Jay from Serial Contradicts Podcast’s Narrative in First Major Interview

Matt WilsteinDec 29th, 2014, 7:14 pm
 


The massively-popular Serial podcast ended its 12-episode first season earlier this month, but over the Christmas weekend, Jay Wilds, the one and only witness in the state’s case against Adnan Syed in the 1999 murder of Hae Min Lee let it be known in a since-deleted Facebook post that he was ready to talk about what happened:

Jay had spoken to Serial host Sarah Koenig for the story, but would not allow her to tape his interview for the show. On Monday, The Intercept published the first of what they promise is a multi-part interview with him, in which he retells the events of January 13, 1999 as he remembers them 15 years later.

At several points during the interview, Jay contradicts not only the narrative as it was put forward by Koenig and her team of reporters, but also the original story he told the police. While Koenig reported that Adnan and Hae had broken up weeks before she was killed, Jay now says that one week before she died Adnan “found out she was either cheating on him or leaving him.” Elaborating on Adnan’s supposed motive, he continues:

From the way he carried himself, at least, it looked like he had never lost anything before. And it was really hard for him to deal with being on the losing end. In that situation, he was the loser. And people were starting to find out he was a loser, ‘Oh, you and Hae aren’t together anymore. She got a new boyfriend?’ And he didn’t know how to deal with that.

And the other thing about it, I mean, there looked like there was real hurt and pain. What else could motivate you to choke the life out of someone you cared about? He just couldn’t come to grips with those feelings. However he ended up doing it—whether it was premeditated, an involuntary reaction at that point in time—he just couldn’t come to grips with being a loser and failing. He failed; he lost the girl.

When The Intercept’s Natasha Vargas-Cooper brings up Adnan’s decision to lend Jay his car and cellphone, Jay says he did not know because he was planning to kill Hae that day, another contradiction. He says he first saw Hae’s body in front of grandmother’s house, not at a Best Buy parking lot as he told the police. If you listened closely to the podcast, you will notice more discrepancies in the interview.

Jay tells Vargas-Cooper that he did not originally tell the police the truth because he was worried about his own culpability in the murder, given the fact he agreed to help dig the hole to bury the high school girl. “That’s the best way I can account for the inconsistencies,” he says. “Once the police made it clear that my drug dealing wasn’t gonna affect the outcome of what was going on, I became a little bit more transparent.”

While Jay may not have said anything self-incriminating in the first part of this interview, Adnan Syed’s most ardent supporter, Rabia Chaudry, who first brought the case to Koenig’s attention, believes he may have helped her friend. Her take on the interview:

As for how The Intercept landed the coveted interview with Jay, Vargas-Cooper insisted that he had not been paid by the outlet:

Read part one of the interview at firstlook.org.

UPDATE — Dec. 30, 2:10 p.m. ET: We reached out to the producers of Serial and got this response: “Emily Condon, Production Manager of Serial, pointed out that the full interview isn’t out yet, and that we have no comment at this time.”

[Photo via Facebook]

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