Previously on Serial From this American life and W.V.E.Z. Chicago, it's Serial. One story told week by week, I'm Sarah Cainig. The most incriminating piece of physical evidence against Adnan Syed was a fingerprint, or rather a palm print on a map. It was one of those big map books you buy at a gas station. Police found it in the backseat of Hayes Car. On the back cover was a partial print of Adnan's left palm. One page was ripped out from the map.
A trial, they pointed out that it was the page that showed Leacon Park. The defense argued, well, you can't put a time stamp on fingerprints. They could have been six week old fingerprints or six month old fingerprints. There's no way to tell. An Adnan had ridden in and driven Hayes Car many times, all their friends said so. The ripped out page showed a whole lot more than just Leacon Park.
In fact, it showed their whole neighborhood, the school, the malls, probably 90% of where they most often drove. And that page didn't have Adnan's prints on it. His palm print was only on the back cover of the book. Plus 13 other unidentified prints turned up on and in the map book, none of them matched Adnan, or J. So the prints weren't exactly conclusive. Over the past few weeks, I've been holding up bits of evidence here and there that look bad for Adnan.
Today, I'm just going to lay out the rest. Everything else that a person could reasonably add to the Adnan is guilty side of the scale. Everything that the state had that I know about. Some of these I've mentioned before, but let's just hang them all up side by side and see what they look like. First off, there's a question of whether Adnan asked Hay for a ride that day after school. Is he looking for an excuse to get in her car so he could kill her?
Officer Adcock testified that the day she disappeared, Adnan told him he'd asked for a ride. And then later told a different cop he didn't ask for a ride. Then you know how Adnan says he can't really remember much at all about the day Hay went missing. How it was just a normal day to him? Nothing much stands out. I've wondered about that, the normalness of the day.
Because wouldn't the call from Officer Adcock asking whether he's seen Hay just in and of itself wouldn't that call make it a not normal day? Something pretty unusual did happen to you that day which was the police call you and say do you know where Hay is? Right? Oh no, well, yeah, no, I do remember that phone call and I do remember being high at time because the craziest thing is to be high and have a police call your phone. I'll never forget that.
I guess that's the only thing about the day that seems weird to me that you wouldn't then that the day wouldn't then come into focus for you because you've gotten this call from the cops and you know you were high, you were young, you know, it's a scary call to get or just a jarring call to get. I mean, at the time the only thing I really associated with that call was that man, you know, Hay is going to be in a lot of trouble when she gets home with the police or at her house.
You know, if her mother actually, you know, for whatever reason that she didn't, you know, go home where she went somewhere else. That's it. In no way that I associate this call with being, you know, the beginning of this, you know, this is this whole horrible thing. It's not in no way is this like, you know, a foreshadow and I don't know if that's the right word. What's the, you know, what's the comp? So to me, all of this call was, was man, Hay is going to get in a lot of trouble.
You know, her mother's going to be pissed when she comes home, right? To be fair to Adnan, if this really was his reaction, then he wasn't the only one. The seriousness of Hay's disappearance didn't start sinking in with her friends for a while. School was canceled on January 14th and 15th because of the ice storm. Then the weekend came. Then Monday was Martin Luther King Day. So the kids didn't all reconvene at school until the following Tuesday.
All of Hay's friends I spoke to said they initially thought, hey, had either run off some place with her new boyfriend, Don, or this was another rumor that a lot of people talked about at the time that she'd run off to California. Friends said she talked about that sometimes that her dad or maybe it was her stepdad was in California and she wanted to go there. They told the cops the same thing. Next, the night before Hay disappeared, Adnan called her house three times.
It seems like the only time they actually spoke was the third call at 12.35 AM. That's when Adnan says he was probably calling to give her his new cell phone number and she does write it in her diary. Here's something that makes me pause though. If you look at his cell records from that day forward, neither Hay's home number nor her page or shows up again, which suggests he never tried to contact her after she went missing. They were supposedly such good friends.
