Geospatial Analysis and the Serial Podcast

Jeffrey Lewis 0:00

Oh, it's an international call. You know what, you can just call me back. All right, let's do that all again. All right, all right, let's try this again. All right, hitting record in three, two, one. Hello, you're listening to the Arms Control Wonk podcast, the leading...

Aaron Stein 0:22

Wait, wait, Jeffrey, the only.

Jeffrey 0:24

Yeah, okay, the only podcast on arms control, disarmament, and nonproliferation. I'm Jeffrey Lewis. I am a senior fellow at the newly christened Middlebury Institute for International Studies at Monterey and the founding publisher of the Arms Control Wonk blog.

Aaron 0:40

And my name is Aaron Stein. I am a contributor to the Arms Control Blog. I'm an associate fellow at the Royal United Services Institute. And starting on Monday, I will be a doctoral fellow at the Geneva Center for Security Policy.

Jeffrey 0:52

Hey, congratulations.

Aaron 0:54

Thank you. New job title.

Jeffrey 0:55

Yeah. Are they paying you? They are paying me. I'll be taking home a paycheck. It's a real live job. I know. So this week, we're not going to talk necessarily about arms control, disarmament, or nonproliferation. We're going to talk about the serial podcast.

Aaron 1:11

We both love it.

Jeffrey 1:12

Yeah, you know why we're going to talk about the Serial podcast?

Aaron 1:16

Why?

Jeffrey 1:17

Well, two reasons. The first is I was really struck at how differently I look at questions about who may or may not have committed the murder that's at the center of Serial. And if you haven't heard Serial, I'll explain it in a second. And turn off the podcast. Yeah. Oh, I should say. So we're going to do this for two reasons.

I think about these problems really differently and I think about it differently because of the work we do with geospatial analysis. I think there's a totally different way of knowing. If you listen to the podcast, you're going to get a ton of Discussion about whether you can look into someone's eyes and know whether they're lying or whether they're the kind of person who can strangle a 17-year-old girl.

And I don't care about any of that stuff. I want to know where the cell phone was when the strangling was happening. And so it struck me that just like we have had this ongoing conversation about different ways of knowing arising from geospatial intelligence, that's not just true of – National security problems. That's also true of things in everyday life, and I think the Serial podcast is a great way to introduce that idea.

There's a second reason, though, Aaron. You know what it is? What is it?

Aaron 2:30

Serial is effing awesome. It was really good. I'm going to be honest. I'm over here in Geneva. We're a little slow over here. Life moves a little slower pace over here. I hadn't heard of it until you told me about this idea for the podcast, and I binge listened to it on my flight home for the holidays.

So a 13-hour flight, 10 of it, I was listening to Serial back to back to back. And I listened to it again because then I told my wife she had to listen to it. So I listened to all the episodes for a second time.

Jeffrey 2:57

So if you don't know what Serial is, Serial is a podcast from a producer at This American Life. That is a series of 12 episodes that were made in semi real time. Like they didn't make all 12 and drop them. They started an investigation of a 1999 murder of a high school student named Hamian Lee and a conviction of her ex-boyfriend Adnan Syed, who's a Pakistani American.

And Sarah Koenig, who is the reporter, who had been a reporter in Baltimore and now is at This American Life, tries to essentially reinvestigate this murder. And it is fascinating.

Aaron 3:37

It is fascinating.

Jeffrey 3:39

Yeah. And so it's a big deal in the United States. It's what, the most downloaded podcast ever? Yeah.

Aaron 3:44

Yeah. Yeah. I think we're jealous of the numbers. Yeah.

Jeffrey 3:47

Yeah. I should give a warning, though. We're going to talk about the podcast. And so if you haven't listened to the podcast... Go do that. Go binge listen. We'll still be here. But there are going to be a ton of spoilers because the podcast is over and the conversation is changing and it's evolving and we just want to talk about what came before and what's happening now.

We don't want to have to worry about people who haven't listened to the whole thing. So really, if you're going to listen, just go away. Go listen to Serial now. We'll be here when you get back. That's right.

Aaron 4:22

So I don't know, Aaron. What do you think? Well, I mean, I certainly wish on the podcast that they talked more about the geospatial element. I'm not just saying that because we had the podcast about this, but because I think the cell phone issue is the most interesting throughout. It's the only thing concrete to a certain extent that we actually know about the entire case that builds around the testimony of both Adnan, Jay, Jen, Kathy, all the characters involved.

Jeffrey 4:48

Yeah. So it, If you're not going to listen, the fundamental issue is Heyman Lee was a Korean-American high school student whose body is found strangled and buried in Baltimore Park. And her ex-boyfriend, Adnan Syed, who's Pakistani-American, gets convicted for it on the basis of, I don't know, what would you say, very little evidence?

Aaron 5:14

Honestly, it's on Jay's testimony, which changes multiple times throughout and has changed up until his most recent interview.

Jeffrey 5:21

So there's this character named Jay who is Adnan's friend he smokes weed with. Can I call him a drug buddy?

Aaron 5:29

Yeah, and he was his dealer, wasn't he?

Jeffrey 5:31

Can I say that? Well, Jay said he was a dealer. I don't know if Jay ever said he sold. Yes, actually, Jay did say he sold to Adnan, right? Yeah. He says, yeah, I didn't really say that. So, by the way, this is probably a good point to say this. We're going to try as possible as much as possible to stick to what we, what we, what we know as we discuss this, but you know, I don't think any of us think that at the end of the day There's enough evidence here to convict anybody.

I mean, we all have speculations and theories. And in some cases, I think we'll say, well, I think the evidence best fits this hypothesis. But I wouldn't want to give the impression that I feel like I know who did it. I have suspicions, but those suspicions are really different from knowing.

Aaron 6:25

Yeah, same.

Jeffrey 6:26

So Adnan's dealer, Jay, Adnan loans him his phone and his car. During school. During school, purportedly to go buy a birthday gift for Jay's girlfriend. Stephanie. Stephanie. And then the body shows up and Jay says, oh, Adnan did it and he had me help bury the body. And he eventually pleads guilty to accessory to murder after the fact.

