Previously, on Serial, while you're digging in the lake and park to bury your body, you're going to find somebody else's. That's Lincoln Park. I walk along the edge of the log expecting to find a body real soon. I never saw one.
Lincoln Park, I'm like, where is that? Do you even know where it is? Have you ever been there? One shopping with a friend of mine.
An ex friend of mine. Hey, no. You know, it was not that normal for you at least four to go do something. And then come back.
This is a global hill leak. They take home from... And nine say it. And you may that from Maryland to Russia.
From This American Life in W.E.C. Chicago, it's Serial. And one story told week by week, I'm Sarah Koenig. Remember how last time I ended by saying that the detective had other leads in this case besides Mr.
S, the guy who found Hayes Body? That they were also starting to look at it non? Well, the reason we know that is because of this memo. The memo was dated 12 February 1999 from Detective Daryl Massey to Detective Greg McGillern.
This memo he's talking about is regarding an anonymous call. That's Detective Ritz on the witness stand at trial. He's talking about how they got this anonymous call three days after Hayes Body was found. The call came in to Detective Massey of Baltimore County Cup.
The caller must have had an accent of some kind because Massey's report describes him as an Asian male 18 to 21 years old. Though it's unclear whether Asian in this case means East Asian like Korean or South Asian like Pakistani. But anyway, a mystery caller says look at the ex-boyfriend. The caller further advised that the boyfriend has taken to the victim to Licken Park on past occasions for sexual encounter.
Prior to concluding the phone interview, the caller further stated that the victim broke off the relationship with her boyfriend about a week before she was reported missing. The caller hangs up. Then a few minutes later, the same guy calls back and says, oh yeah, by the way. This time the caller remembered about a year ago the suspect informed a friend of his parent was a master Ali, Asian male 17, and a parent's season.
If he ever heard his girlfriend, he would drive her car into a lake. This time the caller mentions a friend of Anans, bosser Ali. Actually, the name of this friend is Yasser Ali. The caller says Yasser might know something.
Hangs up again. The cops can't trace the call. It's out of range. Three days after the anonymous call, the detectives go meet with Yasser Ali at a pizza.
Yasser says, I didn't make that call. I don't know anything. Their notes from that conversation say, quote, if Anans wanted to get rid of the car, where would he do so? Ali indicated somewhere in the woods, possibly in Centennial Lake where the inner harbor unquote.
No one has ever gotten to the bottom of who made this anonymous call. The cops didn't figure it out. Anans attorney didn't figure it out. I've tried to figure it out too.
For a while I couldn't let it go, because it seemed to me that whoever made this call, he must be the key to the whole thing. But so far, I only have guesses that I can't responsibly say out loud. Anyway, the day after the pizza talk on February 16th, the detectives do some paperwork that will ultimately crack the whole case open for them. They get a subpoena for Anans cell phone records.
The results of that subpoena include a list of all the calls dialed and received on Anans phone on January 13th. The day he disappeared. That list will become arguably the most important piece of paper among all the thousands in this case. It'll become their map, and they'll follow it, call by call by call like footprints, that end up at Anans front door.
If you look at that call log from January 13th, there are 34 calls that day. Obviously, the first thing they have to do is figure out who all the phone numbers belong to, home cell and pager numbers. Once they do, they realize, wait a minute, one person was called six times that day, much more often than anyone else. That person is an 18-year-old girl named Jennifer Pusitari.
Jen is not a friend of Anans. She's a friend of J's. Remember, J had Anans car that day and his new cell phone. He says, Jen, you got us where he won't tell normally, what about the tell you?
That's Jen talking to detectives about the night of January 13th. I was like, all right, he's like, I got to tell you, I got to tell somebody I can't, you know, and I was like, all right, what's up, you know, he was like, um, Anans, kill pay. That's what I'm just like, what do you mean, Anans, kill pay? Why, what, how, when, where, you know.
If you want to figure out this case with me, now is the time to start paying close attention, because we have arrived along with the detectives at the heart of the thing. This interview with Jen happens on February 27th, 1999. The day before on the 26th, the cops had gone to find Jen at her house. They explained they'd like her to come downtown to talk.
Jen is thoroughly wigged out. She says, she can't right now. She's busy maybe later. Then Jen and a friend go see Jay.
He's at work at a video store. She tells Jay, the police want to talk to me. What do I do? A trial, Jen says, quote, he told me to go down there and tell them what I knew, tell them enough to keep me out of trouble and tell them to go see Jay, send them his way.
