Previously on cereal He left his cell phone in the car with me.
Tell me he called me. Hey now at this point You know why he's leaving the car with you.
Yes, and why is that? Because you said you're gonna kill him I definitely I just stand and someone could look at this and say oh man, you know He must be lying.
They still coincidentally He told me to speak with Jay and I was like okay, cuz Jay wanted to say hi.
So I said hi to Jay And that's all I can really recall The uselessness of what we're trying to do by recreating something that doesn't fit It's like trying to plot The coordinates of someone's dream or something You know, I have never been able to explain it and it is what it is if someone believes me or not You know, I have no control over This is a global talent.
Play pay call from It's not a say it And in late at a Maryland correctional facility From this American life and WB easy Chicago.
It's cereal one story told week by week and this episode 12 is the final week Final episode of season one of this podcast It's been a year since I first contacted it at none and I'm still talking to him regularly I'm still asking him the basics still thinking I don't know that he'll remember something or maybe he'll just get so frustrated with me that he'll crack I still
want to know what you were doing that afternoon I want to know who had your phone and I want to know what you were doing that afternoon No, I don't I don't remember anything more This is from Saturday night just this past Saturday.
I mean we're down to the wire here.
Oh, man So you don't really have to tell mommy after you already have no ending like this is I mean do I have an ending Of course I have an ending we're gonna come to an ending today plus a smattering of new information a review of old information cast under different light and an ending In case you haven't noticed my thoughts about a non-case about who is lying and why
have not been fixed over the course of this story Several times I have landed on a decision.
I've made up my mind and stayed there with relief and Then inevitably I learned something I didn't know before and I'm upended Sometimes the reversal takes a few weeks.
Sometimes it happens within hours And what's been astonishing to me is how the back and forth hasn't led up after all of this time Even into this very week and I kid you not into this very day that I'm writing this Because I'm learning new information all the time For instance, I talked to Don Eight months ago he told me he did not want to talk to me for this story and then
last week he talked to me for this story He didn't want me to use tape of his voice or his last name, but he said I could use what he said Spoiler here Don does not appear to know what happened to hey or why it happened to her or whether it known as guilty But it was interesting to hear what he said he remembered about the day.
Hey disappeared and about her and about the trial Here's what he told me Don said hey was at his house in a town north of Baltimore city on the night of January 12th the night before she went missing He says she wanted to spend the whole next day with him too.
She wanted him to call with on high school and pretend to be some authority figure Tell the office hey couldn't be in school that day She wanted it to be an excused absence rather than just plain hooky But he didn't he says he thought she should go to school and besides he told her he had to work the next day at 9 a.m It was supposed to be his day off from the lens crafters at the Oing
smells mall where they both worked But Don said he'd arranged to fill in for a friend at the store in Hunt Valley Don said he and hey had made plans to meet up later that night of the 13th after her work shift ended at 10 p.m When the cops recovered Hayes car there was a note inside with Don's name on it.
Hey cutie Sorry, I couldn't stay.
I have to go to a wrestling match at Randall's town high But I promised to page you as soon as I get home, okay?
Till then take care and drive safely always hey In a p.s.
on the note Hey mentions a TV interview that had been taped that day a local station had done a student athlete segment on her So the note was written on the 13th the day she went missing This note was one of the reasons I'd initially written to Don way back when Sorry, I couldn't stay is Confusing I didn't understand what she planned to do with the note put it on his car
maybe but his car was so far away in Hunt Valley But the notes stumped Don too.
He said he didn't know about it until I sent it to him And he didn't have a guess as to what her plan was for that afternoon When Hay went missing Don was one of the first people the cops called he says he knew immediately he'd be a suspect He said quote that was the first thought when they said she's missing I said well, okay They're gonna try to blame it on me because she was with me
last night. I'm the new boyfriend I'm obviously gonna be one of the first suspects me and a non-unquote He said he immediately made sure he knew where he was Quote when someone calls you up and tells you have you seen this person?
They went missing they haven't been seen since school You automatically retrace everything you did that day did I see them?
Did I hear from them? Did they page me?
Did they call me? Where was I at this time?
What was I doing at that time?
Yeah, unquote Maybe you're all noting as I did that that wasn't a non-stated reaction to getting called by the cops on the 13th I'm tempted to make a judgment right here, but I'm gonna pull a benefit of the doubt Because a non was 17 he was stoned.
He's a different person, but noted right?
Also note however, there was one similarity in how they reacted to his disappearance You know how a non says he doesn't remember calling hey after the 13th?
Guess who else doesn't remember trying to call hey after the 13th?
Don Like everyone else he said he wondered whether maybe she'd gone to California She told him her father lived there.
He says it's not that he didn't think about what it happened or didn't worry It's just that he didn't know what to do Don's alibi was solid his computer generated time card said he'd arrived at work at 902 a.m.
on the 13th Take a lunch from 110 to 142 clocked out at 6 p.m.