Accessory after the fact to murder. Yeah. And so Adnan goes to prison. But there's nothing other than Jay's testimony, and Jay's testimony is famously unreliable in the sense that it changes over time. And now Jay has admitted in an interview with The Intercept that he lied about some of the details because he wanted to protect certain people.

And so Sarah Koenig sort of digs all this up. But I was really struck. That the only things we know or the only things we think we know are all tied to places.

Aaron 7:24

Right. And the places, at least the case that the state built, most places were then corroborated with cell phone data.

Jeffrey 7:31

Right. So, for example, you know, the body is in this place called Lincoln Park, which is, you know, actually spelled like Lincoln Park. And that Jay has this story and it takes him a while. Like he tells the story multiple times and it changes over time. But but eventually he has the story about them being in Lincoln Park and making a cell phone call.

And then the cell phone call pinging a nearby tower. And so the prosecution would argue, I think pretty unconvincingly for reasons that we can discuss, but the prosecution would argue that that kind of corroborated the version of events that Jay was telling at that moment.

Aaron 8:05

Right, and that version of events where he and Adnan were together burying the body after she was killed without Jay, I think at around 2.30 in a Best Buy parking lot. And then Adnan called him later And then they were together around 3.30, which they then verified by another phone call.

Jeffrey 8:25

Well, I should say we can't probably walk somebody through the state's version of events, which has the murder at 2.30, the most likely version of events, which both the serial podcast and I think everybody who looks at the cell phone data thinks the murder was probably later than that. Or the various speculations. But what I really wanted to highlight is how much of the evidence, how much of the things that we can really latch onto, right, really are geospatial.

So, for example, the only reason that people believe anything Jay says is he knew where Hay's car was dumped, right? Mm-hmm. Yeah. Right? To me, that's geospatial analysis, right? He makes a factual claim the car is here, and it turns out that's where the car is. Now, we're going to have guests. It turns out it's like way more complicated than that.

Yeah. But to a first approximation, you know, the question is like, well, why don't why don't the police think it's a serial killer? And the answer is because Jay, this guy who says he helped Adnan bury the body. He knew where the car was. Right. Same thing. Like when you're trying to recreate their movements, we know Jay and Adnan were together later in the day.

Yes. Because we know they were at. Kathy's house. Kathy, not her real name, Kathy. I feel like what's so interesting about this whole process to me is as we look at it, other people are like, well, I don't know if Adnan could have done it. I just don't care. I just want to know where the phone was.

I think I said that already.

Aaron 9:56

I think what you're saying is that we can take a pretty good stab at it with the information that's out there and with The tools that we have out there to then not like recreate to know exactly what happened, but just to test the story that's been put out there thus far.

Jeffrey 10:11

Right. And, you know, a lot of this stuff is happening on Reddit. And, you know, the quality of the analysis on Reddit is not so good. Right.

Aaron 10:20

We've had disclaimers about some of the sources we use in open source before MH17.

Jeffrey 10:24

But if you go to Reddit, like one of the things they did is they've got an open source map. Where they've tried to map all of the locations, the various places Jay lived, where the high school was, where the body was buried, where the car was dumped. And it's just so interesting to me that that basic idea of, oh, let's create a map online and start locating all these places as a way of thinking about this case.

It struck me as it's such a wonderful illustration of what we've been arguing, that people are going to look at Analytic problems differently now because information technology allows us to recreate things geospatially.

Aaron 11:07

Exactly. I say this later, but one thing that comes up is when you see it on paper and you see the map that they put on Reddit, it clarifies just how small the area is that these events are taking place in. So even when you're listening to it, like I said, I was binge listening to it on a 13-hour airplane, you can't put You can't conceptualize what they're talking about.

You think of this vast space. But when you look at it with very simple open source tools, you realize how small it is. It sort of adds to the story, if you will.

Jeffrey 11:37

Yeah. There's this great moment in the podcast, I don't know if you remember it, where Sarah Koenig says all of the students had no idea where Lincoln Park was. You know, they thought that maybe it was in downtown Baltimore, and she said, you know, and then it's like two miles from their campus. It's just right there. But their world is so small.

Aaron 11:55

Yeah, they know where it is. Yeah, I mean, one would assume they know where it is.

Jeffrey 11:59

No, I don't think they do. I mean, I think this is, I think, a recurring... It's one of the reasons I love the geospatial work is... It in so many ways helps realize how flawed people's, well not flawed, that's not the right, how contingent people's understanding of the world is. For those kids, many of those kids, Lincoln Park is in another universe.

And it doesn't matter if it's two miles away or if it's 200 miles away. It's a different world. And that's because their world is so small. And I think that to me, that's just fascinating. When you really look at it on a map and you see like, people say like, oh, well, it's so far away, but it's right there.

You just get a sense of like how insular and cloistered the life of a high school student really is.

Aaron 12:51

That is a good point. I actually hadn't thought of it like that. I thought of it in the fact that they had to have known what Lincoln Park is. They just didn't know the name of it. Like that's what I thought.

Jeffrey 12:59

So that's the other thing is as I started looking at the geography, there are a ton of parks around there. I don't know if you count it as suburban or exurban, but it's not a wealthy suburb. It's a very, very – Very working-class suburb with a lot of crime and various things. And so there are a ton of parks.

Aaron 13:22

Yeah, you're right. You're actually right. Yeah, and now I'm visualizing the map in my head. Absolutely.

Jeffrey 13:27

You know, and I just – it's so interesting to me – It's just, it's interesting to me how small their world is. And, you know, I think one of the things we keep eluding the conversation that we're going to have, which I know is probably weird time. We listeners, we brought on a special guest who we'll tell you about in a second.

But one of the things we talk about with special guests who's to be announced just use Susan's name, right? Yeah. It's just Susan. Well, cause if you're looking at the podcast, you're thinking to yourself like, yeah, but it says, you know, like interview with Susan Simpson, right? Like, why are you idiots not telling me like One of the things we talk about with her is the judge makes a comment about how – I think it was the judge – that Adnan talks about how he was on campus all day, but in fact he was at the public library.

But they're adjacent to one another, and when you look at them in a satellite photograph, you can see why a high school student would think they were part of the same campus. And so I just – I feel like there is this – like all ways of knowing when we have an oral tradition – There's a slipperiness to verbal descriptions because they come loaded with so many assumptions about how the world is.

