Serial - the podcast *spoilers*

SPOILERS
(should we ask mods to put a spoiler warning in the title of the thread?)

Also interesting in this week's show was Jay's friend Chris who gave a whole new version of events (the pool hall story) and the the whole new motive for Jay to help Adnan (Adnan's threats to Jay's girlfriend Stephanie). Odd that it seems like Jay never told cops the threats story, as far as we know anyway.

is one of these gonna drop thanksgiving morning?

Totally wasn't expecting them to actually ambush Jay like that. Seems out of character with how passive the investigation has been up to this point.

Yeah totally.

I kind of had a few seconds of "why am I even bothering to listen to this then" when she said he ultimately declined the interview. There's so much only he can answer.

latest episode is still banging around in my head. the "all facts are friendly" vs. "bad evidence" bit was really fascinating and maybe the core of what this show is ultimately going to be about.

i was already feeling pretty sure that adnan did it (separate tho from the question of whether he should've been convicted) but this last ep made me feel like 99% sure.

im interested in the jay/Stephanie/adnan dynamic

yeah, sure does seem like Adnan did it.

biggest lingering questions to me are around why he brought Jay into it at all, and if Jay had a bigger role than he's admitted.

this episode convinced me of it too, but i still think he should have been found not guilty. was totally annoyed by attorney's cross-examination style. i think he brought jay in for the reason jay said, that he was perceived to be "the criminal element" at school. i don't think jay's different stories mean much. i think he was just scared.

After this week's ep I am def more sympathetic to Jay... i dropped my suspicions that Adnan is hiding more than he's letting on a while back but now they're back in a big way.

i think the venn diagram of jay & adnan has a big swampy ??? in the crossover & goddammit i want to know what it is

and i am with schlump, i found last week's ep v cathartic & exciting & useful. a good way-marker on the road to new questions etc

i just binged-listened to 7 eps in a row - this is so engaging! although i'm having a really hard time keep track of everything.

to me, so far, the most stand-out thing has been:
when koenig tells adnan that the main draw has been him and what a "nice guy" he is etc. and he's goes off at her, kinda incoherently, but the next day really forcefully explains how being perceived as a nice guy is the least of his concerns - he wants someone to point out all the discrepancies in the case that led to him being convicted. this is what has meaning leaning away from him being guilty right now.

unless he's an actual psychopath, there really doesn't seem to be a believable motive for Hae's murder - especially such a premeditated one.

*me, not meaning

guys the most recent episode made me develop a super far-fetched theory! what if some third person committed the murder and threatened Jay to help him cover it up, otherwise he would hurt Stephanie? (naming Adnan would be part of the cover-up) something about the way Jay responded when Koenig went to his house seemed both truthful and evasive to me--like when he said, if Adnan didn't do it, who did? also it seems for real that Stephanie got threatened back then/Jay was worried for her. he said his first thought when he saw Hae's body was how fragile Stephanie is.

this is all cap'n-save-an-adnan of me and probably totally irrational and unlikely, but i am totally taken in by the dude.

also i feel like a creep for listening to this show, but i can't stop

i tried to get my wife to listen so we could discuss but after 5 minutes she was like "i do not want to listen to a show about a murder" and was adamant about how sick it was

I think this is an introduction to "true crime" storytelling for a lot of people (me included), so it's understandable that not everyone is on board.

yeah so far every time she has said 'I warn you this is upsetting' she has been totally otm, the thing is stomach turning if you aren't used to it.

As long as the show has the blessing of the girl's family, I'm ok with it. But I do think it veers slightly into entertainment, and that's not a very comfortable place.

it makes me realize what a creep i am that this is comparatively pleasant to the stuff i usually dig into :/

ha i was gonna say; i have become #true #crime #guy since this started, watching everything that came up as a point of reference (the staircase, paradise lost, &c), & there's such a difference between serial's kind of take-a-moment preparatory remarks, before something distressing, &, say, the scenes in the staircase where 8x10 glossy photographs of head wounds are passed around a conference table & light-heartedly chuckled over by defence strategists. i feel like the vague allegiance of being semi-embroiled with a weary, inquisitive reporter in serial puts you at a relatively, or at least more successfully, comfortable distance away from the sensation of gawking; that it expends enough of its capital on just reeling in threads about whether people are truthful & how credible evidence can be that you feel sort of more worthy & purposeful when you're hearing about something specifically upsetting, arguably private, &c. there was a really beautiful moment a couple of episodes into this where they played the song that hae had really loved, around the time of her prom, & it had the same effect as the romantic instrumental rockabilly guitar theme in twin peaks, the dreamy, teen-romantic theme we see whenever the guy's on his motorbike. & that's obviously a kind of cool, ear-catching aesthetisisation of something actually pretty depressing, the people involved kind of abstracted into these themes. but it does feel kinda broad enough to get away with it.

thing that was so interesting about the last episode to me was just more squarely having to deal with what lying would mean, given that adnan's so persuasively straight-shooting-seeming & that a guy in a shitty apartment saying he did it also seems credible. it's really hard getting to the stage of inventing weird, circuitous exculpating theories that involve others, because i feel like adnan's persuasiveness is so in step with how much he seems to be just unadornedly telling you how things were that the idea that he's concealing some b-narrative would erase all sense of him being so well-intentioned.

guys let's start a podcast

yeah I think my third party murderer theory is about wanting jay and adnan both to be telling the truth somehow.