But Don's manager at the Hunt Valley store was his mom so that didn't look great Don said he was anxious throughout the investigation Quote they never up until the day they arrested a non I had no idea what was going on He said they never said okay.
You're cleared as a suspect It was left hanging and until they arrested him.
I had no idea I Suspected they might try to say that we were in on it together.
I didn't know Jay existed until I started listening to the podcast Don had met a non once according to his diary.
It was December 23rd It was a snowy day and she'd had a minor car accident on the way into work and she'd called a non to come help her out They were broken up by this time, but he came to the rescue In the parking lot outside Lenscrafters a non and Don converged Hey writes quote Don and a non took a look at my car and told me not to drive it unanimously Ah Mommy is gonna be so mad,
but I swear it's not my fault unquote Don told the cops back then that he and a non had a perfectly nice conversation a trial He said a non said something damn like okay.
Well, I just want to make sure you were an okay guy Don told me the same quote We sat and talked and just as everyone else described him.
He was very polite Articulate just really the typical what you would expect of the ex-boyfriend meeting the new boyfriend sizing each other up We joked we spent a good 10 15 minutes talking after we checked out the car A trial for whatever reason this episode is firmly time stamped as having happened in January After hand Don had started dating though.
It's clear from the diary.
It was December 23rd In any case Don's testimony at both trials.
He's the state's witness is milk toast He just says yeah, I met him.
It was cordial Which made me wonder why the state even called Don and according to Don prosecutor Kevin Uric might have been wondering the same thing Don said quote when I testified they pulled me in a back room and let me tell you how fun that was to have the prosecutor afterwards yelling at me because I did not make a Non-sound creepy he said they wanted me to make him
sound creepy so creepy that I felt intimidated which I did not And not he just he was very personable.
He was funny. He was everything that I already said He was somebody that I would have hung out with if I knew him in school, unquote Don's memory is that Uric yelled at him after both the first and second trials Oh, he was irate Don said when I say yelling he was literally yelling about it at me I ran this by Kevin Uric, but he said he was not authorized to talk about the case
Don says he loved hey that he still loves her.
It's not something that goes away.
He said Even though they only officially dated for 13 days.
He says she meant a lot to him.
She was totally unshore He said confident She pursued him he said for all of December whenever she saw him at work He said she'd ask him when he was gonna take her out constantly She asked him followed him into the lunch room on his break pestered him He was dating someone else at the time, but then that ended and so on New Year's Eve They made their first date for the next
day He fell for pretty quickly he says quote you could not not like this girl She was aggressive intelligent assertive is a better word than aggressive Generally nice person anything.
I've heard anybody say about her since it's not like oh I don't want to talk bad about the dead.
It's just being honest.
It's it's hard for me to explain If you didn't like her you didn't like her because she was so likable But then you couldn't even be annoyed by her because she wasn't annoying.
She was charming Don said hey actually changed him changed the way he thought about himself He said he'd come off a couple of bad relationships girls who had cheated on him Quote she basically in no uncertain terms told me to knock it off He said that I am worth that I have worth.
I don't remember the words she used I can't paraphrase it at this point, but I am worth having self esteem That I should think that I am good enough and I took it to heart especially after I found out that she had died unquote I'm sorry that I'm doing it so late in the game here, but I didn't even know that this existed until Friday Yeah, that's okay.
No, that's okay. That's okay Here's another guy I just heard from and speaking to him all of a sudden I was hearing Jay's perspective or at least this guy's perspective of Jay's perspective.
He was scared I mean like terrified This guy's name is Josh.
He asked that I not use his last name He said he worked with Jay at Southwest video the porn store.
Josh was 21 at the time They weren't close friends.
He said but Josh would give Jay rides and they'd smoke weed together hang out a little bit Josh said that on the night Jay was first picked up by the cops So late at night on February 27th into the morning of the 28th Jay called him at home and asked him to come into the store because he didn't want to be alone there He was that scared he was I mean Frightened out of his mind
and not of the police like they were the the secondary fear I mean he he was afraid to go in a jail, but not like like he was afraid of Admon I guess that's how you say his name.
I don't know. Adnan. Adnan.
That's it Josh says Jay actually never told him a non's name, but Josh has listened to the podcast So he knows the name now, but back then he didn't He says Jay told him he was afraid that people were after him people connected to the murderer across the street from the video store was parking lot for the Amtrak commuter trains and The parking lot was usually empty in in the evening
Well that particular night there was a van in that parking lot Which I'm pretty positive had nobody in it, but Jay was afraid.
I mean like to the he was almost in tears.
Yeah, he didn't want to go outside He didn't even want to look out the door Because he really thought the van that was across the street was like people waiting to get him But the people you're talking about like is it only in retrospect that you're that you're thinking it's like Adnan's people or did he say that to you?
