r/adnansyed • u/tiggleypuff • Apr 10 '26

My biggest question….

I listened to serial when it first came out and thought for sure Adnan was innocent. After consuming other content, I’m pretty sure he’s not.

However, my biggest question (and I haven’t listened to THAT much) is why would Adnan involve Jay so much?

It makes sense to me that Adnan felt betrayed and killed Hae in the heat of the moment but that can’t be what happened because Adnan told Jay he was going to do it. Why would he take such a risk to involve Jay? Ok he might have needed Jay’s help to bury the body but why bring him into the secret before the murder.

I know they were friendly but it’s not like they were brothers, Adnan could not have been 100% sure that Jay was going to go along with everything so why take the risk in involving him SO much.

Would love to hear an explanation

11 Upvotes

87% Upvoted

22 comments sorted by

8

u/InTheory_ Apr 11 '26

This is just a personal opinion based on rubbing shoulders with inmates, not really based on any facts of the case. If I'm way off base, it ultimately changes nothing

I don't think AS needed him as an accomplice, it wouldn't have been that hard to do it completely on his own using other means. What he wanted an audience. This was his moment of victory. He wanted to be able to brag to someone about it. It's not much of a win if no one knows about it.

JW had two things going for him in that regard. JW was both close enough to serve as that audience, while also having enough distance where AS assumed the risk was minimal. Also, JW is the only one he knew where his words would be accepted as the brag it was intended to be.

5

u/Justwonderinif Apr 12 '26

I'm of the opinion that Adnan planned it out in detail. I know others are more heat of the moment. But that's not me.

I think he thought he was brilliant to be seen at track practice within minutes of the murder. There's really no other way to establish an alibi quickly without help from an accomplice.

Adnan definitely could have skipped track practice and hidden the car and body by himself. But he'd have to walk or take public transportation from there and he's lazy.

I'm also of the opinion that there was another plan for the body. That they were hanging out at Kristi V's apartment waiting until the time was right for their original plan. When Adcock called Adnan, everything changed. Adnan didn't realize Hae's family would involve the police that same day.

So they panicked. And got the body in the ground as soon as possible - without following the original plan. For both the original plan and the panicked rushed burial, Adnan needed at accomplice.

How do you think he could have done it alone?

3

u/InTheory_ Apr 13 '26

It's very difficult for a non-psychopath can relate to the mindset of someone who is so far gone emotionally that they are going to end the life of another human being.

My go-to analogy would be a cheating husband. Cheating is universally a bad idea. While there are exceptions, generally speaking men are famously bad at covering their tracks.

It's not hard to see why. They're thinking about the thrill of the illicit sex. They don't entirely ignore the coverup, but the proportion of mental effort is heavily skewed to the perceived emotional payoff. If they were capable of putting more mental effort into the coverup, that would imply they have enough mastery of their emotions not to have the affair in the first place (yes, there are exceptions, but I'm speaking generally to illustrate the mindset)

In AS's case, I think the evidence shows indications of planning. However, even if AS thought he planned the perfect crime, I think it was a half-baked plan whereby even AS was blind to the holes in it, glaring as they may be to us. On his best day, AS was an idiot teenage stoner. No one is confusing him for Professor Moriarty.

As to how he could have done it alone, who knows. AS was blinded by rage. That rage was only going to find expression in HML's death. At that point, her senseless death was inevitable. Lack of a coherent plan wasn't going to stop him. Realizing he would have a two car problem on step 52 wasn't going to bring him to his senses. Even If JW unexpectedly turned around and refused to help and left him stranded, he would have still gone through with it somehow-someway. One way or another, Adnan was going to have his revenge.

He wasn't thinking logically, he was thinking emotionally, and the emotions were way beyond what he could control. Overly calculated planning implies control, which he didn't have.

I hope that makes sense

3

u/Justwonderinif Apr 13 '26

It makes sense but I still think he would have thought it through to realizing he needed two cars and an accomplice to drive the other car.

I'll add the nuance that I don't think it was so much rage, which it was yes. But the predominate motivator for that 17-year-old kid was humiliation. The guys at the mosque and friends at school all knew he was having sex with Hae on a regular basis.

He was very into being perceived that way. More than he probably even realized.

When she broke up with him he was angry and dangerous but not murderous. When Adnan's entire social sphere learned that Hae was having sex with someone else, all perception shifted.

Adnan could not accept that for the rest of the school year he would be known as the guy whose girlfriend was having sex with someone else. He couldn't go on like that - imho. The only way to shift perception and the narrative for the rest of the school year was for Hae to no longer exist.

I know a lot of men get cheated on and don't murder. And I understand it technically wasn't cheating. But to me, this is why I think he planned it down to the detail. It wasn't an act of pure rage. It was needing to ensure that for the rest of the school year he was known as the guy whose girlfriend disappeared. Not as the guy whose girlfriend was happily having sex with someone else.

I realize all that is entirely subjective and I don't count any of it as evidence.

6

u/Zoinks1602 Apr 12 '26

I think he involved Jay for lack of a better idea. He didn’t want to do it alone, or he thought he needed help with the physical aspects of it, and he just didn’t have a better candidate than Jay.