The description of high school Jay made me like him, too.

big lacrosse fan

our new podcast is called cereal

this having a dramatic conclusion in which innocence is revealed & justice is done gets a lot of play
but
finding out that adnan was lying would be so incredibly jarring & difficult i think

ha ha
just some internet user friends chewing over the new episode over breakfast every thursday
the internet's slurpiest podcast

I finished ep 8 last night, and I'm still not buying that Jay went along with it bc Stephanie was his weakness. But Jay's reaction to being approached by sk and the strength of his response makes him just as believable as Adnan.

Without third party involvement like horseshoe suggests, Adnan as an actual psycho is the only conceivable theory to me.

I am troubled by Jay and his pathological lying - I've known at least 2 ppl like this, who would lie about the weather just for the sake of it.

I am more troubled by the position Jay has been put into IF Adnan really did do it. Like, wtf

I wonder why SK has held off so long on talking about Adnan's trials/lawyer. It would make sense if she'd been building a convincing case for Adnan's innocence all along and then showed us how his corrupt lawyer dropped the ball/took a dive, but really she's just given us a bunch of evidence that doesn't seem like cause for a new trial. idk if dropping the "btw his lawyer sucked" bomb in episode 10 or whenever is going to be all that mind-changing.

http://www.theawl.com/2014/11/serial-and-white-reporter-privilege

some discussion of this piece of the Race Thread. Writer has a bizarre misreading of SK's comment on Hae's diary.

As long as the show has the blessing of the girl's family, I'm ok with it.

Does it have their blessing? I assumed since they haven't been interviewed that they wanted nothing to do with the show.

i thought that in episode 1 or 2 they discussed his lawyer

There was a mention, with SK saying that some think she intentionally threw the case, which is a statement kind of asking for follow up

pretty sure they said his lawyer died a few years ago

She did, but I think he meant the topic needs to be revisited.

does it seem to anyone else like hae is missing in this? as far as i know, there hasn't been anything about her family, her friends (outside of those known to jay/adnan), etc.

that did strike me too, idk, there was stuff from her diary. i also feel like her family may not have wanted to be involved

Hae's family moved back to Korea after her murder. Don't know if SK was unable to contact them or they didn't wish to be interviewed.

Well, that complicates things. I guess that I'm wanting to know more about the person – about Hae. This isn't to say that I think pathos-wallowing is a good journalistic angle, but I'm hoping SK spends more time establishing the human behind the victim. Nearly all I know about her:

* On-again/off-again/on-again/definitely-off-again relationship w/ Adnan (unremarkable, except maybe not)
* At time of death dating 'Don' from Lenscrafters
* Good student @ WHS magnet program, w/ lots of friends
* Korean
* ???

yeah, everyone I know who's hooked on the show has talked about starting to feel uncomfortable about Hae being kind of lost in the shuffle of the story... I imagine they'll make an effort to address it soon.

a couple of things from chaudry's blog

I send a copy to the his lawyer and the court, thinking the case can get reopened based on it. I’m a law student with no experience in criminal procedure. I learn that no “new evidence” can be submitted until a post-conviction appeal. A post-conviction appeal cannot be filed until 10 years have passed since the conviction.

this is NUTS. what's the reasoning behind this type of restriction?

Adnan loses every technical appeal. Ten years pass and we’re ready to file post-conviction through an excellent attorney who is really committed to the case.
His lawyer has Asia’s letters and affidavit and sets out to find her. His private investigator locates her but returns with terrible news. She won’t testify. The PI never spoke to her but her fiance made it very clear, in a very nasty way that suggested an anti-Muslim prejudice, that Asia would not be involved and to leave them alone. It was devastating to Adnan and his loved ones. All of these years had been passed in the hope that when post-conviction came around Asia would corroborate her letters and affidavit and he would be given a new trial.

if this testimony from asia was so crucial, why had they not contacted her during that 10 years, to say 'hey at this certain date we're gonna need you to testify, are you willing?' - why did they wait till the 10 years were up?

people are speculating that if the story told on this week's episode is true (that Hae was killed in the library parking lot, not at the Best Buy) then Asia's testimony might actually prove that Adnan did it and the inconsistencies are the fault of the cops pushing Jay to tell their favored theory.

that was my thought after listening - that the library was prob the scene of the crime

a couple of things from chaudry's blog

I send a copy to the his lawyer and the court, thinking the case can get reopened based on it. I’m a law student with no experience in criminal procedure. I learn that no “new evidence” can be submitted until a post-conviction appeal. A post-conviction appeal cannot be filed until 10 years have passed since the conviction.

