Chapter 1: What rumors are surfacing about Adnan's character?
We gave Times employees a preview of Crossplay from New York Times Games. And here's what they had to say.
I can finally play with other people. I'm pretty competitive. It's fun to beat friends and co-workers.
I have a J for 10 points.
I'm guessing tanga is not a word. Let's see. Tanga is a word. Oh.
As an English as a second language speaker, I like to learn new words. Crossplay, the first two-player word game from New York Times Games. Download it for free today. Hello, Serial listeners. This is Sarah Koenig. If you're listening to this show, I'm hoping that means that you're into it, and maybe you want to hear more stories like it.
Well, you're in luck, because we've got a brand new show called The Idiot coming at the end of March, 2026. Just like or follow this podcast, The Serial Podcast, on your podcast app, and you'll automatically be notified when The Idiot comes out. And I am predicting you're going to love it. Okay, on to Serial Season 1.
Previously on Serial. What did he tell you?
He told me that she had broke his heart. It was extremely wrong for anyone to treat him that way. He was like the community's golden child. I think like the odds of you getting the charming sociopath, you're just not that lucky. You don't think that I know you at all?
I mean, for you to say that I'm a great person, I mean, I'm like a nice person. I've only talked to you on the phone a few times. This is a Global Telelink prepaid call from An inmate at a Maryland correctional facility.
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Chapter 2: How are the rumors affecting the community's perception of Adnan?
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. I heard it secondhand that someone said something about Adnan at a party 15 years back.
I spent weeks trying to learn first the name, then the location of that someone, then trying to contact that someone, and then finally driving several hours to question that someone in person. I nervously knock at the door. Nice guy comes out. We chat. He tells me what I've spent all these weeks and hours waiting for. "'Oh yeah,' he says. "'I remember Adnan. Nice kid.
"'I remember he seemed sad when he and his girlfriend broke up.'" And so I prompt him, I heard this thing. Is that true? Anything else you want to tell me? The guy looks blank. That's all he had for me. Imagine I have a file on my desk about this rumor, and I just stamped it with my big cartoon stamp, unsubstantiated. I cross it off the list.
There's one more rumor I'll tell you about in a minute. But first, I want to talk about why relatively few people from the mosque community are willing to talk on tape or on the record about Adnan. To give you a sense of what I'm talking about, here's Ali, not his real name, and this is also not his real voice. Why the secrecy?
So now let's say you use my voice and use my first name and last name, and then you play it on NPR radio or whatever, and then somebody from the community hears it,
within seconds that will travel throughout the whole community and this is what he said he probably knows something how do we know he's not involved or he did something or why is he doing that and that's how bizarre they're or how irrational their thinking is but i think i don't know it's very irrational thinking and it's sad because it's education educated kids
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Chapter 3: What were the significant childhood stories shared about Adnan?
talking like that.
But it's you, but you're one of them. I mean, you're basically saying I'm succumbing to this irrational... Oh, yes.
I'm 100% guilty. I'm 100% brainwashed by it.
Ali and others told me that their community is judgmental. Right and wrong is drummed into you early and often. Adults judge kids' behavior, which then gets reflected back onto their parents. This is certainly not unique to their community, and the other thing that isn't unique is how close-knit it is.
Information and gossip travel swiftly, and you don't want to be the one who goes against the grain or says something that could hurt Adnan or his parents. No one wants to end up in hot water. I live in a small town. I understand that. But what I hadn't totally understood, I think, is how scared people were when Adnan got arrested. I got an anonymous text recently that said, quote,
Some people did speak out on tape. I mean, Rabi and Saad Chowdhury obviously did, and there are others too. But there's also a significant faction of people, including Ali, who are scared. Ali said his parents were especially protective, like a 10 on the protective scale, so that after Adnan was arrested, they were frantic about his safety. His own life changed because of it.
Are you serious?
That really happened?
It really happened. I'm not even making that up. Because your mailbox was like at the end of a driveway or at the end of... No, my mailbox is attached to the wall of my house next to the front door. And if I open the front door, he's like, where are you going? Who are you going to go meet? Is it a girl? Are you going to give her a ride? Because they think Adnan gave her a ride.
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Chapter 4: How did Adnan's community react to his arrest?
And I think that's just, uh, the general, uh, I can't speak of everybody, but I think that's just how the community has become. Because it's just that fear that has just stuck in. That's how it is. And even now, if you go to a party and try to talk about Adnan's case, everyone just gets quiet. Not because they're saying he did it or he didn't do it.
It's just kind of like if you don't talk about it, then it doesn't exist.
A bunch of people I talked to told me they feel guilty towards Adnan, that they let him down, because they let him astray, or didn't protect him, or didn't mentor him, or didn't show up enough at trial, or didn't visit him in jail. Even ones who were on the fence about his innocence said, please tell Adnan I love him, or please tell him I'm sorry.
