Previously on Serial He was like the commuter he's golden child. I think like the odds of you getting the charming sociopath you're just not that lucky. You don't think that I know you at all? I mean for you to say that I'm a great person. I mean I'm like a nice person. I've only never had a chance to be a good person. From this American life in WBZ Chicago it's Serial. One story told week by week. I'm Sarah Canig.
For two months now I've been grappling with rumors about a non. People telling me there's stuff you don't know about it non. Stuff you need to know to understand who you're dealing with. These communications came in the form of phone calls. Many phone calls. Sometimes one on one, sometimes conference calls. Also texts and nervous emails. I can't tell this one. I've spoken to that one and then that one gets worried that I've broken my word which
I promise I haven't. When Person 2 doesn't confirm the thing Person 1 told me and I report that back to Person 1. Person 1 often tells me Person 2 is lying to me. All these rumors are coming from people a non new growing up in the mosque community. The South Asian families who attend the Islamic Society of Baltimore. Some of these people I'd already
talked to during my first round of reporting for this story. But then once the series started and they heard how it not as being portrayed, a new round of phone calls began. The rumors themselves are nothing too dastardly. Nobody is saying I saw him do it or I have proof. None of it is directly connected to the crime. But likely there are a great many things I don't know about a non. Some of the things I was hearing were giving me pause.
So I checked them out as best I could. Not every single one. Some of them were so small that I initially was confused by the telling, waiting for the punchline that had already slid by. Such as he took a piece of my clothing, a piece of designer's sportswear, and then overexplained claiming it wasn't mine or that he didn't know it was mine and then apologized profusely. I, Sarah Canig, am going to confess something right now. I have done exactly the
same thing, more than one side wager. On the other end of the scale was a story so incriminating that we thought, well, if this one is true, then we're done. Our story is over and we can all go home. This was the biggie and I worked every angle I could to suss it out.
I heard it second hand that someone said something about a non at a party 15 years back. I spent weeks trying to learn first the name, then the location of that someone, then trying to contact that someone and then finally driving several hours to question that someone in person. I nervously knock at the door, nice guy comes out, we chat. He tells me what I've spent all these weeks and hours waiting for. Oh yeah, he says, I remember a non,
nice kid. I remember he seems sad when a unit's girlfriend broke up. And so I prompt him, I heard this thing. Is that true? Anything else you want to tell me? The guy looks blank. That's all he had for me. Imagine I have a file on my desk about this rumor and I just stamped it with my big cartoon stamp, unsubstantiated. I cross it off the list. There's one more
rumor I'll tell you about in a minute. But first, I want to talk about why relatively few people from the Moss community are willing to talk on tape or on the record about a non. To give you a sense of what I'm talking about, here's Ali, not his real name and this is
also not his real voice. Why the secrecy? So let's say, so now let's say you use my voice and use my first name and last name and then you play it on NPR radio or whatever and it's somebody from the community years it within seconds that will travel throughout the whole community. And this is what he said. He probably knows something. How do we know he's not involved or he did something or why is he doing that? And that's how business
are there or irrational that thinking is. But I don't know. It's very irrational thinking and it's sad because it's educated kids talking like that. And it's you, but you're one of them. I mean, you're subculture. You're basically saying I'm succumbing to this irrational. Oh, yes. I'm 100% guilty. I'm 100% brainwash. Ali and others told me that their community is judgmental. Right and wrong is drummed into you early and often. Adults judge kids behavior, which then gets reflected back
onto their parents. This is certainly not unique to their community. And the other thing that isn't unique is how close-knit it is. Information and gossip travel swiftly and you don't want to be the one who goes against the grain or says something that could hurt a non or his parents. No one wants to end up in hot water. I live in a small town. I understand that. But what I hadn't totally understood, I think, is how scared people
were when a non got arrested. I got an anonymous text recently that said, quote, I'm a Muslim male who attends the Baltimore mosque. My father and a non's father are good friends that have known each other for years. A non story has always been an urban legend to us kids growing up in the Muslim community, clouded in mystery and used as a cautionary tale. Some people did speak out on tape. I mean, Robby and Sad Childry obviously did. And there
are others too. But there's also a significant faction of people, including Ali, who are scared. Ali said his parents were especially protective, like a 10 on the protective scale. So that after a non was arrested, they were frantic about his safety. His own life changed because of it. Draftically, I would even go to the mailbox and my dad's like, where are you going? Are you serious? That really happened? It really happened. I'm not even making that up.
