Confessions of a Serial Alibi (19 page)

As troublesome as this experience has been, I have a hard time wishing that it all never happened. I try to remind myself that there is an important reason that God put me in that library on January 13th, 1999. I don’t think the reason is as obvious as
it seems, but I’m sure with time all will be revealed. Perhaps the point was as simple as to have me serve as Adnan’s alibi? Maybe he truly is innocent? Perhaps it has nothing to do with Adnan at all? Maybe all of this has occurred to expose misconduct or problems within our criminal justice system. Perhaps this circumstance opens Hae’s murder to new scrutiny and investigation. I had a conversation with one of my best friends and he stated his opinion on the matter. He said, “Guilty or not, perhaps Adnan may be serving a purpose outside of our own imaginations. We have yet to see what God has in store for Adnan nor are we privy to the knowledge of how many lives he has yet to bless. It’s possible that if Adnan is released that he could contribute something wonderful to his community, or help a multitude of people through community service or charities, etc. We just don’t know. In addition, perhaps this experience has come to fruition in order for you to be that kind of blessing.”

Either way, I cannot allow myself to close my heart to those possibilities. To say that I wish I had never spoken to Adnan or ever come forward would be to reject God’s plan. I live by my faith in God’s love and favoritism for his children. I can not ignore that God has used SERIAL to shed further light on this situation. Or that he saw fit to give me another chance to right my ignorance from back in 2010. I know from my own experiences that second chances don’t happen all the time. I intend to make good on mine now that they have come around.

CHAPTER NINE

MY THOUGHTS

People of Interest

I don’t know what people expect me to say about Hae, Adnan or Jay. I didn’t really know any of them very well. I do have a couple of opinions, but not many. Most of what I feel for them is better measured in emotions and not words.

Hae

I didn’t know Hae very well on a personal level, but I knew her in spirit. I knew her environment, her friends and her type of life. She seemed like a really nice person. I never heard her say a bad thing about anybody and I can’t imagine her having any enemies. Whoever killed Hae murdered her in spite of her wonderful disposition.

I recently had a conversation with some of my best friends and they informed me about a “Hae fact” that I had not remembered. Apparently Hae attended the same junior high school as I did. Back then Hae was an ESOL (English as a second language) student and was very meek and mild-mannered, so meek that I don’t remember her from those days at all. My friends tell me that she was very quiet during those years and struggled with her English. I can only imagine the determination and fortitude it must have taken for her to become who she was at the time of her death. She was a star athlete who dated a popular guy. She was an excellent student with lots of friends. She was what all immigrant parents want for their children. She was the American dream. I often think about how closely Hae’s life resembled my own. Her life was essentially the same as my life, her friends very similar to mine. Her death could have been my death as well.

It’s a morbid thought to admit, but in my head I have imagined Hae’s corpse many times. It wasn’t until recently that I finally bucked up enough courage to actually read the autopsy report. When I did, I found it extremely heartbreaking and eerie to realize that my imagination wasn’t too far off. After years of relying on rumors, reading the report made things all too real. In my head it’s the closest I’ve ever come to the real evidence of her death. I know that sounds strange because we all know that Hae is dead. It’s just to me, when people die, it’s like they just vanish. I don’t know why I process death that way, I just do. To read the report and know that someone really did those things to her just made me all the more angry that someone had stolen her life. I can’t imagine any circumstance in which I would help someone do or even hide the evidence of something so awful. I can’t imagine any scenario in which a person is ever normal again after participating in something so vile. Whoever took her life is a truly evil person. We may never know who that person is, but I believe that God knows. One day that person will have to face judgment for what they did and I would love to be there when they do.

Although this isn’t really about Hae herself, I really dislike when people use the acronym HML in place of Hae Min Lee. I think if you are too lazy to type out her whole name, then just refer to her as Hae. For goodness sake, there aren’t that many characters in her name. Show some respect! If you are going to talk about her death, the location of her death and who you think killed her, take the time to type her actual name. The acronym takes away from the fact that she was a real living breathing person. It takes away that she was a beautiful young girl. I find it so callus and cold to refer to her as HML. Enough said.

Jay

Let me start off by saying this. None of us know the true extent of Jay’s involvement in Hae’s murder, least of all myself. I can tell you that I never had a high opinion of Jay to start with. I never made fun of him, but I definitely didn’t care much for him physically. To me he always seemed tall and awkward (gangly if you will). In my opinion he was often poorly dressed in what seemed to be the same type of outfit whenever we crossed paths. Stephanie, his girlfriend, on the other hand was gorgeous—one of the few girls at Woodlawn who made me feel a little self-conscious in the realm of good looks. She had gorgeous sandy blonde hair, bluish-green eyes and a pretty smile. I never did understand what exactly it was that she saw in Jay. To each their own, I guess.

