Serial - Jay speaks (part 1)

Last week, a few short sentences posted on a Facebook account created a huge buzz among the Serial fan base.  The reason?  The post was made on Jay's Facebook, stating:

For the followers of the serial podcast produced by Sarah Koenig: I will make my self available for one interview : 1st, to answer the question of the the people who I hope are concerned with the death of Hae Min Lee (the person who's paid the ultimate price for Entertainment). 2nd, to out this so called reporter for who she truly is.

The post was removed within 24 hours, but it was enough to cause rampant speculation.  A post on the Serial reddit discussing the Jay FB post spawned over 1300 comments.  People wondered who he would talk to.  What would he say?

Today, we got our answer in the form of the first part of a multi-part piece from the Intercept.  It's unclear how many parts the interview will span.  But notably, Jay offers yet another account of the events of January 13, 1999, which also fails to hold up to a modicum of scrutiny.

First things first, the timeline of events.  Here are the highlights:

• He says that Adnan loaned him the car when they were hanging out during last period (which Adnan was ditching).  Jay said he needed to run to the mall to get a gift for Stephanie, and Adnan said that he was going to be late for practice, so just drop him off at school, take the car and cellphone, and he'd call when he was done.  
• Right off the bat we know this is bogus.  Given that school ended at 2:15pm, that would put "last period" at some point between 1:30 and 2:15pm.  According to the call records, we know Adnan called Jay at 10:45am.  And there were two phone calls made to Jenn's house at 12:07 and 12:41pm, meaning Jay would already have been in possession of the phone at that time.
  
  Jay could be saying they had met up earlier and they hung out for much longer, say from Noon on.  But then Adnan would have ditched pretty much most of the school day.  They would have had ample time to go to the mall to buy Stephanie's gift.  And even still, Adnan would not have to rush back to school for track practice since it didn't start until 4pm.
  
  The "last period" is an oddly specific lie, but still a lie.
  
• He drops Adnan off at school and head to Jenn's house where he normally goes to "sit and smoke with [his] friend."  He gets a call when he's at Jenn's to pick him up.  He goes to pick Adnan up at Best Buy, Adnan says he killed Hae.  Hae's car is nowhere to be seen.  He has not seen the body.  He says it was starting to get dark, so it was between 3 to 4pm.
• So by this timeline, he would have dropped Adnan off at school some time after 2pm.  He would have gone to Jenn's house then, and received the call from Adnan.  There were two incoming calls, the infamous 2:36pm call and a 20-second call at 3:15pm.  Giving Jay's story the benefit of the doubt, the 3:15pm call would make more sense.  The 2:36pm call is too early for the timeframe of the Best Buy pick up, and Jay would have just gotten to Jenn's house after dropping Adnan off.
  
  We also know this contradict's Jay's (and Jenn's) testimony that they were together at Jenn's house until after 3:30 to 3:45pm.
  
• He says that Adnan told him that Hae's car was somewhere there and that he killed her in the parking lot, but that, "according to what I learned later, is probably not what happened."  He speculates Hae's car was probably there until Adnan came to pick him up later that evening.
• It's one thing to leave a car parked at a park-and-ride for 3 to 4 hours.  It's another to leave a car parked in the parking lot of a commercial store for that long.  Not sure how things are in the Baltimore suburbs then, but in my experience, if you park your car in a private parking lot and leave the premises, they will ticket/tow your car pretty quickly.  Perhaps it would have gone unnoticed for 3-4 hours.  But it seems like something that would not be left to chance.
  
• Then they drive over to "Cathy's" house.  Cathy, Jeff, Laura, and Jenn are there.  They are smoking when Adnan gets a phone call from the police and gets all panicky.  Jay says they should part ways.  He doesn't remember if Adnan dropped him off or if he got a ride from someone else.  He got home some time about 6pm.  
• A few interesting bits.  First, Laura and Jenn are also at Cathy's apartment.  You may remember Laura as the one with the lovely quote from the podcast.  Jenn is important because the prior testimony was they didn't see each other until after 8pm.
  