And I always find it fascinating when you take those assumptions, you take those statements and you map them to the real world and then you surface the assumptions, right? So Lincoln Park is two miles away. But it is another world for those kids. The library is not part of the school, but it is for those kids. To me, that is, I think, such an insightful way of starting to dig at this.

I don't know. When you listened to it, didn't you sit there and go, God, I wish somebody would geolocate all of the cell calls to the towers and tell me what was going on?

Aaron 15:15

I did. I wished, again, because I was on an airplane, I wished I could do it myself, actually. I didn't think – So I did too. Yeah, I wish I could do it myself. But then – first, I just wanted to map it. I wanted to get on Google Map and just pin drop all the locations on it.

And then I wanted to – at one point in the podcast, they drive. They do the drive from the school to the Best Buy parking lot, and they want to see if the murder could have been done in I think less than 30 minutes, something like 25 minutes. Right. I couldn't do the drive because honestly I'm not in Baltimore.

But what I thought to myself is you don't even have to do the drive. You could just use Google Drive. Route planner. Google Maps, yeah. Google Maps. And my story about Google Maps, it's sort of a tangent, but I was in D.C. for a meeting and I was staying at a hotel and they told me to walk there.

And it said, it will take you 41 minutes to walk there. And I said, oh, there's no way it will take me 41 minutes. I walk fast. I was 10 minutes late because it took me 41 minutes to walk there and me thinking I could do it in 30. So I take Google Maps seriously. So I thought you could do it with a car.

Jeffrey 16:23

Right. But that's my point is, If you get interviewed about this murder and you say, oh, there's no way it takes you 40 minutes to walk from this location to this other location. I've done it a million times. But you would have been wrong. And so having this geospatial information holds people accountable to like some – Frame of reference. So I, I had exactly the same thing, and I started to do it. So I start to like, okay, I'm gonna, I'm gonna make a map. I'm gonna put everything on the map. you know, I'm gonna dox all these people. I'm going to get all the addresses, and then I'm gonna go through the cell phone calls, and I'm gonna see if I can come up with a better story, right? Like if, if, if Adnan's version is, I gave my phone to Jay, I loaned my car to Jay you know, he picked me up from track practice, and then dropped me off at the mosque, and then he had the phone in the car again.

I don't know what happened. And Jay's version is no. Adnan didn't go to the mosque and we were burying the body together. I thought like, oh, well, if I could map all the locations of these things, even if I didn't know who did it, I'd know which story was more plausible.

Aaron 17:35

Yeah, it's a way to test the narrative that was put out there. Right, and it turns out Susan Simpson did it. Yes, and that's why she's on the podcast. Absolutely. She's our special guest. Should we call Susan, he says in air quotes? Yeah, yeah, we should definitely call Susan so she can start adding into the story here.

Jeffrey 17:49

We're joined by Susan Simpson, who is an attorney. She's a graduate of George Washington Law School and an associate with the Volkov Law Group. How are you doing, Susan? Doing great. Welcome to the podcast. Thanks for having me on. We're really excited to have Susan because she did something I wanted to do but was too lazy to do.

She actually took Jay's, what would we say, varied accounts of his activities that day. He openly admitted to lying. Right? Yeah. And compared them to the geolocation data from the cell towers. And so it was a very nice use of geospatial analysis to answer or at least get at answering some of these questions. And one of the things that really struck me, just to start off, is I look at these problems so differently than, say, Sarah Koenig does.

You know, I don't, Care about whether I can look into Adnan's eyes and see the kind of person who can strangle a 17-year-old girl. I want like the hard data. And you made this interesting observation that the reason that you had that same outlook is that you have this long interest in international law and law of the sea and that you use a lot of geospatial data in that kind of national security law.

Susan Simpson 19:09

I do because I find that for a lot of the more complicated cases, ones like this where it's all the nitty gritty, It gets glossed over too much. You end up having these discussions that talk about all the big details, all the dairy cow brown eyes and all the impressions and feelings that are going on. And no one ever stops to check the underlying numbers.

And this definitely seemed like a case where there wasn't enough being done to look at the actual data we already had.

Jeffrey 19:37

And have you, I noticed that you get referenced a lot on Reddit. So have you gotten like a measure of fame or infamy out of this?

Susan 19:47

Yeah, that was weird. I, it's really weird to see your own name written on a forum. I don't know. I have not experienced that much. So it's always odd to log on there and see the interesting ideas people have about my writing.

Jeffrey 20:05

Yeah. How would you describe the quality of the analysis on Reddit? It's uneven, perhaps?

Susan 20:14

There's some really good stuff being done there. There's also some, I don't know what charitable word to use there, less good things being done there.

Jeffrey 20:24

Yeah. Well, so one of the things that really strikes me is how much of the things that we I don't even want to use no in this case because it seems like there's so little we really know. But how much of the things that we think we might know or the things we feel semi-confident of are geospatial?

And for me, the first place it starts, which I wanted to talk about, is the only reason I think that anybody believes anything Jay has to say is that he apparently knows where Hay's car was located.

Susan 20:57

Probably knew where Hay's car was located. I'm hoping once we get the actual or the second trial transcripts that become clear. Because right now we have the appellate briefs referencing Jay's various interviews and how he led the detectives to the car. And nothing in there says that he led the cops to the car the first day. I believe Koenig said that in the podcast at some point.

But right now I haven't seen nothing. That's hard data-wise to confirm. He actually led the cops to the car after his first interview.

Jeffrey 21:34

Yeah, the document you posted, oh, I'm not going to remember. It's a document from the appeals process. Is that right?

Susan 21:41

Yes, it was the Maryland Court of Special Appeals.

Jeffrey 21:45

And that – the way it is written and I'm sure that like all human endeavors, sometimes documents are not written in the most perfect of fashions. But it would seem to imply that they – that he doesn't lead them to the car until like the 13th of April or something?

Susan 22:02

It places that sentence after the discussion of the April 13th interview and it says eventually Jay led them to the car.

Jeffrey 22:10

I mean, that's bizarre.

Susan 22:13

But we do know they did a search of the car on the 28th because that's what the notes say.

