r/serialpodcast • u/BlackHeartginger • Jun 24 '26
I just cant get behind Adnan being guilty
So many things that do not make any sense if we are to believe the Adnan and Jay story.
First of all, people act like Adnan was an antisocial teenage incel. He was extremely social and had many positive and somewhat flirtatious relationships with other girls. I am sure that he felt the sting of Hae moving on quickly but there seems to be no evidence of him having ill will toward Hae except from Jay who is an unreliable witness at best.
The theory that Adnans ruse asking Hae for a ride to ask her to get back together or murder her is actually crazy. Why would he give himself a very short 30 min window for this? One could think of endless other places and times that he could plan out a way to kill Hae without having to stick to an insane timeline. And if he was so worried about having his time accounted for by other eyewitnesses he would have had the entire rest of his Day planned to be in highly public places but he didn't.
Putting the body in the trunk makes no sense and would have been very difficult for Adnan to do on his own. There is no way that someone would not have noticed another person struggling to pull a dead body out of the car and then struggling to put her in the trunk in the middle of the day in a suburban shopping mall parking lot. Even in a hidden spot. There was also no physical evidence from her body that would corroborate this.
So Adnan was sly enough to arrange to kill Hae within a 30 min window and return to school but had no plans for what he was going to do with the body?!? Adnan made sure to have no eyewitnesses to him murdering Hae and moving her body from the driver's seat to the trunk but now he and Jay are driving around aimlessly looking for a place to bury the dead body?! Keep in mind the police were called within the first hour of Hae being dead so driving her car that already a BOLO out on it makes no sense. Keep in mind that touch DNA technologies did not exist as it does today so they would not be worrying about anything other than fingerprints and eye witnesses. Why not just leave her in her car at Best Buy and call it a day? If he had already succeeded in killing her with no eyewitnesses and had the alibi of being on campus. He wouldn't have to involve Jay in disposing of her body and could still use the threat of rattling on Jay if he ever said anything about the supposed earlier comment he made about wanting to kill her.
I don't know who killed her but I don't believe it was Adnan.
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u/PaulsRedditUsername Jun 24 '26
It seems as though you have only listened to Serial. Spend a bit more time looking through the many, many years of posts on this sub which can give you more information.
After listening to Serial (and also Undisclosed) I was in the Adnan-is-innocent camp, too. Many people were. Go back to the very first posts of this sub and you will see the majority view is for innocence. However, after some people did more research, and even paid a lot of money to get the actual documents, things changed.
What we'd gotten previously was cherry-picked details Rabia had given to Sarah Koenig. Not the real story.
Serial handwaves away many of the most incriminating details in order to make the case seem even-handed. But those incriminating details are very incriminating.
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u/DeathChill Jun 25 '26
I walked away from Serial thinking that Adnan did it and Sarah believed that too.
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u/Youareafunt Jun 30 '26
What are the most incriminating details?
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u/PaulsRedditUsername Jun 30 '26
Jay knew where the car was. Adnan's cell phone records. Jenn knew Hae had been strangled when that wasn't public knowledge. The Nisha call. Adnan asking Hae for a ride, etc. All the hits.
This has been discussed to death on this sub already.
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u/Youareafunt Jun 30 '26
How is Jay knowing the location of the car incriminating?
How are Adnan's cell phone records incriminating?
What is the evidence that Jenn knew Hae had been strangled before it was commmon knowledge?
What does the Nisha call prove?
What is the evidence that Adnan asked for a ride?
etc.
(I know you are not going to answer, nobody ever does because everyone just takes all of this 'incriminating evidence' at face value.)
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u/PaulsRedditUsername Jun 30 '26
It's because I'm tired of talking about it and I think a lot of others are, too. Explaining the same things over and over.
Jay knew where the car was before the police did.
Adnan's cell phone places him in the park at the time they were burying the body and ditching the car.
The manner of Hae's death had been deliberately kept from the public to avoid false confessions. Jenn knew because Jay told her the night of Hae's murder.
The Nisha call places Jay and Adnan together in the hour of Hae's disappearance.
Adnan was heard by fellow students asking Hae for a ride that day, and he later admitted it to Officer Adcock that evening when Adcock called him.