As a matter of fact, upon recently looking through my senior book I was humored to see that under “weirdest couple” I had listed Stephanie McPherson and Jay Wilds. I’m not sure if I’ve ever even talked to Jay. I know I must have, but I just can’t recall a specific conversation. The closest I can come to remembering any interaction with him is an event that took place possibly my ninth or tenth grade year. My volleyball teammates, other “jocks” and I decided we were going to goof off one day after school. We ended up getting into a random yet pretty fun game of tag. I say random because who plays tag in high school? We were generally way too cool for that, but that day we were having a wild hair and being goofballs.

If I recall correctly, I think Jay played tag with us. I think I remember laughing at him because he was cheating (go figure). He kept using his skateboard to get away! In any case, that day was all fun and games but as I said before, I never really cared for him much. I always saw him as a bit of a Dennis Rodman-ish kind of weirdo. I never had a desire to be friends with him because he was a self-proclaimed hipster before hipster was even a thing. He had a slacker type attitude with alternative music and lifestyle choices. When I listened to Jay’s police interviews on the podcast, they struck me as odd for a number of reasons, the first being Jay’s depiction of his high school reputation. In episode four of SERIAL Jay says:

“I’m the criminal element of Woodlawn…Perceived. It’s like how the student body sees me. You know, I mean, people who really know me know that I’m not like that but, you know, you get a certain reputation and it kinda sticks with you.”

Now again, let me say it, I didn’t know Jay very well. However, I myself was pretty well known in high school. We didn’t have many pretty girls named A.S.I.A. if you get my drift. Consequently, I am still friends with a rather large contingency of people from high school. That being the case, I’ve asked many people and have yet to find one single person who says that Jay was some sort of criminal badass in high school. Not one of us would even have considered him to have been the “criminal element of Woodlawn.” Most people weren’t even aware that Jay (says he) sold weed. If anything, most people that I have asked only remember that Jay was “odd,” “a weirdo,” “strange,” “that he dressed badly,” etc. A lot of my alumni remember that Jay often rode a skateboard, a few thought he had piercings and that he listened to a lot of heavy metal back then. None of which are deemed strange now, but back in the 90s it was very strange behavior for a black student at Woodlawn. Most people, myself included, say that they wanted nothing to do with him. So it’s news to us that Jay was some sort of big time drug dealer. Is it possible? Sure. We all had connections to people who did bad things. We lived in Baltimore for God’s sake!

All I’m saying is that if Jay was a drug dealer than he was the worst drug dealer ever! By his own admission he hung out with his clients and got high on his own supply, all the while still being broke. By his own admission he didn’t have a cell phone or pager. He didn’t even have his own vehicle. How on earth were people supposed to contact him about purchasing drugs? How did his clients get the product after ordering? Hell, by his own admission he and Adnan drove around on January 13th trying to find drugs. What kind of big time drug dealer is worried about being ratted out to the cops on a day when he has no drugs to begin with? What kind of big time drug dealer doesn’t have friends that wouldn’t beat the snot out of some dorky magnet kid trying to blackmail him? What kind of drug dealer doesn’t understand concepts like probable cause or search warrant? What kind of big time drug dealer rats himself out to the cops? Doesn’t make a lot of sense, now does it?

Another thing that doesn’t make much sense is Jay’s admission of having “murderous conversations” with Adnan. In one interview Jay can be heard telling the cops that Adnan bragged about murdering Hae. He says:

“…he couldn’t believe he killed somebody with his bare hands, that all the other motherfuckers referring to hoods and thugs and stuff think they’re hard core. But he just killed a person with his bare hands.”

I’ve crowdsourced alumni opinions about this and by all accounts, it just does not seem like something that Adnan would say. In all actuality, in most people’s opinions, it sounds like something Jay would have said.

Knowing what I know about Woodlawn, I don’t think anybody questioned Adnan’s “thugness.” Adnan was a non-black, Baltimore County magnet kid from the Johnnycake area. He didn’t have any “thugness” in him to question. The crowd of kids Adnan hung out with wasn’t concerned with such matters and any “thugs” that he did have interactions with at school seemed to love him because of his generosity and kindheartedness.