Jeffrey 22:19

The 28th of?

Susan 22:20

February.

Jeffrey 22:20

28th of February?

Susan 22:21

February. Yes. Right after the day. So Jay had that interview, the first one, early, early morning on the 28th. Sometime later on the 28th, there was an inventory taken of the contents of Hayes' car.

Aaron 22:34

Which interview of this was Jay's? I can't keep them all straight.

Jeffrey 22:37

The very first one. The very first interview. Yeah. Here, I'll make it easy for you. It's the one he admits to lying in.

Aaron 22:47

The first or second time.

Jeffrey 22:49

Sorry, that was a little dark. Okay, so – and I suppose there are other explanations. Assuming that Jay does know – Well, assuming that the police are asserting that Jay knows the location of Hay's car, there are at least, what, two possibilities, right? One is police misconduct. They tell him where the car is. And the other, which I've thought about, is is it possible that the location of the car was common knowledge in the community?

Susan 23:24

Well... It's possible her body's location was common knowledge going by Mr. S. Right. So I wouldn't rule out the car. Another possibility is that someone else was in charge of ditching the car later or finding the exact location to ditch it. And Jay had to get an update later and went back to the cops and said, oh, wait, I know now.

Jeffrey 23:47

Oh, well, that's a very knowing. No, no. No, I mean, before you go, Aaron, the joke that I was going to tell, which doesn't fit, but it's still funny. So reason the wired is set, the wire is set in Baltimore.

Aaron 24:03

I know the whole time through this, I keep thinking about the wire, but probably rightly or wrongly, it's probably tainted and made me biased about the whole thing. But anyway, no, no, this is one thing that makes it, it's about the geospatial data in general. It's like, In the trial, they tried to do geospatial data. They just did it badly.

I mean, wouldn't you say, Jeffrey? It came in. It was just not used very well, correct? Well, so this is what makes Susan famous, so I'll ask her about this.

Jeffrey 24:35

But – Yeah, I mean it seems like the description is the version of events that Jay tells at trial, which is very different than the versions he's told before and actually very different than the version he's telling now to The Intercept. But the version he tells – well, there are, what, two versions at trial. But they assert that those versions are in some ways corroborated by the cell phone records – Both the time of the calls, the people that the calls are placed, but also the location of the cell towers that they ping.

But Susan did this really nice analysis, which I'd love you to talk about and explain, that suggests that maybe the better description is that his account is not corroborated by the cell tower pings.

Susan 25:24

And the fact it's not is kind of sad because his story at trial was put together while looking at the records. So he didn't even do a very good job of making it match. His first stories don't match anything. His last story in the recent Intercept interview doesn't match anything.

Jeffrey 25:44

Oh, can I just – because we probably don't want to talk about that interview too much, talk about how frustrated I was by that.

Aaron 25:51

So in this interview – I think anybody who follows you on Twitter knew how frustrated you were.

Jeffrey 25:56

Well, okay, so he starts off by saying, like, well, yeah, I lied in court, you know? You can't do that. You can't just be like, oh, it's cool, I lied. And then turns around and says, oh, you know, the trunk pop happened at Mama's house. He says his grandmama, but her nickname was Mama. The trunk pop happens there, and Adnan calls me from outside.

There is no cell phone call. You know, it is so transparently inconsistent with the evidence we have. And yet there are people, including journalists on Twitter, who are like, oh, you know, I found him very credible. This is the real story. We finally have it. You know, and admittedly, there is a class of journalists. Fortunately, there are not very many of them.

But you'll experience these people. They always believe the person they talked to last. And I feel like that's happening, but gosh, that was so frustrating. Anyway, I'm sorry. I cut you off.

Susan 26:51

Well, he's going back to his roots. Cause it's, there's not one call or event that he describes in the intercept interview that matches to anything we've got in the cell phone records. And it's mostly the same for his first story. His first story did match up for the Lincoln park, But other than that, it was pretty much not matching anywhere.

We now know that after the first interview, he went in for a second interview where the cops gave him a written list of the phone calls that were made and talked it through him. And as the detectives set a trial, Jay started to remember things a lot better. So he starts incorporating these phone calls that he never mentioned in the first interview.

Yeah. And he's like, oh, yeah, I called Patrick or Pete, as he says in the interview. I called Pete. Oh, yeah, I called Jen. And then we have the third interview, which was not recorded. And at trial, Jay says, well, they just wanted to talk to him about locations. That's all they wanted to know, which obviously means the detectives had realized that their phone data was not matching up with any of Jay's story.

And they needed him to start changing locations. So it trials better. Like there are actually – there are some matches when he says happens and what the trial – what the cell records show. There's a lot of non-matches, which is weird. He didn't do a very good job of making his story fit the data, and that's very likely because he didn't want it to.

Aaron 28:34

Didn't this come down to basically two calls? I mean two pings. So you have the three – Two of them. 3.32, if I'm remembering correctly, which was the call to – who was that call? Call to Isha who only Adnan knew. No, Nisha. Nisha, sorry. And then there was the ping in Leakin Park. And so doesn't it really just come down to those two?

Oh, there are several calls in Leakin Park, right?

Jeffrey 28:58

Right, right.

Susan 28:58

Well, there's two we think are, and they might not have been. They were near Lincoln Park. They don't necessarily have to have come from inside. We should discuss that.

Jeffrey 29:07

So this is – it's not quite junk science, but this kind of analysis isn't admissible in many courts. Is that right, Susan?

Susan 29:19

It changes by jurisdiction. There's – I think it's usually still admitted. I don't think there's a rule in many jurisdictions and none that I know of where you just flat out can't use it. But it comes in with caveats, and you need an expert there to explain the limitations on what the data can show.

Jeffrey 29:37

Right, because it's only most likely that the nearest cell tower would be pinged. But if a cell tower is being used very heavily or if there are – A tree in the way, it doesn't take much to throw it off.

Susan 29:52

So probabilistically, you can get a sense of what probably happened, but you can never say for any single call, oh, it was made right there. Right.

Jeffrey 30:00

Can I jump in here? And there's a great example where – oh, sorry. Just the – when Adnan calls his cell voicemail, there are two pings. But they're on what? Two different towers, right?