Because your mailbox was like at the end of a driveway or at the end of it? No. My mailbox has attached to the wall of my house next to the front door. If I open the front door, he's like, why are you going? Who are you going to go meet? Is it a girl? Are you going to give her a ride? Because they think Adnan gave her a ride. And so
they think that that's the reason that he picked him up because he was right. And there was a girl named, that I used to give her a ride to in the morning, lived down the street from me. And after I got picked up, she came and was knocked down the door. Like, you didn't come pick me up. What's going on? Am I dad went crazy? My dad dropped her off to school and in the car told her, don't ever ask my son for a ride. I think. Oh my God, really?
Yeah. And I think that's just the general, I can't speak of everybody, but I think that's just how the community has become. Because it's just that fear that is just stuck in. That's how it is. And even now, if you go to like a party and try to talk about Adnan's case, everyone just gets quiet. Not because they're saying he did it or he didn't do it or not. It's just kind of like you, you know, if you don't talk about it, then it doesn't exist.
A bunch of people I talk to told me they feel guilty towards Adnan that they let him down because they let him stray or didn't protect him or didn't mentor him or didn't show up enough a trial or didn't visit him in jail. Even once you're on the fence about his innocence said, please tell it, not I love him or please tell him I'm sorry. And I often say back, you should tell him yourself, you can write to him, you know? And then sometimes
comes a pause. The reason Ali agreed to go on tape was that he wanted me to know this about Adnan. I remember especially in middle school and I'll mention more into middle school that when we would get picked for sports, I was very athletic, tall, good looking, kind of like the Jack Roll and I was more chubby, short, kind of the nerdy, you know, kind of role. So he
never made me feel that he always made sure I got picked for the team. If other kids made fun of me on my athletic performance or I couldn't shoot or I couldn't kick the ball and they would start poking fun. He would always have my back and kind of tell them stop it or kind of watch out for me kind of like an older brother and I'll never forget that. Adnan was the kind of kid who'd stand up when your parents came into the room, he said.
At parties or events, he'd be the first one to ask, how can I help you on tea? Do you need help setting up those tables, Uncle? This was what Ali disguised and anonymous had to say. Normally, I probably wouldn't pursue rumors that on their face aren't connected to the crime at hand. But in this case, I decided it was worthwhile because of where these rumors
come from. I think these rumors are coming from a feeling that a handful of people have, I've heard this from about four people, people who knew Adnan growing up, that Adnan was capable of committing this crime. I think they believe they saw things in his personality that they think I am not seeing, namely that he's duplicitous. The term psychopath gets
thrown in sometimes. People told me he used his charm and his smarts to deflect suspicion or weasel out of things when he got caught, pretty much what the judge said to him at a sentencing. Which brings me to the only rumor I heard that at least partly checked out. It was this. Adnan stole money from the mosque, donation money. I heard various versions of how this happened or could have happened. But from what I can tell, the basic story is people who
come to pray on Fridays and it's a lot of people, many hundreds. Some of them put donation money into boxes and that's what Adnan skimmed. Two people told me they saw him do it. One person told me he'd seen it several times. He wouldn't go on tape. But the other guy did. He was stealing from the mosque every Friday. This is a guy I can't name whose voice
we've also changed. See explanation above. Because he was looked upon like the golden child and he was his dad was very religious and you know he would go out on missionary work and so on. So he and his family was looked at you know very good religious family. And he was he was collecting money or you know the donation boxes that would go around on Friday after prayer. You know he was he was he was in charge basically of collect you
know getting all the boxes together and counting the money and totaling it all up. And he was pocketing thousands of dollars every week. And nobody questioned you know good little Muslim kid you know stealing from the mosque. I mean are you serious? I couldn't even imagine. You saw him actually take money. You know I absolutely saw him taking it and I also have done it. This guy estimated that a non had stolen many thousands of dollars over
time tens of thousands maybe a hundred thousand dollars. This sounded fantastical to me. So I checked with muck bull Patel. He was president of the Islamic Society of Baltimore at the time. He said he had never heard of a non taking donation money but that it does happen from time to time someone stealing or trying to. There are people who take shoes he added. My own brand new shoes were stolen twice he said that happened once in New York and once