Hay's friend Aisha said she was paging her like crazy. Did you ever try to page her and just be like see if you could find her, raise her, see if you could get a response from her? Well, I know that we would always, I can't remember if I did page her or not, but we would always talk about it in school. I would always get my information first hand from Aisha who would usually be in contact with, I fucking remember she was liking contact with Hay's family.
So it was kind of like I would always, if not Aisha or Krister or, or, or, I mean it wasn't like I was just sitting around like not even thinking about her, you know, not paging or whatever, but I used to always get my information from them first hand. So it's not that, I don't prefer a pager or not. No, it just seems like I know Krister was trying to pager, I know Aisha was trying to pager during this time to just be like where are you, where are you, where are you?
And I was wondering if you had, were in that group of like where are you? Well, you asked me a question. I don't know. I'm just explaining why I'm asking the question. I'm explaining why I'm asking the question is that it seems like from the relationship you had with her, you would have been one of those people saying, hey, hey, hey, like give a hug or where are you okay? We're all worried about you. No, but I mean I'm right alongside with them though.
It's not like they're in a whole, I mean we're all seeing each other every day, we're talking about it. It's not like, you know, it's not like I'm just sitting there, you know, like whenever Hay comes up in a conversation, I'm leaving, don't do another side of the classroom or something like that. I mean, I'm just as involved as they are. Yeah. I mean, I don't know enough.
Then there are some stray things that, eh, I don't know what they mean or if they mean much of anything, but I'm going to tell you about them in case. A note came up at trial. After Hay and a non broke up in early November, Hay had written a non-affrestrated letter. I'm really getting annoyed that the situation is going the way it is, she wrote. You know, people break up all the time. Your life is not going to end.
You'll move on and I'll move on, but apparently you don't respect me enough to accept my decision, unquote. Ayesha Pittman read this note at trial. Hay was her best friend. A non had shown Ayesha the letter, apparently in health class, and they'd written notes to each other on the back. Ayesha and pencil, a non and pen. They were joking, making fun of Hay, making fun of themselves. That's all just silliness. But then at the top of the page, it says, I'm going to kill in pen.
I talked to Ayesha about it. And I mean, did you take any of that as men as saying or anything? Was it just like part of the joking of the note? No, it just seems like you guys are just messing around. And that wasn't on the note when I was writing with it. So to see it later, it was one of those things where it's like, that's weird to see that, but I don't know when that would have been written or what the... Oh, that wasn't part of the conversation?
No. Because I remember, like, once you showed red through it, it was just like on it, it was our conversation on letterhead, and then at the top of it, it was kind of out of context. What? Did you take it to mean anything? I mean, did you take it to be meaningful, I guess? I don't know, because when I'm first seeing that part of it, it was sitting in court having to read the rest of the letter. He said, found the note when they searched at Nons' house. But who knows about that one, right?
It seems like a detail you'd find in a cheesy detective novel. The other one I'm not sure about is this kind of stray report in the police file. A guy named Dave had called the cops and said, my daughter just heard something about a dead body. Dave told the cops it was the neighbor boy who mentioned it. Dave names the neighbor boy, but I'm just going to call him the neighbor boy. Here's Dave. I just remember he had told my daughter he had seen the body of a girl in the trunk of some vehicle.
I seemed to me that he said it was like an oriental girl or something, but that's all I remember. That's all I know about it. Did he tell it to you or just to your daughter? It's about daughter, he didn't tell it to me. Dave gave me his daughter's number. I went to see her right away. Her name is Laura. These were what she remembered about what the neighbor boy told her that day.
He was with a friend and the friend says something like, look what I have and they pop the trunk and that's what he saw. Did he seem upset? He seemed disturbed. More like a, wow, I can't believe what I just saw. Kind of almost like he was maybe getting something off his chest, that type of thing. I asked Laura, did the neighbor boy tell you the name of this friend who showed him the body? I think the guy's name was maybe Adnan. Really?
Hmm. So this guy said my friend Adnan showed me the body of a girl in the back of a car. Yes. Do you think he was telling the truth? Yes. Laura didn't go to Woodlawn. She didn't know Adnan. She'd known the neighbor boy since they were little. They were friendly. Laura said she never spoke to police about this. They never questioned her. So this sounds really, really bad, right? That there was another witness besides Jay who saw Hayes' body, who saw Adnan with Hayes body. That's huge.
