Serial: Phone Records, Bank Records, and Alibi Witnesses

The following post is a collection of a few points of interest that I’ve mentioned elsewhere, in other forums, but have not yet addressed on my blog. In order to make everything available in a central location, I’ve expanded on those topics below, with links to source material.

The 5:13 p.m. Phone Call

In addition to the 33 calls that were disclosed in the phone records introduced at trial, additional records, provided by Abe Waranowitz but not introduced into evidence, disclosed the existence of an additional, previously undisclosed phone call made from Adnan’s cellphone on January 13, 1999.  AT&T’s dropped call records from January 13th show that a call made to or from Adnan’s cellphone was dropped, apparently due to reception issues:

The 5:13 p.m. call does not show up on Adnan’s phone bill, or on the cellphone records obtained by the prosecution, so there is no way to know if it was an incoming or outgoing call, or who might have been on the other line. The 5:13 p.m. call does, however, provide a more detailed context for the 5:14 p.m. call, which was an incoming call to voicemail. Adnan’s cellphone received or made a call at 5:13 p.m. that was subsequently dropped due to poor reception, and then (presumably) the person who had been on the other end of the line tried to call back at 5:14 p.m., but was sent to voicemail instead, as the phone did not have reception at that time.

The tower from which this call was dropped was L651A, which covers Woodlawn and the area around Woodlawn High School. The previous call, at 4:58 p.m., had originated on L654C, which roughly covers the area of Jay’s mother’s house — however, as an incoming call, that could also be an artifact of the unreliability of location data for incoming calls, making it uncertain where the phone had been before. These records indicate that the 4:58 p.m. call was likely from Adnan asking Jay to pick him up at 5:30 p.m., which was the typical time that track practice ended. After receiving the call, Jay (along with the cellphone) then migrated up towards Woodlawn to pick Adnan up, so that, at 5:13 p.m., the phone was in the area covered by L651A.

The Real Nisha Call

The real Nisha Call was not the 3:32 p.m. call on January 13th, but a call that occurred at 7:17 p.m. on February 14th. That call — unlike the call made to Nisha on January 13th — is consistent with the cellphone records, with Nisha’s testimony concerning the nature of the phone call, and with Jay’s work records.

The Real Nisha Call

The cell records show that, at the time of the February 14th call, Adnan’s cellphone was in the vicinity of the video store where Jay worked — consistent with Nisha’s recollections of what was happening at the time of the phone call.

Jay’s work schedule, provided by his manager at the video store where he worked, confirmed that Jay was working at the video store at the time of the February 14th call:

This phone call matches Nisha’s testimony far better than does the phone call made on January 13th. Consider her testimony from the first trial:

KU: Now, just to focus you in. Did there come a time where he called you and put a person named Jay on the phone?
Nisha: Yes.
KU: Would you please tell the ladies and gentlemen of the jury what that conversation consisted of?
Nisha: It’s a little hard to recall, but I remember him telling me that Jay invited him over to a video store that he worked at and he basically, well Adnan walked in with the cell phone and then he said, like he told me to speak with Jay and I was like okay, because Jay wanted to say hi, so I said hi to Jay and that’s all I can really recall.
KU: And did you recognize the voice of the Defendant on that phone call?
Nisha: Yes.
KU: And about how long was the conversation?
Nisha: I wouldn’t say it was that long. Maybe a couple minutes or so. It could be —
KU: About what time of day did that occur?
Nisha: I would think towards the evening, but I can’t be exactly sure.
KU: Can you remember the day that that phone call occurred today?
Nisha: No, I can’t exactly remember the day, but I know it was some time in January. (12/10/99 Tr. 27-28.)

So Nisha thinks it was “some time in January,” but her memory of the phone call with Jay is linked not to a specific date, but to an event, Adnan walking into the video store where Jay worked. There is a conflict here, though, as Jay’s first day working at the porn store was on January 31st — when he worked the midnight shift. As it is unlikely that Adnan would be walking into Jay’s store in the middle of the night, let alone calling Nisha at that time, this cannot be when the phone call that Nisha remembers occurred.