Susan 30:14

Well, that one's – one of them is not even a tower. It's like the internal system for AT&T.

Aaron 30:20

Oh, okay.

Susan 30:21

So anyway, Aaron, you were going to say.

Aaron 30:23

No, it's just like – was it trial in 2000 or 1999? 1999.

Susan 30:28

1999, the first one, and then January 2000, the second.

Aaron 30:33

There was a mistrial. Yeah, I know that. One thing when I was listening to the podcast I was struck by was how new cell phone technology was at that time and how this was one of the – a lot of the data that was being put out there, this geospatial stuff that we're looking back now, nobody had really done before.

Jeffrey, we talk about this all the time, about how geospatial and open source have become more and more open for everybody to use. I just want to throw out there – And I don't think that was brought up at the time when Sarah goes after the attorney, Christina Gutierrez. Is this us looking back now and saying, well, why didn't they attack the cell phone records?

Why didn't they understand this better? I mean, is this that they didn't understand it at the time because it was so new?

Susan 31:15

Yeah, there's a line from the first trial, the last day before the mistrial was declared, that kills me because they're talking about the cell phone records coming into evidence. And it's actually when the whole you're a liar thing happens, when the judge calls her a liar and they have to do a mistrial. But they're talking about the cell phone records and Eric gets them in and she says, oh, I don't even care.

That's fine. They can come in. I don't even care about them. And I read that and just, yes, it's a new technology for them. They don't know the significance of it, but. She just tells the – I don't care. That's her actual words. So she clearly had no idea.

Aaron 31:58

And she could have exploited them better like you did. That's where I was going with this. So it's not even that she didn't even attack them. It's that she didn't even know how to use them to plant reasonable doubt in the state's case.

Jeffrey 32:11

So I was really struck similarly that there wasn't a – Serious effort – well, the police do do it, right? But they do it in a harmful way of just trying to drive the route, right? And I guess that's how the Patapsco Park thing eventually disappears. What was that? So the police are driving Jay around trying to get him – That would be so awkward.

Right, to tell a consistent story. And as it becomes clear, it's like, no, I can't get to Patapsco and back in this time. So basically, they're walking him through the day so that he can create a suddenly plausible story. But to me, that's geospatial analysis, right? And so the notion that he could tell... This story, you know, like, well, I go to Google Maps and I can now very easily tell you how long it takes to get from point A to point B with, you know, reasonable reliability.

Yeah, it's route planter. Well, so but I think it's that what that ends up amounting to is a different way of knowing. So this is the big Susan, you don't know this, but Aaron and I have this this ongoing effort to get people in national security analysis to look at these problems as primarily geospatial. And it's just I think it's just a different way of looking at the world.

Sorry, that should end in a question, right? Don't you agree?

Susan 33:34

I do. I mean, it's as an attorney. In international law, it's so easy to get stuck into the academic, abstract, let's go online and download a paper style of analysis. But these are real world conflicts and real world fights. And just having an abstract look at how the law applies or how the politics applies takes away from the actual politics.

Geospatial arguments going on.

Jeffrey 34:03

Oh, there was a perfect example of that that Sarah Koenig did mention in the podcast where there was a discrepancy where Adnan indicated that he had been on campus the entire time. And this discussion of like, well, no, now you're saying you're at the library. The library isn't on campus. Yeah. But if you look at a satellite image, you can see how a high school kid would think of the library as being on campus because they're adjacent and connected by, you know, like the same road.

Susan 34:35

Yeah, like almost same parking lot, I think. Yeah.

Jeffrey 34:37

Might as well have been on campus. And so you can – again, it's one of those instances where on paper the library is not the campus and so it seems dishonest. But when you see it and you actually experience it in three dimensions, it's like, no, it's on campus.

Aaron 34:55

Another thing I was struck by is when I saw your maps, Susan, I hadn't done this. So I – When I looked at your maps, I was struck by how close everything was together. When you read the podcast – They are close. It's really close, and you think of this really large space, and then you say they're driving around buying weed.

It's like, well, no, they're not going very far, and that really struck me too. It's just looking at the map and putting everything in context puts a new spin on the case that when you're listening to it, you don't really visualize. So even if you're not trying to disprove cell phone records, you just want to look at it.

I think it makes the story much clearer and easier to follow.

Susan 35:34

And for me, it was interesting to see, trying to put it all together, how if you take just the narratives or just the cell phone data, they don't make sense on their own. You take Jay's narrative and you have no idea what's going on. It's just a bunch of Random bits and pieces thrown together.

Jeffrey 35:51

Well, the structure, the title of your post, which was from Sarah Koenig's comment was, it was like plotting the coordinates to someone's dreams, right?

Susan 35:59

It is because it's, it's like someone is, well, it's, it is like, it definitely is someone making up a story and just saying what comes to mind. And then you're trying to treat it like a reality. So you couldn't get very far with just J statements. You could never figure out What really might have happened. But same for the cell phone data.

Standing alone, the location data is just a bunch of random blips. And without some kind of narrative to put on top of that, it's equally meaningless. It's only when you try and figure out where there is some overlap or where there's some kind of cross-verification going on that any of it starts to make sense.

Jeffrey 36:40

Well, and I have to say, I mean, there are a number of instances like that where, you know, Jay sticks to this, I am at Jen's house until, what, 340 story? 340. And it's the only thing that he is consistent about, as far as I can tell. And, you know, he and Jen stick to it. It's very amazing how consistent they are.

And yet the cell phone calls Jen's home. 320. Yeah. Yeah. Which, you know, if that story is true and Jay has the phone, why are they calling Jen?

Susan 37:21

And what's telling is that he doesn't change his story. Jay will change his story anytime. You read the transcripts, you see the cops are like, well, this is wrong. He's like, oh, that's right. I actually meant to do this. Or say that he has no problem.

Jeffrey 37:34

Actually, he says, sorry.

Susan 37:36

And then, sorry, sorry. What I meant to say was and this time he won't do it for the three 40 story. He's given every opportunity in the world to change his mind. Almost like it's an alibi.

Jeffrey 37:48

Yeah. Almost. Almost.

Susan 37:52

I mean, he's really, really, really convinced that this happened at three 40. Or that it needs to happen at 3.40.