But I called the neighbor boy that same night. He's now somebody else's neighbor and he's a man. He was affable and patient and he wholly denied this episode. He was pretty convincing. He said, quote, the only dead body I've seen is on TV. God's on his truth. Except for my great-grandmother. She died when I was like nine. The neighbor man said he wasn't friends with Adnan. He was friends with Jay though. They smoked weed together.
I suggested maybe Jay told him this story and he kind of appropriated it and told it to the neighbor girl to freak her out. And he said no way. Quote, I wouldn't kid around about something like that. The man told me the cops came to see him in 99 and he told them the same thing. They didn't know anything. And he wrote out a statement to the same effect to a private investigator who was working for the defense in a non-case. I've read it. This is what's weird.
That original police report about Dave and his daughter Laura, it's dated April 28th. By that time Adnan had already been in jail for nearly two months. But Laura was under the impression that whatever happened to her neighbor had just happened. He told her dad right away and he called the cops right away. And I talked to friends of Jay's who also knew the neighbor boy and they said oh that guy? They gave the impression the neighbor boy was a bit of a gossip. A guy untalented at keeping secrets.
Which could play either way I guess. But they meant it like nobody would tell him anything they wanted to stay quiet. The neighbor boy never shows up at trial. He's never mentioned. So I let it go. But you know it is weird. And if Laura's story is true, then there's another witness to this murder. It's one of the things about this case that kind of bobs above the water for me. Like a disturbing buoy. Then there's Kathy. That's not a real name and we've changed her voice.
But I'm calling her Kathy. I've mentioned her before. She saw a non and Jay together acting suspiciously the word she uses as shady at a critical time that evening of the 13th the day he disappeared. If you go by Jay's story, he brought a non to Kathy's apartment after he picked a non up from track practice. So after he had been killed but before they went to bury her body, it was about six o'clock a night. And they all three at non, Jay and Kathy acknowledged being together at the apartment.
There's no dispute about that. Kathy was a close friend of Jens. They were sorority sisters. She knew Jay a little bit but only through Jen. She didn't know it not at all. So here was an acquaintance Jay and a stranger who suddenly show up at her door. Kathy remembers that night pretty clearly. Her boyfriend Jeff was there at the apartment too.
And I was kind of surprised, like a little confused because he didn't call unless, you know, it was with Jen and nobody had called to say like, hey, are you guys home? Do you want to hang out? Nothing like that. I was a little strange that he would just pop up at the door and I remember him being like, you know, do you want to smoke? Do you want to hang out?
And I remember being like, wait a minute and asking Jeff, you know, if he wanted to, you know, he was like, Jay's at the door, you know, Jeff was like, for a while. And I think he was hanging out and Jeff was like, so, you know, that's cool. So Jay came in and he introduced his friend. I don't think he introduced him by name. I think he was just like, you know, just a friend of mine.
I think I remember as Jay sat over by the table and a non-settled on the floor on some big cushions that were there and didn't speak. I remember the guy wasn't doing a whole lot of talking. Like he was just kind of like slumped over and mistilned my cushions. And I kind of like thought it was really strange. Like, who is this guy? You know, like, who is this guy? When I first heard about Kathy's statement and her testimony, it didn't seem like a big deal to me.
This is a girl who says some kids she didn't know who was high was acting strangely in her living room. I've been that girl for Christ's sakes, having to deal with a stone friend of a friend on the living room floor. And I've probably been that weird guy on the floor at least once. But listening to Kathy tell it all these years later, the way it stuck with her, how she describes the whole night is just feeling wrong. That also made it stick with me. Kathy thought Jay was acting odd as well.
She knew him as the super laid back stoner guy like Shaggy from Scooby-Doo. But now he was being conspicuously chatty. That was your day, what's going on? You know, kind of like, filled like dominated conversation really. She says while Jay and Adnan were there, Jen called the apartment. Or maybe it was she who called Jen, she can't remember now. But she does remember talking to Jen and saying, Jay's here was some kid who's practically passed out on the cushions.
