Why don't you go ahead and tell us what you know about the death of Hayley?
Previously on serial. So he wanted an album?
Yeah. I mean, the only thing I could say is it was just a normal day to me.
There was absolutely nothing abnormal about that day.
She was concerned because she was being asked questions about an affidavit she'd written.
Even now, it would be nice if there was some technicality, something that was proven to be an essence.
Great. But I think, I think Asia like you might be that technicality.
Listen down. Global tell week.
Prepaid calls from. I'd not say it.
And who made it? From this American life and WBEZ Chicago, it's serial.
One story told week by week.
I'm Sarah Canig. We're at episode two.
You probably heard episode one on this American life or through our website, serialpodcast.org.
But if you haven't, stop.
Go back to the beginning.
We're telling this story in order, the story of Hayman Lee, an 18-year-old girl who was killed in Baltimore in 1999.
And the story of Adnan Sayed, her ex-boyfriend who was convicted of the crime.
So to pick up where we left off, last episode, you heard how the prosecution told the story of this murder at Adnan's trial.
And the motive of the state supplied, the basis for the whole thing, was that after Hay broke up with Adnan, he couldn't accept it.
He was so wounded by her and so furious that he decided to kill her.
Prosecutor Kevin Uric told the jury in his opening statement, quote, he became enraged.
He felt betrayed that his honor had been besmirched and he became very angry and he set out to kill Hayman Lee.
Or this is from closing, quote, it was humiliating what she did to him.
Make no mistake about it, ladies and gentlemen.
This was not a crime about love.
This was a crime about pride.
But is that what their relationship and breakup were really like?
Was he so hurt that he decided to kill her?
That's what I'm trying to find out in today's episode by talking to lots of people who knew Hay and Adnan.
Mostly their friends, because they were a close knit group.
Some of them had known each other since elementary school.
And even though they went to a big, tough, high school, Hay and Adnan and their friends were clumped together in a magnet program of about 30 kids, kind of school within the school.
And they all took classes together and hung out together and they dated each other.
So they knew each other well.
And the other information I have to go on are Hay's own words about their relationship, because I have a copy of her diary.
It was entered into evidence of trial.
It was read by many people, cops, prosecutors, even Adnan.
What's remarkable about the diary and what makes it so helpful is that it's essentially a chronicle of the Adnan era of Hay's life.
The first entry is April 1st, 1998, right when they started going out.
And the last entry is dated January 12th, the day before she went missing.
And in all those months, what she's mostly writing about is Adnan.
If you had to bookend Hay and Adnan's romance, you'd put a school dance right at the beginning and then another one right at the end.
The first dance was junior prom.
Adnan and his best friend had a little competition going about who could get the prettiest prom date that year.
Someone said Adnan should ask Hay to go.
So one day after sports practice on the little hill behind the school, he asked her to prom and she said yes.
On April 27th, she wrote a long entry in her diary about prom night.
And her diary, by the way, well, I'm not exactly sure what I expected her diary to be like, but it's such a teenage girl's diary.
She jumps from her boyfriend to driver's ed to the field hockey game.
She's bubbly one minute and the next she's upset with her mother or dissing her friend or complaining about homework.
So prom night. She writes about Adnan.
Quote, I swear he is the sweetest guy.
Let me tell you why. He was prom prince and Stephanie was prom princess.
And traditionally they were supposed to dance together to my song, Casey and Jojo's All My Life.
I tried act natural and unjelous, but it did kind of bother me.
Ten seconds later, guess who danced with me and not with Stephanie?
Adnan. Now how can I not fall in love with this guy?
Of course, I gave him his first kiss on the lips.
Then I totally fell in love with him.
Since then I keep on falling deeper and deeper into him.
The bad thing is that we have to keep things secret.
Sigh. But it's okay, because love conquers all.
For a while I would like notice they were flirting and I would like make fun of her about it.
That's Aisha Pittman. She was in the magnet program too.
Hey was her best friend.
She would show me notes that they shared and then it just progressed from there.
But it was a relationship that was constantly secret because neither of their families knew about it.
So that just created much more of her saying, I'm going to be at your house, but really I'm going out with him.
She would tell her parents she was at your place.
Or others, I primarily mind.
Just a lot of that sort of secrecy around it.
We had a lot of similar type of situations with our families.
