p.m., so it s been two days. You ll remember in the interview that Ann held pretty firm to the idea that the prosecution was upset that the judge did not give Jay Wilds jail time. And she was going to look for some source documents on that the next day. It s now two days later. I ve had a few exchanges back and forth with Ann, and so far, she has not provided any source documents that would prove her claim. I did send her an yesterday that I found a trial transcript from one of Adnan s appeal hearings where the transcripts clearly state that the prosecution requested leniency from the judge in Jay Wilds sentencing. I ve started my search for the sentencing transcripts but I haven t found them yet and I haven t had time to go too deeply into that search given that I had to prepare for this episode. I did send that transcript over to Ann and at that point, that was yesterday, she responded that she had not found her information yet. However it s important to note that that was the defense s claim at that hearing as to what happened and it could be incorrect. However it is also important to note that the State did have representation there, and it is noted in the trial transcripts, that the transcripts from Jay Wilds sentencing were present at that hearing. So I would find it highly unlikely if that information given at that hearing was false. No one challenged it. So at this point, I m going to hold strong to my claim that the prosecution did indeed request the leniency in Jay Wilds sentence. They were not surprised or upset that he was given leniency. I would further note that it seems somewhat suspicious to me that the prosecution would create a plea agreement requiring Jay to serve jail time before trial and then after trial request leniency so that he would not receive jail time. That s highly suspect to me. 42

43 My personal belief, and let me make clear, that s just my personal belief, was that this was done so that the prosecution could tell the jury that Jay Wilds had a plea agreement where he was going to go to prison for two years, and that they were fully aware that they intended to try to make that not happen. There s no other explanation for it in my mind. The prosecution created the plea agreement. If they didn t want him to go to prison, they could have created a plea agreement that didn t make him go to prison, but that would have looked really bad at the trial. So with all that being said, you the jury now have all of the elements of this case, presented by both sides. Or at least from a representative from each side. There are certainly more facts out there on both sides but Ann was the only one that was willing to step up to the plate and present her arguments, which I really do appreciate her doing. Ann really was a pleasure to speak to and it showed a lot of courage that she was willing to come on the show and have an open debate as we did. So this is where the rubber meets the road. Ann, as the prosecution in this case, presented you with twelve points that she believed collectively proved that Adnan Syed is guilty. My self serving as the defense, countered those arguments in the best way that I could. So now the decision is up to you. You the people of the jury, in the case of the State vs. Adnan Syed, on the charge of murder in the first degree, how do you find the defendant? [02:19:20] Thanks and Credits Thank you all for putting the time in to listen to this very long episode. I hope that you found it worthwhile. All of the source documents that were discussed within the interview have been posted to the SerialDyansty.com website. If you re interested in looking them over, just go to SerialDynasty.com and click the links page. I ll warn you up front that I had to put that page together very, very quickly in a scramble to get this episode put together, so it s not the best looking website you re ever going to look at, and it doesn t look quite as good on a mobile phone as it does on a desktop. But all the information is there for your review. I also want to give a very special thanks to Jill from Pod Transcriptions. Jill is a fan of the show and she ed me earlier this week and offered to transcribe all of The Serial Dynasty episodes for me to post on my website. Of course, I graciously accepted the offer and Jill has already put together transcripts for our last episode, Episode 14, and that transcript is already posted on the website. The plan is to continue working on the current episodes and then work backwards through the archive of old episodes. I haven t gotten them posted to the website yet but she already has completed Episode 12 and Episode 13. So throughout this week, I should be updating more and more transcripts onto the page and if you re interested in reviewing or reading the transcripts, again go to SerialDynasty.com and just click the transcripts page. So a big thank you to Jill from Pod Transcription, generating these transcripts is a lot of work and Jill has agreed to do it free of charge. I also want to thank Shaun T and Shaun T Fitness for funding the program. 43

44 A special thanks to Jonny Rose of Slightly Subversive Music for creating all of the music for this show. And another special thanks to Tate Krupa who created our logo. And, of course, thank you to all of you listeners for continuing to download these episodes and telling your friends and building this army. If you haven t already done so, I would ask that you go onto itunes and review the show. That helps make the show more visible to people searching for it. And don t forget to send in all of your thoughts and theories before next week s episode to theories@serialdynasty.com. And if you d like to just to pop in and say hi, you can always catch me on I really enjoyed putting this episode together even though it s been a lot of work and I m really looking forward to hearing all of your reactions to it. But until next week, this has been The Serial Dynasty. Transcription by : 44