Adnan's Story Page 12

  It was a hunt for any behavior that was suspicious, any inkling that would confirm their foregone conclusion: that he was an obsessed, heartbroken, angry young Muslim man who couldn’t take the end of the romance lightly, who thought he had some Islamic duty to kill Hae, and whose community would accept his behavior.

  Woodlawn friends and teachers weren’t able to offer much more than banalities, many of them in fact affirming that Adnan and Hae had a good relationship, that there was never any violence between them, that even after breaking up they were friends. But they did all report that their relationship suffered because of family and his faith.

  Debbie Warren was the only one who reported that Adnan was possessive, but initially her suspicion was clearly on Don, as evidenced by her belief that he had perhaps “hidden” Hae and her surreptitious e-mail message to him that led to their seven-hour phone call.

  Debbie had reached out to Don before Hae’s body was found. It’s worth noting that in the interviews Don gave to Baltimore County Police and the investigator Mandy Johnson, he doesn’t mention the possibility of Adnan’s involvement in Hae’s disappearance. It may have been that early on he didn’t realize that she had truly disappeared, assuming she had gone to California, but later, when it became clear that something was very wrong he began to think Adnan was involved and told Debbie so. The seven-hour phone conversation is a little harder to explain—especially in light of an undated police note that reads: “None of Hae girlfriends like new boyfr. New boyfriend assaulted Debbie.”

  The only new boyfriend Hae had was Don. But nowhere else in any of the files is this assault by Don explained.

  * * *

  Because the police didn’t begin interviewing most of Hae’s classmates and teachers until long after she disappeared, and after Adnan’s arrest, the statements they give end up conflicting on a few points, one major one in particular—when Hae actually left school.

  Becky recalls seeing Hae leaving school immediately after dismissal, around 2:20 p.m., when she tells Adnan she can’t give him a ride. But about a month earlier, Debbie told Detective O’Shea she saw Hae leaving close to 3:00 p.m., saying she was going to see Don at the mall, though Debbie didn’t actually see her leave school.

  Inez Butler, the school athletic trainer, backs up Becky’s recollection in a police interview when she says Hae pulled up to her concession stand in the bus loop to grab Andy Capp Hot Fries and apple juice. According to Butler in a March 23 interview, this happened around 2:30 p.m. the day Hae disappeared.

  The police only get two statements about where Adnan was around the end of and after school that day. The first is from Debbie, who recalls seeing him at the guidance counselor’s office picking up a letter of recommendation around 2:45 p.m., dressed and ready for track practice. The second is from Coach Michael Sye, Adnan’s track coach, who says in his March 23 police interview, “Ms. Graham lets them go from study hall, they change, come to track. I usually arrive around 3:30. From what I remember he was there on time, left on time.”

  The police weren’t able to get information that would tie Adnan to the crime from anyone at Woodlawn, but they did think there was another set of people who might be able to tie Adnan to the crime.

  Of Adnan’s Muslim friends who were questioned (including Nisha because they couldn’t distinguish between Muslim and Hindu), all were asked if he had told them anything about the murder—but none of his non-Muslim school friends were asked that.

  Of particular interest to the police was Yaser Ali, the same person thought to have been referenced in the February 12, 1999 anonymous tip. Yaser, an old family and childhood friend of Adnan’s, had grown apart from him in the last couple of years. He knew Adnan was dating but was disappointed by the fact that he was having sex. Though he didn’t attend Woodlawn High, Yaser knew Hae, had met her at a party. He also knew Jay, whom he saw at a party in late January, but Yaser also had gone to school with him for a couple of years in the past.

  The interview notes, taken on April 8, seem to suggest Yaser had already spoken to Detective MacGillivary once before, though no record exists. He also mentioned that he had been contacted by Andrew Davis, a private investigator working for Adnan’s attorney.

  A couple of things Yaser said put holes in the cops’ case: first, that Adnan had been looking for a cell phone for months, contradicting the idea that he had gotten it specifically for the murder, and second, he denied everything attributed to him in the anonymous call.