In the second trial, Nisha gave consistent testimony on these same key facts: that the call had occurred when Jay invited Adnan to come to the video store where he worked, and that the call took place ‘towards the evening.’

KU: Now, did there ever come a time when the defendant called you and put a person he identified as Jay on the line?
Nisha: Yes.
KU: Please tell the ladies and gentlemen of the jury what that call consisted of?
Nisha: Basically, Jay had asked him to come to an adult video store that he worked at.
KU: No, don’t — tell us what the defendant told you? Tell us the content of the call?
Nisha: Okay. He just asked me how I was doing?
KU: When you say “he,” who do you mean?
Nisha: Adnan.
KU: Okay.
Nisha: And then he put his phone – – put his friend Jay on the line, and he basically asked the same question.
KU: And he described him as his friend Jay?
Nisha: Yes.
KU: Do you have any independent recollection of when that call occurred?
Nisha: I can’t remember the exact date.
KU: And about how long did that call take?
Nisha: I would say, like, a minute or so.
KU: Okay. Now, —
Nisha: It was not that long.
KU: — drawing your attention back to the exhibit, line 25, which was a call — do you recall about what time of day that that call occurred?
Nisha: The one on – – yeah, I think it was in the evening time. (1/28/00 Tr. 189-191.)

Moreover, at the second trial, Nisha backed away from her previous claim that the call had been made “some time in January,” stating instead that the call could have happened any time up until Adnan’s arrest on February 28th:

CG: And you don’t recall when that conversation took place?
Nisha: No.
CG: So it could have been the 13th or it could have been any other day from the NewYear’s party all the way up until Mr. Syed’s arrest on February 28th?
Nisha: Yes. (Id. 202-203.)

Although the February 14th call is longer than the call Nisha remembered (10 minutes, 14 seconds vs. 2 minutes, 22 seconds), the length of that call is a much better match to Jay’s memory of the Nisha call — which he says “was a pretty long conversation, maybe like 7 – 8 minutes, 10 minutes, something like that” (Int.2 at 18).  Accordingly, whatever the 3:32 p.m. call on January 13th really was — be it a butt dial or an intentional phone call — the evidence does not support the prosecution’s contention that it was the same phone call that Nisha remembered, and  testified about at both trials.

Moreover, the January 13th phone call, which occurred at 3:32 p.m., is not consistent with all of the other phone calls made to Nisha from Adnan’s phone. Aside from that single phone call, Adnan never once called her before 7 p.m. on school day, as shown from the following table of all phone calls made to Nisha from Adnan’s phone from January 12th through February 17th:

Other than January 13th, the only weekday on which Adnan’s phone ever called Nisha before 7 p.m. was on Thursday, January 14th. However, that day was not a school day. Due to the storms that hit Maryland early on the morning of January 14th, neither Adnan nor Nisha would have been in school that day. Although I do not know what school Nisha attended, she lived in Silver Spring, which was also affected badly by the storm. According to one court filing I found, schools in PG County (adjacent to Silver Spring) was shut down for both the 14th and the 15th:

On Thursday, January 14, 1999, Mr. Brooks made arrangements with the Court to hear at 8:45 a.m. on Friday, January 15, 1999, his motion to restrain and enjoin [Council’s] proposed 9:30 a.m. sale of even date. On the afternoon of January 14, 1999, Mr. Brooks advised Mr. Emig that said hearing had been set. However, as a result of the ice storm which occurred on January 14th and 15th (resulting in power outages and school closings both days), Mr. Brooks suffered electrical power `brown outs’ that caused the loss of both the proposed orders and extensive corrections to said motion which had been entered into Mr. Brooks’ word processor.

This leaves the January 13th call as the only call Adnan’s phone ever made to Nisha before 7:30 p.m. on a school day — and this break from the normal calling pattern further supports that the 3:32 p.m. call on January 13th was not an actual conversation between Adnan and Nisha, as Nisha likely would not even have been home at that time.