Jeffrey 37:59

Yeah, I find that so interesting. And again, for me, it's one of these things that emerges from, I just, I could never get over how much time Serial spent on, you know, this, I think, totally useless question of, you know, whether Adnan is the kind of person who could strangle a 17-year-old, which just strikes me as being totally unknowable.

And actually, even if he is the kind of person who can strangle a 17-year-old, totally irrelevant to the question of whether he did.

Susan 38:31

And yet, would you say the majority of the podcast was dedicated to that? I think too much was. She's a reporter. It's going to be of more interest to her and to the story and to the listeners. And I did enjoy the... I mean, I actually kind of got into serial because I had someone I would have called a friend recently do something pretty horrible.

And the shock of that kind of That's actually how I ended up stumbling upon Serial, by Googling things, trying to put together my head. So for me, it was kind of a real-life example of how people can do horrible things, and you would never know. I fully believe Adnan could have killed Hay. I believe the English teacher could have done it.

It's not a matter of who could have done it, because... People can do horrible things. The question is what the evidence shows.

Jeffrey 39:20

So it's so interesting that you say that. Yes, exactly. I have these two experiences that are very similar. So in my high school, there was a drug-related murder. And in fact, one of the persons who was suspected of that murder was later tried for another drug-related murder that just happened a few years ago.

Aaron 39:41

And he was acquitted but committed suicide.

Jeffrey 39:44

Or was committed to suicide. It's, it's a little unclear. And, and that was a real shock to me, right. To know that, to see people who are like a little bit rough, you know, when you think like, Oh, you know, but you would never imagine. But then once you see like, no, actually that happens. And the other thing is I had a I should probably disguise his identity a little bit.

And authority figure in my high school turned out to be a pathological liar who Claimed to have a job, but actually was embezzling money out of his wife's trust fund.

Aaron 40:19

Wow.

Jeffrey 40:19

And so to like live next to, you know, to have this person in your life in a, in an academic way, you know, every day for like two or three years and then realize their whole story was a lie, you know? Yeah.

Susan 40:32

And they lie to your face.

Jeffrey 40:33

Yeah. And people, people overestimate how truthful other people are and they overestimate, I think their ability to tell how truthful people are.

Susan 40:42

You mean you can't just take a single word and focus on it and determine what they think about everything based on one word?

Jeffrey 40:47

Well, you have to stare into their doe eyes. What was that comment? I stole your joke. Dairy cow eyes. Dairy cow eyes.

Aaron 41:00

And that wasn't my joke. That was Susan's joke.

Jeffrey 41:02

No, no. I'm saying that to Susan. This is a virtual hangout, so you can't see why I'm directing my side comments too.

Susan 41:09

I'm sorry. But I, so I think it's, it is an interesting question because there is, it's something I don't understand. And it's interesting to me to see how, I mean, I don't think Jay's the kind of person you'd think would do this. So if he was involved in any way, even just the coverup, it seems like his friends were surprised with that alone, that he would help Adnan bury the body.

So that it's an interesting question and I'm glad they spent some time looking at it, but I think Kayna really underestimated people's interest in the cell phone records and actually seeing what was there. Yeah.

Jeffrey 41:45

Well, and, you know, I think interviewing people about their high school impressions of their other high school colleagues is a more fraught activity. Because, you know, I mean, there are all these people in high school you think, oh, this person's going to be really successful or this person's not going to be. And in some cases, you're right.

But I think in many cases, you know, because you're a 17-year-old kid, you don't know.

Susan 42:07

Plenty of high school stoners go on to do quite well with their lives. Yeah. You never know.

Jeffrey 42:13

Yeah. So I just – I don't know. I find – obviously I'm committed to the whole geospatial approach to knowing, but it just seems to me that especially in this case where so much of the information is geospatial, I don't think you can make sense of it without doing that, which by the way was my segue. Aaron, did you pick it up?

I did.

Aaron 42:33

Yeah. No, but I just want to pick up on one thing you just said because doesn't that then fall upon – you're the lawyer, Susan. Doesn't that then fall upon the defense attorney? To either use it to her advantage or just blast it to hell in testimony. I mean, that's what I'm just – I'm sorry, Jeffrey. I stomped all over your transition, but it just gets you back to a point I made earlier.

Jeffrey 42:54

It's okay.

Aaron 42:54

I'm going to make this end on an unhappy note, Aaron. Yeah, but how does this come back to – how does this – would this apply in a trial? That's what I'm curious.

Susan 43:03

In Gideon Harris' defense, I think this was the first case in Maryland where cell phone data had been used.

Jeffrey 43:09

Right.

Susan 43:10

So she didn't –

Jeffrey 43:13

That, by the way, is just mind-blowing. It is mind-blowing. Because I was alive in 1999.

Aaron 43:19

It was an Nokia. I used to play Snake on that phone in class.

Jeffrey 43:22

Me too. Well, and it's crazy, right? It's crazy we're using cell towers, right? Because today you'd be like, well, I don't know. Did he leave his geolocation data on when he tweeted?

Susan 43:32

Yeah, did he check in somewhere?

Aaron 43:33

Or it's like, I don't know, did Jay take a selfie when he was burying the body? Did anybody figure out how he paid the cell phone bill? There's another tangent. I mean, did anybody figure out how he paid it?

Susan 43:43

They did. It's a long story, though. It was a phone he got through a friend at the mosque, and the bill was in his name, the friend's name.

Aaron 43:52

Oh, so that's how he hid the bill from his parents?

Susan 43:55

Yeah.

Aaron 43:55

Okay. That's a question I didn't know. Because I could never wrap my head around why you would give your friend your phone and then let him carte blanche make phone calls that then he would have to pay for. Yeah. Because I wouldn't do that. By the way, you know why you shouldn't do that, Aaron? What? Yeah, I'm never giving my phone to anybody, but go ahead.

Jeffrey 44:14

After this case, I'm never loading my phone. My wife is giving my phone. Hey, could you just leave the geolocation data on the whole time? No one gets my phone. Anyway, we cut off Susan. She was about to say that this is the first case in Maryland or possibly the first case when cell phone data was used.