afaik this is wrong but i can't really tell what she's talking about. post-conviction and appeal mean two different things. you can appeal from a denial of a post-conviction petition, but i think she's talking about a post-conviction. those have to be filed within ten years generally. (and i can see from maryland's court records site that one was filed and the petition was denied).

yeah - she seemed to blow by the library as the scene of the crime thing really fast last week - that's potentially huge for the case against Adnan, solves all kinds of timing problems and blows away Asia as an alibi.

i even heard that the park that jay originally testified they had gone to smoke a joint is actually reachable in the time frame allowed if the murder happened at the library

xpost
Also Adnan's threats against Stephanie as a motive for Jay to be complicit seems huge too - but it seems really bizarre Jay wouldn't have made that part of the story he told the cops, it makes him way more sympathetic. Kind of feels like it must be bullshit.

http://www.businessinsider.com/brother-of-hae-min-lee-responds-to-serial-podcast-2014-11

wow, kind of shocking that "we don't know if this is really Hae's brother" doesn't crop up until paragraph 6 of that article. though the Koenig email does look legit fwiw

I think that may not be legit. The reddit user says he heard about the podcast from his cousin - but he also says he was approached by Sarah Koenig before it aired. Also he claims his family doesn't know about the podcast - but I seem to remember SK saying they declined to comment in Ep 1. Am I imagining that? Has Koenig ever been specific about being in touch with Hae's family?

The e-mail SK sent says just that she works for TAL and wants to do an extensive radio documentary about his sister's murder. If I received that I would assume she meant that maybe an entire episode of TAl was going to be devoted to the story, not a 12 part podcast.

I don't remember SK saying that Hae's family declined to cooperate. I relistened to the old episodes after reading that Jay Caspian Kang piece about how Serial is GETTING IT WRONG about immigrant families! and was surprised at how little she actually says about Hae's family. It's maybe a coupe of sentences.

Baltimore prosecutors on Tuesday dropped all charges against Adnan Syed, the man who spent over two decades behind bars for the 1999 killing of his ex-girlfriend Hae Min Lee and whose murder case was featured in the landmark podcast “Serial.”

Baltimore City State’s Attorney Marilyn Mosby said Tuesday she instructed her office to dismiss the charges after results of advanced DNA testing of Lee’s shoes, skirt, pantyhose and jacket ruled out Syed.

“The items that we tested had never before been tested,” Mosby said. “We used advanced DNA to determine that it was not Adnan Syed.”

So was it the fuckin... six-fingered man?? What?

So, apparently there was no recoverable/testable DNA on the skirt, pantyhose and jacket at all. There was DNA on the shoes of "multiple" individuals who did not match Syed.

I am having a really hard time understanding how that would eliminate Syed as the murderer - the shoes weren't even on her when she was buried, they were in the car. I feel increasingly out on a limb arguing with a prosecutor's decision to overturn a conviction and at the same time I am completely baffled by this and do not understand.

The ONLY way it would wind up making sense is if that DNA specifically matches one of the "alternative suspects," and that suspect wouldn't otherwise have had contact with Hae such that the DNA accidentally got on her shoes (this is trace DNA so it's like tiny amounts of skin cells). And even then, you'd need a lot more than just DNA on shoes to convict. I guess we will see if that's the case?

Meanwhile, Rabia Chaudhry is now insisting that Scott Peterson is innocent too.

I'm not following that closely, but he was released on house arrest because they realized the defense was not told about other suspects... and whatever else was wrong about that trial. Meantime, they ordered new DNA work. Now that's back and in the absence of any more evidence against him, he's not going to be tried. Right?

There's no real question of eliminating him as a suspect.

I’ve read a few articles and I’m equally kinda baffled.

Mosby is kind of a sullied prosecutor and politician here in Baltimore, she’s currently under federal indictment. Would not at all be surprised if this was a cheap ploy to drum up good will.

“We used advanced DNA to determine that it was not Adnan Syed.”

I mean, this is a Trump-level statement.

I’ve read a few articles and I’m equally kinda baffled.

Mosby is kind of a sullied prosecutor and politician here in Baltimore, she’s currently under federal indictment. Would not at all be surprised if this was a cheap ploy to drum up good will.

― circa1916, Tuesday, October 11, 2022 8:53 PM (fifty-five minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

At first I dismissed this as conspiracy theory, but there are literally stories in the news RIGHT NOW about how her attorneys are being accused of trying to influence the jury pool.

Becky Feldman, the attorney who wrote the motion, may have been a true believer, but it reads like she watched the HBO Doc and took it as gospel. She gets significant facts blatantly wrong.

xp OK I missed them coming right out and saying that. Wow.

This feels like a Mad Lib: Serial subject Adnan Syed spent his first Thanksgiving out of prison with Young Sheldon pic.twitter.com/TlPAHIJ6HO

— Jillian Sederholm (@JillianSed) November 30, 2022