Confessions of a Serial Alibi (9 page)

Nevertheless, Urick made everything sound relative to Adnan’s guilt. He said that a student named Jay confessed to helping bury Hae’s body in Leakin Park. He said that Jay testified in court and that Urick himself had presented cell phone records that placed the two boys in Leakin Park during the very time that the burial occurred. As you can imagine I was wowed by all this information. Along the way I had heard that Jay Wilds was involved somehow back at the time of Adnan’s arrest. I didn’t know he was actually a witness to the crime or that he was involved in the trial. Being that Jay was my upperclassman and not someone that I personally liked, I never had a reason to speak to him. I think I only have one memory of Jay and I’m not even sure about it because, once again, nobody else remembers the day in question.

In any case, Urick continued to talk and I continued to listen and take notes. He told me about how quickly it took to convict Mr. Syed and he even said, “If I [myself] had any doubt that he [Syed] killed Hae [Min Lee] then it would be my moral obligation to see that he [Syed] didn’t serve any time.” Just then my husband came up stairs and began to speak. I shooed him away and continued listening to Urick. As I listened and agreed with his previous sentiment he scoffed and also said, “Oh, he killed that girl, there is no doubt in my mind!” I found the statement so profound that I wrote it in quotes. Just the way he said “Oh” as you would when talking about something blatantly obvious. I found this to be very convincing. As if his previous statement wasn’t good enough he followed it by saying, “Yeah, there’s a snowball’s chance in hell that they [Justin Brown] could reopen the case with those type of accusations. Let alone get him [Syed] off!”

As I think about this case now, that quote makes me chuckle a little. Isn’t it ironic? As if there was anything more to say Urick told me one more time that the defense was wasting the court’s time. He said that at the trial, the defense had a list of about eighty individuals that were willing to lie and place Adnan at the mosque. Urick said that he knew these people to be liars because every single last one of them backed down once the state produced the cell phone records showing that Adnan was in Leakin Park. As I sat there listening to what Urick was telling me, I shook my head in disbelief.
How awful and what a shame,
I thought.

As we ended the conversation, Urick gave me one final thought to chew on (which again I was not asked about during my testimony because it wasn’t written in my “Urick Notes”). He reminded me of the fact that the defense already had my original affidavit in their possession. The defense already knew my testimony and could use the affidavit in court if they needed to. He reminded me that I had not received a subpoena, so in essence I was free to do whatever I wanted. I agreed and we ended our thirty-four-minute phone call. To say the least, I was sold on Adnan’s guilt. I was sold on Justin Brown’s intentions to manipulate and exploit loopholes in our criminal justice system. To me I had received the case facts straight from the horse’s mouth. The prosecutor, the good guy, had shelled out everything I needed to hear. I decided not to call Justin Brown. In fact, I didn’t even keep his business card.

CHAPTER FOUR

MAKING OF A PODCAST

Normally I don’t think I would have ever agreed to have my voice on the SERIAL podcast. Not because I regret talking with Sarah Koenig. My reasoning is a little vainer than I’m happy to admit. As horrible as it sounds, I absolutely hate the way my voice sounds when recorded. There’s only one reason that I agreed to speak with Sarah Koenig on the phone in 2014 and it wasn’t because I wanted to “get famous.” I don’t think anyone anticipated SERIAL’s success, most of all Sarah Koenig. In fact, the reason that I agreed to help was quite the opposite. Unbeknownst to Sarah, I wanted nothing more than to be left alone at the time she reached out to me. I’ve never told anyone other than my husband this story before, but Sarah actually found my home address.

There it was, four years after the private detective showed up at our last residence and we were now living in Washington state. My husband and I had literally moved on from the event and were enjoying our new life as parents. Out of the blue one day came a letter in our mailbox. The letter was from Sarah Koenig, a reporter from
This American Life
and she explained that she was doing a “story” about Adnan’s Syed trial in 2000. She stated in the letter that she had a great interest in speaking with me and left her contact information for me to touch base with her. Now as you can imagine after receiving this letter, I became stressed. Although this written request was not as invasive as the private detective four years prior, it still did not sit well with me. Once again I was jarred by the fact that yet again another stranger had tracked me down, in yet another state. After the event in 2010 I did some digging and eventually determined the previous private investigator had located my husband and I through our home business. In 2010, I wasn’t aware that I was a person of interest to anyone and as a result I had my home address listed as my business address. Little did I know that anyone with half a brain and a lot of determination to find me could locate me simply by checking the Secretary of State’s office, where our LLC information was on file. Upon moving to Washington state a few months later my husband and I decided that going forward, it would be a wiser idea to use a post office box for our business address. Nevertheless, here I was walking to my house with a letter in my hand from an overzealous investigative reporter. Shortly after her letter Sarah also managed to reach me through my business email address. I wasn’t very surprised because my company website is easily accessible. Her persistence was more annoying than anything. Based on what Urick had explained to me in 2010, I was still under the impression that the State of Maryland had overwhelming evidence to convict Adnan back in 2000. As far as I was aware, Adnan Syed had been rightfully convicted of the murder of Hae Min Lee. Now fourteen years into his life sentence and having exhausted all his appeals, it seemed strange to me that any investigation into his conviction was even a thing of interest to anyone. Since I had never been subpoenaed by Justin Brown (that I was aware of) and my affidavit was on file, I couldn’t imagine why this woman (Sarah) now also wanted to speak to me. She had no personal attachments to the defendant, nor was she a member of the court. I couldn’t imagine what more I could possibly offer her that she didn’t already know.

