Serial's Adnan Syed - did he do it?

His words say a lot

The podcast Serial looked at the murder of Hae Min Lee and the man convicted of that murder, Adnan Syed. The podcast did an excellent job of highlighting the legal and procedural issues with the case but couldn’t provide the ultimate answer of whether Syed was the murderer or not.

Syed spoke on the podcast from prison many times. The words he used are highly informative. Here is the first thing we hear him say in episode one:

Adnan Syed

I just sometimes wish they could look into my brain and see how I really felt about her. And no matter what else someone would say, they would see, man, this guy had no ill will toward her. Whatever the motivation is to kill someone, I had absolutely-- it didn't exist in me, you know what I mean? No one can ever say why.

People could say why. Oh, man, he was mad, this, that, or the other. But no one could ever come with any type of proof or anecdote or anything to ever say that I was ever mad at her, that I was ever angry with her, that I ever threatened her. That's the only thing I can really hold onto. That is like my only firm handhold in this whole thing, that no one's ever been able to prove it.

No one ever has been able to provide any shred of evidence that I had anything but friendship toward her, like love and respect for her. That's at the end of the day, man. The only thing I can ever say is, man, I had no reason to kill her.

Let’s break it down.

We don’t know the question that was asked to elicit this answer which makes it harder to work out what the expected answer or perfect answer would be. Adnan’s whole vibe in this answer is very much “it wasn’t me” only he doesn’t say that once.

He points out there is no reason for him to have killed Hae. People will perform large amounts of mental and linguistic gymnastics to avoid telling a direct lie. Is there ever a legitimate and rational reason for killing? And just because there is no reason to kill her does not mean he didn’t kill Hae.

There’s a lot of this extract that is like a word salad, so many clauses, more than double negatives, all sorts of flawed logic. Not once is there a straight statement “I did not kill Hae”

Adnan is at pains to get across how much he liked, loved, and respected Hae he never uses her name once in this excerpt. Hae is always referred to as “her”. That implies a distance between the two. It’s highly possible that Syed is creating that distance to keep bad memories at arm’s length.

“Whatever the motivation is to kill someone, I had absolutely-- it didn't exist in me, you know what I mean? No one can ever say why.”

Here Syed claims both that he does not know what a motivation would be to kill someone and that he knows he didn’t have that motivation in him. Can that be true? I suspect a more revealing line here is “no one can ever say why”, we’ve all been there where we’ve done something irrational on the spur of the moment, if it turns out the be the wrong thing to have done, we look back and wonder why we did it.

No evidence?

Consider these two lines :

People could say why. Oh, man, he was mad, this, that, or the other. But no one could ever come with any type of proof or anecdote or anything to ever say that I was ever mad at her, that I was ever angry with her, that I ever threatened her.

No one ever has been able to provide any shred of evidence that I had anything but friendship toward her, like love and respect for her

These are extremely weak denials. Look at them closely. Adnan does not deny he was mad at her, does not deny he was angry with her, does not deny threatening her. He merely says there is no proof of these things. In other words, they could well of happened, just there’s no proof.

Likewise, he doesn’t say he only had friendship, love and respect for Hae. He says no one has any evidence otherwise.

That is all weak enough, but we can take this further. Adnan can’t bring himself to tell us there is no evidence he killed Hae only there is no evidence that he had bad feelings about her.

Ever, ever

The words people repeat when they talk tell is a lot about what is important to them. Ever is one such word. Look at this “But no one could ever come with any type of proof or anecdote or anything to ever say that I was ever mad at her, that I was ever angry with her, that I ever threatened her”.

Ever has two meanings “always” and “at any time”. It is possible here that Adnan is using the “always” definition. He wasn’t always mad or angry with her. That’s a world of difference from the other definitions that he wasn’t mad or angry with her at any time.

Hold firm

The next repeated word gives me the chills. “That's the only thing I can really hold onto. That is like my only firm handhold in this whole thing”

Hold and firm handhold really stood out in this excerpt. Such strong words in an otherwise woolly statement. Hae Min Lee was killed by manual strangulation. I don’t believe the choice of words is a coincidence.

We reveal much more than we mean to when we speak. Here Adnan is at pains to point out he had no anger, he wasn’t mad at Hae. The implication here is that anger is the only possible reason for one person to murder another. Therefore, if he wasn’t mad he couldn’t have done it.

There are plenty of reasons for killing someone. Accident, jealousy, fear, self-defence, an altered state of mind. So just because he wasn’t mad (more accurately there is no evidence he was mad) Adnan is saying he couldn’t have done it. Which plainly isn’t true.

Adnan is drawn towards one reason only and very keen to focus on that. He puts no focus on any alternative theory at this point. This suggests he knows well the reason Hae was killed.

Conclusion

It is slightly possible Adnan has been in the system so long that he’s only looking at evidence and motive. However, he was convicted of killing Hae Min Lee by strangulation. It was said the reason was anger. Nothing in his statement here suggests that conviction is wrong.

The Serial podcast may have been a lot shorter and a lot less successful if it stopped and paid proper attention to the very first words they used from Adnan.

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