Adnan had asked me to handle the public advocacy to the best of my ability—no pressure from him. But I was afraid to say no to anything while people were still interested.
I was being invited to speak at law schools that I would never have had a chance to get into, like Stanford and Yale, and law firms that would never have hired me. The legal community, from bar associations to law schools to firms, was captivated. Serial had taken what seemed like a routine state-level homicide case and made it something mythical, magical. The question kept coming up: why was this case so special?
“You tell me,” I’d say.
One day, among the thousands of e-mails, Facebook messages, and tweets I was getting every week, I got one from a professor of digital writing and media arts named Pete Rorabaugh at the Southern Polytechnic State University.
Pete had been following my blogs and online commentary about Serial. He wondered if I had ever given thought about doing a discussion about the meta questions.
“The what?” I asked.
He explained. Unlike the rest of the world, Pete was interested in understanding almost everything but the case—he wanted to discuss the broader issues at play, the media dynamics, the storytelling frameworks and platforms. To be frank, I still wasn’t sure what he was getting at. But I said ok.
We decided it would be best to have live conversations every Monday to parse the previous week’s episode. That would give me time to do my blog, catch my breath over the weekend, think through the questions he sent me, and be prepared for another hour or more of his very thorough and thoughtful interviews.
I had thought I was being rather clever in my social media usage, but Pete forced me to take a step back and see the entire enterprise as one of storytelling. I was not fighting a case. I was attempting to shape a story, wrestling it from Sarah, from Serial.
Over the next couple of months we did a total of nine Hangouts, including one with a Reddit moderator, and one with an entire panel of Adnan’s childhood friends. Sometimes I cried in the Hangouts—at any given moment my emotions could break free. Mondays weren’t that far from Thursdays, and I often spent the weekend watching online conversations and having intense exchanges with Saad and Yusuf. Many Monday mornings I was still unsettled, raw, still processing the past few days.
And of course there was plenty happening behind the scenes. In the spirit of my pact with Sarah I hadn’t uttered a peep about the Innocence Project taking Adnan’s case. In early November, when the episode featuring Deirdre Enright and her team finally aired, I felt relieved and vindicated.
I kept getting asked why I believed in Adnan’s innocence with such unmoving faith, but I realized my answers were colored by my personal attachment to him. Skeptics dismissed my certainty in his innocence the way atheists dismiss faith. But in Deirdre I had an unbiased expert, who by looking at just the documents could tell that something had gone very wrong.
It was a small mercy to have that information public; it provided some respite from the cynics who still pummeled me with all sorts of questions and attacks, trying hard to plant some doubt in my mind.
Still, I had a lot of bad moments when I realized there was no smoking gun that proved his innocence, and that nearly any piece of information could be interpreted in diametrically opposite ways. That Adnan never accused Jay of the crime was seen by some as proof of his innocence, that it meant he had no idea what really happened, and by others as proof of his guilt, an acquiescence to Jay’s statements. That his friends saw him cry after Hae’s body was found was seen by some as remorse, others as grief. That Asia never showed up at the PCR hearing to some meant that her alibi was contrived bullshit and Adnan knew it, and to others it meant that he wasn’t methodical or manipulative enough to plan for an alibi.
The Asia argument, and my confusion over what had happened with her, was put to rest late one night in mid-November when I got a call from Justin Brown.
“Ok, you can’t tell anyone what I’m about to tell you.”
“Ok, I won’t.”
“No, I mean it. No posting it online or writing about it.”
“Ok, I won’t blog it, what is it?”
“No tweeting it.”
“Oh my God, Justin, ok, I won’t tweet ANYTHING.”
“And … you can’t tell Sarah I told you.”
Deep breath.
“Ooookayyyyy, what the hell is going on?”
“Asia called Sarah. She’s back in. She wants to give us a new affidavit and will testify that she remembers being with Adnan after school that day.”
“What. What? What?!!!”
After a paralyzed “what the hell” moment, I began jumping up and down. I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. I ran a few times around my dining room table, flailing my arms. Then, unsurprisingly, I began crying even before he could explain.
After calming me down, he finally did.
Asia McClain, who hadn’t contacted Sarah since the one taped interview we heard on the very first episode, had listened to the podcast. She had heard the audio recording from the PCR hearing where Urick talked about getting a call from Asia, stating, “She was concerned, because she was being asked questions about an affidavit she’d written back at the time of the trial. She told me that she’d only written it because she was getting pressure from the family, and she basically wrote it to please them and get them off her back.”
According to Asia, she had panicked a bit when Justin’s PI showed up to talk to her about the case, and when she spoke to Urick he reassured her that Adnan had been convicted on sound evidence. After listening to Serial, not only did she realize how shaky the case was, and that Urick had lied to her about the veracity of the evidence against Adnan, but he had also lied to the court about their conversation. Asia had never told him she had been pressured to write her letters or affidavit, or that she had written them to get the family “off her back.” And finally, Urick had all but told her not to testify, saying it was an open-and-shut case.