And Jen thought that was curious. Like, what's Jay doing there? She told Kathy that Jay had been acting weird earlier in the day too. The story Kathy's telling is pretty close to what she told the cops during the investigation. Detective McGillivary interviewed Kathy in March of 99 after Adnan had been arrested. She told him back then, she remembered Adnan saying only one thing to the group. How do I get rid of a high? I hate you. I have to get some water. There's just something in it.
It's really important. I always like, you just have to let it go. Do you have any idea where he was going to go? Who he was going to meet? No, I don't. I'm not clear whether I remember or he was saying, I have to go talk to someone actually. He's someone or I have to do something. I'm not sorely. I remember him expressing that with meeting work, what he had to do to, he didn't specify why. Okay. There are three incoming calls on the call log that ping towers near Kathy's house.
607, 609 and 624 PM. That's the longest one for a little more than four minutes. We don't know for sure who they're from, but Officer Adcock testifies that he calls around this time and he thinks the 624 call is probably him. And hey, his brother, young, also calls a non around this time, looking for his sister. But I know who the third call is from. Kathy definitely remembers a non getting one phone call while he was at her apartment.
She says they're sitting around talking one of Kathy's favorite shows is on the TV, Judge Judy. The phone rings and he hadn't said anything the whole time he had been there. So when he answers the phone and he's saying, what am I going to do? What am I going to say? They're going to come talk to me. What am I supposed to say? And I remember I'm sounding very worried, concerned. You know, like this was, whatever was happening was not good on the other line.
And I remember being like, wow, you know, wonder what he's, you know, he's dropping basically, you know, wondering what was going on. And then not too long after he hung up the phone, he left, just bust out the door, left. Jay follows a non out, leaves his hat and smokes behind Kathy says. They go downstairs and then she says they get in a car and just sit there in the car for a while. And so now they're outside in the car. And I remember going to the window like, what are they doing?
You know, Jeff, they're in the car. They're just sitting there. You know, what the hell is going on? You know, just finding the whole situation. Super odd, super strange. And Jeff, he just like, didn't give a shit about anything. It doesn't matter who cares, you know. And I just remember being like, you know, what is going on? And like, was it, was it, like you'd never met the other guy before, right? So you didn't know what was normal behavior for him.
But clearly it was not normal behavior for, I mean, anybody. I mean, that was just, I mean, regardless of, you know, whether you know him or not, clearly you could tell something was going on, something wasn't going on. It wasn't good. And, you know, yeah, I mean, it was just strange behavior for anybody. I think that's been the one thing I've always remembered, like how he said it, how he looked when he said it. He's definitely panicked. And he's definitely worried.
And I can imagine if I was in the position, that's what I would have been saying on the phone to my best friend, you know, my God, what am I going to do? They're going to come talk to me. What am I supposed to say? You know, trying to come up with some story quickly. Many hours later, at the end of the night, Jay came back to Kathy's again, without Adnan, but this time, Jen was with him. I remember being like, so what the fuck?
You know, and I remember kind of them both being like, oh, it's nothing. You know, kind of smoothing it over a little bit, you know, and that thing was kind of like, oh, it was never a big deal. You know, that kind of thing, but you could definitely tell it was a big deal. And whatever was going on was kind of like a secret, or, you know, because Jen and I were best friends. I mean, we talked about everything.
I mean, we were, I mean, we didn't do anything without talking about it, or, you know, I knew what she was wearing in the morning, I knew where she was going at night. You know, I knew, you know, we should talk to her on the phone. You know, so it was a little strange that when I said, so what happened? You know, I didn't get a full, like, account. The next time I talked to Adnan, I told him how Kathy still remembered all this stuff, how shady the whole scene was for her.
And he said that on a bunch of levels, with Kathy, I just didn't hold much water with him. First of all, if someone had called him to warn him the police were about to call, why would he then answer the phone when the police called? I mean, if I was expecting the police to call me, I probably wouldn't answer my phone. You know what I mean? I could just turn the phone off or something. I think it's a good comment.