Susan 44:31

Yeah, so she didn't have any warning. I wouldn't blame her too much for that about not paying attention. And part of it is that based on what they had at the time of this trial, the cell phone data wouldn't have made all that much sense necessarily. Because for me, there were some, even after going through all the records and putting together a chart and pairing all the testimony we had, I had about three calls that I could not fit in a way I was satisfied with until recently when we had the whole mama's house thing come into play.

And once you add that one fact, a lot of the issues I had seemed to clear up remarkably well which was interesting to see to have that come together like that.

Jeffrey 45:22

Do you have a post coming on this?

Susan 45:24

Possibly I'm still a little uncertain how far I want to go in disclosing that information. Oh, interesting. As we talked a little bit before, I mean, it's, it's all, there's a lot of speculation necessarily. And Bringing in third party names that aren't on the podcast always.

Jeffrey 45:42

Yeah. Well, let's, let's say comfortable. Let's, let's say a couple of words about that because that's kind of where I wanted to end because I think one of the big challenges we have is, you know, the podcast comes to an end and the legal process grinds on. And the innocence project is when, when, when Deirdre, oh gosh.

So we talked about this offline. We don't know. We don't know if it's Deidre or Deirdre. I like Deirdre. Deirdre is good too. I like Deirdre. Ms. Enright. She makes these very subtle comments. And Rabia does too. Rabia Chowdhury, who brought this to Sarah Koenig's attention, is a huge advocate for Adnan and is the sister to Adnan's best friend, I guess.

About Jay being scared of people. And I don't think you can decode the subtlety without a little bit of geospatial analysis. And that piece of information is mama's house. And so, yeah, it's very hard. It's very hard to understand the conversations that are now starting to happen about who else might like if. So Jay is, you know, he pled guilty to what?

Accessory to murder. Is that right, Susan?

Susan 47:04

Yes. After the fact.

Jeffrey 47:05

After the fact. And so, you know, he's admitted that he's involved in in the burying of the body and the ditching of the car. And so the question is, if if if someone else was involved. And what she hints at, what Deirdre Enright hints at, is that that person still frightens Jay. And Rabia said something very similar the other day on Twitter.

She said, you know, why doesn't Adnan blast Jay? And she said, you know, prison's a very dangerous place. Right. And I think if you look at that address, how do we want to say this? It's such a delicate thing to say, right?

Susan 47:51

You know how Jay in that Intercept interview, he talks about how some psycho Redditor drove by his house?

Aaron 47:59

Yeah, that's the third one.

Susan 48:01

I just hope to God that no one tries that with this address.

Jeffrey 48:07

Yeah, I think that would be a very dangerous thing to do. Oh, yeah, that's when doxing would get very dangerous.

Aaron 48:16

Yeah, that address is... Could we give somebody the way to find the address? Or is that also off limits?

Susan 48:24

You know what? It's West... So, you know Jay's story about going to Forest Park to buy weed? He was not going there to buy weed. He was going there... Well, he wouldn't have needed to buy it, and... He was going to some place in that area where he had very strong connections.

Jeffrey 48:46

Well, so I'll say this. In Jay's interview, he said his grandmother just passed away, right? And you know Jay's name. So you can find who his grandmother was. And you can then find her address. And if you want to look at the criminal records of folks in Baltimore, you can figure out How many of Jay's relatives lived in that area.

And I think you can pretty quickly discover why he's in Forest Park and you can understand why he would be, you can, well, I'll say this. We can't, you certainly couldn't prove anything. You can understand why Deidre Enright would be incredibly interested in that location. Is that a fair way to say that?

Susan 49:34

Yes. And you can also understand why other people aren't talking because there's no way that there's not Someone, a few someones out there, who's peripherally involved and has heard something from someone, like Neighbor Boy, for instance, and will adamantly not talk. And it's kind of hard to blame him. I mean, there is a real issue. It's unclear where the pressure's coming from or who it might apply to, but Jay's not wrong when he says that snitching can be a big deal.

Jeffrey 50:06

Yeah. Yeah. Do you guys remember the Baltimore Stop Snitching campaign with the video with Carmelo Anthony in it? I don't actually.

Susan 50:16

I never saw it.

Jeffrey 50:17

Yeah, there was a video produced by – Oh, yes, yes, yes. I do remember this. I'm working from memory. I know it contained drug dealers. And NBA players. Well, and NBA player, Carmelo Anthony, who grew up in Baltimore and may or may not have realized – When he was being taped, what it was going to be used for.

But yeah, I think if you look at people's rap sheets and you look at the people, like if you just look at the rap sheets of the people that Sarah Koenig interviewed and then start connecting names and addresses, you can understand why people would be terrified to talk.

Susan 50:57

And you can also understand why Jay is not telling the truth when he says he was scared about none.

Jeffrey 51:02

Yeah.

Susan 51:03

Well, and remember when he says Adnan has a badass uncle who can make people disappear?

Jeffrey 51:08

Someone does. Someone has a badass uncle who can make people disappear. I'm almost certain that's true.

Aaron 51:13

And how does this fit with open source and geospatial, sort of like our final wrap-up here? So how does – is this just more along the same curve because now you can find this stuff on the internet and you're just one click away? Or is there more to it?

Susan 51:27

I think we're – the fact there's so much new info coming out, And a 15-year-old murder case shows the power of making databases available to the public. You put enough info out there, good or bad, people can put this together. But it was a lot harder on – this is not something they could have done in 99.

Prosecutors could have probably. They probably did. But this is not something that even a diligent defense attorney would necessarily stumble across.

Jeffrey 51:58

Yeah, let me – Yeah, I've got two perfect examples of that where you couldn't do it. One thing is when I started to want people's real names, I won't use it, but the whole Kathy thing just drives me crazy. When I started to look up Stephanie and Kathy, it was very easy using LinkedIn to see if you searched for Rabia.

If you look at who other people searched for, Their names pop up, right? Because people who are searching for Rabia and Saad are also searching for the real names of the other people involved. Tangent. That's the way I find drone engineers and what countries are working on which projects. No, it's exactly right. It's exactly right. It's not just their networks, but when other people are going in and typing in Rabia Chaudhry and then the next thing they do is they type in Stephanie, her real last name, That – LinkedIn records that and then presents that information to you.