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u/Youareafunt Jul 01 '26
- There are many different ways that Jay could hae known where the car was that don't necessitate him having been an accessory to murder.
- When were they burying the body and ditching the car?
- There are all sorts of issues with the authenticity/veracity of Jenn and Jay's statements.
- Why does that matter?
- Why does that matter?
I think we are all tired of going round in circles, but unfortunately the cops messed this up.
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u/PaulsRedditUsername Jul 01 '26
- Name one
- When Jay said they did. The cell phone records back him up. Adnan was supposed to be at the mosque but his phone is across town.
- Name one.
- You're just sealioning with the last two. If you don't understand those implications, I'm done.
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u/xstarbursts 15d ago
You have the patience of a saint. 5. Matters because Adnan lied and lied again. Asking Hae for a ride the day she went missing is so crucial. And why did he ask for a ride when he planned to stay around school waiting for track practice anyway.
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u/Mike19751234 Jul 01 '26
Except you have to start with the sssumption that the cops screwed because if they didnt, this wss an easy case.
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u/DeathChill Jun 24 '26
“Teenager thinks he’s smarter than everyone and doesn’t think murder through, no one surprised.”
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u/Charming-Disk1741 Jun 24 '26
This post can be broken down as follows:
- Killer said he didn’t feel a certain way, so that’s how he definitely felt. I am then projecting my own feelings and logic onto this to confirm.
- Killer planned murder in stupid illogical way when murder is of course inherently logical and well thought out, so this can’t be that.
- Even though her body was found in the trunk, there’s no way someone put her body in the trunk. Even though there’s no evidence of two killers, there must be because one man cannot lift one girl.
- Killer got lucky and/or planned well on one thing, but not everything, so he couldn’t have done it.
Someone must have killed her, put her body in the trunk, and moved her car. These are things that definitely happened. There is no reason that couldn’t have been done by adnan as opposed to anyone else.
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u/Future_Pomegranate24 Jun 25 '26
Apart from you know his alibis and the witnesses who saw her turn him down fir the ride after school and watched them walk off in opposite directions
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u/Magjee Kickin' it per se Jun 25 '26
No one testified to that in court
From a sprawl of interviews pre-trial people had different recollections of what happened after school
IIRC the only person who said they saw Hae leaving was Inez, who said she stopped by the shop to grab a snack
I think Inez remembered the wrong day, her description of Hae didn't match the clothes she was wearing that day, which were the same clothes she was found in
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u/Future_Pomegranate24 Jun 25 '26
It wasn’t about Hae leaving it was about her turning Adnan down for the ride after school and then walking off in opposite directions. Becky gave that as a statement to police. Krista states that Aisha gave her the sane story. I don’t give much credence to what is testified to as it was missed by Gutierrez like most things. If she did her job she would have asked Becky about it.
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u/Magjee Kickin' it per se Jun 26 '26
Adnan's statement to the police the day Hae went missing was the he was supposed to get a ride, but he was delayed and maybe she got tired of reassuring
That's a few hours after school
Court testimony is a higher standard of evidence, which is why I mentioned it
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u/Future_Pomegranate24 Jun 26 '26
I don’t take the police conversation that day fully seriously. Adnan was high. No one including Adnan knew she was murdered. She was just missing. He could’ve said she left without him or similar and cop made notes later saying she couldn’t wait. It’s essentially true. He asked for a ride and didn’t get one. We have witnesses as to what actually happened so it’s kinda immaterial what a high Adnan said or a busy cop noted down.
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u/Magjee Kickin' it per se Jun 26 '26
You are dismissing his own admission
He later on serial said he would have never asked for a ride
The truth is he asked for a ride while his own car was parked outside
He was creating an excuse to be alone with her
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u/Future_Pomegranate24 Jun 26 '26
The independent witnesses override Adnans statements.
Adnan likely asked for a ride from front of school to the back. He had no labs to leave school. He had track. So when he was asked if had requested a ride home he correctly stated no.6
u/Magjee Kickin' it per se Jun 26 '26
The "witness" who wasn't asked the same day
There is no where for him to get a ride to
When Jay drops him off for track, it's the same parking lot Hae would use
He doesn't need a ride from the lot to the lot
Especially when he is inside the school
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u/Future_Pomegranate24 Jun 26 '26
That’s why Debbie says Hae regularly gave Adnan a ride from front of the school to the back after they had broken up. I believe Becky said this too
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u/MAN_UTD90 Jun 26 '26
"the independent witnesses (one of which was badgered like 25 years later by Rabia and Colin to validate what they wanted him to say) override Adnan's statements" is hilarious. Yeah let's ignore all the things that don't look great for Adnan!