I was curious about the full nature of her request, but I was all too familiar with the concept of curiosity killing the cat. I didn’t want to confirm to her that she had found my home address. I worried that if I didn’t call her back that she would show up at my front door, too. According to Jay Wilds’s interview in the Intercept, that was probably a smart assumption on my part, as she did travel across country to track him down. At the time, that was something that I could only speculate happening, but it was definitely something that I did not want to transpire. In the end, I decided that because I did live so far away, I would put the letter aside and give my actions some further thought before proceeding. I tucked the letter away in my underwear drawer and proceeded to go about my normal stay-at-home mom life. Unfortunately, I soon became preoccupied with other things and after a few days had forgotten about the letter entirely. Then as I stated before, one day I was checking my company email and once again I had a message from Sarah Koenig. The message said:

Hello Mrs. Chapman, I’m the producer from the radio show This American Life. I just wanted to verify that you got my letter in the mail? Did you receive it? If not, I’d be happy to send it again, or just email it if that’s easier.

Thanks very much, Sarah K. xxx-xxx-xxxx

Once again I found myself facing the perseverance of another third party investigator wanting to speak to me. As I stated before, I’ve actually been stalked, so the feeling of being “found” is very unsettling to me. There is nothing like minding your own business when you receive a phone call one Saturday morning and someone says, “Hi Asia, don’t you want to know how I found you?” To me, a private detective at my door, a letter sent to my home and now an email sent to my business was just plain annoying and invasive.

In hindsight I know for a fact that Sarah never meant any harm, however at the time all I could think of was telling her to “go kick rocks.” In the end, I conceded to both emailing and calling Sarah that next day. Little did I know, that was the start of a small kinship between us. At the time, I had no idea what type of person Sarah Koenig was and whether she could be trusted. Now I have a better understanding of the caliber of character and journalistic integrity she has. In the beginning when Sarah and I first talked, I thought nothing much about her actual “story.” When I first picked up the phone to call her, I had no idea what I was stepping into. Neither did Sarah.

In our conversation that followed it began to feel like one amateur sleuth bringing another up to speed. Like I said before, when Sarah first reached out to me, I was very suspicious of who she was, her affiliation to the case and her motives for even investigating it to begin with. I wanted to know who had hired her, how she knew about the case and if she was acting as an advocate for Adnan Syed. As we began to chat more, it became clear to me that she was in fact very impartial about the case. Although she was a reporter, at the time she was no Barbara Walters-type celebrity reporter (like she is now) and she didn’t seem to have a dog in the fight.

As I began to talk more with her, I saw that her only motivation was to find out the truth and report on the facts. Of course those goals had their own motivations, but who can blame a girl for wanting to be successful at what she does? I saw Sarah as a truth seeker and in that sense she reminded me a lot of myself. It became apparent to me that she had started off not knowing anything about the case and trial. All she initially knew was the fact that Hae was murdered, Adnan was in jail for Hae’s murder and that I might be an alibi. Although Rabia was the person whom introduced her to the case, it was abundantly clear to me that Rabia nor anyone associated with Adnan’s defense team was “running the show.” After fifteen years of having this situation randomly making cameos in my life, I decided to talk to Sarah. I liked Sarah’s position on the matter and I figured that it was “safe” to open up to her. Little did I know, that was the very moment in which things began to get more complicated in my life.