Oh, no, he said it was the I guess Adnan had threatened him Right, but you're saying you didn't know he never told you the name of the per I'm just trying to imagine is it possible that it was somebody else entirely who he was afraid of Yeah, I mean I guess it could have been but I mean the whoever he was afraid of is obviously the person that committed the crime Right, but so I'm
saying did you Did he express to you at the time that this was a person with Pakistani Relatives or oh he did Yeah, he definitely said yeah, he definitely said that it was somebody the guy was in Middle Eastern Josh says Jay told him it was the ex-boyfriend who'd killed hey It was Josh's impression that Jay had called the cops himself that night because he told Josh the cops
were coming to get him And he seemed anxious that it was taking them so long to get there Josh says Jay was pacing checking his watch that he kept asking him to look outside and see if the van was still there A trial Jay testifies that the cops showed up at the video store on their own that he didn't know they were coming In his taped interview with the police that same night
February 28th Jay doesn't mention a white van or that he's terrified of it Non's people But he does tell the cops that he'd talk to it non either yesterday or the day before and that a non was threatening him in a general way Here's tape from that February 28th interview detective Ritz talks first.
What was the last conversation you had with that name?
I Even the most recent conversation you had with him.
Yeah, what was the content of that conversation?
I Learned it you guys are looking for me and how did you learn that?
A lot of people told me friends are told me you guys are becoming questioning And so I went to hear them and I said, you know, you can be grabbed up and he just told me calm down everything will be okay What did this conversation take place?
I believe in front of my house in a spot Other than you say you know what fuck you do why don't you get me wrapped up in this what it is If you just told me Ain't nothing that happened.
They don't look shit and Just stay cool Is anything else said during that conversation?
He told me that he'd use somebody I mean He's involved a lot of we were activity and People on the website.
They told me that It's just what you told me was didn't you what started me?
So I mean it wasn't I would call it directly You let me know in a random way that what if you said something to the police that yeah, I told him I mean I was like, you know if they call me me I you know Fuck around it.
You know, I'm just gonna tell you guys I know Okay Okay, so the Westside hitman it's so strange I find Josh's version of J's fear so much more believable than J's version of J's fear Which makes me wonder if it's all just in the delivery When J first told Josh weeks before then he knew something about the missing girl who was all over the news Josh says he didn't believe
him. Yeah, I said something about you know Like if not being really involved or whatever, you know, and then he's like no, I mean you understand I helped him bury the body And it seemed like he was kind of bragging and and I mean that's kind of the guy that Jay was not He's not that he bragged about stuff that he did it sometimes he made up things that he didn't do Mm-hmm,
and so that's kind of what I thought he was doing now It's like why would you say that like why would you tell somebody that you really don't know that well?
And I guess it's kind of why I didn't believe him if I had done it I certainly wouldn't have told me right You know, maybe like what best friend or something like that but not right that somebody that you work with at a porn store The version of the crime that Josh says Jay eventually told him it's pretty close to the version that Jay's friend Chris told me too That Jay was out
somewhere and that a non came to him and showed him the body and said something to the effect of you got to help me Josh says he can't remember where Jay said he was when this happened But he is certain the words best by were never attached to the story Josh went to that best by all the time And he says he definitely would have remembered that He said when he heard in the podcast
that Chris had mentioned the pool hall thing that sounded right to him But he can't say for sure Josh says he also had the impression like Chris that it had all gone down later in the day not mid afternoon Josh says at first Jay seemed afraid the cops were gonna figure out he was involved through fingerprints or DNA or something But that as time went on he seemed more and more
afraid of the guy who did it that he was threatening Stephanie It was you better keep your mouth shut or else he says Jay told him the threats were getting more forceful To Josh Jay was so not the type to be involved in a murder maybe tried to act tough.
He said but he wasn't He said he himself had friends who got in serious fights or who'd been locked up for Grand Theft Auto But Jay was not in that category at all.
He said he was a nice guy.
He just wasn't he wasn't the type of guy that you That you really got the sense he could do something real He wasn't a killer and he wasn't a Thug If anything he was kind of the opposite Like he seemed like he was in way over his head.
Yeah I don't know I remember feeling bad for him and It was there any point I mean I don't mean to sound judgey or something But like was there any point where you like well you should go tell the cops then if you know who did this go tell the cops No, not really I know that's probably what I should have said but I didn't really believe him and And like I said when it comes to
like Reputation You know on the street you don't want to be the guy.
It's like oh go snitch You know you don't want it anybody see your week and all that stuff and so I Didn't ever say go to the cops because I mean that would be like the bitch thing to do Josh says what never quite made sense to him when he never entirely understood was why Jay would help it non Barry hey even if I didn't call the cops I definitely wouldn't you know grab a shovel
and help them dig great I know I know I know that's that's what's hard about the story is you just figure like there's something that's not Computing here.
