If a serial killer did it, this must be how and why Jay implicated Adnan and himself

When Hae disappears Jay thinks Adnan might have done it since he'd been blowing off steam about the breakup. They are not close friends, but smoking buddies, so they talk regularly, but Jay doesn't know exactly what kind of guy Adnan is. Jay, being a big bullshitter, braggs to some people that he knows who did it and even tells some friends that it was Adnan who did it, getting that idea out there, but he doesn't know anything and the story changes every time. They are still smoking buddies/business partners after Hae's disappearance, they still hang out – we know this because Adnan comes to the porn shop later – but Jay is concerned: what if Adnan did it (and possibly set him up)?

On the 28th of January, two weeks after Hae's disappearance, Jenn and Jay are at Champs where they catch a report about it on the news – Hae is still missing, the police are concerned. This confirms Jay's fears that Hae was killed. Jay says to Jenn "what do we do, we can't let the wrong man go down for this" referring to himself – because he thinks it will land on him. He has no good alibi that day, all he did was drive around and call Jenn – and he is probably smart enough not to involve the people he saw that day in a murder investigation (from the call log we can surmise he was around Forest Park where his second grandma lives).

When Hae's body is found on the 9th of February Jay's bragging comes back to bite him in the ass. On the 11th the discovered body is all over the news. He knows he will be questioned.

Then the police receive an anonymous call – probably from Tayeeb, one of the people Jay told the story. The police can now subpoena the phone records and do so on Feb 16th.

By the 22th they have both the call log and the cell tower data and proceed to call Adnan to ask why he's calling Jenn on the 13th. Adnan says Jenn is Jay's friend and remembers Jay had the phone and the car that day. This sends the police to question Jenn.

To Jenn and Jay it looks like Adnan is sending the police their way. Jenn dodges the police on the 26th and talks to Jay at the video store first – they need to discuss what to do. We know she brings Cathy along for this – it might be only to advice Jay on how to talk to the police, but it might also be because she knows some details about the murder though her father that can be of use to Jay.

If Jay is afraid he's been set up, he has probably been trying to get information about Hae's disappearance for a while. He might have discussed his fear of being framed with Jeff, then Jeff might have gotten information through Cathy about the investigation and told Jay. How much information is hard to say, but cause of death and general location of the body is what I will speculate. Edit: Actually we know from Jay's first interview that the newscast described the crime scene (burial site):

Jay: ... the search for her was over and down there they showed the crime scene ...

Ritz: The crime scene they showed on t.v., was that the location that you described to me with the concrete barriers and

Jay: Yes.

Ritz: The fallen down tree?

Jay: Yes.

When they called, the police told Jenn that Adnan had been calling her on the 13th, the day Hae disappeared. They both realise this is the day Jay had Adnan's phone. Jenn and Jay try and remember that day. Jay recalls Adnan promting him to borrow the car and phone. At this point, Jay, Jenn and people around Jay all believe Adnan is the killer and that Jay has been set up. For reasons I will touch upon later Jenn and Jay have no alibi, so they decide on a lie: they were together that day and Jay helped Adnan dispose of the body.

The next day the police interview Jenn and she tells them the agreed upon story. To the police this is compelling. They already suspect Adnan did it, and here comes this girl and says she knows Adnan strangled Hae in the Best Buy parking lot. She knows 1) the method and 2) the location (which they see matches the cell tower data – but this is a coincidence – Jay is at Best Buy buying Stephanie a gift at this point – Hae is being abducted from some gas station elsewhere).

By now everyone knows the police are looking for the car (there has been some publicity about that) and that Hae's body has been found in Leakin Park. Still, everyone does not know the details – like how she died. But the police are rightly concerned that Jenn has information about the case from the news so they ask her if she has been following the case on the news and Jenn remembers the night at Champs. Then they ask her if she made an anonymous call to the police and this is how she answers:

... [I] never did 'cause I have friends that work at Woodlawn Precinct and I know a couple of detectives there and a couple of officers but I didn't...

One of these connections is probably Cathy's dad, but apparently she has more than one.