And I often say back, you should tell him yourself, you can write to him, you know. And then sometimes comes a pause. The reason Ali agreed to go on tape was that he wanted me to know this about Adnan.
I remember, especially in middle school and elementary, more into middle school, that when we would get picked for sports, Adnan was very athletic, tall, good looking, kind of like the jock role. And I was more chubby, short, kind of the nerdy, you know, kind of role. So He never made me feel that. He always made sure I got picked for the team.
If other kids made fun of me on my athletic performance or I couldn't shoot or I couldn't kick the ball and they would start poking fun, he would always have my back and kind of tell them stop it or kind of watch out for me, kind of like an older brother. And I'll never forget that.
Anand was the kind of kid who'd stand up when your parents came into the room, Ali said. At parties or events, he'd be the first one to ask, how can I help you, auntie? Do you need help setting up those tables, uncle? This was what Ali, disguised and anonymous, had to say. Normally, I probably wouldn't pursue rumors that on their face aren't connected to the crime at hand.
But in this case, I decided it was worthwhile because of where these rumors come from. I think these rumors are coming from a feeling that a handful of people have, I've heard this from about four people, people who knew Adnan growing up, that Adnan was capable of committing this crime.
I think they believe they saw things in his personality that they think I am not seeing, namely that he's duplicitous. The term psychopath gets thrown in sometimes. People told me he used his charm and his smarts to deflect suspicion or weasel out of things when he got caught, pretty much what the judge said to him at his sentencing.
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Chapter 5: What is the significance of the rumors related to Adnan's behavior?
He was stealing from the mosque every Friday.
This is a guy I can't name, whose voice we've also changed. See explanation above.
Because he was looked upon like the golden child, and his dad was very religious, and he would go out on missionary work and so on. So his family was looked at as a very good religious family. And he was collecting money, or the donation boxes that would go around on Friday after prayer, he was in charge, basically, of getting all the boxes together and counting the money and totaling it all up.
And he was pocketing thousands of dollars every week. And nobody questioned, you know, good little Muslim kid, you know, stealing from the mosque. I mean, are you serious? You couldn't even imagine.
You saw him actually take money.
You know, I absolutely saw him taking it. And I also have done it.
This guy estimated that Adnan had stolen many thousands of dollars over time, tens of thousands, maybe $100,000. This sounded fantastical to me, so I checked with Makbul Patel. He was president of the Islamic Society of Baltimore at the time. He said he'd never heard of Adnan taking donation money, but that it does happen from time to time, someone stealing or trying to.
There are people who take shoes, he added. My own brand new shoes were stolen. Twice he said that happened, once in New York and once in Baltimore. But if Adnan did take money, he said, there's no way it was a big amount. He said on average, people donated about $2,500 at Friday prayers, maybe up to $3,000 if it was a special occasion.
That money was used to pay the bills, he said, keep the electricity and heat on. If they were even $100 short on any given week, they'd have noticed. So sure, maybe $20 or $40 here or there, but not hundreds and thousands out of the question. Adnan says it's true. He did take donation money. When I first asked him about it, he was unhappy.
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Chapter 6: How does Adnan's past relate to the allegations against him?
I mean, and it's a very uncomfortable thing for me to talk about. You know what I'm saying? It's a very shameful thing that I did. You know what I'm saying? I've never denied it. I've never, I don't see, I don't understand. I just think it's really unfair to me.
If you don't want to talk about this, that's your prerogative. I'm not going to force you to talk about it.
If you don't want to talk about it... Yeah, but I'm also not going to sit here and you mention it, and this is the only thing I don't talk about. Do you understand what I'm saying? So it's put me in a predicament. It's like you're basically publicly shaming me for something that I've never denied that I did anyway. And it has nothing to do with the case.
But you won't do it to other people, though. I mean, it's like, why do I have to keep getting called out on my stuff? It has nothing to do with the case, but you don't do it to nobody else. You don't do it to nobody else, though.
A couple of days and phone calls later, all was calm, and he told me his stealing story. It was during the summer, maybe the summer before eighth grade, he said.
During, like, the Friday prayers, a lot of times there would be one adult, and he would get, like, four or five kids together. And he would say, hey, look, I want you guys to go around and collect, you know, money from people or stand there. You know, however different days, it was different ways. So it was usually anywhere from, like, four to five of us. We'd all have little boxes or something.
and people would come and they would put money in them. Usually, like, it would be, I mean, I'm not trying to say this sounds like Ocean's Eleven or whatever, but it was like thousands of dollars in cash, like ones, fives, tens, twenties. It may be like $1,500, you know, like $2,000 or $3,000 in cash. And I don't really remember who. I'm not saying it wasn't me. I'm not saying it wasn't me.