Yeah, no, it's definitely never sounded right which is why I never believed him until the cops actually picked him up Josh does he only remembers seeing Jay one more time after that he thinks maybe Jay came by the store to pick up his check And when Josh asked him so what happened Josh says Jay told him he couldn't talk about it In preparation for this episode Julie and Dana the producers
of this show went back over everything we had All the police files the attorney files the interviews I've done the cell records They did one final sweep just to be sure we'd weighed everything and because old details can have Startling new meaning after a year's worth of research is behind us They came across a couple of things they wanted me to know First and foremost
the knee chakal I'd ask them is there any other viable explanation from the knee chakal on a non-cell record Here's Julie we had always been under the impression that the knee chakal was a no way around it call it looks terrible for him It looks terrible for him and it's two minutes and 22 seconds To remind you the knee chakal is the one that happens at 3.32 p.m.
on January 13th So that girl and none had been flirting with who live near silver spring And the knee chakal is the one that's always stuck out to me and I think to most people who have looked at a non's case closely Because it happens on the afternoon that hey disappeared at a time when a non has said Insisted even that he was not with his phone that Jay had his phone while
he was in school Jay had told the detectives that a non had called some girl and silver spring that afternoon and briefly put Jay on the phone with her And that's why the call is so important Not only does it put a non together with his phone in the middle of the afternoon It puts a non together with Jay in the middle of the afternoon it corroborates Jay's story I've always
had some suspicion about this call because knee chakal said to the cops and a trial That there was a day when a non put his friend Jay on the phone, but knee chakal has consistently said it happened toward the evening at the video store where they worked Jay didn't have the video store job on January 13th.
He started that job at the end of the month So I never bought the idea that the 13th was the day she talked to Jay But even so it didn't look good for a non because who was calling knee chakal in the middle of the afternoon then Jay didn't know knee chak So for me this call has remained one of the pillars of the case against a non That's what Julie means when she says no way around
it But now I think the knee chakal might be moving from the no way around it.
This looks bad for a non column into No, I'm not so sure A non says knee chakal's number was programmed into his cell phone So he's always said to me maybe the button got pushed accidentally like a butt dial and then the answering machine picked up The problem with that explanation besides how convenient it sounds for a non is that there was no answering machine on that line
That's what knee chakal says at trial This call shows up not just on the call log, but on a non's AT&T bill he got charged for it So this was our quest or really Dana and Julie's quest to find out is it possible this call would have shown up in a non's bill even if it went unanswered This proved so elusive first we got one answer than another than another than another AT&T
was not helping us then finally Dana and Julie figured out exactly what they needed to answer this question an AT&T customer service agreement circa 1999 They found one in a class action lawsuit against AT&T that included as an exhibit the very document we needed Luckily that class action lawsuit was filed in New York So Dana was able to go down to the uh and that's
the photo you sent Yeah, the old records department is so awesome New York Supreme court or something like that.
Yeah, it looked like like the madhatters like the archive room We're the first humanoid who'd come down in like 15 years.
Yeah, they were like what news do you bring?
um so Dana goes down there pulls the service agreement takes pictures of the contract sends the first picture the first picture says on the contract it says we do not bill for unanswered calls Meaning the nisha call had to have been answered because it shows up on the bill But there was fine print to the fine print and when Dana flipped through the contract to the last
page She found a loophole The loophole says AT&T won't charge for unanswered calls unless the call isn't terminated within a quote reasonable time So if you call someone and it rings and rings and don't hang up within a reasonable time AT&T will charge you for that call even if it's unanswered So what is a reasonable amount of time or rather an unreasonable amount
of time That loophole actually still exists today and the unreasonable amount of time today is 30 seconds or longer they'll charge We saw one contract from 99 that specified 60 seconds or longer So it stands to reason that two minutes were probably covered.
They probably did charge The folks at AT&T told us the only reason a contract would have varied back then in 99 was if the state had passed particular legislation to address it We didn't find anything in the Maryland rules about it So after all this work we feel pretty confident that AT&T would have charged for a call that rang and rang for more than two minutes in Maryland in 1999
So either way it's if it's two minutes and 22 seconds it's probably unreasonable It's probably unreasonable It's an unreasonable amount of time to be listening to a phone ring I gotta say without it being answered So it's an unreasonable amount of work going into trying to figure that out I know that's a long and perhaps way too detailed way of explaining it But all
this adds up to something important It means the niche a call could conceivably have been a butt dial that no one answered It means there isn't only one explanation for the niche a call.