  The timing doesn't fit either.  Jay says he returned home from Cathy's place at around 6pm.  But the three calls that supposedly pinged the tower near Cathy's place (according to the State's expert) occurred at 6:07, 6:09, and 6:24pm.  The 6:24pm call is speculated to be the Officer Adcock call.  Also, there is the 5:14pm voicemail call, which suggests Adnan got his phone back around then.  And under this chain of events, Adnan went back to school to go to track, but ended up skipping track altogether since he was picked up at Best Buy between 3 to 4pm and then was with Jay.
  
  So Jay could have been off by an hour, but it seems more like Jay and Adnan were there from about 5:30 to 6:30pm.  The 5:14pm voicemail check is more troubling under this timeline because why would Adnan wait for over an hour to check his messages?
  
  But even more odd about this scenario is that Jay is not "associated with" the crime yet.  He had Adnan's car and phone, picked him up when Adnan called him.  And Adnan just told him that he killed Hae.  He didn't see the body yet.  Adnan did not ask or coerce him to help dispose of the body.  So why in the blue hell is he taking Adnan to hang out with his friends???
  
• Jay says he went home (to his grandmother's house) where he was trying to collect himself because he was "pretty distraught, fucked up, feeling guilty for not saying anything."  Adnan calls him, either when he's on his way to the house or right outside.  Jay goes outside and Adnan is with a different car, not his own.  Adnan pops the trunk and sees Hae's body.  Adnan threatens to go to the cops about the weed and all that shit if Jay doesn't help.
• Oh boy, where to start.  I suppose we start with the facts, ma'am.  According to the call log, the police call ends approximately 6:28pm.  There is a 27-second call to Yaser Ali made at 6:59pm.  Immediately followed by a call to Jenn's pager at 7:00pm.  Meaning there is a 30-minute window for Adnan to be panicked about the police phone call at Cathy's apartment, he and Jay parting ways, Jay getting home, Adnan going to ditch his own car and pick up Hae's car, and drive it over to Jay's house.
  
  Oh, and there is no call made to Jay on the call log.  That too.
  
  This is also yet another new location for the infamous trunk pop.  This is the most absurd one yet.  Because after you murdered your ex-girlfriend and put her body in the trunk of her car and ditched the car in a commercial parking lot, what you really want to do after you get a call from the police letting you know they are looking for her (and, presumably, said car), go get the car and drive it (with dead body in trunk) to someone's house, and pop the trunk and show the body on the street in front of that person's house.  Yes, makes perfect sense.
  
• Jay says that he said he would help dig the hole because he was concerned about getting his grandmother involved (for running drugs out of her house).  Adnan leaves and returns to the house several hours later (around midnight), this time in Adnan's car.  They drive and Adnan takes him to Leakin Park and it starts raining.  They dig for about 40 minutes.  Jay refuses to help move the body so Adnan makes him drive to Hae's car, which was parked around a corner up a hill on the street.  Adnan gets into Hae's car and tells Jay to follow halfway down the hill.  Jay waits for 30-45 minutes until Adnan comes back with gloves on, saying she was really heavy.  Then Adnan goes to ditch Hae's car and Jay follows in Adnan's car.  They drive for a few minutes, Adnan picks a place at random behind some row houses, leaves her car, and takes Jay home.  
• So Jay says that after around 6pm at Cathy's house, Adnan came over in Hae's car to show the body.  Then Adnan comes back around midnight in his own car.  Issue is that there are 3 phone calls to Jenn's pager during this time:  at 7:00pm, 8:04pm, and 8:05pm.  Also, there were two incoming calls at 7:09pm and 7:16pm that pinged the vicinity of Leakin Park, sandwiched between those calls to Jenn's pager.  
  
  So there's clearly something not right here.  That doesn't mean the body was not buried after midnight -- in fact it makes more sense to bury the body late at night instead of between 7 and 8pm.  But there are the calls that pinged Leakin Park, bookended by calls to Jenn... which suggests Jay was with Adnan (or his phone at least) between 7 and 8pm.  So this idea of Adnan showing the body, leaving, then coming back at midnight makes no sense.
  
  Adnan also has a two car-one driver problem.  So apparently Adnan leaves Jay's house that evening in Hae's car.  According to this story, Hae's car is parked around a corner up a hill near Leakin Park.  Previously it was parked at the Best Buy parking lot.  Then Adnan magically re-appears with his own car.  So unless Adnan had help, there's a problem.  He could have driven to Best Buy, left his car there, grabbed Hae's car, driven to Jay and do the trunk pop, then go to Leakin Park to leave Hae's car... but then Adnan is stranded by Leakin Park with no car.  Google Maps puts this about 4 to 5 miles away, a bit far to walk.  Maybe he took the bus, but it seems like a bad idea to create all these witnesses of your movements.
  