Why Adnan Got a Cellphone

In addition to obtaining the call records for Adnan’s cellphone, investigators also obtained phone records for Adnan’s home phone line. Those records give a good indication as to why Adnan suddenly decided to buy a cellphone on January 11th, 1999: Nisha.

Adnan and Nisha met one another at a New Years Eve party. The records from Adnan’s home phone show that,  during the first two weeks of January, the two of them spoke frequently:

Call records for the Syed residence.

So frequently, in fact, that Adnan managed to rack up  $45.50 in long-distance charges in just ten days, all from calls he had made to Nisha. Which his parents would see when they paid the phone bill. At $37 a month, a cellphone plan was a whole lot cheaper, and a whole lot more private.

It is also worth noting that the call records from Adnan’s home phone confirm that, on school days, Adnan’s calls to Nisha occurred exclusively in the evenings.

The Crown Gas Station Receipt

One of the items recovered from the trunk of Hae’s car was a receipt from a Crown gas station in eastern Baltimore:

Although the date on the receipt was illegible, Hae’s bank records show that the transaction at the Crown gas station — for a $1.71 purchase — had a post date of January 13, 1999, the same day that Hae was murdered. As Hae would not have had an opportunity to make a purchase from that gas station on January 13th,  there has been a great deal of theorizing about whether the Crown gas station receipt was connected to Hae’s murder, and perhaps represented a purchase made by her killer.

It wasn’t. A review of Hae’s bank statements shows that the “date posted” for purchases made on Hae’s check card is not the same as the data of the underlying transaction. In addition to the “date posted,” the actual date of each purchase is listed separately, under the “transaction” column. Just like the receipt for the $10.00 withdrawal on 1/10/99 shows a posted date of 1/11/99, but a transaction date of 1/11/99, that the transaction at the Crown gas station shows a posted date of 1/13/99, but a transaction date of 1/11/99.

And a quick side note, in regards to the quoted section from the evidence review transcript, above: this is the only confirmation that Hae’s purse had been left in her car. During the evidence review session, investigators noted that two of the items in evidence — hand lotion and a bottle of perfume — were found in Hae’s purse (which the transcript here described as being found in her trunk, although other sources place the purse in the back seat of her car instead). This is inconsistent with Jay’s statement from his first police interview, in which he told the detectives that Adnan had taken Hae’s purse with him after abandoning her car off Edgewood:

After he moved it to the second spot then he got out the car and acted like he was carrying her purse and her wallet and he had some other stuff in his hand and ah. (Int.1 at 19.)

Was Adnan only pretending when he “acted like he was carrying [Hae’s] purse,” since he didn’t actually carry it out of her car? What was he doing, pretending to wear high heels and prancing about as if he was holding an imaginary purse in his hands?

Yaser and Adnan Never Spoke on January 13, 1999

At trial, Adnan’s friend Yaser testified that he did not recall speaking to Adnan on January 13th, even though Adnan’s phone records show two calls to Yaser that day: one at 6:59 p.m. (27 seconds) and 10:02 p.m. (7 seconds).

It turns out the reason Yaser does not remember speaking to Adnan is because he didn’t. Yaser is one of only three witnesses for whom the investigators subpoenaed call records (all other phones were either not investigated at all, or only subscriber data was requested). Yaser’s cellphone records show that he received no incoming calls at either of the times that As Adnan’s phone plan billed from “send to end,” the call times for the two calls to Yaser on the 13th represent the time the phone spent ringing, and not the time of any connection between the two lines.

During the Missing Person Investigation, Baltimore County Police Did Suspect a Link Between Hae’s Disappearance and the Murder of Jada Lambert

Less than a year prior to Hae’s death, in April of 1998, another 18-year-old woman from Woodlawn disappeared while driving to work. Jada Lambert (who was apparently — although unconfirmed — was class of 1998 at Woodlawn) was last seen in her car driving to the mall. Her body was found in a park five days later:

The woman found strangled in a Northeast Baltimore stream Friday was identified yesterday as an 18-year-old from Woodlawn, city police said.