Late one night in November she called Sarah and told her that Urick’s testimony was a lie. Sarah did something that I will always deeply respect—she immediately got in touch with Justin and put the two in contact. More importantly, she agreed with Justin’s request not to report this development on the podcast.
Imagine the integrity it takes to refrain from (1) reporting a major development at the core of your story and (2) ever even hinting at your role in the development. By the time it became news a couple of months later, Serial had ended.
For now, Sarah was concerned about preserving Asia’s current statements and realized how significantly this could impact the case. She cared about getting justice in a court of law for Adnan. It meant a tremendous amount to Adnan and all of us, then and now.
Justin had one last mini-bomb to drop on me about Asia about a month later. She had gotten her own lawyer and was going to do a new affidavit, refuting Urick’s testimony and confirming her recollection of January 13, 1999. But she had one request, perhaps even a condition. The first news outlet to report this development, her new affidavit that Justin would file with the court, would have to be Glenn Beck’s Web site, TheBlaze.
I thought I heard him wrong so I made him repeat it.
“She’s a big fan of Beck, it is what it is.”
The irony didn’t escape me, that the one person who could save Adnan’s appeal of the PCR denial was a fan of a media personality with a proven track record of anti-Muslim animosity.
But it proved something to me—it may be that Asia didn’t care for Muslims, and maybe she even shared Beck’s deeply troubling views on Islam, but she cared more about the truth. Asia wasn’t even concerned about whether Adnan was innocent or guilty—that wasn’t her business. Her business, regardless of his faith or culpability, was to make the truth known. This raised the value of her testimony exponentially.
It was a precarious situation, though. What if the prosecution got to her again? What if it was too late? Would the Court of Sp
ecial Appeals now find credible a witness who failed to appear the first time?
Adnan, always more cautious, always aware of the thousands of ways things could go wrong (because for him, they mostly did), was less optimistic.
He said, “Look Rabia, it’s a shot, but a long shot. And at this point probably our only shot.”
That sobered me up. I agreed with him.
Turned out we were both wrong.
CHAPTER 11
IT TAKES A VILLAGE
And say, “My Lord, lead me in through an entry of truth, and lead me out through an exit of truth, and grant me from You a supporting power.” And say, “The truth has come, and falsehood has withered away; for falsehood is bound to wither away.”
Holy Quran, 17:80–81
When I first got the e-mail I gasped slightly. Was this really … really, from the wife of comedian Chris Rock?
I got thousands of messages on my blog as I posted in response to Serial every week. Like Adnan, I couldn’t respond to everyone, but every so often a message would make me stop, force me to respond. It could be a message from someone offering to help with their expertise, or contribute to a fund for Adnan (which I had yet to even think about setting up), or sending a surprising, feel-good message thanking me for opening the world of Muslims to them in a way they hadn’t been exposed to before.
I was insanely excited when Jemima Goldstein, known as Jemima Khan to her legions of Pakistani fans, sent me a Twitter message. Jemima, the ex-wife of Pakistani cricket legend and current political leader Imran Khan, is the closest Pakistanis ever got to having their own princess. She’s adored by Pakistanis, even after divorcing Khan, having gained our admiration and trust for being an outspoken critic of the U.S. drone policy in Afghanistan-Pakistan as well as for her continued public concern for the people of the country. Jemima reached out to tell me she had listened to Serial and how impacted she was by Adnan’s story, especially given the fact that her own sons were teenaged Pakistani-British Muslim boys and Adnan reminded her of them.
I had already heard from Jemima when I got the message from Chris Rock’s wife. And yes, I initally thought it was the Chris Rock—it took a couple of days to realize it couldn’t be unless the comedian had a secret second wife stashed away in Australia. Still, I was really touched by her message, having gotten it on a particularly bad day when Internet trolls were doing a number on me.
I wrote back, and after a couple of weeks she made me an offer I couldn’t refuse. Dez’s Chris Rock was not only one of the most respected and well-known hackers in the world, he also ran one of the world’s premier cyber-security firms, Kustodian.
Would I like Kustodian, free of charge, to protect my blog?
Why, yes, Dez, yes. I would like Kustodian to do that.
Within a matter of weeks, they took over my site and began protecting it from literally thousands of attacks a week, something I could have never have managed on my own.
Shortly before I first heard from Dez, I got another note through my blog that made me pause. A literary agent wanted to speak to me. Lauren Abramo had been reading my blogs and following my other work too. She thought I should write a book.
After talking for a bit and realizing she was really, truly interested, I finally got excited.
“Can I send you what I’ve written, the start of a novel? I’ve got a few chapters down, it’s a story built on multiple stories from my life and the lives of people I’ve known—about a Pakistani girl who is married off by her family and ends up in the U.S. as an immigrant!”
Lauren grew silent, pausing cautiously as she tried to find the kindest way to break my heart.
“Well that sounds wonderful, Rabia, but I was thinking … perhaps you should write a book about Adnan’s case.”
It was my turn to pause.
I hadn’t ever considered writing about his case, and the very thought of it filled me with dread.