in Baltimore. But if a non did take money he said there's no way it was a big amount. He said on average people donated about twenty five hundred dollars at Friday prayers maybe up to three thousand dollars if it was a special occasion. That money was used to pay the bills he said keep the electricity and heat on. If they were even a hundred dollars short on any given week they'd have noticed. So sure maybe twenty bucks or forty bucks here
there but not hundreds and thousands out of the question. And none says it's true. He did take donation money. When I first asked him about it he was unhappy. I've asked him so many frankly insulting things so many nosy and inappropriate questions and he's never given me pushback. But this was the last straw. What does it have to do with the case he wanted to know? He's never claimed that he's innocent of killing hay because he's a perfect or even a good person he said.
So why talk about this and why the double standard why wasn't I going into everyone else's closet and pulling out skeletons that made them look bad. Why do I protect other people and call him out on everything? He's endured other stuff in my reporting that he didn't think was fair to him. You go from my savior to my executioner on it you know it just flops it flop like mad money. But now he was sticking up for himself he said he seemed pissed and hurt and I understood it.
I mean it's a very uncomfortable thing for me to talk about you know to say it's a very shameful thing that I did you know to say I've never denied it I've never I don't see I don't understand I just think it's really unfair to me if this if you don't want to talk about this that's your prerogative like I'm not going to force you to talk about it if you don't want to talk about it. But I'm also not going to sit here and you mentioned it and this is the only thing I don't talk
about. You understand what I'm saying so it's put me in a predicament like it's like you're basically like publicly shaming me for something that I've never denied that I did anyway and it has nothing to do with the case but you won't do it to other people though I mean it's like why do I have to keep getting called out on my stuff it has nothing to do with the case but you don't do it to nobody else.
Well I mean a couple of days and phone calls later all was calm and he told me his stealing story it was during the summer maybe the summer before 8th grade he said during like the Friday prayers a lot of times there would be one adult and he would get like four or five
kids together and he would say hey look I want you guys to go around and collect you know money from people who are standing there you know however different days it was different ways so it's usually anywhere from like four to five of us we don't have little boxes or something and people
would come and they would put money in them usually like it would be I mean I'm not trying to say it sounds like ocean 11 or whatever but it was like thousand dollars in cash like one five ten 20s it may be like fifteen hundred like you know like two with three thousand dollars in cash and I
don't really remember who I'm not saying it wasn't me I'm not saying it wasn't me you know it just the idea came up like hey man we could take like sixty or eighty dollars we could go to the movies go to the mall you know playing the arcade you know like eating stuff like that so eventually
you could be a thing where like one or two of us would like pocket a twenty dollar bill and then pocket another twenty dollar bill and other three or you know two or three of us would do it and other two would kind of like keep watching and I mean it was you know it was wrong it was very
wrong you know I mean it is nothing that I'm proud of it's not you know I'm very ashamed of it you know I don't I don't I don't say that we were kids to try to put it in context or try to make an excuse I mean well maybe I am right but it's just you know it I mean what made you what
made you realize what made you stop and what made you realize it was wrong I mean I wish I could say that it was like you know some feeling of religion or something or feeling of wrong but it wasn't I mean you know I was just kind of caught red hand to speak a non says he was caught red
handed by Shamim his mother he says she found some money in his pants pocket and asked him where it came from and the truth came out he says she was horrified it was the classic I'm not angry I'm disappointed more disappointed than she'd ever been in him he says and not says back then he
didn't think he was hurting anyone they spent so much time at the mosque and they shuffled snow and they helped set up events and clean up and so to him it was akin to taking twenty bucks from the till of the family store at the end of the night he says of course as an adult he knows how