That's Adnan. Since he and Hay both had immigrant parents, they understood the expectations and the constraints.
Do well in school, go to college, take care of your younger brother, and for Adnan, no girls.
If a female friend wrote in his car, for instance, she'd have to make sure not to leave any long hairs behind.
Or if a girl gave Adnan a ride home, she'd have to drop him off down the block so his parents wouldn't see who was at the wheel.
You know, it was really easy to date someone that kind of lived within the same parameters that I did with regards to.
She didn't have an expectation of me coming to her house for dinner with her family.
She understood that if she was to call my house and speak to my mother or father, I would get in trouble and vice versa.
So we would have to set up our self-climate role.
Usually we would talk later when our parents were sleeping.
They had a whole system for this.
One would page the other when the coast was clear.
Remember, it's 1998, so not many cell phones around.
Then that person would call someone 800 service, like the weather or the time, and the other one would call in so that the phone wouldn't actually ring.
It would come in through call waiting, and the dosing parents would never be the wiser.
At the trial, the state tried to paint a picture of Adnan as possessive of hay, as controlling.
When I spoke to his closest friends about that, a couple of them did say that he seemed to be over-involved with her somehow.
Though they couldn't come up with many examples.
Two people remembered a time when Adnan showed up uninvited to a girl's trip to an amusement park.
A. Shipitman was one of them.
She remembers nothing positive about their relationship anymore.
Though by her own admission, she doesn't know whether her memories are colored by what came later.
I think it was probably mostly normal, but things that, like, he kind of just always generally annoyed me because just the constant paging her if she was out.
He was like, well, I just wanted to know where you were, and it's like, I told you where was going to be.
If she was at my house and we were having a girls night, he would stop by.
He would walk over and try to come hang out, and it's just like, have some space.
And it's one of those things.
At first, it's like, oh, it's so cute.
Your boyfriend's dropping by, but then the tenth time.
It's like, really? Did he ever, did he ever seem freaked out by it?
No, but I don't think I was ever freaked out by it in the moment.
Here's Hayes take on one of those impromptu visits I used to talking about.
On July 16th, she writes, quote, Adnan dropped by Esha's late with carrot cake.
So yeah, Hay does not describe Adnan as overbearing or possessive in her diary.
Though she does mention a couple of moments when she's mad at him.
Like, quote, how dare you get mad at me for planning to hang with Esha?
Or a time when he was nasty to her because she didn't respond to his messages fast enough.
But mostly these incidents seem to be tit for tat.
Quote, I'm in a real bitch attitude and Adnan is not helping.
She writes on June 15th.
He hasn't called me since 1230 this afternoon and it's definitely pushing me to the edge.
I think I'm going to pick a fight, unquote.
Hayes friends say she had a strong personality and strong opinions.
She's no pushover. When she's pissed at Adnan, she let him know.
But by far the majority of her diary entries are about how much she likes and loves him.
I stopped counting. There were so many wonderful and sweetest and best boyfriend in the world.
Mostly I heard stuff like this from their friends.
Here's Becky Klein. Back then she was Becky Walker.
It's just a silly teenage high school relationship.
I remember a lot of teasing and a lot of, you know, hand holding arms around each other.
I don't really remember anything weird or anything that stands out.
They hung around all that summer before senior year.
They'd meet up after work and drive around.
They were 17. They were in love.
They were active. They'd have sex whenever and wherever possible.
Sometimes at motels or in the car or a park or other people's houses or apartments.
Sometimes they'd fight and then they'd quickly make up.
A couple of times Hay called it off but then would ask for a non-back after a day or two or three.
Remember the setup for this crime that the state laid out was that a non was betraying everything he held dear for this girl.
As a good Muslim he was not supposed to be dating.
And so he was sacrificing his religion and lying to his family all just so he could be with her.
And it twisted him up inside.
And Hay's diary seems to be where they found some evidence for that.
In fact they had a friend of Hay's Debbie Warren read excerpts from it on the witness stand.
Quote, I like him. No, I love him.
She read it trial. It's dated May 15th.
Quote, it's just all the things that stand in the middle.
His religion and Muslim customs are the main thing.
It irks me to know that I'm against his religion.
He called me a devil a few times.
I know he was only joking.
