Episodes 2 and 3
Serial Season 1 Episode 2
The second episode is aptly titled “The Breakup,” and Koenig’s project for the episode is to discover the nuances of Adnan and Hae’s breakup. Koenig has access to Hae’s personal diary, and essentially their relationship sounds like a typical high school kind of relationship–quick to fall in love, flirting, sneaking around because of their respective parents, etc. There seems to be a lot of information that could go either way in regards to Adnan–for example his poetry– to make Adnan sound more capable of murder– it was said that Adnan had a dark side, and that it could be seen through his poetry– but if you think about it, aren’t all teenagers in high school somewhat angsty? Don’t they all think that they are misunderstood, that the world is against them? In her diary, Hae goes back and forth–loving Adnan, to hating him and breaking up with him, to heartbreak, and then back to loving him and getting back together with him. There is also Don–a boy that works with Hae–and so again, we can see the story being reframed– that Adnan probably killed Hae because he was jealous. One of the things that I found most interesting about this episode is the way that Koenig pays special attention to the role in which religion and cultural customs played in the murder– or the framing/rhetoric surrounding the murder. Adnan takes Hae to the homecoming dance, and his parents find out and show up to the dance and embarrass him in front of his friends. A section that I found really interesting that I wrote down while listening to the podcast was Koenig’s assertion of what the “prosecutor Casey Murphy told the jury about the moment when she says Adnan strangled Hae. ‘What is it that the defendant saw on January 13 when he looked down at Hae Lee?…He saw his parents standing at the window of the homecoming dance. He saw his mother raise her voice at Hae Lee in front of his class mates…He saw the pain in his mother’s face because she knew they were together.” I thought this was really interesting– the way that the prosecutors use such affective language in order to frame the event of the homecoming dance and Adnan’s religious parents as some sort of cause of his murder of Hae.
Serial Season 1 Episode 3
This episode mostly centers around Leakin Park, where Hae’s body was found. Leakin Park is over 1000 acres and located on the western edge of Baltimore City, and has a reputation for having a lot of dead bodies buried in its woods. Adnan asserts that he had never been to Leakin Park and didn’t even know how to get there! Mr. S is the person that finds Hae’s body, but his story is a very strange, and doesn’t exactly sit too well with Koenig. Mr. S apparently was going home to get some tools for a job that he was supposed to do, and while he was home, he “grabbed a beer out of [his] refrigerator.” On his way back to the school, he had to go to the bathroom and so he stopped off pretty deep into the woods so that he could urinate and no one would see him. It is here that he “discovered what looked like a body,” but his story is weird because of the placement of a fallen log and WHY he chose that particular area in the woods to go to the bathroom, and also why he wasn’t able to just wait to use the restroom at the school–which was not that far away from his home. It seems as if Mr. S already knew where Hae’s body was buried– it seems too odd that Mr. S just happened to pick that spot in the woods– and that he was even able to see Hae’s body, as her body was apparently “nearly impossible to spot.” Koenig also reveals that Mr. S was a streaker. Hard to tell whether he is telling the truth– and this is where the episode ends.
I enjoyed this episode a lot– I think what I really liked about it was that Koenig took a really in-depth look at one suspect in the case. She ran through his past history, and the role he played in the murder. Koenig certainly gives a lot of information, and I would say that her thoroughness is something that I really enjoy and appreciate.
Serial Season 1 Episode 4
In this episode, Koenig notes the discrepancies in Jay’s account of the murder of Hae Lee. It begins with anonymous phone calls– the first of which the caller tells the police to look at the “ex-boyfriend,” or rather, Adnan. In the next call, the caller tells the police that Adnan and Hae used to have sexual relations at Leakin Park (where Hae’s body was found), and that they broke up only a week before she was murdered. During the third call, the anonymous caller mentions someone named “Vasser Ali,” and says that Adnan told “Vasser” that “if he ever hurt his girlfriend, he would drive her car into a lake.” “Vasser” is actually named Yasser Ali. The police then obtain a subpoena to get access to Adnan’s phone records, and they find that there were 34 calls on January 13th, and a few of them were made to Jennifer Pusateri, a friend of Jay’s. Jay told Jennifer that Adnan killed Hae, and then Koenig describes Jennifer’s retelling of events–Jay;s involvement and what he told her–which seem a little bit muddy. I think what makes Jennifer’s testimony and Jay’s involvement a little bit weird is that at the end of Jennifer’s conversation with the cop, the cop asks her “were Adnan and Jay best friends?” and Jennifer responds “Oh no. More like casual acquaintances.” To me, this is odd for a variety of reasons– the first being that Jay and Jennifer were clearly very good friends (earlier in the podcast it was stated that they basically hung out together everyday) and also because if Adnan and Jay were only “acquaintances” and not “best friends,” then why was Jay so involved? And if Jay was in fact not guilty, then why was he trying to get rid of evidence (the shovels, fingerprints, etc.)? Jay’s story is not static– when he first goes to the cops he tells them what he did on the day of Hae’s murder (banal things) and then finally, comes clean, with what Koening seems to interpret in the transcripts as “Alright, I come clean.” Koening states that for both her and the cops, Jay is the “biggest mystery” of the case, and I completely agree. I don’t know where to place him, what to believe, and how to possibly even factor in his story to the case–seems rather wishy-washy for a murder case.