No, I mean, that comment says if we're going in the scenario, if I'm trying to avoid the police, you know what I mean? Then I wouldn't pick up the phone and engage in a bit of conversation. Well, but there's also the other thing where you're just like, just act normal. Everything's not sure. Hi, yeah. Yeah, I don't know. I saw her after school. I don't know. You know, like, were you trying to just play it cool? But then it still leaves us the third person. This third individual. Right.
This has seemed to make more sense than I have this conversation with Jay. But she clearly said, from what you just said that I was not talking to Jay, I was talking to someone on the phone. Right. Right. Her story would imply a third man, a co-conspirator. Someone a non would be on the phone with who clearly knew about the murder. So who would this third caller be? So now who is the third person on the phone? So at some point, her memory either benefits me or it doesn't benefit me.
I mean, that's a hard one. Her testimony does not look good for you, you know? Because she's not really connected to Jay. She's not connected to you. You know, she's a little bit more objective, I would say. And she really thought you were acting very strangely. You know? So it's not good for you what she has to say. I mean, I mean, it's beyond listening to you, but I kind of think that it's not good for me if a person believes in narrative of what Jay is saying.
But if you don't believe in narrative of what Jay is saying or if a person questions it, what does she say specifically that links me to Hayes Merck? You know, she didn't say that she saw me with any type of equipment or materials or dirty clothes or disheveled or anything like that. I mean, from what I got it, I don't know.
I mean, certainly, you know, there's something about me you, but I'm definitely not going to yield that, you know, if something that I feel really, all this in the context of her believing, okay, well, maybe he did this or he's charged with this and you know what now all this stuff makes sense or whatever. Which in and of itself may not have been that strange had I never been charged with this.
Like I seriously thought she would have gave this a second thought and I never been charged with Hayes Merck. Maybe, maybe not. There's a second person who puts Jane and not together that night and that's Jen. You know how last episode we talked about those two incoming Leacon Park calls on the call log at 709 and 716 when Jay says they were bearing hay. The ones where we think the cell phone really was in Leacon Park. Well, Jen has a cameo in that scene.
Jen says she was one of those incoming calls. She says she called the cell phone around that time looking for Jay, but that a non picked up. He didn't identify himself, but she assumed it was a non. Here's from her police interview. If Jen's story is true, it does look an awful lot like Adnan was in Leacon Park that night, busy not handing the phone over to Jay.
The second time Jen puts them together that night is pretty soon after that when she picks Jay up sometime after 8 o'clock, so in Jay's timeline after they've already buried hay. She says she'd arranged to meet him in the parking lot of Westview Mall. She says she saw them arrive in Adnan's car. And Adnan said hi to me, say hey was a girl, and I was like hey, it's all. And then we left the parking lot and that's when Jay told me.
What the exchange of work between you and Adnan is, hey what's up girl, how are you described as you did that time? You seem just like you know me seems. She says neither his nor Jay's clothes he must or dirty. Adnan doesn't remember seeing Jen at Westview Mall or where he dropped off Jay that night. And Jay doesn't say he met Jen at Westview either. Matter of fact Jay says consistently that Adnan dropped him off at home and then Jen showed up at his house to get him.
Jay stuck to that, even at trial when it contradicted Jen's story. The thing about Jen and Kathy though is that even if they don't look great for Adnan, they don't actually contradict Adnan's own account of that evening, which I think is why he kind of shrugs them off and why I'm sometimes tempted to shrug them off. Because Adnan has always admitted he was hanging out with Jay that night. So what if a couple of people saw them together? What does that prove?
But now we come to the big one, the one nobody can shrug off. This call, well this is a bad metaphor for a phone call, but of all the calls on the log, this is the one I think of as the smoking gun call. Think of it as a title, capitalized. The knee should call. Between noon and 5 pm that day, there are seven outgoing calls on the log. Six of them are to people Jay knows. The seventh is Tanisha, someone only Adnan knew.
A non-story is that he and his cell phone were separated that day from lunchtime all the way until after track at around five something. The knee should call happens at 3.32 pm, smack in the middle of the afternoon. The prosecution makes much of this call at closing, and I can see why. In Jay's second tape statement, granted it's the one where detectives are showing him the call records.
