PassiveObserver
Member
Yeah, this account definitely sounded the most plausible, but Adnan would be one cold motherfucker then, like he killed once and now he's down to kill again. Creepy.
Serial: Season 01 Discussion - This American Life meets True Detective
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Yeah, this account definitely sounded the most plausible, but Adnan would be one cold motherfucker then, like he killed once and now he's down to kill again. Creepy.
sparky2112
Member
Has anything been said about 'Season 2'? I'm assuming this has been ragingly successful. Just wondering what kind of production schedule they're envisioning.
I have no idea what his motive is but his constantly-shifting stories and reasons for doing things make absolutely no sense. For example, that big story he told about them driving all the way out somewhere and seeing the sunset didn't match up the timeline that the state laid out and was just dropped when he claimed that it was such a vivid memory of his. His explanation about not wanting to initially tell the police that he met Adnan in the Best Buy parking lot because they might've had security cameras also made no sense whatsoever. Some of the things he lied about were nonsensical and, at the very least, didn't make him a reliable witness at all.
And why would he go along with Adnan just because Adnan knew that he sold drugs? I just can't buy some guy saying, "I killed someone and you're gonna help me cause I know you sell drugs". The moment Adnan told him that he killed Hae would've been the moment that any perceived leverage he had over Jay evaporated. Even as an 18 year old, he should've known that helping cover-up a murder he had nothing to do with would be worse than Adnan telling the police that Jay sold drugs.
As far as why he came forward, he clearly had knowledge about the murder and cover-up, so going to the police and blaming Adnan for it would make sense, especially since they had been seen together and Adnan's phone was in Jay's car all day.
Number one podcast in the country. There's podcasts about this podcast. Dunno when, but it's deffo happening.
I don't follow you. If Jay is the murderer and Adnan is innocent, then why would he care about being seen with Adnan? Wouldn't that be good for him, as it would be a potential alibi? The only reason for him to worry about being seen with Adnan is if Adnan is the killer.
I can understand why he might do it if he and Adnan were both involved, but not if he is the sole murderer.
The mystery surrounding it and the extra long format being strung out has been really compelling. I too hope we continue to get crime and mystery stories in the future. I also think that Sarah does a good job putting it all together and telling the story.
Side note: I've recently discovered that mystery is by far my favorite genre. It sucks that outside of Sherlock, no one seems to care
Poor Detective Dee. I wish you could have gotten a sequel.
ErinIsADrunk
Member
Hard swing from last episode to this episode.
After last week's episode I was starting to come around to the Adnan is innocent camp after sitting on the fence for most of the season. Now I am back to not being sure and maybe even leaning towards the idea that he did do it.
After last week's episode I was starting to come around to the Adnan is innocent camp after sitting on the fence for most of the season. Now I am back to not being sure and maybe even leaning towards the idea that he did do it.
Because he has someone else he can pin the crime on and since Adnan's phone was in his car all day, he can say that Adnan was with him while the murder and cover-up was happening, even if Adnan was elsewhere at the time.
The big thing that keeps me from believing that Jay wasn't involved is his explanation that he only helped bury the body and hide the car because Adnan knew he had drugs, which makes absolutely no sense. There's also the fact that he is the only one claiming to know everything that happened but his story kept changing and parts of it made no sense and/or contradicted later stories that he told. And since I believe that Jay was involved, it's hard for me to accept that Adnan and Jay did it together but that Adnan would never implicate Jay during either of the trials.
So, maybe Jay wasn't alone but I definitely think that he was involved and, if there was someone else, that Adnan wasn't the other person.
Edit: oh and the reason that Jay's changing story sticks out to me more than Adnan's (like the thing about Adnan telling the police that he was going to get a ride from her, then saying that he would never ask Hae for a ride after school) is that I chalk some of those up to just misremembering. The problem with Jay's lies is that for some, he has a weird explanation for why he lied (the Best Buy thing) or, like the sunset thing, he tells some vivid story, then the next time it's something different. The way he recounts events sounds like someone making up a story as opposed to him just forgetting what happened, then remembering a more accurate version later on.
And if Adnan is this cold-blooded killer who's not above using Jay as an accessory and threatening the life of one of his best friends to get Jay to help with everything, it's weird that at no point he accused Jay or anyone else of doing the killing, he just kept professing his own innocence.
Side note: I've recently discovered that mystery is by far my favorite genre. It sucks that outside of Sherlock, no one seems to care
Poor Detective Dee. I wish you could have gotten a sequel.
If you haven't already, read every series that Walter Mosely has written.
chris121580
Member
One thing that is strange through all of this is I feel like Adnan doesn't have any hatred towards Jay. If someone convicted me of a crime I didn't commit, I would make sure everyone knew how much I despised him. Just a little strange.