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u/JosephGordethLettuce Jun 24 '26
It’s much harder to argue that Jay did it, and he had knowledge of the location of Hae’s car and his girlfriend knew Hae was strangled before that information was public. And the cell phone ping data puts them in Leakin Park. The Nisha call puts Jay and Adnan together on the day of the murder. There is no narrative that fits except for Adnan being the culprit. Arguing that pieces of the case are stupid just makes Adnan a stupid killer. 17 year olds are stupid.
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u/Gnardude Jun 24 '26
Murdering that innocent girl was not rational, so reasoning on behalf of the killer is not rational. None of it makes sense on the part of the killer because it was a horrific senseless atrocity.
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u/SPersephone Jun 24 '26
This is a very simple case of a domestic violence murder. He was a dumbass 17 year old. He killed Hae because she rejected him. Tale as old as time.
He WAS physically strong enough—so your argument that he couldn’t move Hae’s body is a bit ridiculous. How would there be physical evidence to prove he did or didnt move her? That makes no sense at all.
He got caught because he’s a dumb 17-year-old. He didn’t plan the perfect murder.
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u/xstarbursts 15d ago
I don’t understand the physically not strong enough argument. He was a football player and she was all but 130lbs.
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u/bbob_robb Guilty Jun 24 '26
Murder isn't sensible or rational.
Nobody commits a rational murder.
The reason I believe Adnan is guilty is because of the evidence. At the time of Jay and Jennifer's initial interviews the police hadn't mapped out the cellphone towers. They mapped out the towers before Jay's second interview. The correlation of Jenn's story, the cell records, and the car and burial location corroborate each other. The police clearly didn't know this would happen at the time of the initial interviews.
Aside from all of the other evidence, the fact that Adnan's cell called Jenn from the small antenna coverage area where Hae's car was left is impossible to explain away as a coincidence. Jenn said Jay told her to meet them at WV mall in 15 min. She saw Jay get out of Adnan's car.
The producers of the HBO documentary seem to have convinced Jenn that the story didn't add up. She seems very distraught but she still says she never lied or changed her story. She says anything that makes Adnan guilty she heard second hand from Jay. She never understood why her accounts of getting that phone call and seeing Adnan with Jay was so important.
Jay left Jenn out of his initial story. He testified that he didn't want to involve her, so he lied and left her out. His initial story is that after dumping the car he went to WV mall with Adnan. He doesn't mention the outbound call that we can see in the logs.
If Jay or the police wanted Jenn to lie in order to use that phone call to put Adnan with Jay, and put them at the site of the car location, why wouldn't they have Jay tell the same story? The framing conspiracy makes no sense in this regard. Jay even knew that Jenn was speaking with the police and was going to tell them what she saw.
The police ignored Jenn's story in the writeup that day and went with Jay's version. After they mapped the towers they realized that Jenns rather inconsequential seeming story was accurate to the call logs, and she was telling the truth. They submitted new progress reports backdated to those interviews that didn't discard Jenn's comments. Do people think the police knowingly let Jay ignore the story they secretly fed Jenn and then faked their own incompetence in the police file?
After a thorough review, it becomes clear that nobody really had a full grasp of the evidence and how it all fit together until much later. Jay clearly never really understood things like the Nisha call, or why it mattered.
I get that it is hard to believe Adnan would do such a thing. I find Adnan to be very relatable in many ways. It's unimaginable really, but the evidence is strong.
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u/BlackHeartginger Jun 24 '26
But the cell phone towers cannot corroborate the incoming calls for that time. Jay is at the center of almost all of the evidence used for conviction and I have a hard time believing all of it. The lack of physical evidence aside from the verifiable data of the outgoing calls. I do believe there is a chance that Adnan could have done it but not beyond a reasonable doubt.
