There isn't much substantive here, so I let my imagination run a bit more with this one...
The episode starts with a brief overview of the police investigation. SK notes they checked out Don and the area around his house. Don's alibi was that he was working at Lens Crafters. Not sure when his shift ended. Also, Hae had said that she was meeting Don at the mall after she dropped off her little cousin, so presumably his shift would have ended soon. (Note: I think I was mistaken on this. Seemed like Hae wanted to go see Don at the mall before picking up her cousin and perhaps going to the wrestling meet.)
If the time table of the murder is off, Don still would be a suspect, no? It's unclear when his shift ended, so we don't know until when he's cleared until. He's also probably the person Hae would most willing to have driven off somewhere secluded with. Maybe he even would have been a reason for her to shirk her responsibilities (picking up her cousin, going to the wrestling meet). Nothing really to back this up, but it sounds like the police looked at him, saw he had an alibi for the assumed murder time (between 2:15 and 3:15 pm) and dismissed him as a suspect.
Mr. S - The rest of the episode focuses on "Mr. S" and the discovery of Hae's body. To recap, Mr. S works as a custodian in a local school. On Feb. 9, he says he went home, got some food, grabbed some beer and was driving back to work. Stopped by Leakin Park to, um, take a leak, walked in about 127 feet from the road to where a huge log had fallen, saw some hair and found the body.
From his call to police:
“I think I may have discovered a body in Leakin Park.”
--A bit indirect. "I discovered a body..." would be most direct. "I think I discovered a body" or "I may have discovered a body..." Of course, he could just be freaked out about finding the body. Or he could be being deceptive on account of what he were doing at the time.
Police question Mr. S. They noticed a few inconsistencies (first he said he was going to urinate at the log and found the body; later he says he was planning on going further and saw the body). They question him about a liquor bottle found by the body. But he sails by the brandy that the police were looking for.
--The focus on the brandy bottle seemed odd considering how the police didn't really seem to analyze it for physical evidence. I believe some of the criticism of the lack of physical evidence is addressed in Episode 7 (i haven't gotten to recapping that one yet), but a significant portion of SK's discussion centers on this half-pint bottle of Coronet VSQ. While finding an empty bottle near the body seems important, it would have been more relevant if, you know, they had analyzed it for evidence. I will note that Coronet seems to be a cheap, California brandy. Small bottles of cheap brandy are a blue-collar drink, so I could see Mr. S (or even Jay) drinking it.
SK and crew look at the crime scene photos. Were surprised to see how hard it was to spot the body. The surveyor testified that he did not see the body even though he was explicitly looking for it (he almost walked onto the grave site). Near the body was an empty brandy bottle and some rope. Went to the site. Noticed that the distance was not that far and was reasonable to find privacy.
SK concludes that Mr. S probably was not the killer. But theorized he may have heard about the body and went looking for it. But then she notes why would a man with a criminal record and history of streaking go seeking further trouble?
--I tend to agree that Mr. S was not the killer. It takes a tremendous amount of nerve to commit a murder and then bring yourself into the focal point of the investigation by discovering the body for the police. Especially given his previous foibles, it would make sense he would want to avoid unwanted police attention.
But then it seems like it would have been a huge coincidence for him to just stumble across the body, especially given how difficult it was to spot. And if he were really streaking through the park, would he really be paying close attention to the ground around him rather than, um, enjoying the thrill?
Rabia Chaudry's blog also notes the changes in the questions to Mr. S's polygraphs. In the first exam, Mr. S was asked general questions about Hae and whether Mr. S was withholding any information about her death. He failed the exam but claimed he was nervous because he had an important meeting. He passed his second exam, but the questions were completely changed to straightforward factual questions about specific possible ways the victim was killed. It is curious why the questions were changed in such a manner.
Another unsubstantiated theory alert: SK tries to find a connection to Mr. S and she says that Mr. S’s sister-in-law was a math teacher at Woodlawn HS. She was Hae’s math teacher. And her husband (Mr. S’s half brother) used to live next door to Adnan (when he was 9 or 10).
--Now, I'm generally going to view things skeptically, and that means not simply accepting coincidences... and this seems like an awful lot of coincidences. The man who finds the body is separated by 2 degrees from the victim? And he's 2 degrees separated from the suspected killer? Something just doesn't sit well with me there. So if Mr. S wasn't the killer, but had knowledge of the body... then from whom?
Taking that thread, how about his half-brother? From his perspective, his wife was the victim's teacher. He was the suspected killer's next door neighbor (he said when Adnan was 9 or 10). Used to throw the football around with him. So now he is 2 degrees from the victim and directly connected to the suspect. Yes, perhaps the community isn't that large and you can run into the same people, but this double-coincidence seems glaring. SK was looking for a connection between Mr. S and Jay (who we know has to be involved because he knew where Hae's car was). But could the connection have been between Mr. S's half-brother and Jay? It's unclear how old the brother is. But if he were throwing a football with Adnan when Adnan was 9 or 10, I would expect the brother is not that much older (think about it, it would be weird for a grown man to be throwing a football around with a young boy who lived next door). Yes, his wife was a teacher at the high school, but I had teachers who were in their early to mid 20s (at a specialized magnet school), so she could have been a young teacher. So maybe the half brother knew Jay some how.
The other thing that struck me was how he casually chuckles and volunteers to SK that Mr. S was probably streaking through the woods when he found the body. The reason being that having a brother who is a streaker seems pretty embarrassing -- streaking seems like something that requires a certain level of deviance that would be embarrassing to his family. I would expect him to try to hide that fact about his brother rather than volunteer it to an investigative journalist doing a story. Think about it - if you had a family member who was caught engaging in similar behavior, is that information you would go announcing to a reporter?
So why bring this up then? It's a good way to (1) deflect attention away from the coincidence of his connections onto something "juicier" and (2) provide an explanation for how his brother found the body (other than "I may have let slip to him where I buried the body").
Again, nothing really to back this up. But there is definitely something suspicious about Mr. S. I don't think it's a stretch to think he was hiding something. And that it was improbable for him to just happen upon the body. If he had learned of the location of the body from someone, his half-brother seems like a source that makes sense.
No comments:
Post a Comment