This is so hollywood but I'm totally waiting for a Primal Fear moment from Adnan
This is so hollywood but I'm totally waiting for a Primal Fear moment from Adnan
exmachina64
Banned
Side note: I've recently discovered that mystery is by far my favorite genre. It sucks that outside of Sherlock, no one seems to care
They only care about Sherlock because of Benedict Cumberbatch.
From the show it seems like the research was conducted over a period of a year or so (and is still ongoing), so they would need to be in the middle of investigating the next season now for it to come anytime soon.
I don't think S1 will end up resolved, so S2 might be more content about the same case or a different case altogether.
But if Jay committed the murder, why does he need to pin it on anyone? He doesn't come forward until weeks after the murder, and the only reason that he shows up on the police's radar is because he starts talking about the crime volunarily. It seems like if he would have just kept quiet about it the investigation would have gone nowhere.
In regards to the phone records, the only part of the phone tower records that is directly incriminating is it being in or near Leakin Park. Everything else is only important insofar as it corroborates Jay's story. But the thing is that even Adnan says that Jay returned the phone to him prior to the time it was in Leakin Park. No one is saying that Jay was in Leakin Park alone with the phone; not even Adnan says that. And the calls to Adnan's friends back up the evidence that he had the phone in his possession.
And Jay seems mad people even think he was involved, when he was. Adnan just wants to keep explaining that he didn't do it.
I don't know, maybe he heard that the police were questioning people he knew and he started to get nervous. Why would he help Adnan hide the body and car? I have yet to see a possible explanation for why he would feel forced to help Adnan when he had nothing to do with it.
Which calls are you referring to? The Nisha call? As far as the rest of it, I'm gonna have to listen to the phone records episode again and get back to you cause that was the one I paid the least attention to.
Kos Luftar
Member
I think Adnan doesn't have any hard feelings towards Jay because he wants to be found innocent so he can come out and kill Jay as well.
chris121580
Member
Because if the story from the podcast today is true, he threatened to kill Stephanie if Jay didn't help him
Elementary and RDJ did good too. Referring to the character. He's not the only mystery series, but Hollywood thinks he is. Pour one out for Batman.
Vincent Alexander
Member
I think this story will end at 8. She'll never be able to give us a definitive yes or no, so I feel like the final episode will be hearing from the investigative team, a recap, and cliffhanger "What do you think?"
sparky2112
Member
Yeah, I'm not sure if it's because he's been in prison for so long, but Adnan seems not emotional enough, I guess?
I wonder too, despite what the head of that innocence project said about there just not being all that many charming sociopaths out there, if Adnan WERE a charming sociopath, would he even be capable of expressing anger, or would that simply not occur to him?
I just find his demeanor weird.
I wonder too, despite what the head of that innocence project said about there just not being all that many charming sociopaths out there, if Adnan WERE a charming sociopath, would he even be capable of expressing anger, or would that simply not occur to him?
I just find his demeanor weird.
chris121580
Member
Way too laid back if he truly is wrongfully accused
That story didn't sound very real but if it was, why wouldn't he immediately go to the police instead of driving around with the guy? Or, if he was actually scared for his girlfriend's safety, why not go to the police after he helped him hide the body and car? If he was so scared for his girlfriend's life that he would help cover-up a murder, why would he just let it drop and not say anything to the police about it? Presumably, her and Adnan continue to hang out afterwards since they were such good friends and in the same classes so if he knew that the guy was capable of murder and had threatened to kill again, it doesn't make sense to just let that go without saying anything.
One of my uncles went to prison for a crime he didn't commit and when I would talk to him, he wouldn't yell and scream when we were on the phone. I'm not sure where you get the idea that there's a type of behavior that someone should follow, especially when the guy has already spent half his life believing that he'll be stuck in prison for the rest of his days. Getting angry on the phone with a woman who had nothing to do with the situation won't change anything.
Emerson
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Episode 8 just happened and it ended with a teaser for the next so I'm not sure why you'd say that.
Foxy Fox 39
Banned
Adnans been in prison for years. Why would he be yelling and screaming?
I was listening to the This is Criminal podcast; the episode about polygraph tests.
Something they mentioned made my look at Serial (specifically Adnan) in a different light.
I'm paraphrasing here but it's something like when someone is lying they give you facts, they always repeat the same facts rather than providing anything new.
I'm going to have to listen to it again, but it was very interesting. You guys should check it too.
http://thisiscriminal.com/episode-two-pants-on-fire/
A liar will tell their story and when pressed on specific details about the event, they will repeat what they have said and you won't learn anything new over time.
They will say things like "Oh you know, like what I said before..."