So Jen goes downtown to see the cops later that night and she lies to them, says she doesn't know anything. I've seen the detectives' notes from that interview and they're remarkably uninteresting. But by the time she left that night, Jen thought it was possible she was about to get charged. A trial she said the last thing detected in the gillivary said to her that night was, quote, everyone's a suspect and no one's a suspect.
So the next day she goes back to the detectives. This time she's got reinforcements. She's got an attorney with her, plus her mom. They turn on a tape recorder.
Who, what, where, when, why? That's why, what did you say? Oh, he said that, and said that he broke his heart. Did he say anything else?
Yes, and how, what did he say? He said that he's telling him. So Jen gives him a motive. Hey, broke it non's heart and a method.
He strangled her, which of course they already knew. But then Jen's information gets a little muddier. Yes, and where it happened? He told me, he told me, this way he told me.
He asked me, she asked me what we should do. He said, you think we should go to police now and tell him right now. And I said, I don't know. I said, what was your involvement?
Were you involved? And he said, Joe, he said, and I'm, show me your body and ask me if I would help her, Mary, and I would help him, very hurt, but I said, what did you do? Did you help him? You know, where the body is?
No, I just told him to sell the city and I dropped them off. I said, went to it, then I went down, picked him up and went to a different place in the city. And I don't remember where he said he went. I said, how did he do this?
You know, when was this done? He didn't know when. What do you say? He said that he strangled her in a best-by parking lot.
But I don't know how he got the best-by parking lot. Everything went back. Jay has told her, I saw the body in the trunk of a car. A non asked me to help bury her, but I didn't.
I refused. I had to leave my house at home. I had to go to the police and leave her in a place and later picked him up at some chicks' house. And he tells her that all this went down at the best-by parking lot, off security boulevard, about a mile from Woodlawn High School.
Jay and Jen were close friends at this time, winter of 99, talking or hanging out almost every day. They'd known each other since elementary school. They were in the same class at Woodlawn. They'd graduated the year before in 98.
Now Jen was a freshman at UMBC, University of Maryland, Baltimore County. She's studying biochemistry and she's in sorority. When Haid disappeared, Jen was on winter break. January 13th, she and Jay had been hanging out earlier in the afternoon at her house after she got home from work.
Then Jen says Jay left her house sometime between 3.45 and 4.15. They planned to meet later that evening. But then Jen had gotten a message, Jay was running late. He wanted her to pick him up in the parking lot of Westby Mall around EPM.
She goes there, and she sees them together. She sees Jay get out of a non-s car, and non-says hi to her. She says he seems to be acting normal. Jay gets in her car, and that's when he tells her about the murder.
After they'd driven a little ways, Jay mentions shovels. The shovels that none had used to dig in the park to bury hay. But they were Jay's shovels from his house. Jay mentions to me that he knew we're at and not done the shovels.
I don't know how many they were, but he mentioned to me that he knew we're at and not done the shovels. Jen tells him she drives Jay back to Westby Mall, to the dumpsters back there, so that Jay can retrieve the shovels and wipe the handles clean in case of fingerprints. After that, Jay came back out of my car, and he was really shitting off. He was completely shitting off.
He was like, you have to take me to go see my girlfriend now. The next day, Jen says she drove Jay to the F&M store, the same one where he worked, so that he could throw out the clothes and boots he was wearing the previous night. He pitched them into a dumpster behind the store. One of the cops points out, for a guy who's telling you he didn't kill anyone and didn't help dispose of a body, he sure is taking a lot of precautions.
He clarifies Jay wasn't along when the body was buried. Jay wasn't along, I was there. They'd match any, no, I'm understanding. We always close.
We're waiting for you guys to take the clothes and things like that. Yeah, well, it wasn't until today, but I mean, I always just don't think that Jay, I don't think that Jay would lie to me first of all. And like, I don't know, unless I don't pay Jay a good sum of money, I don't know if I'll see Jay helping me. Finally, the cop asks, we're a non and Jay best friends?
And Jen says, oh no, more like casual acquaintances. Once the detectives talk to Jen, everything happens very fast. That same night, the detectives go get Jay at the video store where he works. It's actually a porn video store, which come trial, a non-saternity will stress with relish at every opportunity.
Anyway, the cops bring him down to homicide. By the time they turn on the tape recorder, it's 1.30 in the morning on February 28th. I'm willing to answer questions and do not want an attorney this time. I'm not a citizen to answer questions.