Detective McGillivary is asking Jay about all those afternoon calls on the log between three and four o'clock. Again, Jay says this is when they were driving all around Forest Park and Emence and Avenue, looking for weed. Did anybody else use the phone? I can't remember where he received a call, a police call, but I remember he was talking to a girl. I can't remember her name. He put me on a phone with her for like three minutes. That's that hello to her. Where did she live? Silver Spring.
You recall her name? No, I don't. You have any idea why Adnan would call this individual in Silver Spring after he had just strangled his girlfriend? I don't. I have no idea why he would call. And a conversation didn't pertain to anything that he had just done. The cops went and talked to Nisha. She was a high school student. And she told them, yeah, there was a time when I spoke to a non-on-his-sell and he put his friend Jay on the phone. Nisha testified at both trials.
For a smoking gun, she's very cute. It's like a chipmunk. Good afternoon. Good afternoon to you, Tissar. Do you know the defendant? Yes, I do. This is from trial number one. It's a little hard to recall, but I remember him telling me that Jay invited him over to a video store that he worked at. And he basically won non-walked in with his cell phone and then he said, like, he told me to speak with Jay and I was like, okay, because Jay wanted to say hi. And I said hi to Jay.
And that's all I can really recall. What time of day did that occur? I would think towards the evening, but I can't be exactly sore. The prosecutor, Kevin Uric, asks her if this call, the 332 call in the log, could it be that same call where a non-put Jay on the phone? And she says, it could be, but I'm not sure. Jay did work at a porn video store. He worked mostly nights there, so it makes sense this call would have happened towards the evening.
What doesn't make sense, if Nisha's saying this call happened at the video store, is that Jay didn't have that job yet on January 13th. As far as I can tell from Jay's own testimony and from the notes of a private investigator for the defense who interviewed the video store manager, Jay didn't start working there until the very end of January. So listen to what happens at the second trial. I don't have the tape, but I have the transcript.
Uric asks Nisha, now did there ever come a time when the defendant called you and put a person he identified as Jay on the line? Yes, she says. Please tell the ladies and gentlemen of the jury what that call consisted of. Nisha starts to answer. Basically, Jay had asked him to come to an adult video store that he worked at. But then Uric interrupts her. He says, no, don't tell us the content of the call.
Now, if I had to guess, I'd say the prosecutor is trying to get her to not mention the video store, because it contradicts their story. So Nisha says, okay, he just asked me how I was doing, etc. then she goes on. She doesn't mention the video store to Uric again. So I'm not at all convinced this call, the 332 call on the 13th, that this was the call when a non put Jay on the phone with Nisha.
But still, Vennon is supposedly at school during this time, and Jay's not talking to Nisha for two minutes and 22 seconds, then who the hell is calling Nisha? This is what a non can't explain. I've asked him about it many times. He says Nisha's number was entered into his phone on speed dial. You can see he calls her a lot on the cell. In fact, hers is the very first number he dials when the phone is activated on the 12th.
And Nisha says he thinks what must have happened is some combination of a butt dial and an answering machine. This is from one of our very first phone calls. But if she says she testifies that her phone does not have an answering machine or voicemail on it. So who is picking up that call and talking for two and a half minutes or whatever it was? Two minutes and 22 seconds or something. You sure she testifies you that? I'm sure. I'm sure.
I'm sure I remember if I'll have an answer received or voicemail or something. Hold on. Let me look. Let me look. Let me look. Hold on. I was right. Here's from the first trial. Yurik Asniusha. Does your home phone have an answering machine? Does your home phone have an answering machine? Not this phone number.
No. I can't really explain it, but I can say for sure I have some hours of percent sure that the only time I ever put Jay on the phone with her would have been at the video store and I absolutely was not in the car with her at that time. So when it's another way to call an answering store, I can't explain the billing of it, but I can for sure have hours of a spend day. I was not in the car with him at that time. What did I have access to calling at that time? Because I was in school that day.
Over the past year, I've swiveled the Rubik's cube of this case so many different ways. I've arranged and rearranged it to come up with alternate versions of how this day might have actually gone. And I can get pretty far in certain hypothetical directions. Maybe every time Jay says a non's name in his story, maybe he's really talking about someone else. And the person we don't know about who Jay's afraid of or he's trying to protect.