Something they mentioned made my look at Serial (specifically Adnan) in a different light.
I'm paraphrasing here but it's something like when someone is lying they give you facts, they always repeat the same facts rather than providing anything new.
I'm going to have to listen to it again, but it was very interesting. You guys should check it too.
http://thisiscriminal.com/episode-two-pants-on-fire/
A liar will tell their story and when pressed on specific details about the event, they will repeat what they have said and you won't learn anything new over time.
They will say things like "Oh you know, like what I said before..."
Trying to hold as suspicious "well why didn't he _____" is so lame. There's a million reasons Adnan wouldn't be an emotional wreck on these tapes, there's a million reasons why he might not have been calling Hae after her disappearance, there's a million reasons why Jay wouldn't have gone to police if he felt threatened. There's a million reasons why Adnan wouldn't have taken to the stand: he was worried he'd fall apart emotionally, he knew he didn't really have anything to say except "I didn't do it".
Unless someone's non-action constitutes some negligence it's super lame to hold them accountable to it. What you "would have done" or what you think is normal is totally irrelevant.
Unless someone's non-action constitutes some negligence it's super lame to hold them accountable to it. What you "would have done" or what you think is normal is totally irrelevant.
They've explained this numerous times: Jay didn't immediately go to police because he was involved in various other criminal activities. So he would be the kind of person whose first reaction would be to run to the police.
Adnan threatening Steph to Jay was an interesting angle. The talk with Jay was interesting too. "If it wasn't Adnan, Who did it?" Is a good question, and without having an answer to that, I don't see this ending well for Adnan.
I know that and that explanation doesn't make any sense. Unless Jay murdered someone and only Adnan knew, none of the information Adnan had about Jay selling drugs or whatever else he did trumped murder. Without the "he threatened my girlfriend" thing, which doesn't sound plausible and makes his silence following the murder even stranger, there was no reason for him to be driving Adnan around and helping him cover-up the killing. Again, if Adnan did all this threatening and coerced Jay into being an accessory to murder, why would he never implicate Jay (or someone else) once he was arrested? It seems strange that Adnan would go to such lengths to cover everything up (including erasing any physical evidence linking him to the killing), then just let Jay talk to the police and not do anything about it.
OpinionatedCyborg
Member
Chris' story is interesting because it erases the Asia alibi (if we can even trust that alibi to begin with) since it places the murder within the vicinity of the library. In fact, I found Chris' story much more plausible than the ones that followed: it was a crime of passion, not premeditation, and the sequence of events may not have followed the prosecutions (murder in the Best Buy parking lot seems implausbile given the timing -- not impossible by any means, of course). It is possible this first story was mostly true but the investigators helped coach Jay into massaging his story to better suit the evidence they had.
This was a great episode, but it only touched on a few things I've been aching to hear more about: Jay, Stephanie, Jenn, Jay's friends, the jurors, the defense attorney, etc. I'M DYING FOR MORE. Random thoughts to follow. I better understand how the jurors could've decided Jay was a credible witness. I'm disgusted, but unsurprised, that at least one of the jurors held it against Adnan that he didn't testify. I'm surprised Jay didn't end up in jail for murder, and we aren't hearing a story about how a charismatic dentist may have framed him -- he's black, poor, has a set of priors, comes from a broken family and a father who's a drug dealer, and he tells multiple people about the crime. He's damn lucky Adnan was already a suspect or he would've been locked up eternally.
I think Adnan did it, but I don't think there was enough evidence to convict him beyond a reasonable doubt, and I certainly don't think he should've been sent to prison for life without parole.
This was a great episode, but it only touched on a few things I've been aching to hear more about: Jay, Stephanie, Jenn, Jay's friends, the jurors, the defense attorney, etc. I'M DYING FOR MORE. Random thoughts to follow. I better understand how the jurors could've decided Jay was a credible witness. I'm disgusted, but unsurprised, that at least one of the jurors held it against Adnan that he didn't testify. I'm surprised Jay didn't end up in jail for murder, and we aren't hearing a story about how a charismatic dentist may have framed him -- he's black, poor, has a set of priors, comes from a broken family and a father who's a drug dealer, and he tells multiple people about the crime. He's damn lucky Adnan was already a suspect or he would've been locked up eternally.
I think Adnan did it, but I don't think there was enough evidence to convict him beyond a reasonable doubt, and I certainly don't think he should've been sent to prison for life without parole.
exmachina64
Banned
You're thinking about this in a vacuum, i.e. without context. Sure, that holds true when an event/action/crime recently occurred, but it's been fifteen years later. Actual memories have faded and what's left are memorized narratives.