So they get Jay in the interview room, and initially he pulls a Jen. He tells them nothing more or less. Says he'd walk to them all that day, got his girlfriend a bracelet for birthday, hung around with Jen's younger brother, talked to a nun sometime in the afternoon. And then after two pages of notes like that, it says, all right, I come clean.
At least that's what I think it says. The detectives handwriting is messy. So maybe it says a bright eye came down. In any case, around 20 minutes later, they start taping.
And Jay tells them a whole different story, one that more or less matches Jen's. Except for one major difference, one major piece of information about this crime that the cops are still missing. They do not know where Hayes' car is. They've been looking all over the place for it.
They can't find it. Now Jay tells them he knows where it is. Before the interview prior to turning the tape on, he stated to take them to go rain myself. They did people willing to take us out and show us where the tables parked.
No problem. Are you still willing to do that yet? So that's huge for them. Jay will take them to the car.
And he does. Once they're finished at headquarters, they all drive out in the middle of the night to wear the car as parked. And a grassy hill behind some row houses off Edmondson Avenue. Within a few hours, they'll have a warrant for a non-serrest.
If it's on something like we know what you and Jay did, we talk today, and I'm like Jay, Jay, like I had a look of a puddle on my face like, what do you mean? What do you mean Jay? A non, of course, says Jay's story isn't true. But he says he doesn't know why Jay would lie either.
He says when he first heard Ritz and Aguilerrey mention Jay's name in connection with his own arrest, he was just confused. And the same guy, Aguilerrey, he kind of like snorted like, you know what we're talking about. I mean, I had no idea. And the reaction that he gave me was like, stop laying it down.
It's not like there was some secret feud between Jay and Anan, at least not that I know of. There was no drug deal gone wrong, neither had bad mouth the other or so only other's girlfriend. To hear a non-teller, it sounds like they didn't even know each other very well. When I first asked him what their friendship was like, what Jay was like as a person, Anananan really had to reach.
He was like, um, Jay worked? He wasn't that into sports. I couldn't even really have a huge long conversation that we were going to go. We wouldn't necessarily be kicking it per se as Anan speak for, yes, we smoked we together, but we weren't close.
However, Anan was close with Stephanie, Jay's girlfriend, very close. And Ananan says that's the only thing he can think of now that might have turned Jay against him. Stephanie was smart, she was the top athlete at the school, she was beautiful by any standard, she looked like a model. She came from a family of achievers who did not approve of Jay but had no problem with Anan.
So maybe Stephanie's relationship with Anan, how affectionate they were with each other, the constant talking on the phone, the prom prince and princess stuff, maybe that was knowing it Jay. I said it. Christina was a non-slower. Like, you know, and you never, like, you know, it's looking like I was 80.
Like, you know, you never thought that this is Robert Jay. I was like, no, I never, you know, my position where I was like, so I felt kind of like a homo where I was like, oh, so then they're kind of like now thinking about all the things and sense like maybe he was, you know that. Anan says he didn't feel betrayed by Jay exactly because again, they weren't good enough friends for betrayal. He says it was more a feeling of injustice.
So, but it'll kind of like, I mind my mind, I was kind of like, maybe the police were in the office, maybe he somehow got caught up. I thought, maybe he tried to claim the reward money and he got caught up in this situation. So, I'm like, I don't know. They're the part of me that I don't want to make accusations against someone else.
It's like, you know, not being sure of it because obviously it's happened to me. A year after Anan was arrested and the case came to trial, Jay walked up to the witness stand and there was a moment when Anan muttered something to him. He says he couldn't help himself. The judge called the attorneys up to the bench, quote, I was just informed by my sheriff that the defendant made a comment to the witness as the witness approached the stand indicating that he was pathetic, the judge said.
I want to advise Mr. Sayed that up until now he has been perfect. In the first tape to interview, the detectives asked Jay, why would Anan turn to someone he didn't even know well, to help him with this murder? Jay, why would Anan call you?
A criminal element of Woodlawn. I'm the criminal element of Woodlawn, he says. Is that a real or a perceived representation? I perceived it, like how do you buy people.
You know, I mean, could you really know me know that I'm not like that but, you know, you can take a medication. Because of the contacts you have with helping him get his marijuana, he thinks you're going to get an element that the county wanted to assist him in disposing of the body. I know someone would have wear something. In her closing argument at trial, prosecutor Casey Murphy posed this, why him question to the jury about Jay?