wrong that is but back then in eighth grade he didn't fully get it a non-stelling of this stealing episode is a much more boys will be boys version than what I'd heard from other people who told me they saw in his actions something more malignant a couple of people I talked to from the mosque community said this was so low to take the harder and cash of hardworking people and at the mosque of all places this was a terrible thing other people said
eh mr. Patel then president of the mosque was thoroughly unruffled by the whole thing he obviously didn't condone it but he more or less said so what it certainly does not a murder or make to him he said if a young person does something like this it's not even necessarily a
sign of bad character other mosque friends agreed they didn't see how it was connected to the crime and also some people told me they'd shoplifted before they'd broken the rules so people in glass houses man and in the end these guys all said what most of a non-s old friends say he didn't have it in him to kill someone it wasn't in his DNA to me this question is the hard center of a non-case can you tell really can you tell if someone has a crime like this in him I think most
of us think if we know someone well we can tell we act as detectives all the time gathering evidence certain scenes we remember or the look on someone's face or that thing he said when he got mad and then we act as a judge of character this is just a human thing but of course it's slippery
because it's so subjective one person's evidence of good character is another person's evidence of questionable character case in point I heard from many people that a non was the opposite of violent that he was someone who would take the heat out of 10th situations I've never even seen
him in a fight I've never even seen him mad at anybody this is atif ikbal who knew a non from the mosque that's his real name and his real voice exactly pretty funny like I was me and him like I somebody told me that he said something about me and some other person or something and I
went up there to confirm him and then he was like hey man I don't know what you heard I didn't say anything like that I was like man if you ever said something like that blah blah I was you know getting all routy up and he just came and kissed me all my cheeks and then that just like
diffused me like completely like I missed that he kissed you on your cheeks he kissed me all my cheek like it just like completely like diffused me like I couldn't even be angry anymore so I mean that's why like I just couldn't even stab them the thought of him going out and then killing
I mean killing somebody I mean that's just so like I don't even know how to say it it's just so out of like you know like his personality I would say so for atif that kiss on the cheek is a tell it's the real adnan but for that other guy who said adnan stole and who thinks adnan might be guilty
of the crime he's in prison for that same peacemaker quality was something he brought up to me as evidence that adnan was full of shit you know taking off the tension out of a situation he was the icebreaker and I and I and I and I knew that whatever was coming was whatever was coming
out of the mouth half of the time it was just a sweet talk or to take the eat away and then half of the majority of it was a light here's the curious thing though the same people who tell me they think adnan was capable of killing hay or that stealing from the mosque was a great evil or that
adnan was a pathological liar they also tell me to a man that adnan was a great guy and he was such a good guy this is the same anonymous person who thought adnan had taken many thousands from the donation boxes you're so smart and you're so friendly and so
so many positive things and that and that don't feel fake to you like that part feels real too is what you're saying genuinely he was good and yet that good side and he was helpful and he was caring and all that yes you think a person can sort of contain both those things inside their
personality I think it's very I think if you corner anybody in the corner in a they'll explode and you know and different people close to the solutions almost to the hundreds of killers I've evaluated have been pretty ordinary people this is Charles Newing he's a forensic
psychologist and a lawyer he teaches at the SUNY Buffalo Law School he told me he's evaluated several thousand criminal defendants and testified in more than 700 trials as an expert witness mostly lately homicides committed by people and intimate relationships and homicides committed
by young people you ing had listened to about half the episodes of the show and obviously he can't weigh in on a non psychological health that'd be ridiculous but I want him to find out what's a valid way to try to understand what's going on when someone kills someone else what's the range
of options here you ing said most of the time he's doing insanity evaluations or evaluations for extreme emotional disturbance and usually in cases where there's not a question of whether the defendant did it more a question of why and again most of the people he's evaluating are pretty