The core tenet of this podcast is that our memories are unreliable and subject to bias. You can see that in the podcast, you can see that on Reddit, you can see that here. We're all picking and choosing how to weigh each piece of evidence in our minds and coming to conclusions about who's involved or who did what.
It may be irrelevant or lame, but how many cases do you think are decided in this manner?
A close friend of mine did research on whether word choice is a predictor of whether a person is lying or not. This was part of a project that was funded by some US government agency. He told me afterward that he felt like the whole field was a sham and that what people tell you about how to predict if someone is lying is mostly based on shoddy research.
I agree, it seemed more plausible. It also placed Adnan and Jay at the library like that Asia letter stated earlier.
OpinionatedCyborg
Member
There may be some tendencies and biological cues liars have in common. We incorporate these into a set of heuristics we use in our everyday lives to determine lies from truth. The problem is when we overestimate the accuracy of these rules of thumb, and apply them to a serious case like this one. I don't trust anyone who considers themselves masters at detecting the truth, from gaffers to detectives to Deirdre. Any sweeping, definitive generalizations are likely to be bullshit in many cases or so general as not to be useful.
Here's the caveat: perhaps her and Sarah use the 'sociopath' to mean evil geniuses. If that's the case, then yeah, she's probably never come across one because those probably only exist in movies.
I think I mentioned it earlier, but I don't know if Adnan is a sociopath or not, and I won't speculate.
She is working with prisoners convicted of serious crimes, not people out in the wild, so it is far more likely for her to encounter sociopaths than the average joe. It is highly improbable that she has never met or represented a sociopath in her many years with the Innocence Project.
Here's the caveat: perhaps her and Sarah use the 'sociopath' to mean evil geniuses. If that's the case, then yeah, she's probably never come across one because those probably only exist in movies.
I suppose it is possible that she only chooses to represent clients whose cases were obvious miscarriages of justice, possibly with exonerating evidence already in existence. If that's the case, then maybe she really has never encountered a sociopath in spite of 20 - 30% of her potential clients being sociopaths. I think it's more likely that she has represented multiple without realizing it, her inability to recognize them d/t ignorance or naivety.
The charming sociopath she speaks of often don't have lengthy criminal records. It's the stupid, impulsive, and violent sociopaths who are often identified as conduct disordered as children and begin commiting crimes at a young age that have lengthy records.
I think I mentioned it earlier, but I don't know if Adnan is a sociopath or not, and I won't speculate.
You guys need not to forget that Adnan has been in prison for 15 years; living a life surrounded by manipulators, murderers, sociapaths, etc. he might have a picked up a few things along the way to not incriminate himself or create a reality where he feels he didn't do it. I feel that people like him can have some regret but ultimately grow detached over time. The fact that he didn't defend himself, the fact that he said "pathetic" to Jay in court make me feel like he might have indeed been blackmailing Jay. We still don't know what he feels about all of the evidence, in all honesty it would probably make him sound more and more like he did it.
The whole "charming sociopath" thing is such nonsense, I can't believe so many people are so hung up on it. He can be a murderer and behave exactly as he's behaving in these phone calls and not be a sociopath. And what has he said that's so charming? Are we not hearing those parts?
The five seconds of silence after he's asked why he never called Hae again while all her other friends were frantically paging her is just about the most awkward silence in any conversation ever.
And his defensive reaction when SK tells him that she doesn't think he did it because he's a nice guy (you don't know me, when they've been talking for 30 hours) is pretty similar to how many people react when they feel guilty about how nice someone is being to them...
The five seconds of silence after he's asked why he never called Hae again while all her other friends were frantically paging her is just about the most awkward silence in any conversation ever.
And his defensive reaction when SK tells him that she doesn't think he did it because he's a nice guy (you don't know me, when they've been talking for 30 hours) is pretty similar to how many people react when they feel guilty about how nice someone is being to them...
Listen to the actual audio, they explain they use a method to bring back memories from the past which always catches the liars out.
Pretend I there with you but I was blind, tell me what I would have seen.
Now pretend that I was there but couldn't hear, what would I have heard?
As the person goes to recall this information, additional memories will come to the foreground... unless you're lying.
exmachina64
Banned
But again, can this be done reliably for a day fifteen years ago?
Vincent Alexander
Member
Because I suck at counting....but my point remains! We'll get no solid ending to this. There honestly can't be much more.
This last episode was the most satisfying. I've completely shifted from feeling Jay was shady to Adnan is guilty as all Hell.
OpinionatedCyborg
Member
What made you change your mind?
The problem is that you said specifically that Deidre should be running into sociopaths in the 'wild', which I didn't take to mean the prison population specifically.
I think Sarah Koenig is using 'sociopath' when she means 'psychopath', and the same holds in the conversation with Deidre.
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