ast week I started to listen to Serial. If you don’t know what Serial is, it’s a podcast by This American Life. A journalist called Sarah Koenig is investigating a murder that occurred in Baltimore in 1999. An 18 year old girl called Hae Min Lee was strangled and dumped in a park and her ex-boyfriend Adnan (who still pleads innocent) was arrested and jailed for the murder after a school friend of his named Jay, testified against him in court. Adnan has served 15 years of a life sentence but the bizarre thing about this case is that Adnan is in jail despite the fact that there was never any physical evidence that tied him to the murder. He was jailed purely based on Jay’s testimony. Adnan maintains that he is innocent, Jay maintains that Adnan killed Hae and Sarah Koenig is going over the evidence week by week trying to get to the truth. If you haven’t listened to the series stop reading now listen to them – it’s addictive, compelling and very well presented. There’s kind of no such thing as a spoiler when it comes to Serial but it’s best to be up to speed (having listened to all 9 episodes) so you can fully enjoy the discussion.
The last episode (number 9) was released last Thursday and there’s a 2 week Thanksgiving break until the next episode comes out. I’ve been dying to have a proper discussion about Serial podcast and there’s a major chat happening on Reddit but there’s a few things that haven’t been brought up that I want to discuss. Here are a few things that have stuck with me…
[divider type=”standard” width=”1/1″ el_position=”first last”]
What Adnan said to Jay in court
It’s mentioned in one of the episodes that Adnan mutters something to Jay under his breath in court, despite the fact that he is forbidden to communicate with him. He mutters ‘Pathetic.‘ as Jay walks by. I think the choice of wording is very interesting. If someone is lying and trying to get you thrown in jail for a crime you didn’t commit you’d be calling that person crazy, a liar, a psycho or unhinged. ‘Pathetic.’ suggests weakness like someone who backed out on a deal or didn’t hold up their end of a bargain. Perhaps someone who was supposed to keep a secret and then didn’t.
[divider type=”standard” width=”1/1″ el_position=”first last”]
Adnan didn’t try to contact Hae after he found out she was missing
When Adnan received a phone call from the police on January 13th asking if he knew where Hae was, he didn’t try to call her. Ever again. His cell records do not show even one phone call to her. Every other friend of Hae’s called her phone repeatedly, hoping she might answer. I find it very odd that Adnan didn’t even try to call her once considering that she was missing for a month before they found her body. A full month of his friend and ex-girlfriend being missing and he didn’t ever call her. That’s a bit weird.
[divider type=”standard” width=”1/1″ el_position=”first last”]
The Nisha Call isn’t really that important or ground breaking
Sarah Koenig continues to refer to the Nisha call as the most important piece of damning evidence against Adnan saying that this call places Adnan in the middle of Jay’s story. I call bullshit. Nisha remembers speaking to Adnan and Jay but she remembers the call happening later in the evening. Jay didn’t know Nisha so it’s assumed that Adnan was the one that called her but it very easily could have been Jay. Think about it – if a teenage guy has his mate’s phone it’s not implausible that he’d call a few of the numbers in the phone with girl names for a bit of a laugh. Jay might also have called Nisha pretending to be Adnan and then pretending to hand the phone to himself. It’s also entirely possible that it WAS Adnan on the phone and he WAS where Jay said he was but the Nisha call doesn’t prove this. The Nisha call doesn’t prove anything except that someone called Nisha from Adnan’s phone and claimed to be Adnan. It could have been Jay, it could have been another person or it could have been Adnan. There’s no way to know because even Nisha doesn’t remember the call accurately.
[divider type=”standard” width=”1/1″ el_position=”first last”]
[divider type=”standard” width=”1/1″ el_position=”first last”]
Almost everyone involved in this case was a regular pot smoker
This is a huge one for me. Almost every story, every alibi, every witness includes most of the key people in the case being stoned, buying weed, looking for weed or having a smoke. Marijuana is proven to cause memory loss in regular users so I don’t trust the testimonies of anyone. They were all heavily baked most of the time. Which is probably why no one really remembers anything, particularly Adnan who has pretty much zero information about where he was the afternoon that Hae went missing except for ‘I was probably at track and smoked a few spliffs with Jay.’ Super helpful.
[divider type=”standard” width=”1/1″ el_position=”first last”]
How the hell Jay got off without any charges
He admitted to helping bury the body, he PROVIDED THE SHOVELS, he disposed of evidence and he admitted to having prior knowledge that Adnan was going to kill Hae. I’m just gobsmacked that Jay walked free. That’s a text-book accessory to murder story that he personally admitted to the police. I just don’t get why he got to walk away from this. It’s baffling.
[divider type=”standard” width=”1/1″ el_position=”first last”]
Jay said that Adnan planned to murder Hae but strangling someone is an unusual choice in a planned murder
Manual strangulation is really difficult. It takes a lot of strength and the murderer (I assume) would have to be fueled by some kind of forceful emotion. I can’t see someone calmly planning to strangle someone. It she was stabbed or shot, I’d believe it more easily but strangulation is synonymous with passion, anger and is often accidental. I just don’t believe that someone would plan a strangulation murder – it’s like planning to punch someone. Violence is almost always impulsive.
[divider type=”standard” width=”1/1″ el_position=”first last”]
Over to you… What are your thoughts on Serial? Any theories you’d like to share?
[divider type=”standard” width=”1/1″ el_position=”first last”]
If you want more chats about Serial and general advice on how to win at life make sure you follow Smaggle on Facebook, Twitter, Bloglovin, Instagram and if you’re really a keen bean you can sign up to the Smaggle weekly newsletter.