  Though he didn’t have any knowledge of the crime, the police were able to get this information from him:

  Inexplicably, in the same notes is a handwritten section that says: “Tanveer—older brother, student @ Towson State, pretty straight guy.”

  How Yaser would both state that Tanveer is a “straight guy” and at the same time imply he had some involvement with Hae’s death is hard to reconcile. It didn’t seem that the police took it seriously, though, since there’s no evidence that they investigated Tanveer at all.

  The police struck out with Yaser, but they tried hard to find someone in the Muslim community that Adnan may have confessed to or confided in. The implication is striking: Muslims were the kind of people who would quietly accept and cover for the murder of a young girl—much as Wash was implying at the bail hearing.

  The suspicion of the Muslim community was so deep that after local Pakistani activist Alfreda Gill visited the school with Adnan’s father to collect Adnan’s school work to deliver to him in jail, a school official took down her license plate number and immediately informed the police of this suspicious character. That one act of kindness on Gill’s part earned her the prize of having her phone records subpoenaed by the police on March 24, 1999, five days after the visit. In fact, the list of people who had their phone records subpoenaed is exclusively Muslim: Gill, Bilal Ahmed, Adnan, and my brother Saad. Jay Wilds’ and Jenn Pusateri’s phone records are not subpoenaed, and neither are the records of the people Jay called on Adnan’s phone on January 13: Phil Mendez and Patrick Furlow.

  Even the kinds of questions posed by jurors in the grand jury to Saad and Bilal Ahmed indicate that they were well aware of the State’s theory of the case—that this was a religiously sanctioned murder. Not having the full transcript of these confidential proceedings, we can only imagine what the opening statement by Wash must have been like to produce questions with such suspicious and disturbing pretexts.

  Among them:

  “In the Islamic community, suppose a young adult goes to an adult that he respects, a mentor, and confesses the same thing, that he has committed a terrible crime … is there a particular course of action that is dictated by the Islamic faith for that mentor? Would he be required to notify the civilian authorities?”

  “I have one more question. You stated before in your community you have no punishment for dating per se. Is there in the Koran a punishment for dating or marrying outside of the Islamic faith?”

  Ahmed was also asked about his immigration status and command of English and why he hired an attorney. Clearly, the jury was suspicious of him as someone who might be keeping a confession by Adnan secret.

  The line of questioning about Islamic punishments for dating and sex are still confounding to me. Is it the State’s theory that these punishments are meant for the person who a Muslim is dating, which seems the implication, given the allegation that the community would hide or support Adnan’s killing of Hae? Or that Adnan risked some terrible religious punishment for dating Hae, and when he was dumped he was angry that he risked it all for nothing? Regardless, it wasn’t just Adnan being indicted at this grand jury proceeding, it wasn’t just him being investigated and prosecuted. His faith, his ethnicity, even his community—they were all on trial.

  It would be up to Gutierrez to defend us all.

  * * *

  Gutierrez met with the community group that had formed at the mosque to help organize Adnan’s defense twice that summer as she prepared for the trial. Each time, in respon
se to the many questions about the likelihood of success, she emphasized one thing: it was the State’s burden to prove Adnan did it. And from what she knew there was little evidence to support the charges. As long as she was able to poke enough holes in the case, she’d win. It was about reasonable doubt, after all.

  Saad spent almost an entire week with Gutierrez when she was representing him and Bilal for the grand jury proceedings, and he would repeatedly press her on how to go about Adnan’s defense.

  “I would tell her, hey Adnan was seeing other girls, you need to call them, and are you going to get the DNA tested, and he was definitely at the mosque that night so you gotta find others who saw him, and what about video cameras, maybe he was on video somewhere like at the school or mosque,” Saad said, exasperated.

  Gutierrez listened but her response was the same: it’s not our burden to prove anything. Stop worrying.