I mean, Jay's got the car, Jay's got the phone, all these calls are to his friends. And then I remember the Nisha call and the whole thing crumbles. No way around it. The Nisha call is a big, fat problem for a non. Someone says his biggest fear is not being believed. When he's sure about something, he has a tendency to over-explain, to inundate you with facts and information and then corroboration for the facts and information.
He doesn't like this tendency in himself, but he says he can't help it. Any woman knows we will say I'm an out-kind of overboard to the point where people will be like, all right, man, we believe you. It could be about anything. It could be about whether it rained yesterday because in my mind it's like it just reached something. I guess like a personality court born of all this. I mean, I really don't like to talk about things and if I can prove no matter how silly it is.
He does it with anything. He's a cook at the prison and he said he got into a discussion with some guys recently about barbecue sauce. And I was saying if you don't have molasses or brown sugar, you can substitute pancake syrup. And the guys were like, nah, no way. And so a breakfast, a non-made, a little batch of barbecue sauce using pancake syrup. Nobody needs barbecue sauce at breakfast time at the maximum security prison in Cumberland, Maryland. But he did it in any way.
All these things that look bad for a non, everything that's raised my suspicion, even stupid things. I run every single one of them by him. I've got this thing in my head that I'll catch him in a lie, maybe just a tiny, meaningless lie, and that's going to be his tell and he'll be caught. And not as smart and clever. He knows that's what's going on when we talk. So every time I call, he's a little on guard. He's not sure what's coming at him.
Because what if I ask him something he can't prove, and then I don't believe him? That notion that people out there in the world, people he went to school with who knew him, don't believe him, that they could imagine he's capable of killing hay. The non-spent 15 years thinking about that, and then trying not to think about that. And I was kind of like in my mind, I'm like, man, what was it about me? I mean, I'm fine with it now. You know what I mean? It is what it is.
When I was younger, I used to wonder about that a lot. Like, I'll leave now. What was it about me that the person could think that it'd be different if there was a videotape with me doing it, or if there was, you know, hay, fought back, and all this stuff of me, like DNA, scratches, and stuff like that. You know what I'm saying? Or someone saw me even with hay that day, like three people saw me leaving with her. Or like she said, yeah, me and the non are going here, like 12 or 5 people.
But I mean, it's like, it's just on the strength of me being arrested. I used to sleep about that. Like, what the heck was it about me? You know what I mean? That people, not just random people, I mean, like people who knew me, they knew me, knew hay, and so many saw us on a daily basis. You know what I'm saying? Just bull. And that used to really like devastated me kind of. You know what I'm saying? I used to really, really like, you know, just really like, just strike me to my core.
And just like, what is it about me that would allow someone to even entertain the possibility that I could do this? Is that the thing? I mean, what you really think about, it's not, it is just say that, you know, that, you know, me and I got to a fight bull. And this happened. It's basically saying that I plotted and planned and kept my true intentions hidden. I mean, just the real devious, cool, like, like, getting there tight stuff. You know what I mean?
Like, obviously, I'm not saying that I was a great person or anything, but I don't think I ever displayed any tendencies like that for a person who would think that, you know, I mean, maybe, who knows? Maybe they happened to someone else? I would have believed it. Just because I naturally would have assumed that, well, the police got the right guy. They got him for the right reason. You know, they didn't just get him because, you know, he was ex-forcer.
So, I mean, maybe for sure, he was on our foot. I would be doing the same thing. But you know what? And it's like the people who have told me that they think either they sort of after a long time came to the conclusion that you were guilty or that are kind of like, I don't know. Maybe I've never really done it. Like, they all at some point in the conversation almost everybody has said, well, the odd none, I knew didn't do it. Like the guy I knew couldn't have done it.
But maybe- How does that even mean? So that- I'm not like a distraught, wasn't it? No, go ahead. No, no, no, I'm sorry. I just think we haven't even know what that means. So what they're saying is, maybe there was another guy in there that I just never knew, you know, like everybody has a deep dark, you know, like maybe- Oh, they don't. No, no, no. Not everyone has their good. You do something cool and heinous like this.