The Interview

The day I called Sarah was a normal day with the exception that I had been bitching to my husband about Sarah’s correspondence. After some time, I was still indecisive on whether I should call her. In any case, that particular day I guess my husband had heard enough. Let me just say, God bless my husband because he always gives me his opinion straight. “Go see what the hell she wants!” he said. “They’re obviously not going to leave you alone, unless you tell them to! If you don’t want to talk, tell them that and be done!” In that moment I knew everything that he was saying was right. Part of me knew I needed to talk to somebody about it. Why not her? I guess that’s why I picked up the phone and gave Sarah a call. When I called Sarah, I made sure to use my star-six-seven feature on my phone. I wasn’t about to relinquish my personal contact information to some random nosy stranger. Sarah answered the phone and on the fly I concocted a story and lied about how I had not received her physical letter but instead was reaching out to her because of her email. Thinking about it now, I laugh because I could tell by her response that she didn’t whole-heartedly believe my lie. Now I chuckle whenever I listen to SERIAL and hear Sarah’s recollection of that first conversation. The same disbelieving and confused sentiment comes across in her tone in the podcast. I admit now that it was a dumb lie to tell, but at the time I didn’t trust the idea of confirming my address to her. As I began to speak with Sarah, she explained that she was a reporter for
This American Life
and that someone vested in the Syed case had brought this story to her attention. She explained that upon checking out the case, she became highly intrigued and decided to do her own “story” about the case facts. She also explained that she was in the process of speaking to multiple people from my high school and that I was an important person of particular interest.

Immediately I liked the fact that her story didn’t seem to center around me. It soon became clear to me that she was not only a reporter but also a fairly impartial one in her pursuit for the truth. I soon began to see that she was interested in both Hae’s murder and Adnan’s conviction. She explained that she had been doing tons of research on the old case files and had become completely baffled on how the trial transpired the way it did. She told me details of the case that I had never known before and I began to agree that something didn’t seem right. She asked about my letters to Adnan and my affidavit, and as we talked, a kinship began to form. As a result, I began to lower my guard and realize that perhaps this was the right person to finally tell my story to.

Looking back, I don’t regret talking to Sarah Koenig at all, however I do wish that perhaps I had taken an extra day or two in order to research her professional affiliations. Perhaps then, I would have realized that I was engaging in an interview with a podcast reporter and that the actual audio of our interview would be aired all over the world. At the time I didn’t even know what a podcast was. Had I’d known what it was, that information most definitely would have influenced my decision and determined to what capacity I chose to participate. For instance, I would have answered her questions more precisely, more thoroughly and less off-the-cuff. I would have spoken more clearly as to compensate for the poor audio quality and I would have most definitely been more aware of my cadence. I would have not used so many similes and generalizations when recalling memories from January 13th, 1999. Sarah was the first to ask me my opinions and the first to not be affiliated with a side. I didn’t realize at the time that my interview was going out to the masses, but I definitely wouldn’t take it back now for the world. The way everything has happened is indeed pretty crazy but I believe it has all played out the way God intended. From that day in the library on, there have been so many serendipitous occurrences that only can be explained as fate; everything from Derrick being late, to Gutierrez being disbarred, to SERIAL and more. If nothing else I am thankful for SERIAL, because it brought out a lot of things that would have otherwise forever gone unnoticed.

Three weeks had gone by since my interview with Sarah. We had stayed in contact over that time, but it was minimal. Specifically, our conversations had been limited to helping her track down other people of interest. The third week of February hit and all of the sudden Sarah had started to complain about the sound quality of my recorded interview. Initially I didn’t think much of it because the fact that Sarah was a podcast journalist had been completely missed by me. The fact that
This American Life
was an affiliate of National Public Radio had also skipped my radar (I know—dumb). I had never listened to National Public Radio or
This American Life.
At that point in my life I was adjusting to life with a two-year-old and an eight-month-old; I was living in a “mommy bubble.”

When Sarah said the audio was crummy, I assumed that she was having trouble making out some information for her written article. Finally, one day Sarah asked if she could rerecord my interview and not thinking, I obliged. It wasn’t until later that I began to get suspicious of her intentions. If she were merely doing a “story,” why was she stressing the audio quality issue so much? Her persistence started to throw up red flags in my mind;
I thought the audio was just for notation purposes. Why doesn’t she just ask me to paraphrase the crappy audio for her? Can I really trust her? Is she really who she says she is?

Incidentally, all of these questions could have been easily been answered by a simple phone call but instead I chose to stay silent. Eventually the day came to rerecord my interview with Sarah in a sound studio. The only problem was that morning I found out that my husband had scheduled me for an important gastroenterologist appointment. I also found out that he had forgotten to tell me about it (got to love husbands, right?). Unable to reschedule the appointment with the doctor, I was forced to call Sarah and reschedule with her. Unfortunately for both Sarah and myself, I also took that coincidence as a “sign” and never rescheduled a time to rerecord. In the days that followed Sarah reached out to me several times, but I ignored her. I had told myself that something was off with her and at the time I thought it best to cut my losses and move on. The unfortunate part was that ignoring Sarah left her with many unanswered follow-up questions that I never paid any attention to. It wasn’t until after SERIAL came out that I was even aware of what those question would have been. Some of those questions were as follows:

Why were you so worried when the PI came to your house?

Why were you reluctant to talk to Justin Brown?