There are alternative scenarios It could be that a non-Cold Nisha or it could be that Jay was with somebody else who called Nisha Or maybe Jay or someone else called Nisha by accident a butt dial and no one was ever the wiser because no one ever picked up And if there are alternative scenarios then that means the list of things we know actually definitively know facts
We can show about the evidence against a non that list just got shorter In a way the only hard evidence in the case against a non is his cell phone record for January 13th That's what the cops and prosecutors used to corroborate Jay's statements So Dana and Julie looked at that same record all over again The call log and the cell tower map teased it all apart to see if they
could figure out what happened To figure out if there was anything else I could know about what Jay and a non were doing that day We've talked about the call log a lot already We already knew it didn't match Jay's explanations of where they went and when But when Julie looked again she realized when she tried to assign the calls some semblance of a narrative Her picture
of the day crumbled even more Instead of answering any of her questions the call log raised bigger ones such as was everyone lying about that day My original question going into this whole endeavor this whole story was either Jay's lying or a non's lying But what if it's not either or what if it's both and The call log evidence is screwy right from the beginning Jay
said that when he and a non met up that morning when a non drove over to Jay's to give him his car They'd gone shopping at the mall Adnan has said various things but not that they went shopping What seems most likely according to what Adnan told his attorney at the time is that adnan hung out with Jay until about 12.45 1 pm and then went back to school There's a 12.07 call
and a 12.41 call the first pings a tower out west in Elkitt city The next pings a tower back east toward Baltimore city.
They're pretty far apart from each other Here's Julie Going to Elkitt city and then going into Baltimore city where the phone is pinging off of like Edmonds and Avenue area which is actually sort of near Drug strips where Hayes car was dumped that sort of area of Baltimore That's not mentioned by Adnan So I don't remember what we did I know we didn't go shopping.
I'm not really sure I feel more Concerned and suspicious.
I feel suspicious of being like huh Because I can see where I can see where the phone was moving.
I know Jay's story about Security square mall is not true right because of the phone if they had the phone Um, but I don't think Adnan's is true either Yeah and and can I also add that it um At one point Jen says to the detectives that she remembers One of those phone calls she answered and talked to Jay and Jay had said that he was downtown was a non The prosecutor at trial
said we don't really know what they were doing But it doesn't matter because Hayes was in school at that time alive And that's true But still the phone record tells us that there's something they're not telling us Why and is it related to what happened later The next call is the incoming 236 call the supposed Best Buy call from the phone booth that were pretty solidly
convinced Wasn't the come and get me call I do have something of an update there We have not found evidence of a phone booth outside the Best Buy on the sidewalk like Jay draws in his map for the cops But we have now seen two anecdotal reports that there was a pay phone inside the best of you all We haven't been able to verify these reports But we did get a look at the 1994 architectural
plans for that best buy and indeed on the plans There's a teeny little rectangle in the vestibule on the left as you walk in labeled pay phone So maybe there was one inside Anyway back to the call log Julie spent a long time thinking about the 321 call it opened a whole new mystery for her Because it's confusing on about three different levels It's an outgoing call from a non-sell
to Jen's house phone Jay and Jen both talk about some call that afternoon that comes into her landline Someone supposedly looking for Jay Jen says she remembers Jay getting phone calls while he's at her house Jay says he remembers getting phone calls while at the house Both of them also reference a landline call Jay says I get a call on the landline and that's when I
leave Meaning right this incoming landline call is a non-calling in looking for Jay Why would it not be calling you on the landline the whole point of him giving you the cell phone was so that he could call you on the cell phone It doesn't make any sense But there is a 321 call Made from the cell phone to Jen's house Here's the second confusing thing Jay eventually told
the cops the 321 call was a call he made to Jen Asking if she knew whether this guy Patrick was around Jay was looking for weed from Patrick Jen by the way testified this never would have happened that Jay would never call her asking about Patrick But anyway, and here's the third thing the confusing kicker Both Jay and Jen also say Jay was at Jen's house until about 345
pm that day That also has always confused me if Jay is still at Jen's house until 345 How is he calling Jen's house at 321 why would he be calling the house that he's sitting in Unless a nun has the phone Unless Jay doesn't have the phone unless Jay doesn't have the phone I'm not saying who has the phone right.
I have no idea who has the phone right But it leads me to believe that there is a possibility that Jay doesn't have the phone So what's the evidence that Jay does have the phone?