It's somewhat true. And then there's this which wasn't read it trial but is from July when a non went to an Islamic conference in Texas with his dad.
This is the most distressed Hay gets on the topic.
When I read it I thought, oh this does not look so good for a non.
Quote, I keep crying over the phone because I miss him so much she writes.
He told me that his religion means life to him.
He tried to remain a faithful Muslim all his life but he fell in love with me which is a great sin.
But he told me there is no way he'll ever leave me because he can't imagine a life without me.
He said that one day he would have to choose between me and his religion.
I love him so much and when it comes to choosing I'm going to let him go his way.
I hate the fact that I'm the cause of his sin.
He said that I shouldn't feel like I'm pulling him away from his religion but hello that's exactly what I'm doing.
So yeah, anytime someone's writing stuff down like sin and devil and religion means life in reference to their secret relationship.
That's not good. But ask the Muslim in question about it and it all sounds so much smaller.
I may have said it as a joke.
You know like, oh man, I can't, you know I'm going to hell because I'm dating you or something but I never mentioned it in a type of way that it seems that she took it.
A non claims he just wasn't that religious.
He was going to clubs and having sex with girls and smoking weed from the time he was 14 or 15.
Culturally yes, a Muslim but the rest he says not so much.
So passages like this he says he doesn't really recognize himself in them.
I never, I never really felt as if you know, man, you know, hey is tearing me away from my religion.
You know, and I never, only till I read her diary that I really kind of understood that wow this is the perception that she kind of had.
Just like the gravity and the magnitude with which she took these things, I didn't really feel that way about these things.
Maybe it seems convenient for me to say that now but the only thing I could say to kind of, I want to say proven in a way that my behavior didn't change once I stopped.
You know, once they broke up with me or once you know, we broke up or whatever.
It's not like you know all of a sudden I'm like okay this is this whole big sin is out of my life.
I just, you know, I just continue with the same type of behavior with different people.
Religious stuff aside, the state said a nun was guilt-ridden overlying to his family about hey.
But he says he wasn't all that bothered by that.
Hey, figured he was a pretty good kid.
He's doing well in school, he had a job, he was volunteering at the mosque.
Why shouldn't he have some fun?
And in the pantheon of ways a teenager could have been disrespectful or deceitful to his parents, he thought this rated pretty low.
Yeah, my name is Shamim Rahman and the Madrah Adnan Sayid.
Adnan did most of his lying to his mother.
She figured out something was up pretty early on.
She'd found Adnan's crown from prom in the basement where he tried to stash it along with his tux.
Shamim came to the United States in 1976.
Her husband was already here working as an engineer for the state of Maryland.
She's from Peshawar in Pakistan, where you do not date.
You are either married or unmarried.
There's not much of a middle ground.
So Adnan's girl contact put Shamim in a state of high alert.
She would check the mileage on his car to see if he'd driven farther than he said.
She eavesdropped when he talked to girls on the phone.
I know this makes Shamim sound terrifying, but she's not at all.
She adores Adnan, her middle son.
Yeah, he will talk to the girls, yes.
I would pick up the phone or al, you know.
I would say, you know what he said, like, mom, hang up the phone.
Yeah, he'll say, mom, you know, I know you're listening to me.
Yes, I say, Adnan, I'm here.
You say, mom, stop, you know, listening to us.
And was that conflict? I mean, it must have been sort of constant.
Of course, yeah, because for me, it was unacceptable.
So we used to argue a lot.
I say, no, you cannot do that.
If you like somebody, you know, it's all right.
You can get married, but not without marriage.
You cannot. Of course, me and Adnan had a problem.
And on father was a little more loose about it.
My whole family was even my older son.
He say, you know, mom, everybody's doing it.
Even my husband say, you know, that all the boys are bringing.
But I say, no, not my children.
Adnan wasn't getting punished for any of this.
It wasn't as if he were about to get kicked out of the house.
More like he was being reminded of his responsibilities, both at home and at his mother's request by his youth leader at the mosque.
Then came the homecoming dance in the fall of senior year.
Adnan and Hay had been together for about seven months by then.
This dance would become a big deal, a trial, proof of just how fraught their whole relationship was, and how tormented Adnan was about his double life.
Here's what happened. Adnan's parents got wind that very night, that he had taken Hay to homecoming.
Adnan says this kind of thing happens in their community all the time.