Think about it, she said. Do you really believe that the defendant, meaning Anan, could go to one of his upstanding magnet school on her student friends or friend from the mosque to assist him with this act? Of course not. He needed someone who behaved a little more dangerously than those people.
He needed someone who took risks. The defendant hopes that you will look at Jay and say, I don't believe him. That is why the defendant chose Jay. Because if something went wrong, the defendant could point the finger at Jay.
This idea, this is what Jay is more or less trying to communicate to the cops. But they ask him, if you're actually not the type of guy who knows where to bury a body, then why did you help? Why didn't you go to the police instead? He gives you his car keys.
He gives you his cell phone. He tells you the time that he's going to call you, that he's going to kill you. You do absolutely nothing. Help me understand your friend of order why you do absolutely nothing with that phone.
I know it's a big thing about you. I mean, you're selling marijuana. So if I go to the cops and say, hey, this guy's been killed, they'll say, well, no, I'm not. He's crazy.
But there's a drug dealer and this is where he gets a shit from. And this is who he deals with. And he got a ratchet. He's just wrong.
And he'll get his ass. He'll give down the arrested. But one time. One time.
You know, really, I'm on a ratchet. One time. I'm on a ratchet. One time.
I'm on a ratchet. I'm on a ratchet. One time. I'm on a ratchet.
I'm on a ratchet. I'm on a ratchet. I'm on a ratchet. I'm on a ratchet.
I'm on a ratchet. I'm sure if I ranted him I would become a hater, he'd even hesitate to turn me over some drugs. There's anything else that you'd like to add to this? I feel bad.
You know, I'm bored of you. I feel bad. I feel bad. I feel old.
I'm like, it's not going to happen. I'm here. I'm going to be bored of you. I'm tired of you.
I'm tired of you. I'm tired of you. I'm tired of you. I'm tired of you.
He says, I just feel bad about it. That's all I got to say. The cops have a struggle with Jay. I have a struggle with Jay.
He's the biggest mystery of this whole case for me. The cops interview him at least four times that I know about. Two of those are on tape. Jay also tells the story a trial, not once but twice because the first preceding ended in a mistrial.
At least six times he's told what happened. Each time some details shift. Some of these discrepancies seem small to me and understandable, but some are significant and confounding. That distance between where a certain detail starts and where it ends up, how far it slides and why it slides.
I've spent untold hours trying to measure that distance, trying to weigh it, for clues as to what might actually be true. For example, this is from taped interview number one. The cops are asking about what he and Anand did that morning of the 13th. Now here's tape interview number two from March 15th two weeks later.
And where did you go? We went through security square mall. That's a different mall, security square mall, a couple miles away. I put this one in the category of probably not a big deal, right?
Maybe Jay miss spoke when he said Westview initially. There are a bunch of little things like this. For example, when they're driving around that afternoon after they've ditched his car at the I-70 park and ride. But the first trial, Jay says they both got high in a non-car.
But the second trial, he says only he smoked. Anand Anand didn't want to. Then there are more significant changes. But still, you can chalk them up to Jay trying to protect his friends, or trying to protect himself.
In the first tape interview, Jay says they're grabbing some food at a restaurant when Officer Adcock calls in on asking if he's seen hay. The next time he tells it, he says that when that call comes, they're at a friend's apartment, a friend whose father happens to be a homicide detective in another county. Jay tells the cops he'd actually been to her house three different times that day, but he didn't want to get her in trouble. In the first tape statement, Jay says he refused to help dig a grave for hay.
Two weeks later, he says they both dug the hole. But then there are other changes, bigger changes, where it's harder to judge why the details shift. This one, for instance. In the first tape interview, Jay says Anand only told him that same day that he was going to kill hay.
Two weeks later, Jay says that Anand had started talking about it beforehand. Four or five days before. I think I'm going to kill her. Yeah, he said that a lot.
I'll come and stick with him several days. He said that. Anand he says Anand enlisted his help with the murder on the 12th, the night before hay disappeared. In this version, Jay tells Jen about it in advance too.
But by the time Jay testifies a trial, he goes back to the first version again, that he knew nothing until the day of, and that he didn't really take it seriously. There's so many more of these. There's a whole side trip Adnan and Jay supposedly take that afternoon after Hayes been killed to smoke some weed in Patapsco State Park. That trip disappears by trial, just drops out of the narrative.
