Ira Glass
Previously, on Serial…
Detective MacGillivary
What did he tell you?
Jay
He told me that she had broke his heart and it was extremely wrong for anyone to treat him that way.
Rabia Chaudry
He was like the community’s golden child.
Deirdre Enright
I think the odds of you like, getting the charming sociopath, you’re just not that lucky.
Sarah Koenig
You don’t think that I know you at all?
Adnan Syed
I mean for you to say that I’m a great person, a nice person I’ve only talked to you on the phone a few times.
Automated voice
This is a Global-Tel link prepaid call from Adnan Syed an inmate at a Maryland Correctional facility. This call will be recorded and monitored. If you wish to...
Sarah Koenig
From This American Life and WBEZ Chicago it’s Serial. One story told week by week. I’m Sarah Koenig.
For two months now I’ve been grappling with rumors about Adnan. People telling me, “there’s stuff you don’t know about Adnan, stuff you need to know to understand who you’re dealing with.” These communications came in the form of phone calls, many phone calls, sometimes one on one, sometimes conference calls. Also texts and nervous emails, I can’t tell this one I’ve spoke to that one and then that one gets worried that I’ve broken my word, which I promise I haven’t. When Person 2 doesn’t confirm the thing Person 1 told me and I report that back to Person 1, Person 1 often tells me Person 2 is lying to me. All these rumors are coming from people Adnan knew growing up in the mosque community, the South Asian families who attend the Islamic Society of Baltimore. Some of these people I’d already talked to during my first round of reporting for this story, but then once the series started and they heard how Adnan was being portrayed, a new round of phone calls began. The rumors themselves are nothing too dastardly. Nobody is saying, “I saw him do it” or “I have proof.” None of it is directly connected to the crime. But likely there are a great many things I don’t know about Adnan and some of the things I was hearing were giving me pause. So I checked them out as best I could, not every single one, some of them were so small that I initially was confused by the telling, waiting for the punch line that had already slid by. Such as, “He took a piece of my clothing, a piece of designer sportswear,” and then over explained claiming, “it wasn’t mine, or that he didn’t know it was mine” and then apologised profusely. I, Sarah Koenig, am going to confess something right now. I have done exactly the same thing. More than once I’d wager.
On the other end of the scale was a story so incriminating that we thought, well if this one is true then we’re done, our story is over and we can all go home. This was the biggie and I worked every angle I could to suss it out. I heard it second hand that someone said something about Adnan about a party fifteen years back. I spent weeks trying to learn first the name, then the location of that someone, then trying to contact that someone and then finally driving several hours to question that someone in person. I nervously knock at the door, nice guy comes out, we chat. He tells me what I’ve spent all these weeks and hours waiting for, “Oh yeah,” he says, “I remember Adnan. Nice kid. I remember he seemed sad when he and his girlfriend broke up.” And so I prompt him, “I heard this thing, is that true? Anything else you want to tell me?” The guys looks blank. That’s all he had for me. Imagine I have a file on my desk about this rumor and I just stamped it with my big cartoon stamp. Unsubstantiated. I cross it off the list.
There’s one more rumor I’ll tell you about in a minute, but first I want to talk about why relatively few people from the Mosque community are willing to talk on tape or on the record about Adnan. To give you a sense of what I’m talking about, here’s Ali - not his real name and also this is not his real voice. Why the secrecy?
Previously, on Serial…
Detective MacGillivary
What did he tell you?
Jay
He told me that she had broke his heart and it was extremely wrong for anyone to treat him that way.
Rabia Chaudry
He was like the community’s golden child.
Deirdre Enright
I think the odds of you like, getting the charming sociopath, you’re just not that lucky.
Sarah Koenig
You don’t think that I know you at all?
Adnan Syed
I mean for you to say that I’m a great person, a nice person I’ve only talked to you on the phone a few times.
Automated voice
This is a Global-Tel link prepaid call from Adnan Syed an inmate at a Maryland Correctional facility. This call will be recorded and monitored. If you wish to...
Sarah Koenig
From This American Life and WBEZ Chicago it’s Serial. One story told week by week. I’m Sarah Koenig.
For two months now I’ve been grappling with rumors about Adnan. People telling me, “there’s stuff you don’t know about Adnan, stuff you need to know to understand who you’re dealing with.” These communications came in the form of phone calls, many phone calls, sometimes one on one, sometimes conference calls. Also texts and nervous emails, I can’t tell this one I’ve spoke to that one and then that one gets worried that I’ve broken my word, which I promise I haven’t. When Person 2 doesn’t confirm the thing Person 1 told me and I report that back to Person 1, Person 1 often tells me Person 2 is lying to me. All these rumors are coming from people Adnan knew growing up in the mosque community, the South Asian families who attend the Islamic Society of Baltimore. Some of these people I’d already talked to during my first round of reporting for this story, but then once the series started and they heard how Adnan was being portrayed, a new round of phone calls began. The rumors themselves are nothing too dastardly. Nobody is saying, “I saw him do it” or “I have proof.” None of it is directly connected to the crime. But likely there are a great many things I don’t know about Adnan and some of the things I was hearing were giving me pause. So I checked them out as best I could, not every single one, some of them were so small that I initially was confused by the telling, waiting for the punch line that had already slid by. Such as, “He took a piece of my clothing, a piece of designer sportswear,” and then over explained claiming, “it wasn’t mine, or that he didn’t know it was mine” and then apologised profusely. I, Sarah Koenig, am going to confess something right now. I have done exactly the same thing. More than once I’d wager.
On the other end of the scale was a story so incriminating that we thought, well if this one is true then we’re done, our story is over and we can all go home. This was the biggie and I worked every angle I could to suss it out. I heard it second hand that someone said something about Adnan about a party fifteen years back. I spent weeks trying to learn first the name, then the location of that someone, then trying to contact that someone and then finally driving several hours to question that someone in person. I nervously knock at the door, nice guy comes out, we chat. He tells me what I’ve spent all these weeks and hours waiting for, “Oh yeah,” he says, “I remember Adnan. Nice kid. I remember he seemed sad when he and his girlfriend broke up.” And so I prompt him, “I heard this thing, is that true? Anything else you want to tell me?” The guys looks blank. That’s all he had for me. Imagine I have a file on my desk about this rumor and I just stamped it with my big cartoon stamp. Unsubstantiated. I cross it off the list.
There’s one more rumor I’ll tell you about in a minute, but first I want to talk about why relatively few people from the Mosque community are willing to talk on tape or on the record about Adnan. To give you a sense of what I’m talking about, here’s Ali - not his real name and also this is not his real voice. Why the secrecy?
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