• The interviewer asks Jay why this story is different from what he told the police and why his story changed over time.  His response (in its full glory):
  
  
  Well first of all, I wasn’t openly willing to cooperate with the police. It wasn’t until they made it clear they weren’t interested in my ‘procurement’ of pot that I began to open up any. And then I would only give them information pertaining to my interaction with someone or where I was. They had to chase me around before they could corner me to talk to me, and there came a point where I was just sick of talking to them. And they wouldn’t stop interviewing me or questioning me. I wasn’t fully cooperating, so if they said, ‘Well, we have on phone records that you talked to Jenn.’ I’d say, ‘Nope, I didn’t talk to Jenn.’ Until Jenn told me that she talked with the cops and that it was ok if I did too.
  I stonewalled them that way. No — until they told me they weren’t trying to prosecute me for selling weed, or trying to get any of my friends in trouble. People had lives and were trying to get into college and stuff like that. Getting them in trouble for anything that they knew or that I had told them — I couldn’t have that.
  I guess I was being kind of a jury on whether or not people needed to be involved or whatever, but these people didn’t have anything to do with it, and I knew they didn’t have anything to do with it.
  That’s the best way I can account for the inconsistencies. Once the police made it clear that my drug dealing wasn’t gonna affect the outcome of what was going on, I became a little bit more transparent.
• W.T.F.  So it's not quite clear when Jay was convinced that his drug dealing wasn't going to affect the outcome.  But this story he's telling the interviewer is completely different from what he ever told the police and what he testified to -- under oath -- at trial.  So there's that.
  
  Also, according to this story, Jenn was never involved.  Jenn never picked Jay up and they didn't go around wiping down shovels or dumping his clothes.  According to Jay's new timeline, they would have been done burying the body at some point around 2am.  And considering Jenn's normal routine is to wake up at 6:30am (see Jenn's statement at page 4), it seems unlikely she would be driving around with Jay at 3 in the morning disposing of evidence.  

So in summary, we have another alternate account of the events that do not hold up to the most basic level of scrutiny.  It's unclear whether the interviewer will actually press Jay and highlight some of these inconsistencies.  Based on what I have seen so far, I don't have much hope.  

A couple of additional thoughts from the early part of the interview before Jay talks about the timeline.  

• Jay expresses some disdain for the magnet program at Woodlawn, saying he "resented the school" for setting up the program.  Even though football paid for everything.  
• This is similar to Jenn's feeling towards Hae (calling her stuck up).  Not sure if it matters, but it seems like an interesting thing to discuss in this interview.
  
• Jay describes Adnan as "a little pompous, a little arrogant" and "a little bit more uptight than the other Muslim kids" that he knew.  He thought it looked like Adnan has "never lost anything before" and it was hard for him to deal with being the "loser." 
• Nothing here to indicate that Adnan would be the type of person Jay would be afraid of.  And here he maintains the drug angle as the source of leverage.  So the idea of Adnan threatening Jay to keep him in line seems even less credible.
  
• He describes Hae as really independent:  "But she seemed to be more mature, like she was two, three, four years older than us.  Like she was a junior in college.  The way she moved and went about her day.  She just seemed like an older chick who happened to be in high school."  
• That's an interesting description of Hae.  We know he knew her because they had Biology class together.  But there was no indication they spent much time together.  So it's an interesting description of her.  

At this point, I really don't understand the motivation for giving this interview.  It definitely isn't going to win over the Jay doubters and restore his image -- telling another bogus story is the worst thing he can do.  Of course, he was forcibly dragged into the public spotlight for something he did when he was 19.  But then again, he did admit to helping bury the body of a young girl and kept quiet about it for weeks.   

The next part promises to discuss Jay's theory on the anonymous caller, why he agreed to testify, and how Serial showed up at his door.  I doubt that there will be anything factually noteworthy there.  But it is fascinating to watch this unfold... kind of like watching a car wreck take place.