Serial Season 1 Episode 5
In this episode, Koenig and her producer, Dana Chivvis, attempt to recreate the process and route that Adnan would have taken had he murdered Hae. Hae was killed between 2:15 and 2:36 pm, an at the beginning of the episode, Adnan explains to Koenig that it would have been almost impossible for him to have killed Hae in that time frame, as he would have just have gotten out of school for the day at 2:15 and would have had to wait for all of the students to file out of the school, wait for the buses to leave the school parking lot, and then get in his car and drive to Best Buy, kill Hae, and then move her body to his trunk and then call Jay and tell him to meet at Best Buy. Koenig and Chivvis go through this entire series of events and activities, and are able to do everything in twenty-two minutes and two seconds. This would have left only one minute and a half for Adnan to strangle Hae. I think its worth quoting this dialogue from the podcast from Koenig: “It does seem far fetched because there’s no room for any errors. Any pauses even. The buses, the drive, the strangulation. The moving of the body. The call. They all have to happen as quickly as they possibly can for the 2:36 call to work. But, it is possible. Or at least not impossible, which was what Adnan was saying in that first letter.” Another part of the episode that I found really interesting and suspicious was the missing phone booth. Supposedly, Adnan called Jay from a phone booth by the Best Buy, but the crazy thing is that there is absolutely no phone booth there when Koenig and Chivvis go to check it out, and the phone booth that Jay described simply never existed at the time that Hae was murdered. The other aspect of the episode I enjoyed was towards the end, when Koenig asserted that “Adnan’s case was the first in Maryland to use cell tower technology as evidence.”
Serial Season 1 Episode 6
The sixth episode of the podcast begins with Koenig asserting that “the most incriminating piece of physical evidence against Adnan Syed was a fingerprint, or rather, a palm print. On a map” that was found in Hae’s car. The reason that this was even “evidence” was because the handprint was on a page that depicted Leakin Park. Then there is a long segment about Jay and Adnan and their friends smoking weed and hanging out, and two strange things happened: Jay, who was apparently a really laid back stoner (sort of like Shaggy from Scooby-Doo) was really chatty and talkative, and Adnan asks how he can get rid of a high because he either needed to go do something or go meet someone (unclear which). Then Koenig talks about “The Nisha Call,” which is really important to the case because Adnan said that he did not have his phone on the day that Hae was murdered, but “The Nisha Call” happened at 3:32 pm, and only Adnan knew Nisha. Jay says that he overheard Adnan talking to a girl, he didn’t know who she was or what they were talking about, but that their conversation did not pertain to Hae’s murder. Adnan put Jay on the line with Nisha, but Koenig is not convinced that the call at 3:32pm was the call “when Adnan put Jay on the phone with Nisha.” Koenig then has a long conversation with Adnan, who is baffled that anyone can think that he had the capacity to kill Hae.
Serial Season 1 Episode 7
Koenig gets help from another lawyer, Deirdre Enright, who is worried about the racial profiling in Adnan’s case, and how racial profiling might have played a role in his conviction. Koenig gets help from Enright and some of her students, and after reading all of the files, believe that Adnan is not guilty. Koenig discusses her feelings regarding Adnan, and she says “‘what if he is this amazing sociopath?’ and I’m just being played, you know? I don’t get that sense, but he’s really charming. He’s really smart. He’s really. He’s funny and he could totally be a sociopath.” I thought this part of the episode was really interesting because Koenig is being so honest and vulnerable. I found that this episode was a lot easier to listen to because it was mostly just a conversation between Koenig and Enright, and Enright was really optimistic and positive regarding Adnan’s case, and that contrasted with Koenig, who seemed to be wavering in her perception of Adnan. I also like that Enright seems to be very fair in her work, and I liked the part when she said “Oh yeah, no for the first however many months thinking ‘oh yeah, of course it’s him. Oh no it’s not him.’ But, in order to revisit it in any kind of careful way, you have to revisit everything. The good and the bad and whatever, and look at it with, an eyebrow up. Sometimes it’s going to stay exactly the way it is and it’s unsatisfying.”