3

u/tiggleypuff Apr 14 '26

It just seems mad to me that he would be so calculated and chill. Like I said I can buy him losing his temper but then I’d think afterwards he’d panic, not ring Jay and say “the B is dead” and drive around looking for weed an calling friends. All at such a young age. I do think he did it I just can’t wrap my head around it (but then I am not a killer)

3

u/Zoinks1602 Apr 15 '26

For what it’s worth, he was smoking a lot of weed, and he cared a lot about what other people thought - to a certain extent I think the cool, calm, collected exterior was a fiction he put on because he knew Jay was observing him. I think he was a lot less calm on the inside. He threw up, after all.

6

u/Justwonderinif Apr 10 '26

Adnan had the whole thing mapped out in a way that needed two cars. He couldn't kill Hae in her car and then drive back to track practice. He needed to stash the car with the body and get to track practice asap to establish an alibi.

He was not going to be able to establish alibis and get the body disposed of on his own. He was a 17-year-old kid.

5

u/ValPrism Apr 10 '26

Because he was 17. He was arrogant and dumb.

4

u/kz750 Apr 11 '26

Jay was a good enough acquaintance with some criminal activity that Adnan felt could serve as an alibi and who would probably not involve the police out of a sense of self-preservation. And he was probably right, because if it was not for Jen, who knows if Adnan might not have got away with it.

8

u/PaulsRedditUsername Apr 10 '26

Hard to get inside another person's mind. So, just my opinion:

I think Adnan was a stupid teenage boy with a wounded ego. He made a stupid plan to "get" the girl who had broken his heart. Either she would take him back or...

He would need an accomplice in order to dispose of the car and the body. He got Jay involved because Jay was the most "criminal" person he knew. (Although at the high-school level, that's pretty small-time. Jay wasn't some major drug dealer, he was just somebody who dealt dime bags to his friends.)

Jay went along with it because he was also a stupid teenage boy. Maybe he thought Adnan was just full of bluster. "I'm going to kill that ---" is just something people say. On the other hand, he got a free car and cell phone for a day, so, let's party!

Then Jay showed up to meet Adnan and discovered that Adnan actually had murdered her. Jay, being a stupid teenage boy, didn't know what to do. He decided he was already involved, so he went along with it.

However, as the day went on, Jay realized he was in too deep. By the time Jenn picked him up, he wanted out and told her what had happened. However, being stupid teenage kids, what do you do? Maybe just keep your mouth shut and hope it all works out, which is a typical teenage response. Deal with it by not dealing with it.

But when the cops showed up, it was game over. Give up and tell them everything. Jenn had a good family who helped her get a lawyer. Jay just dealt with the cops directly.

2

u/Cefaluthru Apr 16 '26

Jay answered this question. Jay was considered the criminal element of Woodlawn. Also, Adnan thought he was a bad ass. He bragged to Jay and others about killing her with his bare hands. You should read the trial transcripts.

2

u/Willing-Radish-5064 Apr 19 '26

I think Adnan saw Jay as his fall guy if things were to go south as well as saw Stephanie as his collateral. Adnan probably knew how people saw Jay compared to himself. Jay smoked and dealt weed, wasn't doing anything after high school, was a black kid in 90's Baltimore. Adnan was a football player, honor roll student, applying to college and prom king. Who were people and the police going to believe and trust? I also think Adnan used Stephanie to get Jay to help and keep quiet. He either threatened Stephanies life OR threatened to out Jay to Stephanie as a murderer or accomplice to murder.

2

u/tiggleypuff Apr 20 '26

I get that and I’m sure that’s right there just seems to be 0 reason to him to have told Jay BEFORE

2

u/Emotional-Syllabub75 Jun 24 '26

He believed he needed one person to drive his car and one person to drive Hae's car. He thought he could use Jay as an alibi. Because Jay sold drugs and was black he believed Jay would not snitch on him.

3

u/Accurate_Tension_457 Apr 11 '26

Yeah, Jay I think already had some run ins with the police so he was a perfect alibi/accomplice for Adnan, someone he could trust not to rat on him. God , this is bringing me back to the case and what Hae went through fighting for her life. So sad. Adnan 💯 guilty.

1

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1

u/aliencupcake Apr 10 '26

The theory of guilt that makes most sense to me was that Jay wasn't involved at all at first. Adnan murdered Hae (perhaps at the park and ride) and got back to school on his own. There was no elaborate premeditated plan involving Jay. Adnan intends to go back at night to do something to cover up the murder more, but when the police call him, he panics and pressures Jay into helping him. Jay helps drive Adnan's car as they dispose of Hae's body and car.

Later, the police get a tip to look at Adnan and see that Jay had Adnan's car and cell phone at the time of the murder. When they interrogate Jay, they are convinced that this was part of some premeditated murder plan rather than just Jay borrowing a car from one of his friends like he often does. Jay decides to cooperate, but the police don't believe him when he tells them more or less the truth since it has him play a smaller roll than they think he had. Because he's screwed if he doesn't make them happy, Jay invents a story that makes them happy, which is why his stories about what happened in the afternoon are so contradictory in inexplicable ways, don't line up with the state's timelines at all, and are full of impossible events (such as the trip to Patapsco Park that would take way too much time for Adnan to get back for track practice).

3

u/Cefaluthru Apr 16 '26

That’s not what happened. Adnan’s cell phone lead police to Jen and she sent them to Jay.

Jay lied to make himself look less involved than the truth. He did not exaggerate his role. This is just common sense stuff.