Homicide Detective Oscar Requer said the victim, Jada Denita Lambert, was last reported seen about 8 a.m. Thursday when she left her home in the 6400 block of Woodgreen Circle for Mondawmin Mall, where she was to get a state identification card before starting a job at Chemlawn.

Although the body was fully clothed, Requer said much of the woman’s personal property was missing when she was found by police acting on an anonymous tip to 911.

In 2003, Roy Sharonnie Davis was convicted of her murder, after a DNA match was made in the Maryland DNA database:

A 911 call led police to Herring Run Park in Northeast Baltimore, where they found Lambert’s body in a stream, according to the prosecutor’s office. The teenager had been raped and strangled.

“They didn’t have a clue as to who did this,” May said.

In 2000, Davis was sentenced for an armed robbery, and two years later a Maryland state police computerized DNA index matched a sample from a swab taken from Lambert’s body with DNA obtained from Davis when he was incarcerated, May said. A blood sample confirmed the match.

At one point, Lambert and Davis lived a block from each other on Woodgreen Circle.

The eerie parallels to Hae’s murder are obvious, and there was speculation of a connection by the media when Hae’s body was found in Leakin Park:

Authorities would not say whether they are investigating a link between Lee’s death and last year’s strangulation of Jada Denita Lambert, an 18-year-old Woodlawn woman whose body was found in May in a stream in Northeast Baltimore.

Lambert disappeared while driving to work at Mondawmin Mall. No arrest has been made in the case.

Although there is no indication that the murder investigation led by the Baltimore Police Department ever considered a possible link between the murder of Hae Lee and the murder of Jada Lambert, the existence of a possible connection was considered by the Baltimore County Police, during the missing persons investigation. The following map, which was included in the files from Baltimore County concerning the investigation into Hae’s disappearance, has three areas circled: Woodlawn High School, Woodgreen Circle, and Campfield Early Learning Center:

(As a side note, this map appears to identical to the one torn out of the map book in Hae’s car. You can see that it covers far more than Leakin Park.)

Woodlawn High School was where Hae was last seen, and Campfield Early Learning Center was believed to be her destination — and directly in between those two locations is Woodgreen Circle, where Jada Lambert had lived, and where she had last been seen driving off to work before her disappearance. Evidently, prior to Hae’s body being discovered, Baltimore County officers were looking into whether there could have been a connection with the Lambert case, because Hae was believed to have been driving in the exact same area that Lambert had disappeared from ten months earlier.

Although Roy Sharonnie Davis was not a suspect in Lambert’s murder at the time of Hae’s death, it is worth noting that, as of January 1999, he lived off of Liberty Road, not far off from where the “26” is circled on this map.

Adnan’s Track Coach Saw Adnan at Track Practice at 3:30 p.m on January 13, 1999

According to Adnan, after last bell at 2:15 p.m. on January 13th, he went to the library and then headed to track practice. The prosecution’s theory of the case was that Adnan had instead, somehow, gotten into Hae’s car (without any witnesses seeing him, despite the hundreds of kids streaming out of the school building), killed her by 2:36 p.m., and then spent a couple hours driving around west Baltimore with Jay before heading to track practice. The exact time that the prosecution alleged Adnan was at track is unclear — according to Jay, Adnan went to track practice from about 5pm to 6:45 p.m. (first interview), from about 4:45 to 5:45 p.m. (second interview), or from about 4:30 to 4:58 p.m. But all of Jay’s many stories do agree that Adnan was very late for track practice that day. In Jay’s second interview, he even told the detectives that Adnan “had to run a lot” and that he “was late” getting to practice:

MacGillivary: Did he talk about any anything that he had
to do with practice?
Jay: He just said he had to run a lot.
MacGillivary: He had to run?
Jay: Yeah and that he was late.
MacGillivary: He was late?
Jay: Um-hum.
MacGillivary: Getting there?
Jay: Yes. (Int.2 at 25.)