Someone sees someone else's kid at a dance or at the mall.
And before you can even hide behind a potted plant, four aunties are on the phone to the kid's mother.
Anyway, this time Adnan's parents did not wait to deal with it at home.
They showed up at the dance and chastised him, made a scene.
The prosecutors argued that this scene would come to haunt him until the day he killed Hay.
Here's what prosecutor Casey Murphy told the jury about the moment when she says Adnan strangled Hay.
What is it that this defendant saw on January 13th when he looked down at Hay Lee?
Then she lists a couple things and says this.
Quote, he saw his parents standing at the window of the homecoming dance.
He saw his mother raise her voice at Hay Lee in front of his classmates.
Look what you're doing to our family.
He saw the pain in his mother's face because she knew they were together.
And he saw himself in the end standing there with nothing to show for it, but a guilty conscience and a pack of lies in which he cloaked himself.
Now compare that with how Adnan's best friend saw it remembers the homecoming debacle.
He comes home at like 11 p.m.
or like 12 midnight and I'm like, you know, what happened at your homecoming?
And he's like, you're not going to believe this.
I'm like, what? He's like, my mom, my dad showed up.
And I'm like, what? I mean, we're dying laughing on the phone about this.
You know, just, you know, this is our world.
And I'm like, what happened?
They're like, you know, they showed up.
They made me leave and everyone saw it.
How like, you know, literally my parents pulled me out of this relationship.
I've come across dozens of bits of evidence like this.
Information that can either mean one thing or perhaps it's opposite, depending on who's talking.
Adnan's cell phone, for example, he bought it just two days before he disappeared.
The state tried to show that that was all part of his plan that he needed the phone to carry out the murder.
But Adnan says he wanted the phones so he could call girls unfettered.
And he was proud of the phone.
He'd worked hard at his job as an EMT to pay for it.
Oh, and the job. The state would argue that because he was an EMT, Adnan would have known how to strangle someone and would have had the training to revive them if he'd wished.
Adnan, again, he says he was proud of being certified.
He'd gotten the highest score on the qualifying test if anyone in his class and a real job is a result.
He liked old people and his job was mostly to ride in the back of the ambulance with old people.
Make sure they were okay.
In the detective's notes, they interview Adnan's English teacher, Jane Efron, who apparently tells them, quote, Adnan had a dark side, which is in his poetry.
The words dark side are underlined.
And Ms. Efron? It was like all the teenagers that I taught because everything in their lives was dark.
I don't remember any of them having anything upbeat to say.
So he was just another one that makes you think that you're living on another planet.
Because you look out at them and they're all healthy and hearty and playing and being stupid.
So it didn't stick out in some way.
It was just like all teenagers ride Rudy, dramatic pro.
Absolutely. See what I mean?
All this information, every scrap, it's currency for whatever side you're on.
It's spin. And the trouble with spin is that you can't totally disregard it.
Because swirling around somewhere inside, some tendril of it is true.
Sad Chowdry thinks Adnan is innocent.
So for him, the homecoming story is also innocent.
He didn't write about homecoming in her diary, but I used to say it wasn't funny to her.
It was a big deal. I used to remember Adnan's parents wanting to find Hay so they could talk to her, which of course Hay wanted nothing to do with.
So that we could leave the dance and not be harassed by his parents.
Like she walked out holding hands with my friend Sean to get away from it.
She just felt like that was a completely ridiculous thing.
And she was super pissed wanting to have, I think that for her was a, I absolutely don't want to be with this person at all because this is what happens.
On November 3rd, Hay wrote in her diary, quote, quote, who would have thought we would end like this?
Who would have imagined the amount of pain that comes with a broken heart?
I know I'm doing the right thing.
Call me selfish, but this pain is way less than what it would be if we stayed together.
Then, apparently they reunited because exactly a month later, on December 3rd, she's full of love for Adnan again.
quote, this feels so real, so loving and ever so amazing.
I can't be any happier, but yet I keep on being happier.
But then, just three days later, there's this on December 6th.
quote, what's the matter with me?
Every time I close my eyes, I see my baby.
But I keep on thinking about someone else.
Don. Hay has got a crush on Don, an older guy.
He's 20. whom she works with at Lenscrafters, at the Owings Mills Mall.