Jen tells the police that she saw Jay with the phone that afternoon She has an image of the cell phone in her mind sitting on the coffee table at her house But at 321 the tower that's pinged isn't the one that covers Jen's house If Jay doesn't have the phone though Then who has the phone and more to the point if Jay doesn't have the phone Then what was going on that afternoon then
I have no idea what was going on There are discrepancies unresolved like this all throughout the afternoon and evening right up until the end of the night When there's a big one We noticed it right at the beginning and while the non-saturni does bring it up at trial No one dwells on it too long But it's odd Jen and Jay tell different stories about where she picked him
up on the night of the 13th And about where and when they got rid of Jay's clothes and boots Jen says she picked Jay up at Westview Mall where she saw a non-too Jay says that didn't happen He says she picked him up at his house and that he dumped his clothes that same night the 13th The first time he tells that he says he threw them out in the trash at his own house But Jen says
she and Jay tossed his clothes in some dumpsters the next day Though there would have been a terrible ice storm happening maybe Anyway, pretty different stories And and and and it hasn't been reconciled and they actually sort of both kind of dig in on it Yeah, I know it to it and I somebody's wrong And I don't believe it's an oversight But I cannot work my head around
What is the What is the lie that is minimizing what right What's the utility of which lie?
Yeah, which lie Yeah You can apply that same question what's the utility of which lie to this entire case There's so much that is murky all you can do at a certain point is speculate and believe me we have Dana and Julien I speculate about all sorts of things like crazy we speculate Rest assured that in the privacy of our office we've turned over every possibility no matter
how remote 99% of what we speculate I cannot report because well we can't back it up its speculation But here's one I can tell you we've recently discussed We looped eloped all the way back to motive I know I dismissed the motive the state supplied way back in episode two But we put it back on the table just to see where it took us here's where we got We've always said a non was over
the breakup it had been a month already But just for arguments sake, let's say he wasn't over it a non and hey had broken up and gotten back together a few times And when they break up in mid-December maybe a non-thanks shall change her mind again They're still friendly several people said to me they couldn't tell or didn't even know that hey and a non had broken up Or
said a non was still referring to her as his girlfriend or said he told them he thought they'd get back together Don said he never quite knew what the deal was between them But judging from his diary by January her romantic feelings are completely absorbed by Don Remember their first date is January first But maybe a non didn't feel the full force of how she'd moved on until
they got back to school after Christmas break Here's what Dana realized recently that first week of school in 99 a non was absent two out of four days and then Friday was a snow day So maybe he doesn't get it that he's really lost hay until that first or second week back at school Here's Dana.
Maybe that's when reality sets in for him and maybe that's when Yeah, maybe that's when the the emotions hit him And so does kind of lose it and so maybe he does kind of lose it But who else says this now one of Hayes or non's friends whom I spoke to says they saw it like this at the time And they don't even speculate now that their adults that maybe it could have been like this So
who are we to put this theory forward?
This is the very obvious problem with speculation especially of the emotional variety You can't prove it so you have to drop it So where does this leave us?
There's no point in trying to come up with a most likely scenario for what happened to hay Because you could pause at a hundred scenarios and so what bereft of more facts better facts Even the soberest most likely scenario holds no more water than the most hairbrained In the equation of a non's case all speculation is equally speculative So instead of most likely
how about most logical Dana has always been very logical about a non's case.
She's the Mr. Spock of our staff Her thing is okay, let's say he didn't do it But if he didn't do it then my god that guy is ridiculously unlucky.
I'm gonna let her lay it out It none has always said it was his idea to loan Jay the car because he wanted Jay to go get Stephanie a birthday present right So that's pretty crappy luck that you loaned this guy who ends up pointing the finger at you for the murder that you loaned him your car And cell phone the day that your ex girlfriend goes missing So the next thing is that it
seems pretty clear to me That a non-ass tie for a ride after school because we've got At least two of their friends saying they overheard him ask for a ride from hay Um, and none himself tells the cop that day he asked her for a ride And in Jay's first interview with the detectives he says to them a non's plan Was to get in his car by telling her that his car was broken down
and asking her for a ride Then the next the next piece of bad luck is the nisha call I mean even if the nisha call could potentially be a butt dial right it's still in the realm of possibility Maybe it was a butt dial, but what are the chances like that sucks for you that your phone butt dial the girl that only you Know and would call on this day that your ex girlfriend goes
missing that you happen to loan your car and your phone out to the guy who ends up pointing the finger at you That sucks um And then the last thing that I think really sucks for him if he's innocent is that Jay's story and the cell phone records match up From about six o'clock to about eight o'clock Which is when Jay is saying that you are bearing the body and That's the time
of the day when you you just have no memory of where you were and you have your dad saying you were at the mosque And maybe belal your your your youth leader who never testifies who never testifies at the trial But testifies in at the grand jury He says you saw him after dark at the mosque on the 13th, but you and none you don't really remember where you were that evening
and And and and that that blank spot in your memory That's the that's the window of time when Jay's story actually does seem to be corroborated by the cell phone records seem to be corroborated yes, but Jay's statement only roughly matches the leek and park calls and eight o'clock calls really roughly The geography matches, but not the timing, but I take her point
so I guess I guess It just in order to make him completely innocent of this You just have to think God that is like you had so many terrible coincidences that day.