In fact, I recently spoke with a guy that played football with Adnan back in high school. A picture of him and Adnan from 1998 recently surfaced on Twitter and became a topic of discussion. I talked to him about that picture and what he remembered from high school. He told me that there was no doubt in his mind that Adnan was 100 percent innocent. He said that Adnan is “literally the sweetest guy he has ever met in his life.” He recalled times when he would be starving after school and Adnan would share his own food with him. He accounted for a plethora of times when he would be stranded on the school campus after football practice and Adnan would take him home. The idea that Adnan would be concerned with the perception of his “thugness” just seems inconsistent with the accounts of his personality that I have heard.

On the flip side, in my opinion, the general perception of Jay’s personality seems consistent with someone who might have said something like that. According to our alumni, Jay was a person who was constantly questioned about his loyalties. A lot of people questioned Jay’s “blackness” and his “thugness” because of his attire choices, his personal interests and dating preferences. I am not saying that those words are Jay’s words. What I
am
saying is that the resentful sentiment expressed within the confines of that statement (in my opinion) sounds more plausible coming from Jay rather than Adnan. I have asked many of my former classmates and we all agree, statements like “I’m going to kill that bitch” don’t sound like something Adnan would say, certainly not in a serious connotation.

The other thing that disturbs me about Jay’s police interviews is his admission of the knowledge of pre-meditated murder. In the very first episode of SERIAL Jay can be heard saying this:

“…During the conversation he stated that he was going to kill that bitch, referring to Hae Lee…”

At multiple times in several interviews Jay admits that he knew Adnan was going to kill Hae the morning of January 13th. If that is true, why, oh, why did he not tell somebody? If nothing else, why did he not at least warn Hae? In Jay’s Intercept interview he appears to have admired Hae. Therefore, what bone did he have to pick with Hae that he deemed her life not worth saving? For me it’s very hard to believe that someone who A) knew a murder was going to occur and did nothing to stop it would then B) have to be blackmailed into helping bury the deceased’s body. Seems more logical to me that he possibly agreed to help dispose of the body (or more), before the actual crime was even committed. I know, personally, there’s nothing that could have convinced me to help dispose of a dead body unless I was already involved in the actual murder. If I were a low-level marijuana dealer and an associate threatened to rat me out in exchange for cooperation, I would walk the other way. At that point I’d rather take my chances with the cops over drugs than a murder. Isn’t it plausible to assume that Adnan would be way too busy trying to dispose of a dead body on his own to effectively get Jay in trouble for selling pot? In the same light, couldn’t Jay have said something like, “Well, you tell the cops that I sell weed and I’m going to tell the cops that you have a dead girl in a car trunk?” Couldn’t Jay just get rid of whatever small amount of weed he had at his grandmother’s house and tell Adnan to kiss his ass? After all, the police never investigated Jay as a drug dealer, only as an accessory to murder. Also, Jay claims that he never touched Hae’s corpse. If that’s true, why did he feel the need to ditch his boots and clothes (according to Jenn)? Dirt can be washed away. Is it me? Am I the only one that doesn’t understand the logic behind Jay’s actions and participation in this crime?

The final thing that I will address is where Jay said Hae was murdered (and/or where he saw her dead body for the first time). Was it Best Buy or Edmonson Avenue? From what I have read online, Hae’s cousin went to school at Campfield Early Learning Center (creepy…right around the corner from my grandparents’ house). If that is true, then it takes approximately fifteen minutes to get from Woodlawn to the closest spot on Edmonson Avenue. It then would have taken Hae another twenty minutes to get from Edmonson Avenue to Campfield. It is possible for Hae to have done all of this driving and still be on time to pick her cousin up by three o’clock. However, not if there were any type of conversation with someone baked in. I could see Hae possibly stopping at the Best Buy, because it’s right next to the highway that she might have used to get to Campfield. I don’t see her driving out to Edmonson Avenue. Knowing the route that I normally took to get home, I think Best Buy is a little out of the way, considering that there is a huge, beautiful, secluded cemetery that connects the Woodlawn and Campfield neighborhoods (Woodlawn Cemetery).

Not only that—I have been to the Best Buy Jay says Hae was murdered at (and possibly saw her body for the first time?). It’s not somewhere I would have gone to have sex with a guy. It’s not somewhere I would have strangled a person (not that I ever would strangle someone). It’s certainly
not
the place to transfer a dead body from the cab to the trunk of a car. It’s not even remotely secluded. Out of curiosity I went to the Best Buy parking lot to see for myself. There is no crevice that is left unexposed to patron eyesight. No matter where you are parked, you can see the farthest parking spaces within plain view. Even the tiny asphalt portion in the rear of the store is located right in front of the store loading dock and the major roadway that lets you into the parking lot. It is just not plausible that Hae was murdered there. Not only that, there are cameras there. Were those cameras there in 1999?