Don has blue eyes and blonde hair and a Camaro, and she really, really likes him.
For the next couple of weeks, she's racked with guilt and confusion over what to do.
At one point, she writes a Don's name and giant block letters made out of tiny little adnons.
And underneath that does the same thing with Don.
Giant letters made up of tiny Don's.
On another page, she writes Don's name 127 times.
127 Don's. It's not clear from the diary when she finally tells Adnan it's over, over.
But certainly by Christmas, they were split.
On New Year's Day, Hay has her first official date with Don, and they start going out.
Hay is head over heels. I usually remember meeting him on a double date to Friday's restaurant and then to see the movie Shakespeare and Love.
It was the most awkward double date in the world because he was older.
I forget how old he was, but he was significantly older than us.
And my boyfriend was two years younger, so it was just a horrible double date.
Like, you're out with one man and one boy?
Yeah. I did. This is where the real questions begin, all the most important questions about Adnan.
About how he responded to this breakup and to the fact of Hay's new boyfriend.
Because the whole premise of the state's case against Adnan is that he felt betrayed and humiliated and angry, and that's why he killed her.
This idea came from Jay, their main witness.
It was Jay who supplied the motive to police.
Here's tape of Jay being interviewed by Detective Gregor Gillivan.
What did he tell you? He told me that she had broke his heart.
It was extremely wrong for anyone to treat him that way.
He couldn't believe how she stood and looked and faced her face and told him she didn't love him and could be that heartless.
He told me he said, almost joking me.
I think I'm going to kill him.
Yeah, I'm thinking we'd kill him.
You didn't know how he was going to kill him.
He told you that he was going to kill him.
Yeah. Because she had broke his heart.
But nearly everyone I spoke with, Adnan's friends and teachers, say he took the breakup like anyone would.
Adnan's friend, Mack Francis, said Adnan was initially devastated and jealous about the new boyfriend.
But he grumbled about it in a typical guy way, nothing strange.
Everyone I talked to said some version of this.
That he wasn't rage-filled or vindictive.
He was just sad. It really did seem like one of the male mundane teenage angst.
That's Donna Pelletti Phillips.
She taught Adnan and Hay a piece of psychology, and I know them both since they were freshmen.
In her job, she's seen a lot of high school breakups.
But the level of frustration he must have felt if he killed her, doesn't register with me.
I don't remember getting that vibe from him.
He was just another kid whose heart was broken.
And goodness, if I thought that the kids I teach today were going to resort to some kind of horrific crime based on that kind of thing, I would have stopped teaching.
Because it happened every other day.
It would be. Adnan's friend, Saad, said Adnan definitely wasn't moaning over Hay.
When they had broke up, Adnan and Hay had broke up.
It'd been like a month, maybe more.
She had already started dating another guy.
And I was like, Adnan's dating multiple girls.
I was like, I can tell you some of the girls that he's dating.
I was like, he is not upset about him and Hay breaking up.
I was like, he's dating this girl, Anjali and Philly, that he's been going to see this girl.
And I know it wasn't like great proof, but it was still proof that he wasn't obsessed with Hay.
He wasn't. I was like, I'm trying to explain.
I'm 17. I'm like, he's a player.
He has a lot of girls. I was like, he's talking to multiple eyes.
I am too. He was cute and charming.
He was just a three-sweet guy.
Very flirtatious. Sorry, Saad.
She's not talking about you.
This is Anjali, the girl in Philly.
And she confirmed. Yep, a couple of visits.
They made out. Nothing too serious.
I knew yours even nonmen another girl, Nisha from Silver Spring Maraund.
And he started calling her a lot too.
Anjali's friend Mac remembered an on making out with another friend of theirs at a party that January.
So yeah, a player. And Anjali's friend, Nisha, is a player.
And Anjali's friend, Nisha, is a player.
And Anjali's friend, Nisha, is a player.
Each time that we broke up, each time, let me say that each time that she ended the relationship or took a break, it was never a thing where I was like, testering her, like going to her house, knocking on the door, or chasing her down.
Look, I want to get back, would you want to get back?
Because, you know, there was a part of me that knew that man, what she said, makes sense.
So, yeah, so pretty much that we were just friends.
You know, we would talk about things like she would tell me about someone that she had met her job, kind of done.
And she was like, you know, she really liked him.