I was afraid that people would think I was trying to profit from the case. I had already heard that people were saying I was trying to ride the podcast’s coattails to fame, even though I hadn’t done any fund-raising and wasn’t even making money on my speaking engagements at this point. Later, because of the enormous demands on my time, I did begin asking for a small speaking honorarium, half of which I donated to Adnan’s legal fees.
I didn’t want to do it. It opened the door to the public considering me an opportunist, and maybe even Adnan and his family as well. But Lauren pointed out that if I didn’t a write a book someone else might.
I told her I’d think about it.
I also had to think hard about it for another reason: I didn’t know the case as well as she thought. I still had thousands of documents to review and would have to wait until Serial was over, until my project at New America was over, to really get through them. It could take at least a year to do that, and by then maybe interest in the case would be gone.
Little did I know that within the month, one of the sharpest minds I’ve ever encountered would enter the scene and save me.
On November 23, 2014, Susan Simpson, a lawyer I’d never heard of, put up a post on a blog I’d never heard of either, The View From LL2. I saw the link on Reddit and spent the next two hours carefully reading and re-reading the fifty-nine-page tome titled “Serial: A Comparison of Adnan’s Cell Phone Records and the Witness Statements Provided by Adnan, Jay, Jenn, and Cathy.”
I did a little quick Googling on Susan. Everything looked on the up-and-up—she was an associate attorney at a D.C. firm, the Volkov Law Group, and a law graduate of George Washington University. Her focus was on white-collar defense but she had a background in criminal appeals. Her previous few posts discussed maritime border laws and the Alien Tort Statute. It didn’t escape me that she had also made a suit of armor for her ridiculously fluffy kitten, Ragnarok. This, I realized, was a highly talented and multifaceted woman. And she loved her cat as much I cherished my feline Mr. Beans, who graced my social media regularly and had become familiar to my followers. I liked her.
Susan also had done what I had not had the time to do—taken every phone call made from Adnan’s cell that day and compared the “pinged” tower locations to every version of Jay’s, Jenn’s, and Adnan’s stories. It was meticulous and thorough, and showed that the State’s story at trial wasn’t actually corroborated by the records.
Sarah had mentioned on Serial that the State only brought up four of the fourteen sites it had tested that day because the other ten didn’t match up to Jay’s story. The four that could be used to bolster Jay’s testimony were all calls after 6:00 p.m., the most important ones being two incoming calls at 7:09 and 7:16—otherwise known as the “Leakin Park Pings”—because they were routed through a tower located in the park.
On these calls, Dana Chivvis concludes in Episode 5, “Route Talk,” that there is little equivocation. She believes the cell phone must have been in the park at the time the calls came.
Susan Simpson writes in her first post on the case, “Of the 52 outgoing and incoming calls made to Adnan’s cell phone on January 12 and 13, 1999, exactly two calls were routed through L689B, which is the tower and antenna that covers the southwest portion of Leakin Park (and covers almost nothing that isn’t Leakin Park). In fact, only one other call was even routed through tower L689, despite the fact it is adjacent to the towers covering Woodlawn and Cathy’s house—and that’s the 4:12 p.m. call, when Jay would have been parking Hae’s car immediately next to Leakin Park, at the Park-n-Ride. This is very strong evidence that the reason the 7:09 and 7:16 p.m. calls were routed from the Leakin Park tower is that the cell phone was, in fact, in Leakin Park. The odds are too much against this being a mere coincidence—because over the course of 48 hours, only two calls are routed through L689B, and both occur precisely within the one-and-a-half hour window in which we know the killer was in Leakin Park burying Hae’s body. This is a sufficient basis from which to conclude that the killer had the phone while burying Hae.”
Dana says something similar on Serial: “The the amount of luck you would have to have to make up a story like that and then have the cell phone records corroborate the key points, I just don’t think that that’s possible.”
The Leakin Park calls were the bane of my advocacy for Adnan, the only thing I didn’t know how to rebut.
The thing I could easily rebut, the issue Sarah thought most damning for Adnan, was the call made from his phone at 3:32 p.m. to Nisha Tanna, the young woman he had begun talking to after breaking up with Hae. Who would be calling Nisha in the middle of the school day from Adnan’s cell phone but Adnan himself? Sarah asked. She figured that put Adnan with Jay at a time when Adnan said he wasn’t with him, and at a time around when Hae went missing.
The “Nisha Call” was easy—Jay said Adnan called her after killing Hae, then gave Jay the phone to briefly chat with her too. Nisha also testified that she did indeed speak to Jay just once while on a call with Adnan—but she stated with specificity that this chat took place when Adnan went to visit Jay at a video store he was working at. The “Nisha Call” couldn’t have have happened on January 13 though, because Jay didn’t begin working at the porn video shop until January 31.
Nisha’s number was saved on speed-dial on Adnan’s phone. It was likely called on January 13 by mistake—a butt-dial or otherwise mistaken attempt to make a call by Jay, because he still had the phone at the time and all calls before and after the “Nisha Call” were to Jay’s friends.
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