It doesn't like, you know, yell at the bank teller for, you know, yell at the waiter for getting the order wrong or something like that. Because it's not like it's saying it's a crime of passion. They say this is a plot it out. No, I know. I know. It insults me to my core, man. You know what I mean?
I get used to not- I mean, it is- I don't care now, you know what I'm saying, but- So you don't believe- you're not someone who believes that like everyone put in a- like anyone could kill depending on the circumstances. Like if they were- No, yeah, if your life was threatening, you know what I'm saying? Like if it was me or him, you know what I mean? Or like if my kids are in danger.
I don't- no, I completely don't think that anyone or even majority of people, you know, could- could stoop to, you know what I'm saying, doing something like this. But based on what? What did she ever do to me that would cause me to feel so angry at her? But- but I- I don't want- No, I'm sorry. No, no, I'm done. Sorry if I interrupt you too. No. Maybe I do care about this. I thought I didn't care about this too much, but obviously I probably do. Still. How could you not?
How could you not care about it? No, because, you know, it's a thing- You know, it- it- it- it- it really doesn't really matter what people think. You know what I'm saying? It doesn't know. I shouldn't care. I see many problems with the state's case, but then I see many problems with the non-story too. And so I start to doubt him. Then I talk to him and talk to him and talk to him, and I start to doubt my doubts. And then I worry that I'm a sucker, and then I don't know. That's the cycle.
Once about six months after we'd begun our phone calls and not asked me a little nervously, what's your interest in this case, really? Why are you doing this? And so I explained all the interesting stuff I'd read and the people I talked to blah, blah, blah. But I also told him that really what hooked me most is him. Just trying to figure out who is this person who says he didn't kill this girl, but is serving a life sentence for killing this girl.
My interest in it honestly has been you. You're a really nice guy. I like talking to you. So then it's kind of like this question of what does that mean? Yeah. Oh, I mean, you don't even really know me though. I'm not. You don't. Maybe you do. Maybe you know. We only talk on the phone. I understand what you mean. I mean, it's just weird to hear you say that because I don't even really know you. But, waiter, are you saying 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. You know what I'm saying? I don't know. I've only talked to you on the phone. I guess you're investigating me back then. We had this conversation in July. By then, we'd logged at least 30 hours on the phone. I've talked to a non way more than I've talked to a lot of people I think I know. People I consider friends. So I was confused by this. This is the closest thing to hostile a non has ever gotten with me.
The next day I came back to him about it. And so I was a little bit like taking it back. And I still I guess feel a little taken it back. What do you think I don't know about you? To be honest, I feel like I want to shoot myself. If I hear someone else say, I don't think you did it because you're a nice guy. I guess you wouldn't know that. I've heard people say that to me over the years, it just drives me crazy.
I would love someone to hear. I would love you someone to say, I don't think that you did it because I looked at the case. And it looks kind of flimsy. I would rather someone say, but not that you're a jerk, you're selfish. You know, you're a crazy SOB. You would just stay in there for the rest of your life except that I looked at your case. And it looks like a little off. Something's not right. I understand this. Being a nice guy doesn't count as exculpatory evidence.
And if I'm going to spend a year figuring out that he's a nice guy, I might as well piss off. Point taken. Maybe we need some experts on this job. Next time on cereal. Cereals produced by Julie Snyder, Dana Chivas and me, Emily Condon is our production and operations manager. Ira Glass is our editorial advisor. Editing helped this week from Condon, Jaffee Walton, Joel Lovell, fact checking by Karen Fregala Smith.
Our theme music is composed by Nick Thorburn, scoring music by Nick and by Mark Phillips, who also mixed our show. And we're going to be doing a great job of making this video. Our theme music is composed by Nick Thorburn, scoring music by Nick and by Mark Phillips, who also mixed our show. Our website, where you can listen to all our episodes and find photos, letters, and other documents from the case, and sign up for our weekly emails, cerealpodcast.org.
Cereals are a production of this American life and WBZ Chicago.