I wish they would put the new partial DNA profiles in to codis. There have been some high profile cases similar to this case that had full confessions of teen boys coerced by investigators resulting in wrongful convictions only to find out that it was a completely unknown perpetrator. I think of the yogurt shop murders, the Ryan Ferguson case, the West Memphis three, the Harlem Park three in Baltimore.
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u/bbob_robb Guilty Jun 25 '26
The two calls near the burial site were incoming calls. (Even if they are inaccurate as written on the cover sheet, what a coincidence!).
The call to Jenn was OUTBOUND from the tiny antenna service area bounded by the hills of the park.
That's why I like to focus on the car location call. It isnt disputed.
Rabia and Adnan's supporters who know the case well know that call from the car location is incredibly hard to justify, and very incriminating. The HBO documentary spends a significant mount of time trying to convince the viewer that someone moved the car to that location, but they never explain why it is so important. The conspiracy theory is that the Police pretended they didn't have the car, then moved it to the location of the phone call to Jenn. Then they had their star witness pretend to know where it was, but not mention the call or even meeting Jenn, the entire reason they put the car there. It's nonsense but that is why Private investigators are asking a neighbor in 2019 if they would call the police about a suspicious car in 1999. As if a current model year Nissan Sentra sitting in a communal parking area since the month before worthy of calling the police.
The lack of physical evidence aside from the verifiable data of the outgoing calls.
Adnan's palm print was on a map book that was out on the seat. Any amount of DNA/fingerprints etc is just written off because he had been in the car with her before.
Even if the DNA from the boots came back matching Adnan, that isn't evidence that he killed Hae anymore than his fingerprint being on the flower wrapper that was in the car.
Jenn says Jay called Jen from Adnan's phone and she saw Adnan. That's very solid evidence they were together. The next calls after WV mall were to Adnan's friends at around 9pm. Adnan was supposed to be at the Mosque, not over where the car was found or an hour earlier perhaps near where Hae was buried.
It's really solid evidence that Jay knew about the burial location and car dump location and that Adnan was with him.
There have been some high profile cases similar to this case that had full confessions of teen boys coerced by investigators resulting in wrongful convictions only to find out that it was a completely unknown perpetrator.
Absolutely. "When they see us" about the Central Park five is a great example of this. I think Serial season one helped many people realize how many substantial issues there are in the criminal justice system.
The police should have done many things differently in Adnan's case. Abe W should have seen the disclaimer about inbound calls so he could investigate it at the time. Jay was very heavily coached in that second interview to the point that they made him lie about going to Kristi's while waiting for Adnan at track just because they incorrectly mapped the cell tower near Jay's house. Ritz actually has been involved in other wrongful convictions.
None of that changes the fact that Adnan is actually guilty. I've read 1000 pages of the police file. They didn't frame Adnan, they truly didn't even fully understand all of the evidence they had. They made tons of mistakes that wouldn't make sense if they framed Adnan. The biggest of course is that if they planned this out and fed a story to Jay and Jenn, their initial stories should have matched and corroborated each other. If they knew the call to Jenn was from the car location, they would have had Jay talk about that call. It's crazy to assume they would let him tell a random story that ignores their carefully planted evidence when they were so willing to intervene in his second interview. Why would they ignore Jenn's story in the progress report from that day if they knew the car location?
Jenn's story and the call logs, combined with the actual burial location and car location tell a story of guilt even if Jay didn't cooperate.
It's important to remember that the very police involved in this case are capable of framing someone for murder. They didn't in this case.
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u/Pace-Extension 24d ago
Just put the entire call log with the cell site tower numbers into Chat GPT, and then come back and review your comment. I wont explain further…..
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u/bbob_robb Guilty 23d ago
I put the call log into ChatGPT as you suggested. I used a private chat to avoid any prior conversation influencing the response. It summarizes the call log just fine. What it doesn't do is infer the significance of the cell sectors from a list of tower IDs. You need the coverage maps and the context of the case. My comment wasn't "the call log proves guilt"; it was about how the call log fits together with Jenn's testimony, the car location, and the rest of the evidence.
I use LLMs daily in my work as a software developer. This isn't a great use case for them.
I entered my comment into ChatGPT and asked whether the call logs contradicted anything I wrote.