And so when there are three people with that name who are all being looked at, you know that's the right name and people are trying to get the right LinkedIn account. The other thing is all these people have Facebook and so – and not all of them – It's public. Why? Why? Yeah, why if you are... Well, I don't want to say someone is a drug dealer in the present tense, but if you have recently been accused of being a drug dealer and you might be a drug dealer, why would you have a Facebook account?

But the answer is they do. And so it's not just Jay. I'm not saying he's a drug dealer at all.

Susan 53:39

Use the privacy settings or something.

Jeffrey 53:42

I don't mean Jay, but through Jay... You can find other people, right? And those other people don't have full privacy and you can see these kinds of connections. And I just think that, you know, 15 years ago, well, I'll give a very practical example. A lot of people speculate on the relationship between Jay and Jen, right? And 15 years ago...

Susan 54:07

I bet Stephanie did too. LAUGHTER

Jeffrey 54:14

I think people are wrong. I think there's a different relationship at play. And rather than interview scary people who I am afraid would hurt me, I think it would be just much easier to take a gander at Facebook. And law enforcement can do that today, right? And they do it. Yeah, in this murder case that I mentioned in my hometown, the second one, the local paper left the comment section open.

For much longer than they normally do because people would anonymously write comments and you would get this kind of crowdsourcing of rumors.

Susan 54:52

Those are surprisingly productive for that. Like just local news stations have comments. It's amazing how often people will write important and previously unknown stuff there.

Jeffrey 55:02

Yeah. I mean, I had a ton of questions about those murder cases that I'd always wondered about, like to just see them in print and be like, oh, and I think I know who that is. You know, like, wow. And I just think, you know, 15 years ago, you couldn't do that.

Aaron 55:16

But you still need one person. I mean, as you were saying earlier, Susan, you still need a story arc to match those at open source, too. But you can prove that you can fill in the gaps of that person's story, I think is what we're saying. With the open source to the person's thing to try and paint a cohesive narrative.

And I don't want to say catch people in a lie, but sort of maybe cast reasonable doubts about the overarching narrative or framework of their story.

Susan 55:44

I think, well, and sometimes I think you can catch them in a lie. Obviously, it's not precise. So I wouldn't call Jay a liar based on his story not matching a few things. But when it's logically true, Impossible for your story to match what the cell phone data is showing, yeah, I think we can. Well, I did call him a liar.

Aaron 56:07

You did.

Susan 56:09

Yeah. One thing I've been thinking of with the way the info's been coming out is that you can almost make an experiment for Jay's lies. As we find more data and find how it fits the previously unknown parts of the cell phone record, we can kind of confirm that we're on the right path. In a way, just to see the story evolving and actually fitting new data to match expectations of what we think might have been happening.

Aaron 56:41

Well, now you need to write a blog post about this.

Susan 56:45

I've got like five I need to do.

Jeffrey 56:47

Yeah, but when we – this is the sad thing about the whole serial bit is the minute, sorry listeners, that we hang up, of course we're going to like demand that Susan walk us through the updated timeline. That's right. Yes.

Susan 57:05

I'm just scared at this point. Anytime I do a timeline, the next day there will be a new interview and it will all be ruined. I'll start all over again.

Jeffrey 57:13

Well, and I mean, I'll tell you what I'm genuinely frightened by. I mean, like, the whole Deirdre saying, like, Jay has good reason to be frightened. Like, the more that I've done geospatial work, like, I'm terrified to talk about cereal. You know? Like, I'm not going anywhere near Baltimore. You're West Coast. I'm an hour away. I'm in Geneva.

Susan 57:35

Wow.

Jeffrey 57:38

I mean, I just, man, you know, just because, like, it's one thing for us to say, oh, it's easy to dox these people. Well, it's easy for them to dox me. You know, none of us are quite as hidden as we think we are. I have a Facebook account. I use the privacy settings.

Susan 57:53

Yes, at least our Facebooks are better hidden.

Jeffrey 57:55

But, you know, whatever, you buy a house, you have an office, you know. I mean, look, I know you're on LL too. Yeah. Yeah. But I just think there is so much more information out there today, and it's not that the information didn't always exist. It's that it's out there in the sense that it's encoded in this digital form, and so it's searchable, and you can remember seeing something, and you can use Google to find your way back to it.

Susan 58:25

Mm-hmm.

Jeffrey 58:25

And so it's not just that the information – it's not just that there's more information. It's that the information is accessible in ways that allows one to do really interesting analysis. That's why we had you on because we – I will – yeah.

Susan 58:41

One of the things I kind of enjoy doing was trying to track down where Hay was buried because we didn't know at first. They didn't publish it. They didn't tell us where it was exactly other than Lincoln Park. So we had a few clues to go on from the podcast. And I obviously enjoy that kind of thing.

So it took what we know and you go on Google earth. And after trying out a few spots and finding where you can get 40 feet from the earth, 270 feet, whatever it was from the road to dead man's Creek, you finally narrowed down to five spots, which could have been buried and then go from there. And that kind of thing would never been possible before Google earth.

Jeffrey 59:20

Is, is, is the serial map, right?

Susan 59:24

I don't know if they have her bodies. I have it on my blog, her precise location. But it basically came down to using the clues Sarah gave in the podcast and seeing what actually physically matched up with that.

Jeffrey 59:37

Is the log still there?

Susan 59:38

Yeah, the log's still there. It was a few years ago. I was using the old images.

Jeffrey 59:44

I mean, isn't that just... You can measure it.

Susan 59:47

It was 40 feet. I checked.

Jeffrey 59:48

It's a different world we live in. Is that a positive note? I think so. Yeah. That's close. I just really want to cut off our dear listeners and then start interrogating Susan about the new timeline.

Aaron 59:59

Me too. That's our positive note.

Jeffrey 1:00:02

Privately, we're going to get a whole update. Oh, listeners, we're going to go back and we're going to record the front end of this segment and we'll probably let you know how great it was.

Aaron 1:00:15

Yeah. Just so you can be upset with us.

Jeffrey 1:00:18

Hey, Susan, thank you so much for coming on. This was really great.

Susan 1:00:22

Thanks for having me. This was fun.

Jeffrey 1:00:23

Yeah, thanks a lot.