ordinary some are extraordinary there's some serial killers some spree killers some really awful psychopathic individuals for the most part people kill not in a premeditated way they're not evil they're not sociopathic they're not psychopathic they kill because something happens that pushes
them over the edge in other words murder isn't usually strictly speaking a planned event a lot of people who know a non they can't get their heads around the idea that a non planned to kill hey I hear it all the time here's his old wood long classmate Peter Billingsley I still I still
the whole idea of premeditation just doesn't fit for odd non no that doesn't fit at all but I don't yeah I know it doesn't fit not one bit with the person I knew of course there is some planned murders but I'm sure this was not a planned murder that's Jane Afran who taught Hayena
nun English at woodland her father was a cop I can't buy that because that destroys everything that I feel about these kids so I absolutely I think it was passion and overdose of emotion of love of jealousy resentment all of those things it sneaks in on you and it dominates your
thinking and you can't get away from it but that's what I'm comfortable thinking planned premeditated murder oh my lord no I asked youing can an otherwise seemingly normal kid up and do something like this plan something like this or even do it impulsively is snapping a thing because people say that
all the time also like maybe snapped or maybe you know you snap yeah people sometimes lose it and when they lose it it's not always all at once I've seen a lot of cases in which people have over a relatively short period of time nursed feelings of rejection or anger or hostility and
they've slowly risen to the point at which the individual decides to kill somebody those feelings simmer for a while and one of the thoughts is maybe I should kill this person I'm not going to kill this person I don't want to kill this person but what if I did and the person thinks about it
and then maybe confronts the other person the person who's the object of the frustration and the anger and then at that point the victim or would be victim says or does something that triggers it that provokes the ultimate killing now the law looks at that as premeditated I'm not sure
that it really is premeditated in the sense that we normally think of it it doesn't have to be like a sudden impulse to violence so that was news to me that there's this sort of liminal phase a simmering contemplation what if I killed this person and that can take the place of actual
cognizant planning but end up in the same result the other thing I've considered in my more reaching moments is whether a non did it but doesn't know he did it I'm not the only person who's entertained that one here's a non-sfriend Laura I mean I remember the cops telling me
sometimes they have murderers standing with a knife in their hand next to the body saying to them that they didn't do it because your brain goes into the shock and it shuts down and I was like well maybe that happened maybe it was an accident maybe he got mad I mean we get mad maybe
maybe he lost it for a moment you know and it was an accident apparently this is not as outlandish as it might sound people can go into what's called a dissociative state where they're really psychologically not where they are physically probably half of the people I've evaluated who've
killed other human beings have some degree of amnesia for what they've done did you say half half the people yeah about half yeah and it's it's not total amnesia usually although I've seen some people who have a complete amnesia for killing but it can be partly I don't really recall the
details I don't recall doing this because literally like the memory isn't in their brain anymore or or it never was in their brain or yeah I don't think we know the mechanism by which this kind of denial or amnesia or combination works but in the cases that I've been involved in where people
have had some kind of amnesia or partial amnesia or denial it doesn't last forever it's very difficult to maintain that kind of facade what I find is that over time people do recover traces of what happened and then they know what happened but I've also seen people who have
genuinely snapped and who've committed a homicide and then they realize what they've done in the immediate reaction for most people is oh my god look what I've done and what am I going to do about it I've got to figure out some way to cover this up do you think it's is there another
scenario where you it starts out as a lie as a sort of cognizant lie like I didn't do this I had nothing to do with this and then over time you truly believe that lie like you you kind of erase erase the fact that you're lying and it just becomes the truth of it for you
I think that happens I haven't seen that happen in homicide cases but I've certainly seen it happen in ordinary life less often in homicides yeah I haven't seen that and it's probably just because of in in most homicide cases the evidence is pretty overwhelming that you did it