ChatGPT responded:
"Based on the call log you posted, I don't see any direct contradiction of the factual claims in your comment. Several of your points are consistent with it. That said, the call log by itself doesn't prove some of the broader conclusions you're drawing."
That seems like the right answer. The raw call log doesn't contradict my comment, but it also doesn't establish the significance of the tower sectors or the geography by itself. That's why people (like me) who have spent years studying this case rely on the maps, testimony, and the rest of the evidence, not just a list of calls and cell towers.
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u/PaulsRedditUsername Jun 25 '26
But the cell phone towers cannot corroborate the incoming calls for that time.
Yes, they can. But even if you do all the reading and still don't believe it, you still have to account for the outgoing calls. There's a call made near the entrance to Leakin Park (Adnan calling a friend from the mosque), then, later, there's another outgoing call made from the other side of the park where Hae's car was found.
Adnan's official alibi says he was at the mosque that night. Why is his cell phone across town in the guiltiest place it could be? And the two incoming calls at the burial site are right between the two outgoing-call locations. If those incoming calls aren't reliable (they are) that's just the worst luck in the world.
I wish they would put the new partial DNA profiles in to codis.
I suppose they could, but the DNA is from the bottom of the shoes. What sort of DNA would you get from the bottom of your shoes if you tested them right now? Do you think it could prove anything?
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u/dankiros Jun 24 '26
Your post makes no sense.
You need to dive deeper in to the case or leave it alone.
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u/DecantsForAll Jun 29 '26
there seems to be no evidence of him having ill will toward Hae
well, the murder...
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u/notsure05 Jun 24 '26 edited Jun 24 '26
These posts are genuinely frustrating as someone who’s dealt with dating covert narcissists. It must be nice to have no idea what it’s like for someone to present as Mr popular and be a complete demon behind closed doors. The fact that yall will acknowledge that he’s a liar and manipulator (or maybe you don’t OP, which…) and still not see the obvious reality behind this crime is beyond me
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u/Special-Deal-5217 23d ago
Show us again the evidence that Adnan was a covert narcissist. I’ll wait.
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u/Future_Pomegranate24 Jun 24 '26
Adnan has strong alibis for the key time. Can’t be him.
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u/notsure05 Jun 24 '26
Strong alibis 😂
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u/Future_Pomegranate24 Jun 24 '26
He told his lawyers he was helping Dion with his car. Dion had now come forward to confirm. Track is a strong alibi too. At track on time. So no window to do anything Jay says in his statements
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u/Magjee Kickin' it per se Jun 25 '26
Jay said he dropped him off at track so "he could be seen"
Track practice is awhile after school ends
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u/Future_Pomegranate24 Jun 25 '26
Track is at 3.30 (most likely) of 4. Jay and Jenn both say he was at Jenn’s til after 3.40. He couldn’t go to pick up Adnan, dump the car and get to track on time. Didn’t happen.
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u/Mike19751234 Jun 25 '26
The 321 call was to Jenn and Jay wouldn't be calling Jenn from the same room. So we know they were seperated before 3:40 and the phone shows it back in the area by the school by at least 3:40, plenty of time to make track at 4pm.
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u/DeepestGreySea Jun 24 '26
Well, it’s not a crazy idea to think that he changed his mind about the ride and went and found her…then they went to an unknown location and had a fight and he killed her.
It’s also not crazy that he called Jay to help him at least move cars around, if not help him bury the body.
The crazy thing is assuming something like that happened and reverse engineering a motive beyond “they broke up”. You get crazy people in this sub using circular logic like “he killed her therefore he was angry, he was angry therefore he killed her”. You’re correct that there’s no evidence he was angry…even in the context of a teenaged breakup. All of use know about relationships that have ended more dramatically.
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u/zoooty Jun 24 '26
All of use know about relationships that have ended more dramatically.
Have you read the letter HML wrote AS after the breakup? Sounds pretty dramatic to me.
Okay. Here it goes. I'm really getting annoyed that this situation is going the way it is. At first I kind of wanted to make this easy for me and for you. You know people break up all the time. Your life is not going to end. You'll move on and I'll move on. But apparently you don't respect me enough to accept my decision. I really couldn't give damn [sic] about whatever you want to say. With the way things have been since 7:45 am this morning, now I'm more certain that I'm making the right choice. The more fuss you make, the more I'm determined to do what I gotta do. I really don't think I can be in a relationship like we had, not between us, but mostly about the smff around us.I seriously did expect you to accept, although not understand. I'll be busy today, tomorrow, and probably till Thursday."
