Chapter 1: What happened on February 9, 1999, regarding Hae's disappearance?
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 coworkers.
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.
He kind of just always generally annoyed me because just the constant paging her if she was out.
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Chapter 2: Who discovered Hae's body and what was suspicious about their story?
It's got a reputation, and not for the beauty of its woods or its trails or its nature center. What it's known for, sadly, is dead bodies. Mention Lincoln Park to people from Baltimore, as I often did, and you're pretty much guaranteed to get a comment like this.
While you're digging in Lincoln Park to bury your body, you're going to find somebody else's. That's Lincoln Park.
When I told the rental car guy in West Baltimore I was working on a story about a girl who was found in Leakin Park, he said, oh yeah, my uncle was found dead in Leakin Park. A macabre website dedicated to Baltimore murders lists 68 bodies found there since 1946, though the list is missing at least seven years of stats, so that number is probably low.
A lot of law-abiding Baltimoreans, they don't even really know where Leakin Park is. Rabia Chowdhury, that family friend of Adnan's who first contacted me about this case, when she was explaining it to me, she said, Yeah, and how is Adnan supposed to get to Lincoln Park so fast? It's like an hour into the city. Lincoln Park is nowhere near the school.
Her brother Saad, Adnan's best friend, he didn't know anything about Lincoln Park either.
After Adnan had initially got arrested... When I was on the phone with him talking like when he was locked up, I was like, Lincoln Park. I'm like, where is that? Do you even know where it is? Have you ever been there? And he's like, I have never been there. I don't even know where it is. So, I mean, living around here, we don't know, but it's somewhere in the inner city.
Where Hay was found is, in fact, less than three miles from where Saad and Rabia are sitting right now in an office across the street from Woodlawn High School. It's about a seven minute drive. They have no idea.
We wouldn't go there. We'd go to the harbor somewhere nice, but yeah, there's no reason for us to go there.
I'm explaining all this just to say that the simple fact that hay was found in Lincoln Park, for a lot of people, that alone made it not look innocent. Like, what's a nice boy like you doing in a park like this?
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Chapter 3: What were the initial police investigations following Hae's disappearance?
Here's Bill Ritz.
When you're walking back to this area where you finally stopped, why did you pick that particular area?
You said you were going to actually go back further? Yes.
In this part of the tape, you get a sense of how Ritz and McGillivary operate together, or at least what I've gathered from listening to a bunch of these interviews. McGillivary starts out all nonjudgmental, just tell me your story, uh-huh, uh-huh. Then Ritz comes in and says something like, just help me understand here, and asks some harder questions, exposing weaknesses in the narrative.
Then McGillivary will come back in. But now it's a tougher McGillivary. And he's asking direct, sometimes harsh questions that seem like they'd be good at pushing someone off balance. Like this one, sort of out of the blue.
Have you ever been inside that girl's car before? No, never.
Back to the fallen tree. Here Ritz is saying, wait, I thought you told McGillivary you stopped at the log to pee, but now you're saying you were on your way farther back?
Stop there. You said before that you were getting ready to urinate. And then that's when you looked in and discovered the hair. Yes. And now you're saying you're going to actually go back further? Before I discovered it. Before you discovered it. Maybe I'm a little bit confused. As you're standing on...
This doesn't ever get cleared up, really, and they sort of let it go. But a bunch of things are fishy. The path he takes back into the woods, it doesn't really lead to the log. So why does he end up there? He didn't need to head toward the log to find a hidden spot to pee. There are so many other choices.
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Chapter 4: How did the detectives become suspicious of Mr. S's behavior?
My producer Dana was with me, and so was Justin George from the Baltimore Sun. Right at the place where Mr. S had entered the woods, right at the road, Justin noticed a sign.
What's that? You should look at it. I mean, the sign says a lot.
It said, this area patrolled. Dumpers will be prosecuted. But you could barely read it. It's hard to read a sign that's covered in graffiti and pierced with seven bullet holes. And in fact, the cops found 20 cartridge casings in right about this spot when they collected evidence in 1999. Still, I thought the park itself was quite lovely. Brambles and trees. It's rocky near the stream.
It's uneven terrain. It's not hilly, but it's not flat either. It's not nearly as creepy as I imagined it. I think it is at night.
At night? Yeah, I think at dusk, I think it is. It's very bleak. It is bleak. 21, 22, 23.
We walked in what we figured was about 127 feet. Justin paced it out by the yard.
42. Be right about there.
We actually wander around for a while, trying to find the right spot. Finally, I remember that we have a hand-drawn map of the site from that surveyor, Budemeyer, who testified. 40-foot long, 15-inch log on the ground. Once we get to the right location, it dawns on all of us. 127 feet back doesn't feel all that far if you're looking for privacy.
You can still see the cars on the road from where we're standing. So if he's peeing, if he's peeing, yeah. I mean, at least you'd want to come this far. There's not a lot of foliage, so yeah. There's nothing. Yeah, I mean, there's some dead leaves or whatever, but yeah, you can totally see the cars. So actually, that doesn't seem that weird to me. Suddenly, Mr. S.
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Chapter 5: What details did Mr. S provide during his interview with the police?
Well, for a while he switched to rum. What rum? Dark rum. Bacardi. Finally, McGillivray can't stand it. He just starts listing different kinds of booze.
No gin? No. Probably a long time ago. Vodka? Years ago.
Brandy? No, no brandy. Cognac? No. Just the Western cheap stuff, yeah.
Just cheap stuff, yeah. Brandy. Brandy was the answer they were looking for. The bottle they found near Hayes' body was Coronet VSQ Brandy, 200 milliliters. And Mr. S., he blew right past it.
Consider for a moment, if Mr. S was just trying to relieve his bladder in peace that February day, minding his own business, and then he sees this terrible, sad sight, and he does the right thing, tells the cops, shows them where she's buried. Well, how horrible now that they're so suspicious of him, that they're considering that maybe either he did it or he knows who did.
How terrifying for Mr. S. After all, he seems like a nice, quiet guy, cooperative, doesn't appear to be a brandy drinker. Again, I can only go by the reports and files, but my guess is the reason the cops are holding on to Mr. S as a suspect is because Mr. S has a little bit of a record, which isn't necessarily a big deal.
But, and here's the part of the story where I'm hoping you'll understand why I'm not using his name, Mr. S is a streaker and not the frat party kind, the freaky kind. He's got indecent exposure charges, to borrow a phrase from Andan's defense attorney, under circumstances that Bazar does not even begin to define. Mr. S is arrested May of 94 for running about naked in a residential neighborhood.
Two years later, March of 96, he's spotted wearing a hoodie, sunglasses, white sneakers, and nothing else. The officer writes, the Southwestern District has received numerous calls for service in the past three years to this area for the same incident, same description. Past three years. The officer chases down Mr. S onto I-95.
Mr. S jumps some chain link fences, the kind with razor wire at the top, ends up in the hospital. It gets worse, or better, depending on whether you enjoy police reports as much as I do. December 7th of 1998, so barely two months before Mr. S. finds Hay's body, there's this. At around noon, during what I have to imagine is Mr. S.
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