Adnan’s track coach, Michael Sye, remembered something different. He told the police that track practice began at 3:30 p.m. and was “usually over at 5:30 p.m.,” and that, on January 13th, Adnan had been “there on time, left on time.” At both trials, Inez Butler gave similar testimony, noting that “[t]rack practice would start after study hall, and study hall started from 2:15 to 3:00, and they had to be at practice at least by 3:30″ (2/04/00 Tr. 14-15). Becky similarly told the police that Adnan had to be at practice on time, or else Coach Russell “would be really upset”:

Becky did not give a precise start time for track practice, but said that “track usually started before [ ] approximately 3:30.”

Another track coach, Coach Graham, told the police that she could not remember if Adnan had been at practice on “that exact day,” but that she thought Coach Russell or Coach Sye might have been working with him on January 13th. She also provided study hall hours as from 2:30 to 3:15 p.m., although noted that because of his GPA, Adnan would not have needed to sign in or out:

Coach Sye specifically recalled Adnan being at track that day because they had a conversation about Ramadan during warm-up. His police statement — which corroborates Adnan’s alibi — seems to have been overlooked because in his statement to the police, he did not specifically recall that his conversation with Adnan had taken place on the 13th. However, the practice that Sye remembers could only have been on January 13th. There is no other day that Coach Sye could possibly have been referring to.

When the detectives came to talk to Coach Sye on March 23, 1999, Coach Sye told the police that, during Ramadan, Adnan would not participate in a full practice with the other athletes, since Adnan was fasting during the day, but he did attend practices, and would go on a jog around the track. He also told them about the following about the conversation with Adnan at practice one day — which Coach Sye had initiated — while Adnan was stretching at the track:

So according to Coach Sye, this conversation took place: (1) in January, towards the end of Ramadan; and (2) when the weather was “in the 50’s.” Coach Sye was very clear that what he remembers was a “warm day” conversation. That year, Ramadan had begun on December 23, 1998, and the last school day before the end of Ramadan was January 15, 1999. During the last two weeks of Ramadan, there were only two days on which the temperature went above 40 degrees, and which Coach Sye’s memory could have been referring to:

Based on the weather records, both January 12 and January 13 could fit Coach Sye’s memory of the day in question. It turns out, however, that the day Coach Sye had his conversation with Adnan could not have occurred on January 12th — because the Woodlawn track team had a meet that day, and Adnan and Coach Sye would not have been at practice.

(And in case there is any doubt that Woodlawn’s track team did attend the Baltimore County Relays, taking first place.)

Adnan himself remembered this conversation as well, and told his attorney that “he believes he attended track practice on [January 13th] because he remembers informing his coach that he had to lead prayers on Thursday.” Which means that Adnan’s track practice alibi is confirmed by a reliable, unbiased witness. Unless you believe that Jay Wilds was a more reliable witness than Coach Sye, there is no reason to think that Adnan was anywhere but a track practice on January 13th.

Although Adnan’s defense recognized Coach Sye was a potentially important witness for Adnan, they never recognized the significant of his memory of the Ramadan conversation. As far as I have been able to ascertain, the prosecution failed to provide the defense with any of the witness notes from March 23rd, including the notes of Coach Sye’s statement — which means the defense never knew about his recollection of having a “warm day conversation” with Adnan. His testimony also changed from his prior police statements, and he stated that “[p]ractice was every day after school, after their
study hall, from [ a]pproximately 4:00 to 5:30, 6″ (2/23/00 Tr. 101). The defense failed to ever question Coach Sye about the prior statements from Coach Graham, Becky, Inez Butler — and his own prior statements — all of which stated that players were to be at track after study hall, which ended at 3:15 pm.

Mr. B Saw Adnan at the Mosque on the Evening of January 13, 1999

In addition to Asia McClain and Coach Sye — who verified, respectively, Adnan’s presence at the library and at track practice that afternoon — there was a third alibi witness who verified Adnan’s presence at the mosque that evening. That witness was the infamous Mr. B — the same witness whom Jay claimed had “pled the fifth” when testifying before the grand jury:

I know that during the grand jury there was a spiritual leader of the mosque – I don’t know how to pronounce his name. Something with a B [ed. note: We’ll refer to this person as Mr. B.]. He spoke with the police during the investigation. But when he was called to the grand jury, he pled the fifth [amendment, against self incrimination through testimony]. So that whatever he knew about Adnan, he knew that if he said it in court he could also be in trouble.

