The Alibi (2)
Saad But it's the truth.
Rabia TMI, TMI, TMI.
Saad See that? That right there is kind of making her feel uncomfortable. She's like, whoa, whoa, whoa.
Sarah Koenig So just on motive alone, Saad and Rabia found the whole thing ridiculous. As for physical evidence, there was none-- nothing. Apart from some fingerprints in Hae's car, which Adnan had been in many times, there was nothing linking him to the crime-- no DNA, no fibers, no hairs, no matching soil from the bottom of his boots.
Instead, what they had on Adnan was one guy's story, a guy named Jay. He's the third person you need to remember in this crime story besides Hae and Adnan. Jay was a friend of Adnan's. They'd been in school together since middle school.
They weren't super close, but they had mutual friends. Jay sold weed, and he and Adnan smoked together. The story Jay told police had problems, because it kept changing from telling to telling. But they were able to bolster the main plot points using cell records from Adnan's phone.
By the time I left Rabia's office that first day, I understood only one thing clearly, though maybe not the thing Rabia and Saad wanted me to understand. But what I took away from the visit was, somebody is lying here. Maybe Adnan really is innocent. But what if he isn't? What if he did do it, and he's got all these good people thinking he didn't?
So either it's Jay or it's Adnan. But someone is lying. And I really wanted to figure out who.
In the early morning of February 28, 1999, Adnan was arrested by Baltimore City detectives. He was asleep in his bed when they showed up at his house. They took him straight from his untidy bedroom to an interrogation room at Homicide downtown. What Adnan didn't know is that just hours before they picked him up, the cops had interviewed his friend Jay.
Detective This is a taped interview of Jay, black male, 19 years of age. We're at the offices of Homicide, specifically the colonel's conference room.
Sarah Koenig The police recorded two taped interviews with Jay. And I'm going to play you the second one from a couple weeks later, only because the sound quality is much better. Just a warning that the tape is a little upsetting to hear in parts.
Detective Why don't you go ahead and tell us what you know about the death of Hae Lee.
Jay OK. I'd left out, went shopping with a friend of mine, an ex-friend of mine, Adnan. We had had a conversation. During the conversation he stated that he was going to kill that bitch, referring to Hae Lee. I took it with context. It didn't stand out in my head any.
Sarah Koenig Jay said he didn't take it too seriously. The cops have him start again from the top. On the morning of the 13th, Jay says, Adnan had left school and driven to Jay's house. Jay had graduated from school the year before and was working, but not on that day. January 13 happens to be the birthday of Jay's girlfriend, Stephanie. And Jay, who didn't have his own car, needed to go buy something for her. So Adnan comes over. According to Jay, they go shopping at the mall.
Detective When did you do that?
Jay We left the mall. I took him to school. I dropped him off in the back of the school. He went up to class. He left his cell phone in the car with me, told me he'd call me. I went back to my friend Jenn's house and waited for him to call.
Detective OK, now at this point, you know why he's leaving the car with you.
Jay Yes.
Detective And why is that?
Jay Because he said he was going to kill Hae.
Detective And the reason you have the car and the cell phone was why?
Jay To pick him up from wherever he was going to do this at.
Detective OK, and you had talked about this while you were shopping that day?
Jay The details of the car and all?
Detective The events, how they were going to plan out.
Jay That day he told me, yes. He told me, I'm going to leave you with my cellphone and my car, and I need you to come get me. Yes.
Detective After--
Jay After he had killed Hae, yes.
Detective OK.
Sarah Koenig Later that afternoon, the call comes.
Detective You received a phone call from Adnan.
Jay Yes.
Detective On his cellphone.
Jay Yes.
Detective Which is in your possession.
Jay Yes.
Detective And the conversation was what?
Jay That bitch is dead. Come and get me. I'm at Best Buy.
Sarah Koenig Jay drives to Best Buy and sees Adnan in the parking lot.
Jay I noticed that Hae wasn't with him. I parked next to him. He asked me to get out the car. I get out the car. He asks me, am I ready for this? And I say, ready for what?And he takes the keys. He opens the trunk. And all I can see is Hae's lips are all blue, and she's pretzeled up in the back of the trunk. And she's dead.
Sarah Koenig They leave the parking lot. Adnan's driving Hae's car with her body in the trunk. Jay's driving Adnan's car. They ditch Hae's car at the I-70 Park and Ride. And then, to hear Jay tell it, they just kind of tool around Baltimore County together for a while as if nothing had happened-- buy some weed, cruise around, make some calls. After a while, Jay drives Adnan back to Woodlawn High School.
Detective Why did you take him back to school?
Jay He told me that I had to take him back to school because he needed to be seen there.
Detective Was he going to a certain event?