Serial Season 1 Episodes 8 and 9
In episode 8, Koenig interviews Stella Armstrong, a juror on Adnan’s case, and she voted to convict him. Armstrong is apparently unaware that Jay did not go to prison for helping Adnan. One part of the episode that I really enjoyed was when Koenig talks about the psychology that goes into conducting a trial, and how the tediousness of the trial can be a strategy: “Not just the procedural stuff, that’s always boring, but the cross-examination was boring. Even of the star witness. One defense attorney I talked to said that boringness can be a strategy. She said lawyers know that people can only pay close attention for so long. Forty-five minutes, an hour, before they start to flag. So it’s not theatrics that gets people to crack, it’s tedium.” Koenig also asserts that “people lie in court under oath all the time. Witnesses lie. Lawyers lie. Police lie,” and while I know this to be true, this fact just makes it impossible to get a fair trial, and I think really says something about the court system. Koenig continues to talk about the inconsistencies in the trial and investigation, such as the missing tapes from Jay’s statement to the police. Koenig and her producer, Julie Snyder, go to visit Jay at his home, unannounced, looking for answers. Koenig talks to various people that knew Jay, and the consensus is that he defied categorization, that he was different, and didn’t really care about fitting in. Another one of the jurors, Lisa Flynn, who also voted to convict Adnan, asserted that it bothered and shocked her and others that Adnan did not testify, and she wonders “You know, why not, if you’re a defendant, why would you not get up there and defend yourself, and try to prove that the State is wrong, that you weren’t there, that you’re not guilty?”
In episode 9, Koenig reasserts the importance of the phone booth by Best Buy, and how there is actually no record of that phone booth ever existing, and she wonders how the cops missed such a big detail. Koenig talks about Adnan’s reaction to Hae’s murder, how some people said that “he was blank, or cried in heaving waves or not at all or that he seemed normal, or that he hid in the dark room in photography class or stared at a picture of him and Hae in psychology class.” I think this part is really interesting because everyone reacts to loss in different ways, people grieve differently, and so it’s confusing to go off of what people say about his reaction–is there a right or wrong reaction? Is he supposedly less guilty or not guilty of killing Hae if he cried? If he does not cry and does not show emotion does that mean that he killed her? Adnan talks about his time in prison, how he turned to religion, and is making the situation work the best that he can and knows how.
Serial Season 1 Episode 10
In episode 10, Koenig talks about Adnan’s jury selection, and she brings up that Judge Quarles “was on the lookout for prejudice, all kinds of prejudice. Against cops, against prosecutors, against Koreans and against Muslims.” I liked the part of the episode when Koenig was talking bout how at a hearing on Adnan’s bail status in March, “the courthouse that day was packed with people from Adnan’s mosque, The Islamic Society of Baltimore. They’d raised tens of thousands of dollars for his defense, they offered to put up their own houses and other properties to secure his bail.” I thought this part was interesting because it helped me get a better look at Adnan’s network, community, and support system. I feel like this relates back to our class discussions about discourse communities and makes me think of Hasan Minhaj’s “Homecoming King,” which really showcased the various communities that he was apart of and that helped and impacted him. For Minhaj, these communities included his home in Davis, California, his family, and his comedy community. I think this is interesting in relation to Adnan’s case— where we don’t really get a look at his support systems up until this point—yes, we know that his parents and family are supportive of him, but that seems to be it. In this episode, the people from his mosque come out to support him through the trial, seemingly offering both emotional and financial support.
Serial Season 1 Episode 11
In the eleventh episode of the podcast, Koenig describes her doubts about Adnan’s character, whether he is a sociopath or not, and whether he is truly capable of murder. The episode begins with Koenig asserting how people have warned her about Adnan, that there are things about his character that she doesn’t know, and people telling her “there’s stuff you don’t know about Adnan, stuff you need to know to understand who you’re dealing with.” Koenig interviews “Ali,” a member of the mosque that Adnan was apart of, and he tells her how kind and fair Adnan was, what a good kid he was. She says that she explored these rumors because there are people that she knows that believe that Adnan was”capable of committing this crime. I think they believe that they saw things in his personality that they think that I am not seeing. Namely, that he’s duplicitous. The term “psychopath” gets thrown in sometimes. People told me he used his charm and his smarts to deflect suspicion or weasel out of things when he got caught.” She then goes on to say that the rumor that she explored about Adnan was that he stole money from the mosque. Koenig’s source “estimated that Adnan had stolen money thousands of dollars over time. Tens of thousands, maybe a hundred thousand dollars.” I don’t know exactly how to feel about this episode—is Adnan capable of murder because he stole money from his mosque (which Koenig’s source admitted he did, as well), because he smoked weed and partied as a teenager? Because he doesn’t seem angry enough after years of being in prison? Does that make him a sociopath? It’s interesting that in some episodes, it seems like Koenig is really rooting for Adnan, and in others, she is doubtful and confused.
Season 1 Episode 12
In the final episode of the podcast, Hae’s ex-boyfriend Don appears in the episode, and basically concludes that he still loves her, that there’s no way for someone not to like Hae. Josh, one of Hae’s classmates, says that he knew who killed Hae, but did not specifically say that it was Adnan, but does make a reference to a Middle Eastern family. We find out that there probably WAS a phone booth at Best Buy, and also, one of the most interesting parts of the episode is in regards to the Innocence Project, which uses DNA to try and help innocent people that have been wrongly convicted for crimes. They find that there is a man named Ronald lee Moore, a serial killer and rapist, that was released from prison about two weeks before Hae was murdered. Perhaps he killed Hae. The episode leaves a lot of questions still unanswered, but I don’t feel dissatisfied, this is not a fictional story—there is no happy ending, and no way to tie up all the loose ends.
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