She continues:

... what I did do is probably about two weeks after the information I told my friend XXX that I knew about this um, I knew that this girl was killed (my emphasis)

A bit strange to refer to a newscast as the information. Also this sentence follows up a question about the anonymous call and her rambling about her police connections, not the newscast, so what I would like to infer from this is that any information she got about the murder was from these connections. She later tells a friend that she knows Hae was killed. She goes on to say she knows it was before this night at Champs, but corrects herself – but none of that matters because she only tells this friend she knows Hae was killed, not how and where. How does she know Hae is killed? She doesn't, but like I said, both she and Jay believe Adnan killed her.

In this interview she also refers to a conversation in a car with Josh – his mom has found an unrelated body in Leakin Park where she works and Jenn is keen to know if that body was strangled – so we can surmise she had the information by then. (This article is also interesting because it draws parallels to another strangulation case in the media 3 days after Hae was found: link).

At this point Jay is equally scared of Adnan having set him up, scared for his family and scared of the police.

The day after Jenn's interview they talk to Jay, who first refuses to cooperate, but then "comes clean". They say: we know Adnan did it and that you helped him get rid of the body. What Jay does not know is what Adnan is telling them – he might think he's being interrogated as well and as I said before, he thinks he's being framed. So he speculates that Adnan is probably saying that Jay did it alone because Jay had the car and the phone that day. The police think Jay was probably more involved, but wont ask too many questions that can hurt their case – they need a case that can stand up in court.

By combining threats with a sugar coated deal and a payed lawyer, the police gets Jay on-board, sort of, but his knowledge of the crime is blotchy – he is a paranoid pot head with poor memory. All he knows is what the police tells him or what might have come through Jenn's channels. (Read this blog entry by Susan Simpson).

So why does Jay implicate himself in something he was no part of? Because it's the only way he can take down Adnan. He wants the right guy to go down for this, he is furious with Adnan for having framed him, he knows he can get a deal if he cooperates. On the other hand, if he says he had nothing to do with it, he knows the police will probably pin it on him, that they'll believe a preppy magnet guy over a black guy with a family full of criminals – that the police will frame him too. He probably thinks it will come down to his word agains Adnan's and he realises he can use the information he has against Adnan. He figures he's looking at an accessory charge at the minimum anyway, because of the phone and the car and Adnan's testimony. He is also probably scared of the ramifications of a full blown investigation into him and his connections/family – which is why he has not alibi for this day.

Next Jay takes the police to the car. This is the hard one. The only thing I can think of is that the car was found close to Patrick's and Gelston Park where Jay would hang out and smoke. It's possible he knew where the car was because he'd seen it there.

He also takes them to Hae's body but that was probably not too hard to spot at this point with police tape everywhere. We know that already in the 1 hour pre-interview he was shown photographs so he knows quite a lot about the burial site at this point too.

So how plausible is this theory? At first glance this is what the innocence project seems to be saying when they want to test for DNA from Ronald Lee Moore. However they are probably using Moore to open of fro DNA-testing in general and since Moore is dead it could be an easier sell to a judge. Once DNA testing is allowed they can run it against anyone in the CODIS system. They might have hope that it will match someone in the centre (or periphery) of this story.

Personally I think it's a stretch, but if a serial killer did it, this is how and why Jay implicated himself and Adnan. Why? Because Jenn was never coached in that first interview and she had the whole story with the facts and everything.

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TL;DR: A serial killer did it, but Jay thinks Adnan did it and set Jay up. Jay and Jenn knows stuff about the murder through Jenn's police connections. Aided by the police and a sweet deal, while cornered between family loyalties, fear and probable outcomes, Jay uses this information to bring Adnan down. Almost everyone lies to protect themselves from getting involved in the investigation and/or to protect Jay from being framed. Possible but unlikely though.

Edit 1: Spelling and added my own skepticism to the theory in the TL;DR

Edit 2: Added the link to the Baltimore Sun article.

Edit 3: Changed the business partners thing after Clarenstein commented.

Edit 4: Clarity and link to Susans Simpon's blog entry.

Edit 5: Added crime-scene-bit from Jay's interview.

Edit 6: Confused Davis with Moore in the bit about the innocence project. Fixed.

Edit 7: Added info about Tayeeb and clarity.

UPDATE: I think this blog entry by Susan Simpson is relevant to this theory.

UPDATE 2: Date when the police have the call log and tower data