And Jay's whereabouts, in between the time he drops Adnan back at school at midday and when he meets back up with him later that afternoon, the stories about where he is are so messy and so confusing that I can't even keep the different versions straight. But none of these discrepancies gives me, or I think the cops, as much pause as this next one. This is the mother of what the cops call Jay's inconsistencies. It's about where Adnan first showed him Hayes' body in the trunk of a car.
Here's from Tate interview number one. Jay says Adnan called him about 3.45 PM saying, come pick me up. I want you to pick him up on the March 15th. And while in route to your house, you receive a phone call from Adnan, on his self-unfusion which is in your possession.
And the conversation was what? That picture's dead, you want to give me on it, Best Buy. Best Buy, just like Jen had originally told them. This is a problem for the cops, this change.
Because it's not something you forget where you were when you saw a dead body in the trunk of a car. It's not a slip of the tongue. And it's not clear what the calculation is, Edmunds and Avenue versus the Best Buy parking lot. What's the advantage of one place over the other?
Why tell this lie? She's just saying it because it matches Jen's story. Or did he lie to Jen in the first place and then forget? I have a friend who's worked for a long time in the Baltimore judicial system.
She knows a lot of cops. And she reminded me when I was telling her about this case, cops are the most skeptical people in the world. They pretty much assume everyone is lying to them all the time. Ritz and Aguilera aren't newbies.
Aguilera came from a law enforcement family. His father had been captured in the homicide unit in fact. And Ritz was known in the department and in the state's attorney's office as a skilled and meticulous investigator. So they're not suckers.
They're taking careful note of the changes in Jay's stories. It's why they keep going back to him to clear up the inconsistencies. In the second tape interview, Aguilera confronts Jay, taking off a list of the main things he's lied to them about. And Jay admits to all the lies.
But even so, what struck me is that they don't really press him on any of it. The most forceful Aguilera gets is in this exchange about the location of the trunk pop. He actually killed her. Yes.
At that spot. He might not do your not the ship. You weren't present for that. No sir.
Why did you lie about the location? I figured there was cameras there or somebody had spotted him doing what he was doing. But if you actually didn't assist him. But I'm associated with her.
I'm associated with her. You lie about because I'm associated with her. But you did lie. Yes.
Okay. Jay is saying I figured there were security cameras at Best Buy, so that's why I lied. Because I didn't want to be associated with it. What is he talking about?
This is nonsensical. When he told the Edmonton Avenue version, he was already deeply associated with it. And if there were cameras at Best Buy parking lot, wouldn't that help his story if they showed Hayes' car or a non-walking around or putting Hayes' body in the trunk? But Aguilera lets it go, moves on to another point.
And just so you know, as best as we can tell from workers at the store and from the former landlord, there probably weren't security cameras in the Best Buy parking lot back in 1999. And there's certainly no mention of any security footage in the police reports. At the end of both of Jay's tape statements, the detectives kind of come out with it. Are you telling us the truth right now?
On February 28th, after Jay has told them off tape that he doesn't know anything about the murder, Ritz points out your story has completely changed since you first came in this room. All the information that you provided to him isn't a complete truth. It's a best buy off. And then Jay reinforces it.
Alright, I believe that concludes his interview. I just want to start off with an off-screen camera member. But of course two weeks later, big swaths of his story have changed. So Aguilera asked him again on March 15th.
Can you take an interview that you've given us right now? Is that truth? Is it the best that I could possibly hear the meaning at this point in time? Remember, that is true.
Did you kill Hayland? I'm sorry to go. Were you there when he had not killed Hayland? I put it to Bill Ritz when I talked to him briefly on the phone.
Jay's story kept changing. You were catching the inconsistencies and he was having to explain them and clean up his story. So what ultimately made you believe him? Ritz said they believe Jay's story because, quote, we were able to investigate and corroborate what he was saying, unquote.
So how exactly did they corroborate it? Next time on Serial. Serials produced by Julie Snyder, Dana Chivas and me, Emily Conan is our production and operations manager, Ira Glass is our editorial advisor, fact-checking by Karen Frigales-Smith, our theme music is composed by Nick Thorburn, scoring music by Nick and by Mark Phillips, who also mixed our show. Special thanks to Gregory Collins, Rich Ores and Lou Teddy, our website where you can listen to all our episodes and find photos, letters and other documents from the case and you can sign up for our weekly emails, serialpodcast.org.
Serials are production of This American Life and WBEZChicago.