off the top of my head I can think of five different people in this story whom other people have told me they think are either pathological liars or psychopaths but I shouldn't trust anything they say this term psychopath gets thrown around so easily as it kind of catch all term for cold-hearted
and calculating killer if it non did this and if he did it the way jay tells it he is so cold-hearted I mean jay tells the cops that a non says to him quote all the other mother fuckers referring to like hoods and thugs and stuff think they're hardcore but he just killed a person with his bare hands
unquote if a non said that does that mean the 15 years since has been this very very long con that he's calculating enough to only pretend to be the normal sounding person he is with me on the phone you ain't told me a psychopath usually means a person who has little or no conscience is
glib who can't empathize or relate to other people's feelings they can read other people very well but they don't have genuine empathy another factor to be sure is this what's known in the profession is superficial charm these are people who come across very smoothly and effectively
manipulate other people and manipulate them without them knowing it very often now I'm running through my head everything you're just said seeing if it applies of course yeah and some of it some of it I could see like yeah maybe another stuff I'm like no
I don't think so I mean so it really does seem like a non is like really functioning really well and it's just fine in prison like he's he seems very adaptable and he's always had like a job with responsibilities and he's not gotten into he's not been disciplined really ever except for
having a cell phone and like doesn't appear to have any kind of anti social behavior he's got lots of friends he's got he's maintained his relationships outside the prison with his family and with friends certain friends I mean is that something to take in that I should be taking into
account I think so yeah it certainly cuts against a theory that he's a psychopath or that he's some kind of pathological person but it doesn't rule it out right and the fact is most psychopaths aren't killers and most killers aren't psychopaths there's there's a very limited overlap between
those two spheres finally I asked you being should I be influenced by the fact that a non has so consistently maintained his innocence all these years and you said in his experience people who are wrongfully convicted always maintain their innocence even when it hurts them like in sentencing
or parole but on the other hand he said just because you say you didn't do it even for decades doesn't mean you didn't do it there just aren't any rules for this stuff here's what I take away from this conversation with Charles Ewing I don't think it none is a psychopath I just don't I think
he has empathy I think he has real feelings because I've heard and seen him demonstrate empathy and emotion towards me and towards other people he is able to imagine how someone else feels but on all the other options it's a toss-up could it not initially have been in some state of
amnesia and denial and then supplanted that with actual lying it's possible could he have had simmering feelings of anger and resentment that then boiled over in a not quite by accident way it's possible could he be truly innocent it's possible Ewing said he's often asked on the stand
how do you know this person isn't lying to you and his answer he said is always the same I don't know in the course of his career he's been fooled a handful of people who are listening to this story have told me one thing they think makes a non-look guilty is the way he talks about or
rather doesn't talk about other people involved in the case especially Jay that if he were really innocent we would hear him being matter I know we've already talked about this why doesn't he sound more mad but there's another factor I haven't mentioned and that is as a defense attorney's
explained to me no good can come and in fact only harm can come from a non-attempting to contact or influence people on the outside or connected to his case that's kind of inmate behavior 101 because let's say Kathy changed her story suddenly remembered something exculpatory for a non
and then the state found out that a non had been writing to Kathy or threatening Kathy somehow or talking smack about Kathy on a podcast then that could be used by the state to challenge the validity of Kathy's new information a non is a smart guy he's been an inmate for 15 years he knows
the deal and he also knows there's nothing he can do to change other people's minds about him if a person genuinely doesn't think that I feel something towards the people who put me in prison then me saying it it really has no validity in my eyes anyway because come on you know it's
either you think I did it or you or or you don't and if you think that I did it then you can assume because I'm a normal you know I'm just a regular I think what happens is people come expect in a monster and they don't find that when next they come expect in a victim and when they don't find that they don't know what to think and the reality of it is I'm just a normal person.