There were so many you had such bad luck that day and on A lot of people see it this way all of us on staff have heard from people who say just so quickly Oh, yeah, he's totally guilty News flash people lie in murder cases on the witness stand whoop to do And we worried that we just spend a year applying excessive scrutiny to a perfectly ordinary case So we call Jim train him
back up. He's the former homicide detective.
We hired to review the investigation And we asked him is it non-case unremarkable?
If we took a magnifying glass to any murder case would we find similar questions similar holes similar inconsistencies?
And Triton said no He said most cases sure they have some ambiguity, but overall they're fairly clear This one is a mess he said the holes are bigger than they should be Other people who review cases lawyers of forensic psychologist they told us the same thing this case is a mess While we've been rabbit-holing in our office back out in the world those lawyers from the University
of Virginia law schools innocence project clinic Have been coming up with their own most logical explanation which couldn't be more different from Dana's I haven't reported anything about it up to now, but over the weekend there was a development of sorts so now I can tell you Deirdre N.
Wright and her students have a motion in the works to test the DNA from a non-case that wasn't tested The per kit that's the swabs from Hayes body the material from under her fingernails the hairs found on her body In a motion like this you have to give a viable reason to test this stuff You have to show how it could potentially ex-culpate you And Deirdre's reason is she
thinks the DNA might match some other guy The path to one of these other guys started way back when Dana and I went down to Charlottesville last February Mario one of her students started looking online for possible signs of a serial killer basically I'd already told him about another strangling of a young woman who was also found in a Baltimore park different park
And one thing led to another and he came upon yet another case cold case I stumbled upon a A website that Categorized all the unsolved murders in Baltimore County and she was there I know your computer's not open now, unfortunately do not Annelies The Lee Annelies young sook Lee I believe she was also Korean She was 27 when she was killed strangled in her apartment
in Oings Mills She was found on December 13th 1999 exactly 11 months after Hay disappeared I could see why Mario was interested so is that your so will you look into that now?
Absolutely Then months later I got a message to call Deirdre.
She said she had huge news Oh please pick Deirdre I'm right.
Hey, it's Sarah Sarah Her huge news and this is attorney huge not necessarily reporter huge, but anyway The news was that she'd spoken to someone in the Baltimore County police department to ask about this unsolved case of Annelies Lee So I'm gonna tell you quickly because I have to get on this call at 230.
Okay, but so I called Sergeant something Sergeant something told her that they now had a suspect for this Oings Mills case from 15 years ago They tested some old DNA and a match came back to this other guy who'd done other crimes mostly burglaries He said my guy was in prison a lot and he said he had a really tiny window of being out and about and he was very active while
he was out and about And so he said during that time that he was out we linked him to two rapes and a murder and The motives in all of them appeared to be burglary, but he always had sex with people.
Okay Um, and he said that he got out and became active for 14 months his release date was January 99 Oh my god Right So what's his name?
He wouldn't tell me his name I'm crying out loud But I'm already he accidentally referred to him as Ronald and did he bury his victims?
I didn't he was like he I think he felt like he was telling me too much already Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah Deirdre later learned this guy's name was Ronald Lee Moore Ronald Moore is dead now he killed himself But it seems like he committed lots of crimes He'd been in prison in Baltimore for a while on assault and burglary convictions And according to a Baltimore
son article in 2007 He was supposed to get transferred to a different jail in an orundal county So he could be prosecuted for a different crime But the Baltimore officials released him by accident He was arrested about a month later in Louisiana for burglary They figured out who he was and that he was wanted back in Maryland Anyhow this is the guy the Baltimore County
cops linked through DNA to the death of Annelese in Owings Mills And this is the guy that Deirdre and her gang are naming in their motion to test the DNA from a non-s case It's a long shot that there'll be anything testable in those samples And it's a long shot that if there is it'll match anyone but hey And most long shotty of all that if it does match someone else that someone
else happens to be Ronald Lee Moore When I say that to Deirdre though as I have several times she always shoots right back What makes more sense that little 17-year-old never been in trouble with the law a non-killed someone Or that Ronald Moore rapist and murderer who got out of prison 13 days before he disappeared that he killed someone Right, I know I say But what about Jay?
He knew where Hayes Car was he had to be involved How does that account for Jay?
And Deirdre says big picture Sarah big picture Meanwhile Adnan's post-conviction petition is still alive in the Maryland Court of Special Appeals His attorney Justin Brown is working on a way to bring the issue of the Asia alibi before the court again I spoke to Asia recently She told me she stands by her memories of seeing a non that January afternoon in the public
library And she stands by her affidavit For post-conviction purposes, Asia's alibi is still a big deal It sure would seem to point in effective assistance of council It's funny though knowing what we now know about the state's garbled timeline And that Hayes was maybe still alive at 245 or 3 pm Asia's library alibi doesn't pack the same punch for me as it once did
Deirdre and Justin Brown have been giving Adnan conflicting advice lately about how best to proceed What to push for and when But on Saturday Adnan finally gave Deirdre the go ahead to file the motion to test the DNA It was an emotional decision for him If there's anything about my case man, I want to know it You know what I said no one asked if I don't want anyone to be
able to say well He didn't want to know so boom we went and found out no, I want to know And so I'd call my stewardess and look with stewardess I want to do the testing man.