  Before she was hired, Colbert and Flohr had already begun doing what attorneys should—building a defense for their client.

  Defense Private Investigator Andrew Davis first entered the scene on March 4, 1999. He met with Flohr and Adnan a few days after Adnan’s arrest. The first order of business in this case was obvious: establish where Adnan was after school on the day Hae disappeared. There are no notes of Davis’s interview with Adnan, but the very same day he went to meet Coach Sye, an indication that Adnan must have told him he was at track practice that day. Unfortunately, there is no definitive confirmation by Sye that he was definitely at track on the 13th, but he did say that Adnan was at track the majority of the time. He medaled in track, and would have gotten a varsity letter if he hadn’t been arrested, according to Sye.

  Most importantly, the notes say “3:30–4:30-5:00,” indicating that track began at 3:30 and ended between 4:30 and 5:00 p.m.

  * * *

  About a week later, on March 10, Davis interviews Jay’s boss, a woman only ever identified as “Sis,” who tells him that Jay was hired around January 24 and was supposed to begin training the very next day. But he didn’t show up from the 25th through the 27th of the month. His first actual training day ended up being January 31. Sis told Davis that Jay would usually get rides to work, not having his own car, and gave him a rundown of his working hours through February and March.

  Sis noted that the police had come by several times to speak with Jay and she eventually asked him if it was in connection with the “girl found in the park.” He said yes. He told her that he knew who killed Hae, stating that “no one thinks he did it but he did kill her.”

  That same day Davis also interviewed one of Adnan’s closest friends and fellow Magnet Program student, Stephanie McPherson. Stephanie was so close to Adnan that it may have been a point of discomfort for her boyfriend, Jay Wilds.

  Stephanie was another overachiever—smart, driven, athletic, and headed for a bright academic future. Her boyfriend, on the other hand, was not who her parents had in mind for her. Jay was in many ways from the wrong side of the tracks. Stephanie came from a solid middle-class home and had parents who demanded excellence from, and for, their daughter. The future they envisioned for her didn’t have someone like Jay in it, and he was painfully aware of that. But Stephanie loved him and they dated throughout high school.

  Adnan and Stephanie had been classmates and friends since middle school and had an ongoing flirtation that never got further than that. Adnan considered Stephanie to be one of his closest friends, but things changed a bit when he began dating Hae—Stephanie didn’t completely approve.

  Still, they continued to hang out, darlings of the other students who had named them junior prom king and queen the prior spring.

  Now, however, a wall had come down. Stephanie had not reached out to Adnan or his family since his arrest, though other students like Asia had visited his home. According to other students, she went on emotional lockdown, refusing to talk to anyone about anything related to the case.

  She did, however, speak to PI Davis twice. The first time was at her home in the presence of her parents. In this interview Stephanie notes that Adnan “is one of my best friends.” She had known him since grade school, but she had only met Hae during their freshman year in high school. She had found Adnan and Hae’s relationship “odd” because she found Hae to be shallow, but also odd because of Adnan’s religious beliefs. She said that in November or December of 1998 Hae became strange because she had a new boyfriend and that Adnan “was said to be upset because he didn’t see it coming.” She said while Adnan wanted to meet Don to size him up, he was happy that they had broken up because now he didn’t feel guilty talking to other girls and hanging out with his friends. She remembered when Adnan got his cell phone and said they spoke nearly every night on the phone.

  On the day that Hae went missing Stephanie recalled getting a birthday gift from Adnan, a stuffed reindeer, and that Hae was very quiet at lunch. Nothing else unusual happened that day, and she left school at around 2:15 p.m., arriving home at 2:55 and then returning for a basketball game around 3:30 or 3:45 p.m.

  The day Hae’s body was found, on February 9, she said she spoke to Adnan on the phone and then he came over to her house along with a number of other friends. Hae’s brother called them and confirmed that Hae had been found, and Adnan immediately said they should call the detective because he didn’t believe it. As Adnan was crying, they attempted to contact O’Shea and ended up leaving him a message.

