[cherdano]

Let's agree that all spoilers are fine. If you still haven't listened, your fault for reading this thread.

[gwnn]

Sounds like fun, thanks for the tip! I will slowly retreat.

[cherdano]

gwnn, on 2015-January-08, 18:26, said:

Sounds like fun, thanks for the tip! I will slowly retreat.

See you in 12 hours.

[Mbodell]

I think it is about 10% likely he's guilty of murder, and 90% likely he didn't do it. If he's innocent than Jay is obviously covering for someone (possibly himself, possibly someone else). I suspect Jay's criminal family are involved in Jay pointing at Adnan (either helping Jay do it, or killing her themselves, or the police using some other charge against a family member as leverage against Jay to get him to confess/snitch/finger point). It is 100% clear that Adnan should not have been found guilty beyond a reasonable doubt.

[MrAce]

I have no clue what you are talking about. But if a name like "Adnan" involved in it, he probably did it, whatever it is. I know my country men well.

[barmar]

I had to google to find out that this is the case that's the subject of the "Serial" podcast. I've never listened to it, I only know about it from the interviews that Sarah Koenig was giving a couple of weeks ago after the end of the show. So I have no opinion about his guilt or innocence.

[cherdano]

No worries, it's only the most popular podcast of all time.

[helene_t]

Is there a "what's a podcast?" option?

[gwnn]

Sorry for being relatively late (23 hours instead of 12 for a podcast of 8:30). I spent most of the time thinking he's innocent, but now I'm going to say it's between "maybe" and "probably." Don't get me wrong, if this is all I knew as a juror, I'd vote to acquit. But Dana's list of coincidences swayed me, along with a few other stuff.

Why would Jay tell several (3 if I count correctly, Jenn, the porn dude, and another dude) different people what he'd gone through? It seems to be counterproductive for him if he's somehow the killer or colluding with someone else. I have the impression that carelessly telling your friends openly is more a symptom of being terrified by what is going on than being a smart plotter. On the other hand, of course, maybe he was terrified by someone else and he'd been forced by that someone else to tell this story (refined in several iterations) to implicate Adnan. But still, the story fits rather too well to be a complete fabrication but at the same time it is a bit too flimsy ("I didn't want to say Best Buy because there would be cameras there and I didn't want to be implicated" -- is this Jay talking or shubi??). The most plausible explanation to all of this is that Jay did more than he wanted to admit but Adnan was involved very heavily as well. One more thing: you bought your cell phone and two days later you lend it to the drug dude and you don't recall any of it at all? Cell phones were expensive those days...

Like I said, though, for most of the podcast I thought he was innocent. Mostly, why would he enlist someone else's help anyway? Just bury the body yourself. Maybe he felt like he needs some help with finding a right spot, fine, but enlisting this random drug dude just because you think you have enough leverage on him? It seems unreal. Smoking pot after killing Hae Lee also looked weird but on second thought, why not. I have an impression that it happens rather more often that this is how criminals deal with what they've been through (I know the victim went through worse than they, but I'm saying this from their side).

I have a lot more uncertainties than the ones written here but I sketched what stood out to me. I would be interested in discussing this in a bit more detail.

edited incorrect names.

This post has been edited by gwnn: 2015-January-11, 02:46

[cherdano]

It's Jenn not Jan, and Jay not Ray.

What do you mean by "But still, the story fits rather too well"?

[gwnn]

Oh right. The side effects of listening rather reading. I will try to explain what I meant later when I have more time.

[Phil]

Maybe I've been in a cave but I've never heard of a podcast thats fictional.

Oh wait, someone already invented this. It's called RADIO.

[Mbodell]

More than 40 million people listen to podcasts of some description. More than 1.5 million people listened to each Serial episode while it was playing - and many more after the fact (like I did last week or gwnn did yesterday). There is also a decently active community on reddit discussing the evidence, theories, and other information.

[cherdano]

Phil, on 2015-January-10, 00:45, said:

Maybe I've been in a cave but I've never heard of a podcast thats fictional.

What fictional podcast are you talking about?

[Zelandakh]

Orson Welles' "The War of the Worlds" was a classic...

[blackshoe]

Zelandakh, on 2015-January-10, 04:38, said:

Orson Welles' "The War of the Worlds" was a classic...

My father was, lessee, about 14 when that was broadcast. According to Dad, the family sat around the radio listening to it, and then my grandfather, in order to find out whether it was true, called Effie, the local telephone operator, because she, of course, knew everything.

[gwnn]

"It fits rather too well" = it fits the 7 PM part in Leaking Park, it fits Adnan asking for a ride from Hae Min, it fits the Nisha call, it fits Adnan writing "I WILL KILL" in caps on the breakup note (IIRC). You could say that well many of these things Jay could have known a posteriori, which is true to an extent, but how could he have planned something like "I will kill/conspire to kill Hae and frame Adnan, hoping that Adnan will have no convincing alibi and will have done several small damning details?

[Phil]

I made my assumptions based on the nature of the poll before I looked into The Price of Tea.

Anything put together by the producers of "This American Life" has to be top notch. I will check it out.

[cherdano]

So here is in my view the best additional reading about Serial:
Susan Thompson on Jay's testimonies

Even if you don't agree with her conclusion, her analysis of Jay's evolving lies is fascinating.

(Also This American Life Episode 507 is required listening for any Serial drone - it includes the story about false confessions and the former detective Jim Tranum, who was also interviewed for Serial.)

[cherdano]

gwnn, on 2015-January-11, 02:44, said:

"It fits rather too well" = it fits the 7 PM part in Leaking Park, it fits Adnan asking for a ride from Hae Min, it fits the Nisha call, it fits Adnan writing "I WILL KILL" in caps on the breakup note (IIRC). You could say that well many of these things Jay could have known a posteriori, which is true to an extent, but how could he have planned something like "I will kill/conspire to kill Hae and frame Adnan, hoping that Adnan will have no convincing alibi and will have done several small damning details?

So here is what the 'Adnan innocent' crowd would reply:

• Jay clearly matched his testimony to evidence presented by the police (including at some point the cell phone logs), so matching the 7pm "Leakin Park" pings is no independent verification of his testimony.
  
• In fact it is not clear whether the cellphone really had to be in Leakin Park shortly after 7pm. (On the one hand, the tower covers a bigger area; on the other hand, there are doubts about the accuracy of location data for incoming calls.)
  
• There is also a witness account saying that Hae told Adnan she could not give him a ride, and that she left school alone.
  
• Jay likely knew (from the detectives directly, or via Jenn) that the police was focussin on Adnan. They would have known at that point if he had a convincing alibi.

I don't really have a reply on the "I WILL KILL", except I don't consider it strong evidence. As some context, while a larger number of murders (20% or so) are committed by intimate partners, these usually come with more severe warning signs of domestic violence.