Sarah Koenig

I can't tell this one, I've spoken to that one, and then that one gets worried that I've broken my word, which I promise I haven't.

When person two doesn't confirm the thing person one told me, and I report that back to person one, person one often tells me person two is lying to me.

All these rumors are coming from people Adnan knew growing up in the mosque community, the South Asian families who attend the Islamic Society of Baltimore.

Some of these people I'd already talked to during my first round of reporting for this story, but then once the series started and they heard how Adnan was being portrayed, a new round of phone calls began.

The rumors themselves are nothing too dastardly.

Nobody is saying, I saw him do it, or I have proof.

None of it is directly connected to the crime.

But likely there are a great many things I don't know about Adnan.

And some of the things I was hearing were giving me pause.

So I checked them out as best I could.

Not every single one.

Some of them were so small that I initially was confused by the telling, waiting for the punchline that had already slid by.

Such as, he took a piece of my clothing, a piece of designer sportswear, and then over-explained, claiming it wasn't mine or that he didn't know it was mine, and then apologized profusely.

I, Sarah Koenig, am going to confess something right now.

I have done exactly the same thing.

More than one side wager.

On the other end of the scale was a story so incriminating that we thought, well, if this one is true, then we're done.

Our story is over.

We can all go home.

This was the biggie, and I worked every angle I could to suss it out.