Adnan shows every sign of being able to identify and understand the emotions of others. We look at whether they seem to have empathy. Adnan is not: He is described as a peacemaker, the sort of person who defuses arguments rather than escalates them.
Most psychopaths aren’t killers, and most killers aren’t psychopaths.īut can anyone tell if someone has a crime like this in him? Koenig wonders. Regardless of whether Adnan pilfered from the mosque, he says, Adnan does not and did not have it in him to be a murderer.ģ. He is unsurprised by these revelations, and forgiving. That doesn’t make them murderers it doesn’t even necessarily make them criminals. Lots of people shoplift or take easy money that isn’t theirs. “He seemed pissed and hurt, and I understood it,” says Koenig. Why do I have to keep getting called out?” “You’re publicly shaming me for something I never denied, and what does it have to do with the case? You’re not doing it to other people. “You go from my savior to my executioner,” he tells Koenig, his voice raised in frustration. But, he asks, why is it relevant? Why is his character being turned inside out and not anyone else’s? Adnan doesn’t mention Jay he doesn’t have to. He stopped when he was caught red-handed by his mother. If the mosque were even $100 short a week, they would have noticed.Īdnan corroborates this account, admitting that he did take small amounts of donation money as part of a small group of boys the summer before eighth grade. But if Adnan took money, it couldn’t have been much. Apparently petty theft from the collection plate happens from time to time. (Later this source adds that he still thinks Adnan is a “genuinely good” person.) “I absolutely saw him,” repeats the source. “You saw him actually take money?” Koenig asks. He was looked upon as a golden child his father was religious … He was in charge of collecting the boxes, counting the money, and he was pocketing thousands of dollars every week.” One refuses to go on tape another does, anonymously, with his voice distorted. When he was a tween, Adnan stole donation money from the mosque. They call him duplicitous, smart, and charming. Other people, fearful of going on the record, confide to Koenig that they believe he was capable of committing the crime.
One person named Ali has only positive things to say: Adnan was kind to him during gym class “he would always have my back … kind of watch out for me, kind of like an older brother.” Even so, Ali is masked by a fake name and a distorted voice.
(The bias evident in episode ten perhaps explains why.) Since Adnan was arrested, his story has been seen as a neighborhood cautionary tale. They tell Koenig that information and gossip travels swiftly, and no one wants to be the individual who goes against the grain. Relatively few people from Adnan’s small, close-knit Muslim community are willing to speak on the record about Adnan. He has no idea what she is talking about. However, when she tracks down the person who supposedly first shared the incriminating information, the source is politely mystified. One alarms her, to the degree that she believes that if she can substantiate it, she will have to accept that Adnan did indeed kill Hae. Some of the rumors that reach Koenig are silly and easily dismissed. Adnan’s community is overwhelmingly supportive of him, but negative rumors continue to swirl about and around him - off the record, of course. How do we trust our own judgment - as reporters, storytellers, or simply as human beings - when we can be so very wrong, even about the people we think we know best? Three points about this episode:ġ. What are we capable of? Could someone who everyone generally agrees is a good guy strangle his girlfriend with his bare hands and then hang out, smoking pot with his friends, while her corpse freezes in his trunk? It seems that what drew Sarah Koenig to the case is not necessarily the specific mystery of who killed Hae Min Lee but a larger mystery about the human condition. Could any of us “snap” and kill someone, or does a person have to be insane in some way - perhaps a psychopath - to be a murderer? S? Jay?) Instead, Sarah Koenig asks overarching questions about humanity.
(A serial killer? Hae’s boyfriend at the time? Mr. We hear almost nothing about the victim, Hae, or other possible suspects. This discursive penultimate episode doesn’t offer much in terms of new facts about the case. Relitigating the case before the people’s court is host Sarah Koenig. Based almost exclusively on the testimony of a fellow high-school student named Jay, her ex-boyfriend Adnan Syed was sentenced to life in prison for the crime. Hae Min Lee, a Korean-American teenager in Baltimore, was strangled to death in January 1999. “Serial” is the podcast of the year, an absorbing dive into a closed case, told in roughly 40-minute weekly installments.