I know but I think actually I think you're that's that's right but I think also what people do is they put themselves immediately in your position and think what would I do how would I be feeling how would I act if someone if I thought you know someone had done me wrong and put me here and
I would be screaming to the rooftops and they're not hearing you do that. If someone I mean it's really nothing to say if someone can't imagine how I feel there's no need for me to say anything to try to convince them otherwise I mean it is what it is if a person can't figure it out then it's not for me to say. I think what a non-saying is it's a trap to try to convince people. A few weeks ago after these rumors started surfacing I got a letter in the mail from a non.
It was 18 typed single space pages he gave me his reluctant permission to talk about it. He wrote about lots of things his religion his case how he's managed over the past 15 years. It's a good letter he's a good writer but it swung from pole to pole from distrust to gratitude to confusion and none is obviously aware of this podcast that it's out in the world and I could tell that my
story had messed with his equilibrium. When he was convicted of murder he said the biggest shock for him was that people thought he was capable of this hideous thing that people didn't believe him. As I look back now he wrote I realized there were only three things I wanted after I was convicted to stay close to my family prove my innocence and to be seen as a person again not a monster. The third one he says he's managed inside prison. Quote people in here know me as a stand-up guy.
Guards, inmates, staff, people I've been around for 15 years have seen me every day recognize me as someone whose word can be trusted. I guess what I'm trying to say is that I was able to find the piece of mine in prison that I lost at my trial. Unquote. And now I come along at Robbie's behest not his and yank this door open again to the outside world and to all its doubts about it non-sintegrity. Stirring up the most painful possible questions about whether he's a monster it's his nightmare
basically to be accused of manipulating everyone around him. Of course I've had a sense of this feeling from him now and then over the year that we've been talking but his letter made plain that in 40 hours of taped conversations he was weighing every word. His goal was to keep it all business. He wanted me to evaluate his case based on the evidence alone not on his personality. Quote, I didn't want to do anything that could even remotely seem like I was trying to befriend you
or curry favor with you. I didn't want anyone to ever be able to accuse me of trying to ingratiate myself with you or manipulate you. Unquote. And having to do that made him feel bad he said. I had a rough year. My stepfather died in April, then my father died two months later. And none knew that. Quote, but I couldn't say anything to you because I had to stick to what I know. Can you imagine what it's like to be afraid to show compassion to someone at a fear they
won't believe you? I was so shamed of that. Unquote. And this second guessing, this monitoring of everything he says to me and therefore to the outside world about anything really but especially about his case, he writes in his letter that it's crazy making. Quote, I'm always overthinking, analyzing what I say, how it sounds and the fact that people always think I'm lying. All this thinking, it's to protect myself from being hurt, not from being accused of his murder,
but for being accused of being manipulative or lying. And I know it's crazy, I know I'm paranoid, but I can never shake it because no matter what I do or how careful I am, it always comes back. I guess the only thing I could ask you to do is if none of this makes any sense to you, just read it again. Except this time, please imagine that I really am innocent. And then maybe it'll make sense to you. At this point, he wrote, it doesn't matter to me how your story portrays me,
guilty or innocent. I just want it to be over. It will be. Next time, final episode of serial. Serial is produced by Julie Snyder, Dana Chivas and me, Emily Connan is our production and operations manager, Ira Glass is our editorial advisor, editing health today by Joel Lovell, research and fact checking by Michelle Harris, administrative support from Elise Bergerson. Our score is by Mark Phillips, who also mixed the episode. Our theme song is by Nick
Thorburn, who provided additional scoring. Special thanks today to Studio Rodriguez, the company that designed our website and to Rich Horace, who codes everything. And to Julie Ferris, Mary Ann Hamill, Thomas Morello, Shivani Lamba, or Forensic Outreach, Lydia Myers of Pickham Up Productions, Detective Robert Cherry, Tom Snyder, Lisa Scalpone, Erin Hengen, Jake Halpern, Jake Polini,
and Shannon Sun Higginson from the Whitman Project. Serial is a production of this American life and WBEZ Chicago.