You have 30 seconds remaining.
Can I call you back or? Yeah, yeah, call me back.
That's the prison phone system telling us our time is up.
It happens every half hour.
Surprises me every time, because I often sort of forget where he is.
But so, you're making the breakups sound very kind of calm and mutual and like nobody got upset.
But, I mean, is that true or was there like crying and the usual teenage angst over it?
Well, imagine now, this is me talking, you know, 15 years later, I mean, you know, she was upset.
I was upset, you know, with Times, where I was very sad.
And maybe I would kind of be like a little stubborn about it.
Like, no, no, we could make it working off her.
It would be cool, whatever.
But on the other hand, it was never a thing where I was like, you know, screaming a yell in that her, why are you leaving me?
So, you know, just to say that, just to kind of dispel that, that was never my behavior.
You know, at all. It is true that no one at the time described it non as acting obsessed or menacing in any way.
Not even Aisha. An inner diary, he never expresses any concerns about a non-spost break up behavior.
In fact, she writes about a time just before Christmas, so after they'd broken up, when she gets into a little car accident and calls up a non to come get her from work.
Both Don, her new crush, and a non, look at the car together and decide it's unsafe to drive, so a non takes her home.
Apparently, it was all very cordial.
Even Don said so. He wouldn't talk to me for this story, but he testified at the trial.
At this point, I'm going to say flat out that I don't buy the motive for this murder.
At least not have the state explained it.
I just don't see it. Not one person says he was acting strangely after they broke up.
He and Hay, again by all accounts, were still friends.
He was interested in other girls.
He was working at his job.
He was headed to college.
About two weeks after his arrest, he gets an orientation packet from the University of Maryland.
I don't think he was some empty shell of a kid who'd betrayed his family and his religion.
It was now left with nothing and conjured up a murderous rage for a girl who broke his heart.
I simply don't buy it. And the reason I don't buy it is because no one who knew him, then or now, says that's how it was.
I want to be clear though, that that doesn't mean he didn't do it.
It just means that so far, I think the state's story about why he killed her doesn't hold up.
Maybe it was more of a spur of the moment thing.
Maybe despite the other girls he was running after, he was privately stewing about Hay.
After all, she was apparently still flirting with him after they broke up, still paging him with loving messages.
She bought him an expensive jacket that Christmas.
Maybe thought he still had a chance with her.
Like their friend Debbie told me, maybe once Don came on the scene, he thought, that's a slap in the face.
How dare you continue to lead me on like this?
The night before Hay disappeared, a non-called her from his cell phone three times.
The first two calls at 11.27pm and 12.01am were only two seconds each.
The third call at 12.35am lasted a minute and 24 seconds.
A non-sense he was probably calling to give her his new cell phone number.
He just got in the phone the day before.
And indeed in the top left corner of her diary, she'd written down the number.
According to Don's testimony, she'd been at his house that night, which is probably why a non-sense first two calls ended so fast she probably wasn't home yet.
Her very last diary entry, dated January 12th, is brief.
I love you Don. I think I've found my soulmate.
I love you so much. I fell in love with you the moment I opened my eyes to see you in the break room for the first time.
There is one detail about the day Hay went missing that I need to tell you about.
A detail that doesn't look good for a non.
And that detail has to do with whether a non tried to get in Hay's car right after school.
Because that is what the state would allege, that a non-fabricated a reason to get in her car that afternoon.
So he could kill her. Jay had told police that was a non-spaian.
Does he tell you how he's going to do it that day?
No, but he tells me that he's going to do it in her car.
He said to me that he was going to tell her his car was broken down and ask her for a ride.
So what do we know about the end of that day?
A Wednesday, January 13th.
Hay and a non had a couple classes together, first period, and also last period, AP Psychology with Miss Pelletti.
That's when Aisha Laszahe, the end of psychology, she was talking to a non.
Then their friend Debbie remembers seeing Hay on her way to her car.
She told Debbie she had to get her cousin from school and then was going to see Don at the mall.
The very last person to see Hay at school that day, we think, is Ainez Butler Hendrix.
Ainez ran a little concession stand right at the gym entrance, and Hay would come by every day and get the same thing, a very fine apple juice and hot fries.
That day, she drove up in front of the gym where the concession stand was and left her car running.