  Stephanie told Davis that there was no talk in school at all about Adnan being involved in Hae’s death until he was arrested, but that her boyfriend Jay told her he had personal knowledge of Adnan’s culpability and that he’d also told her that Adnan had threatened Stephanie as well. Stephanie also stated that she “did not believe that Adnan would ever threaten her but she believed her boyfriend of many years, Jay, was an honest person.”

  Stephanie doesn’t report anything unusual in this interview, other than the threat Jay says Adnan made toward her, and one other thing—that while she spoke to Jay late on the night of January 13, she didn’t actually see him that day. This contradicts both Jay and Jenn, who say they went to Stephanie’s house that night so Jay could wish her a happy birthday. As for the threat, it seems clearly false to me: Stephanie knew nothing of Adnan’s connection to the murder or his alleged threat until after he was arrested, meaning until after Adnan couldn’t reach or harm her anyway. If the threat were real, why would Jay allow Stephanie to hang out with Adnan and speak to this alleged murderer on the phone every single night? The threat Jay brings up after Adnan’s arrest seemed to be a mechanism to keep them from communicating ever again.

  The very next day, on March 11, 1999, a memorial service was held at Woodlawn High School for Hae. Adnan had a hand in organizing the event (it was his responsibility to purchase a tree to plant in Hae’s name as well as draft a speech to give) but he missed it because of his arrest.

  The memorial was held in the school gymnasium, and Davis showed up to try and get some interviews with students. The only one he was able to connect with was Stephanie, whom he had just spoken to the night before. This time she added a detail she hadn’t mentioned before: between 4:15 and 5:30 p.m. on January 13, she had called Adnan on his cell while waiting for her basketball game to start, and Jay was with him at the time.

  The night before the memorial, when Davis had been interviewing Stephanie, Jay showed up at the house, knowing Adnan’s PI was going to be there. Her parents had turned him away but he was told to return later. Undoubtedly their conversation was about Adnan and Jay’s involvement in the case, and the importance of Jay being placed with Adnan that late afternoon. Maybe Stephanie thought she would be helping her boyfriend with this additional detail, or maybe Jay asked her to say it. But not only does Jay never mention such a phone call in any of his statements, past or future, according to Coach Sye, Adnan was most likely at track practice at that time.

  This invites the conclusion that Stephanie is willing to do what it takes to protect Jay from the
defense investigation, but she isn’t willing to lie to the police for him. If she had, she certainly would have been a prosecution witness as someone who could corroborate Jay’s story. But Stephanie—the only person in the story who is so close to both of these young men—never again makes an appearance in the case after her interviews with Davis and the police.

  Stephanie may have had her boyfriend’s back but Adnan, one of her best friends, is on his own now. He’s the only one who can prove where he was after school on January 13, 1999.

  CHAPTER 6

  WITNESS FOR THE PROSECUTION

  The Prophet said thrice,

  “Should I inform you about the greatest of the great sins?”

  They said, “Yes, O Allah’s Apostle!”

  He said, “To join others in worship with Allah and to be undutiful to one’s parents.”

  The Prophet then sat up after he had been reclining and said,

  “And I warn you against giving false witness,

  and he kept on saying that warning till we thought he would not stop.”

  Sahih ul Bukhari, book 52, hadith 18

  As Adnan waited in prison for the trial, my family and I did the only thing we knew how to do—we tried to keep his morale up. Adnan did the same thing with us, never once discussing details of the case or the tremendous stress he was under. We all acted like this was a temporary thing.

  Adnan would tell funny stories of people he met on the inside, to distract us. He was terrified. But he never let any of us know. All around, it was a carefully orchestrated dance to avoid more pain than anyone could bear.

  It wasn’t always easy for him to hide his feelings, though. Once in a while, the pain would jump off the pages of his letters. When he received his high school diploma in a ceremony at the prison, his sadness was clear in a letter he wrote to me: