Lies and the Lyng Liars Who Tell Them (Not the Al Franken book)

Yesterday, I wrote that I respected Chris Flohr and remembered a cool interview he did last year. u/Mycoxadril asked to read it, if I could find the link. So I went looking.

Just as I remembered that it was one of those google chats, I stumbled over the University of Maryland Panel Discussion from last year. I’d read it back then, well before we had the MPIA documents, and had forgotten all about it.

Sorry, but to tell the story, we have to go back to the Missing Persons investigation.

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• On January 13, 1999, or very soon thereafter, probably the next day, Hae’s uncle reached out to Mandy Johnson’s Enehey Group. Enehey had experience with missing persons cases, and employed a Korean interpreter. It seems Enehey worked as a favor to the family.

• On February 15, 1999, about a week after the body was discovered, MacGillivary drove out to meet with Ms. Johhson, who had written a missing persons report some time in late January, before this February 4 news conference.

• On Feb 15, MacGillvary wrote the directions to Enehey on a post it, stuck it on the CV, and drove out there. This is 13 days before Adnan was arrested, and 14 days before any bail hearing

• Just after August 27, 1999 (five months after Adnan's second bail hearing), detectives received a hand-written note from Mandy Johnson, written on her letterhead, not a post-it. She writes that she has finally researched Islamic Pakistani culture, and describes her research as “fluff.” By this time, Adnan has been denied bail twice, the second time being five months before detectives received this note.

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Cut to Thursday, February 12, 2015, two months after the final episode of SERIAL. Susan is now in receipt of the police files via Sarah Koenig’s MPIA and research. She's appearing with a panel of attorneys at the University of Maryland Law School, and says:

I was going to add on to what you’re saying about the bail hearing, the letters are the expert they got to talk about how Adnan was a flight risk of a pattern of behavior.

• (Enehey was not the expert who advised the prosecution that Adnan might be a flight risk.)

I was looking through intake files recently and you can see how it's all involved, the investigators got the same consulting group they’re using for the two person investigation trying to find Hae…

• (By "intake files," Susan means Sarah Koenig's MPIA and research that was given to Rabia, then Susan.)

• (By "consulting group," Susan means the Enehey Group. Only investigators didn’t “get” the Enehey Group. Hae’s uncle reached out to them. And how do we know this? From the files Susan is describing. We've read them now.)

And [the investigators] had [Enehey] write a memo and and it’s then filed…

• (No. The police did not “have them write” anything. When Ms. Johnson finally submitted the report, she said as much, writing, “I finally researched...” Ms. Johnson characterized it as an after-thought, an add-on, and not something police paid her to write, or even cared about.)

And you can see someone wrote a little sticky note on the top of it and it says, "Here’s some fluff with quotes you can use at the bail hearing."

• (Jaw. Dropped. The sticky note was written by Macgillivray and it’s just directions to Enehey, written 13 days before Adnan was arrested.)

• (The note about the report being "fluff” is on letterhead, and written 5 months after the bail hearings.)

And I saw that and I am just like 'They knew it was fluff and they made it as fluff, and they knew exactly what they were doing.' And you can see it all throughout their investigation, their files. They centered on Adnan day one, probably before the anonymous call came in. And they had proceedings initiated and they were pursuing him before they had any evidence whatsoever.

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As an attorney talking about the case, Susan lied while sitting on a panel hosted by The Student Bar Association of the University of Baltimore School of Law.

Just last year.