Serial began in 2014 as a spinoff of This American Life. Each season explored a nonfictional story in weekly installments. In 2020 Serial joined the New York Times Company. r/serialpodcast is an unofficial discussion forum for all seasons of Serial but heavily focused on Season 1.
Been scrolling around here for a while and like many I’ve been really taken in by this case. For me, this case hits close to home. Adnan and I would have graduated from high school the same year and both would have gone to the university of maryland. I grew up maybe 45 minutes from him. I too had a high school girlfriend who I was very much in love with at the time. We are both third culture kids.
I decided to take a little time just to highlight how incredibly unlucky he was on the day Hae was murdered. Just wildly so:
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Even though he did have a car, people heard him asking for a ride that morning. Maybe they heard wrong. Maybe they had it in for him. Who knows? But that’s what they said. Even weirder when a cop first asked him about that ride he admitted to it and that cop wrote it down in his notes. Later he changed that story and now he just says that that couldn’t have happened. But what a strange slip of the tongue that makes him look awful. Wretched luck.
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Later that day he just happened to loan his car out to his drug dealer friend/not really friend. Nobody has asked him to my knowledge how often he did that but having grown up at that time I sure think that’s an unusual thing to do. High school kids love their cars. Still … on that very day he loaned his car. It’s an incredibly incriminating thing to do that day given what we ended up finding out about Hae Mins murder. And it just so happened that Hae was murdered that day in a way where someone would have had access to her car. Maybe if Adnan hadn’t loaned his car he would have been able to say of course it couldn’t have been him, he was driving his own car home. Or maybe if he hadn’t loaned his car he wouldn’t have seemed so dang guilty.
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Adnan just so happens to have a shoddy memory of the events that day. Terrible luck again. I mean he does remember certain things though right? When things look good for him. But not critical pieces that could actually give him a good alibi or further exonerate him. But mostly he says it was just a regular day. Seems strange because this was definitely anything but that so this claim certainly could be seen as incriminating or self serving. But whatever. Memory issues are memory issues.
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His alibi witnesses are shoddy or sometimes nonexistent. His father didn’t do well on cross examination. Asia McClain has serious issues. And nobody seems to be able to give him an airtight kind of alibi. Terrible luck again eh! He wasn’t at some friends house playing video games. Not at band practice. Just so happens that he can’t get good alibi witnesses on this very day. In fact the one guy who does say he knows where he was during critical parts of the day is the one person who turned him in to the police. So unfortunate that nobody else could really vouch for him. And so unlucky that Jay just happened to be right about Adnan’s not really having other alibis.
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His kind of friend Jay just turned on him for no particular reason that anyone can surmise. Insanely, he was even willing to incriminate himself as part of this plot to frame Adnan, risking his own freedom for no real reason at all. Jay would rather work with the police than protect his friend. Of course they weren’t really friends. Just good enough that Adnan would loan him every teenagers prized possessions on that particular day. Just more bad luck. But this is beyond bad luck. Why would Jay do this to him? It’s an incredibly bad situation that just befell this man.
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The guy also happened to get worked by the most scheming cops in history. They withheld knowledge about Haes car just to give it to Jay - a known lowlife - so they could get Adnan. Nobody has really provided a good motive for this incredibly illegal act. But we all know cops can be terrible. Still man. Terrible luck.
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Jay knew where that damn car was! Who knows how?!?! Was he dealing drugs around there? Did the cops feed him the knowledge of the cars whereabouts that they decided to sit on…for…reasons? Who knows! But somehow Jay, who claims he saw the body and helped Adnan bury it, thereby putting himself at extreme legal jeopardy knew where that dang car was. And he used it to concoct this story along with the cops that specifically fingered Adnan, who again, doesn’t really have reliable alibis - not that Jay or the cops could have known that. But they must have just gotten lucky when they were concocting this scheme to take Adnan down. As for Adnan? Just unlucky yet again. What a crazy tough break!
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And what about that Jen pusateri? The one who broke the case and first said she knew that Adnan killed Hae and that she was aware of this on January 13, the day Hae min went missing because Jay told her. Of course she’s also incriminated herself. Just insane that her story matches Jays. I guess they were working together. And with the cops. Poor Adnan just got wrapped up in it all!
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This case has been in the public eye for years and years. Jay hasn’t recanted. Neither has key witness (who had to be involved in framing him), Jen. In all that time no other really plausible theory for the murder has come into focus. Crazy. That real killer must have been quite good. More terrible luck.
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Nobody else involved in the story really has convincing motive to kill Hae Min. Certainly nothing approaching Adnan’s recently broken up with possessive ex boyfriend thing. Crazy bad luck!
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The Nisha call. The butt dial that couldn’t have been one. But still. Just bad luck.
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The cell phone pings. Unreal bad luck. Just happened to have him at the burial site the day of the murder and the day when Jay first talks to the cops. No other times. How crazy is that? Bad luck.
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The way Hae was murdered. Intimate partner violence type killing. So crazy that anyone else would have killed her that way right? So strange. Terrible luck for him.
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Never trying to call or page his very recent ex after she went missing. Not once. I mean could be a coincidence, sure. It is incriminating though. Just bad luck I guess.
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His lawyer ends up doing a trash job in spite of her stellar reputation. Of course that’s easier to claim since she’s no longer with us to defense herself. Oh well tough break kid. You and your family just got unlucky.
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The “I’m going to kill” letter. I always thought this was dumb to be fair. But it is incriminating and he did write it.
I could keep going but everyone gets the point. Nobody is this unlucky. He killed her. Jay helped him.