So she came around the circle, parked her car right there, jumped out, and ran in to get something to drink and to tell me to tell the bus not to leave her.
The bus was for the boys wrestling team.
Hay was manager and they had a match later that afternoon that Hay was supposed to go to.
And you didn't see her after that?
No, I didn't see her anymore.
Was Adnan anywhere near her car?
No. I didn't see him near the car.
Okay, so no one actually testified at trial that they saw Hay and Adnan leave school together.
And no one, aside from Jay, says they spotted Adnan in her car at any time that afternoon.
Adnan has no recollection of having asked Hay for a ride anywhere.
We've talked about it many times.
Here's what he said the very first time I asked him.
I wouldn't have asked him for a ride after school.
I'm sure that I didn't ask him because we need to get in school because I know she always...
Anyone who knows her knows, she always goes to take her for a little hug.
So she's not doing anything for anyone right at school.
No matter what it was, not to take the Donalds, not to take the 7-11s.
She took that very seriously.
The trouble for Adnan is that a couple of their friends say he did ask Hay for a ride.
One of them was her friend, Krista.
If I remember correctly, I think Adnan and I were to had a class together.
Our first period of class was photography.
They passed each other in the hallway and I was with him.
I remember somebody saying or him saying something about...
Can you give me a ride after school?
Their friend Becky told police she heard something about a ride as well.
I do remember that there was talk about it.
I remember I felt like he asked her to give him a ride somewhere.
Can I just read to you what the police notes say?
I think April 9th, 99 they interviewed you.
So it says sometime earlier that day, apparently he asked her to take him possibly to get car before lunch.
Because it was in the shop.
Heard about it at lunch.
So I think you heard about it at lunch.
Yeah, that sounds right.
Hay said she could. There would be no problem.
At end of school, I saw them.
He said, oh no, I can't take you.
I have something else to do.
She didn't say what else.
Approximately 220. So that happened at approximately 220.
He said, okay, I'll just ask someone else.
He told her goodbye. And then she says, did not see Hay after that.
Okay. Yeah, that sounds right.
It kind of all comes back a little bit.
So Kristin and Becky both remembered.
And while Becky's recollection maybe works in Adnan's favor.
And he said, hey, turned him down for a ride and he seemed cool with that.
The question is still there.
Was he trying to get in her car?
Did he ask for a ride? Just like Jay said.
And in fact, the most damning evidence in support of Jay's statement.
Doesn't even come from Christopher Becky.
It comes directly from Adnan.
Because he himself told the cops the same thing that day.
This time the state would call police officers.
Got adcocked to the stand.
Around 6.30 p.m. after head gone missing.
A Baltimore County police officer named Scott Adcock called Adnan's cell phone.
Hay's family was worried that she hadn't turned up to her cousin's school.
And the officer was calling around to send her friends to see if they knew where she was.
Here's Adcock testifying at trial.
I spoke to Mr. Syed. And he advised me that he did see the victim in school that day.
And that he was supposed to get a ride home from the victim.
But he got detained at school.
And so that she just got tired of waiting left.
Then a little more than two weeks after the call with officer Adcock on February 1st.
By this time the search for Hay is ramped up.
A different detective calls.
Asked Adnan about the ride thing.
Assum, did you tell officer Adcock you'd asked Hay for a ride?
According to the police report, quote, Adnan said this was incorrect.
Because he drives his own car to school.
So he reverses himself.
Why would he do that? Why would he tell the first cop he was expecting a ride?
And then once it's clear Hay is missing, change his story.
Maybe the girls were thinking of a different day.
Or maybe Adnan misspoke when he talked to that first cop.
Or maybe he did ask Hay for a ride at some point that day, but he's forgotten.
Or maybe he's lying. I'm not a detective, but I consider this a red flag.
What I don't know is, is this a teeny tiny red flag?
Like you just got confused and so what?
Or is this like a great big flapping in the breeze red flag?
Like maybe he's hiding something.
More next week. Serial is produced by Julie Snyder, Dana Chivas, and me.
Emily Cahnon is our production and operations manager.
Ira Glasses our editorial advisor, editing help from Nancy Updike, fact checking by Karen Fregala Smith.
Special thanks to Lou Teddy, Phil Levis, and Tarioconner.
Serial's production of this American life, and WBZ Chicago.
