The Intercept has done what Sarah Koenig and “Serial†couldn’t: get Jay Wilds to talk on the record about the murder of Hae Min Lee, which Jay swore in court was the work of Hae’s ex-boyfriend, Adnan Syed. As fans of “Serial†might expect, Jay reiterates the same basic story he told at trial — Adnan killed Hae alone, then Jay helped him bury her body — with a few changes to the timeline that could either mean everything, or nothing. In Jay’s new telling, he did pick Adnan up from the Best Buy parking lot, but didn’t see Hae’s body until later, in front of his grandmother’s house. (Jay says he left that part out of his testimony to protect her.)
Jay also tells the Intercept that he was apart from Adnan for more of the day of the murder than he originally claimed, and that the two of them didn’t go to Leakin Park to bury Hae until closer to midnight. As for why he helped Adnan in the first place, Jay says now that Adnan threatened to tell the police he was dealing drugs: “I was convinced I would be going to jail for a long time if he turned me in for drug dealing, especially to high school kids.â€
Unlike the devoted “Serial†obsessives, Jays claims that he doesn’t get too caught up in the minutiae of what happened the day Hae was killed. “I don’t know … what occurred between [Hae and Adnan] that day,†he says. “I don’t know if she said something he couldn’t handle, and he went off the edge or if he had been seriously speculating about [murder]. I don’t feel comfortable drawing conclusions like that. You can’t start drawing conclusions like that.â€