Jay It was practice, track practice.
Detective Track practice.
Jay Yes.
Detective So he wanted an alibi?
Jay Yes.
Detective He wanted to be seen by people at track.
Jay Yes.
Detective And you guys had discussed that?
Jay He just told me that he needed to be seen.
Detective Yes.
Jay He told me that he needed to be seen.
Detective At track practice. You took him back?
Jay Yes.
Detective Are you having any conversation with Adnan at the time?
Jay To the effect, yes. Don't tell anyone. He said that he couldn't believe he killed somebody with his bare hands, that all the other mother [BLEEP] referring to hoods and thugs and stuff think they're hard core. But he just killed a person with his bare hands.
Detective So at this point he's bragging about it?
Jay Basically.
Detective He was proud of it?
Jay Yes.
Sarah Koenig After track practice, Jay picks Adnan up again. They drive around some more. By this time, Hae's family was worried, and they'd called the police, who in turn called a couple of Hae's friends, including Adnan.
The call comes in on his cell. The cops ask if he's seen Hae or knows where she is. Jay says after the call, they drive to Jay's to get some shovels, go retrieve Hae's car from the park and ride. They drive around some more and finally end up at Leakin Park, where Adnan proceeds to bury Hae. It's evening by now, maybe 7:00 or 8:00 PM.
Jay And he asked me if I was going to help. And I told him, [BLEEP] no. And he starts just shoveling dirt on top of her. After we leave there--
Detective Let me stop there.
Jay Yes.
Detective You helped him dig the hole.
Jay Yes.
Detective How long did it take you both to dig the hole?
Jay 20, 25 minutes.
Detective How deep did you make the hole?
Jay Oh, maybe six inches at the most. It wasn't very deep at all.
Detective Who did most of the digging?
Jay Uh, it was--
Detective Both of you?
Jay Yeah.
Detective Equal work?
Jay I wouldn't say that, but yeah.
Detective OK.
Sarah Koenig So those are the key points. Adnan told Jay in advance he was going to do it. He did it. They buried her. Jay's story wasn't just the foundation of the state's case against Adnan. It was the state's case against Adnan.
In the picture Jay drew, it's cold. I mean, he's not describing a crime of passion here. This is something much darker-- to methodically map out the death of your friend, to strangle her with your own hands so close up like that. That would mean Adnan wasn't just a killer, but a master liar and manipulator, a psychopath, probably.
Adnan's in a maximum security prison in western Maryland. He calls me at my request about twice a week. He talks to me from a bank of eight pay phones in the rec hall, a pretty large room where other guys are sitting at tables with metal seats attached to them playing chess or cards or using the microwave or watching TV. It can get a little loud sometimes. Once I asked if all eight phones were always occupied. And he said, usually not, because guys who have been in for a long time, often they have no one to call.
When I first met Adnan in person, I was struck by two things. He was way bigger than I expected-- barrel chested and tall. In the photos I'd seen, he was still a lanky teenager with struggling facialhair and sagging jeans. By now, he was 32. He'd spent nearly half his life in prison, becoming larger and properly bearded. And the second thing, which you can't miss about Adnan, is that he has giant brown eyes like a dairy cow. That's what prompts my most idiotic lines of inquiry. Could someone who looks like that really strangle his girlfriend? Idiotic, I know.
When he first heard Jay's story of the crime, Adnan didn't say, well, it didn't happen like that, or, I didn't mean for it to happen like that. He said, it didn't happen. None of this is true at all. He says he had nothing to do with Hae's murder, and he doesn't know who did.Hae was Adnan's first serious relationship with a girl. He says he loved her in the way of high school love, but then also in the way of high school got over her. So that when they broke up for good sometime before Christmas break of senior year, he says he was sad for sure, but not obsessed or anything.
Adnan Syed I just sometimes wish they could look into my brain and see how I really felt about her. And no matter what else someone would say, they would see, man, this guy had no ill will toward her. Whatever the motivation is to kill someone, I had absolutely-- it didn't exist in me, you know what I mean? No one can ever say why.
People could say why. Oh, man, he was mad, this, that, or the other. But no one could ever come with any type of proof or anecdote or anything to ever say that I was ever mad at her, that I was ever angry with her, that I ever threatened her. That's the only thing I can really hold onto. That is like my only firm handhold in this whole thing, that no one's ever been able to prove it.
No one ever has been able to provide any shred of evidence that I had anything but friendship toward her, like love and respect for her. That's at the end of the day, man. The only thing I can ever say is, man, I had no reason to kill her.
Sarah Koenig He's adamant about this. You can hear it, right? He's staunch. The problem is, when you ask Adnan to go back and tell his version of what happened that day, to refute Jay's story, everything becomes a lot mushier.