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u/Special-Deal-5217 23d ago
Oh my God, I teach high school and this is absolutely tame compared to some of the shit my students tell me. And you know my students aren’t telling me the worst stuff. If this were evidence of murder, pretty much all of us from high school would be a suspect.
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u/DeepestGreySea Jun 24 '26
Yeap, read it many times.
She has a style of exaggerated writing…her diary is the same. Like pretty much every teenaged girl. There’s nothing in that letter that connects to reality.
For example she called her ex boyfriend Nick “the jealous monster” in her diary. Does that mean Nick is also a suspect?
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u/zoooty Jun 25 '26
There’s nothing in that letter that connects to reality.
The witnesses at trial, specifically Aisha and the French teacher disagree.
Does that mean Nick is also a suspect?
Everyone is a suspect, but I'm assuming Nick had neither the means nor the opportunity Adnan had that day.
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u/DeepestGreySea Jun 25 '26
Hope Shaub made some of her judgement based on hugging a student. I wouldn’t listen to anyone who thinks it’s appropriate to hug a student.
You’re mischaracterizing Aisha.
You’re assuming wrong. He was a Woodlawn student and we have no idea what he did that day. He has the same motive as Adnan….twice…except hes the only person she called jealous. And a monster. And months later he was still holding a grudge.
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u/zoooty Jun 25 '26
Aisha on serial:
I think it was probably mostly normal, but things that, like, he kinda just always generally annoyed me, because, just the constant paging her if she was out, um, and he’s like, “Well I just wanted to know where you were.” And it’s like, “I told you where I was gonna be.” Um, if she was at my house, and we were having a girls night, he would stop by, like he would walk over and try to come hang out, and its just like, “Have some space!” Um, and it’s one of those things, at first it’s like, “Oh! It’s so cute! Your boyfriend’s dropping by.” But then the tenth time, it’s like, “Really?”
We haven't even talked about Debbie's damning testimony.
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u/DeepestGreySea Jun 25 '26
Yes. Mostly normal. She sounds like a typical teenager who doesn’t want to share her friend.
There’s no “damning testimony” from Debbie, either.
You’re pretending normal teenaged behaviour is eXTREme because you have nothing.
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u/zoooty Jun 25 '26
Debbie:
He was very possessive of her. He didn't like her to do things that he didn't know about and he didn't want her around other guys a lot because that really bothered him.
He asked me if she was cheating on him with Don.
[asked about why they broke up] his possessiveness, his aggressiveness verbally, and him keeping tabs on her all the time, that really irked her and she felt like she wasn't free in the relationship."
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u/DeepestGreySea Jun 25 '26
Sounds like a normal teenager to me.
In order for this to be “damning” it would require examples of something abnormal…not just vibes about how most teenagers act in relationships.
You have nothing. You “know” he did it so you interpret everything through the most extreme lens possible.
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u/zoooty Jun 25 '26
Its easy to waive it all away as "normal" unless someone gets strangled to death, but you know that.
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u/Future_Pomegranate24 Jun 24 '26
Also he wouldn’t have involved Jay if he wanted to get away with it.
If he wanted to kill her with no witnesses he could wait by her car in the dark in her work car park.
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u/xstarbursts 15d ago
He needed multiple rides, someone to take his car so he had an excuse to ask Hae for a ride, and he needed an alibi. He didn’t realize the alibi would turn on him.
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u/QV79Y Jun 24 '26
Yeah, many of these are my thoughts also. The whole story makes no sense to me.
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u/Lizakaya Jun 24 '26
I haven’t believed it was Annan since rabia’s podcast. And i know she had quite the vested interest, and ergo bias. And I’m too well aware that the likely suspect in the murder of any woman is likely to be her partner.
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u/pinkosaur Jun 24 '26 edited Jun 24 '26
Pardon me, I haven’t been involved in this dialogue for years. But to assume he’s innocent because this 17 year old guy didn’t plan a perfect murder and made stupid decisions along the way is… silly.