Jay was wrong about Mr. B pleading the fifth in his grand jury testimony; that didn’t happen. But Jay was absolutely right when he said that “whatever [Mr. B] knew about Adnan, he knew that if he said it in court he could also be in trouble.”

Mr. B testified before the grand jury that on the evening of January 13th, Adnan was at the mosque, not in Leakin Park burying Hae’s body. Mr. B stated that he had been with Adnan that evening, helping Adnan prepare for prayers that he was going to be leading at the mosque the following day:

Mr. B would have been a valuable witness for Adnan — he could have verified that Adnan was at the mosque that evening, acting normally, and not covered in mud from a sojourn into Leakin Park. So why didn’t he testify at trial? Well, just like Jay predicted, there was trouble.

Mr. B’s last day of testimony before the Grand Jury was on March 30, 1999. Immediately afterwards, Mr. B became a subject of intense scrutiny for investigators, who subpoenaed his call records on April 13th. In fact, Ritz and MacGillivary even got the Drug Enforcement Agency involved in their investigation into Mr. B:

Even Urick took a special interest in Mr. B, singling him out as an “important witness,” and requesting meetings to further discuss his expected testimony:

It is unclear what was discussed during the meeting between Mr. B and Urick, but it does seem, based on what happened next, that Urick didn’t like what Mr. B had to tell him. On the morning of Adnan’s scheduled trial date of October 14, 1999, Mr. B was arrested and charged with a sex offense:

What convenient timing, for Urick. What are the odds that Adnan’s alibi witness would just happen to have been arrested on the morning of his trial date? (Although the defense had filed a motion for a continuance by that point, the prosecution had opposed it, and it was not known until the afternoon of October 14th that the trial would be rescheduled to a later date.) And what are the odds that Urick — a Baltimore City prosecutor with the Narcotics Division — would just happen to have received an update from Baltimore County Police about Mr. B’s arrest?

As close to zero as makes no difference, by my book. It is also telling that this disclosure was the only occasion on which Urick produced evidence to the defense on the same day he became aware of its existence. Moreover, it is also the only disclosure I have seen in which the word “Brady” is ever mentioned. Urick believed that Mr. B’s arrest constituted Brady material, but Jay’s multitude of conflicting statements did not? That Jenn’s statements were not material to Adnan’s guilt or innocence? That the cell expert’s testing methodology was not something the prosecution was required to disclose? Urick’s definition of “Brady” was a constitutional joke.

Whatever the factual circumstances leading to Mr. B’s arrest, however, there was apparently insufficient grounds to justify actually charging him with any offense:

Mr. B did not attend with of Adnan’s trials, nor was he called as a witness by either side. This was a notable departure from his previous activity. On the day of Adnan’s arrest, Mr. B had led the charge in coordinating Adnan’s defense, working the phones throughout the day in order to secure defense counsel for Adnan and to attempt to allow that attorney, Doug Colbert, to get access to Adnan during his six-hour interrogation. Mr. B was also involved in fundraising activities on Adnan’s behalf. There is no indication whatsoever that Mr. B had any testimony to give that was favorable to the prosecution — from the day of Adnan’s arrest until the day of Mr. B’s arrest, Mr. B was an important part of the defense’s case.

After the October 14th arrest, however, Mr. B dropped out of the picture completely. He distanced himself from everything having to do with Adnan’s case. Whether due to the risk of Mr. B’s impeachment, Mr. B’s change of heart about his testimony, or some other factor, Mr. B was ultimately not called as a witness at trial. But Mr. B could have testified — and did testify before the grand jury — that he had seen Adnan at the mosque that night, just as Adnan had said. As with the library and track practice, however, Adnan’s “bad luck” was not that he lacked an alibi witness who could corroborate that he was at the mosque. Adnan’s bad luck was that he had those alibi witnesses, but the jury was deprived of any opportunity to hear what they had to say.

-Susan