You know, it's just the idea came up like, hey, man, we could take like $60 or $80. We could go to the movies, go to the mall, you know, play in the arcades. you know, like eating stuff like that. So eventually it would be a thing where like one or two of us would like pocket a $20 bill and then pocket another $20 bill. And the other three, or, you know, two or three of us would do it.
And the other two would kind of like keep watching. And I mean, it was, you know, it was wrong. It was very wrong. You know what I mean?
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Chapter 7: What insights does the forensic psychologist provide about Adnan?
It's nothing that I'm proud of. It's not, you know, I'm very ashamed of it. You know, I don't, I don't, I don't say that we were kids to try to put it in context. or try to make an excuse. I mean, well, maybe I am, right?
But it's just, you know, I mean... What made you realize, what made you stop, and what made you realize it was wrong?
I mean, I wish I could say that it was like, you know, some feeling of religion or something, or a feeling of wrong, but it wasn't. I mean, you know, I was just kind of caught red-handed, so to speak, sometimes.
Anand says he was caught red-handed by Shamim, his mother. He says she found some money in his pants pocket and asked him where it came from, and the truth came out. He says she was horrified. It was the classic, I'm not angry, I'm disappointed. More disappointed than she'd ever been in him, he says. A nun says back then he didn't think he was hurting anyone.
They spent so much time at the mosque and they shoveled snow and they helped set up events and clean up. And so to him, it was akin to taking 20 bucks from the till of the family store at the end of the night. He says, of course, as an adult, he knows how wrong that is. But back then in eighth grade, he didn't fully get it.
Adnan's telling of this stealing episode is a much more boys will be boys version than what I'd heard from other people, who told me they saw in his actions something more malignant. A couple of people I talked to from the mosque community said, this was so low to take the hard-earned cash of hardworking people and at the mosque of all places. This was a terrible thing. Other people said, eh.
Mr. Patel, then president of the mosque, was thoroughly unruffled by the whole thing. He obviously didn't condone it, but he more or less said, so what? It certainly does not a murderer make. To him, he said, if a young person does something like this, it's not even necessarily a sign of bad character. Other mosque friends agreed. They didn't see how it was connected to the crime.
And also, some people told me they'd shoplifted before. They'd broken the rules. So people in glass houses, man. And in the end, these guys all said what most of Adnan's old friends say. He didn't have it in him to kill someone. It wasn't in his DNA. To me, this question is the hard center of Adnan's case. Can you tell, really? Can you tell if someone has a crime like this in him?
I think most of us think if we know someone well, we can tell. We act as detectives all the time, gathering evidence. Certain scenes we remember, or the look on someone's face, or that thing he said when he got mad.
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Chapter 8: Can a seemingly normal person commit a crime impulsively?
And then we act as a judge of character. This is just a human thing. But of course it's slippery because it's so subjective. One person's evidence of good character is another person's evidence of questionable character. Case in point, I heard from many people that Adnan was the opposite of violent, that he was someone who would take the heat out of tense situations.
I've never even seen him in a fight. Like, I've never even seen him mad at anybody.
This is Atif Iqbal, who knew Adnan from the mosque. That's his real name and his real voice.
It's actually pretty funny. Like, I was mean. And him, like, somebody told me that he said something about me and some other person or something. And I went up there to confront him. And he was like, hey, man, I don't know what you heard. I didn't say anything like that. And I was like, man, if you ever said something like that, blah, blah, I was, you know, getting all rowdy up.
And he just came and kissed me on my cheeks. And then that just, like, diffused me, like, completely. Wait, I missed that. He kissed you on your cheeks? He kissed me on my cheeks. Like, it just, like, completely, like, diffused me. Like, I couldn't even be angry anymore.
So, I mean, that's why, like, I just couldn't even fathom the thought of him going out and then killing, I mean, killing somebody. I mean, that's just so, like, I don't even know how to say it. It's just so out of, like, you know, like, his personality, I would say.
So for Atif, that kiss on the cheek is a tell. It's the real Adnan. But for that other guy who said Adnan stole and who thinks Adnan might be guilty of the crime he's in prison for, that same peacemaker quality was something he brought up to me as evidence that Adnan was full of shit.
You know, taking out the tension out of a situation. He was the icebreaker. And I knew that whatever was coming out of his mouth, half of the time it was just sweet talk or to take the heat away. And then half of it, majority of it, it was a lie.
Here's the curious thing, though. The same people who tell me they think Adnan was capable of killing Hay, or that stealing from the mosque was a great evil, or that Adnan was a pathological liar, they also tell me, to a man, that Adnan was a great guy.
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