I'm the one to ask for this you guys had it sitting for 16 years And you never tested it It's impossible my effort to be sitting there for 16 years and you guys never tested it For this fine, so I want to test it.
Yeah, I want to see what it's best There's nothing about my case and I'm afraid of So So back to Adnan's question do I have an ending?
I was just thinking about everything I said I'm pretty sure she probably has people telling her like look You know you know this case make glutes keep these probably guilty You're going crazy trying to find out that he's innocent which you're not going to find because he's guilty I mean I don't think you'll ever have a hundred percent or you know what I'm saying And
he kept staring to your thoughts the only person in the whole world who can have that is me And I mean for what it's worth whoever did it, you know you'll never have that I don't think you will Adnan told me all he wanted was to take the narrative back from the prosecution just as an exercise So people could see his case without makeup on Look at it in the eye up close and make
their own judgments He told me he doesn't think I should weigh in I think you should just go down the middle I think you shouldn't really take a side.
I mean I mean, it's not you know obviously you know I'm saying My decision or whatever obviously yours, but I'm saying if I was to be you just go down the middle Okay, you know, obviously you know how to narrate it, but I check these things out and these things These are the things that look bad against them These are things that you know the state doesn't really have an answer
for You know what I mean and I think in a way you can even go point for point and in a sense you leave it up to the audience to determine While I appreciate Adnan's blessing to take a powder.
I'm not going to Dana's right to be skeptical What are the chances one guy got so unlucky that everything lined up against him just so Because yes, there's a police file full of information circumstantial information that looks bad for Adnan But let's put another file next to that one side by side In that second file, let's put all the other evidence we have linking
Adnan to the actual crime the actual killing What do we have what do we know not what do we think we know what do we know If the call log does not back up Jay's story if the niche a call is no longer set in stone Then think about it.
What do we got for that file?
All we're left with is Jay knew where the car was.
That's it And that all by itself that is not a story It's a beginning, but it's not a story It's not enough to me to send anyone to prison for life never mind a seven-year-old kid Because you, me the state of Maryland based on the information we have before us I don't believe any of us can say what really happened to hey As a juror I vote to acquit Adnan's say ed I have to acquit
Even if in my heart of hearts I think Adnan killed hey I still have to acquit That's what the law requires of jurors But I'm not a juror So just as a human being walking down the street next week what do I think If you asked me to swear that Adnan say ed is innocent I couldn't do it.
I nursed out I don't like that I do but I do I mean most of the time I think he didn't do it For big reasons like the utter lack of evidence But also small reasons Things he said to me just off the cuff or moments when he's cried on the phone and tried to stifle it so I wouldn't hear And just the bare fact of why on earth would a guilty man agree to let me do this story Unless he was cocky
to the point of delusion I used to think that when Adnan's friends told me I can't say for sure if he's innocent But the guy I knew there's no way he could have done this I used to think that was a cop out a way to avoid asking yourself uncomfortable disloyal disheartening questions But I think I'm there now too and not for lack of asking myself those hard questions But
because as much as I want to be sure I'm not When Rabia first told me about Adnan's case certainty one way or the other seemed so attainable We just needed to get the right documents spend enough time talk to the right people find his alibi And then I did find Asia and she was real and she remembered and we all thought how hard could this possibly be We just have to keep going
And now more than a year later I feel like shaking everyone by the shoulders like an aggravated cop Don't tell me Adnan's a nice guy Don't tell me Jay was scared Don't tell me who might have made some five second phone call Just tell me the facts ma'am Because we didn't have them 15 years ago And we still don't have them now Serials produced by Julie Snyder Dana Chivas
and me Emily Connan is our production and operations manager Ira Glass is our editorial advisor Editing help this week from Joel Lovell and Nancy Updike production help from Sean Cole 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 Oliver Monday David O'Dell Chris Cunningham Bennett Epstein David Raphael And to our respective spouses Ben Shryer Jeff Melman and Rachel Hammerman.
Thank you all And thanks to WBZ and to Goli Shea Holislami a huge thank you to the entire staff of this American life Most especially to Seth Lind who gave us operation support throughout the entire season.
Thank you Our website where you can listen to all our episodes and find photos letters and other documents from the case serialpodcast.org And if you want updates about season two coming sometime in 2015 Please sign up for our email newsletter that serialpodcast.org In the meantime, we hope you'll listen to our other show this American life.
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