Serial S01 - Ep. 11: Rumors
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Bank tok. Com to get started today. Equal housing lender member F, I, C. Previously on cereal, what did you tell you, he told mean that he .

had broke IT was extremely wrong.

Anyone to treat them .

that way he was like.

the community is golden child, I think like the odds of you getting the charming sociopath. You're just not that lucky. You don't think that I know you at all.

I mean, for you to say that i'm a great person, I mean, a nice person. I only talked you on the phone.

This is a global chAllenge. Prepare call .

from an .

in made that the maryland correctional facility IT recorded.

From this american life and W B easy chicago, its cereal, one story told week by week. I'm sarana. For two months now, i've been grappling with rumors about IT non people telling me that stuff you don't know, about IT non stuff you need to know to understand who you're dealing with.

These communications came in the form of phone calls. Make phone calls, sometimes one on one, sometimes conference calls, also texts and nervous emails. I can't tell this one. I've spoken to that one. And then that one gets worried that i've broken my word, which I promise I haven't.

When person too doesn't confirm the thing, person one told me and I report that back to person one, person one often tells me, person too is lying to me. All these rumors are coming from people, and none new, growing up in the mosque community, the south asian families who attend the islamic society, baltimore. Some of these people I already talked to during my first round of reporting for the story, but then once the theory started, and they heard how a none was being portrayed, a new round of phone calls began.

The rumours themselves are nothing to destroy. The nobody is saying I saw him to IT, or I have proof none of IT is directly connected to the crime. But likely there are a great many things I don't know about a non and some of the things I was hearing, we're giving me pause. So I checked them out as best I could, not every single one.

Some of them were so small that I initially was confused by the telling, waiting for the punched line that the door slid by, such as he took a piece of my clothing, a piece of designer sports, where and then over explained, claiming IT wasn't mine or that didn't know was mine, and then apologize profusely. I saracenic i'm going to confess something right now. I have done exactly the same thing.

More than one side wager on the other end of the scale was a story so incriminating that we thought, wealth, this one is true. Then we're done. Our story is over.

We can all go home. This was the bigger, and I worked every angle I could discuss IT out. I heard a second hand that someone said something about IT, none.

At a party fifteen years back, I spent weeks trying to learn, first the name, then the location of that someone, then trying to contact that someone, then finally driving several hours to question that someone in person. I nerve sly, knock at the door. Nice guy comes out, we chat.

He tells me what i've spent all these weeks and hours waiting for. No, yeah, he says, I remember that man, nice kid. I remember he seems sad when a unis girlfriend broke up.

And so I prompt, I heard this thing. Is that true? Anything else you wanted? Tell me the guy. That's all he had for me. Imagine I have a file on my desk about this rumor, and I just stamped IT with my big cartoon stamp unsubstantial I cross IT off the list.

There's one more rumor i'll tell you about a minute, but first, I want to talk about why relatively few people from the most community are willing to talk on tape or on the record about a non. To give you a sense of what i'm talking about, here's ali, not his real name, and this is also not his real voice. Why the secret?

So so let's say so now let's say you use my voice and use my first name and last name and and you played on N, P, R, radio, whatever. And as somebody from the community years within seconds, that will travel throughout the whole community. And this is what he said, he probably knows something.

How do we know he is not improve or he did something? Or why is he doing that? And that's how this are there or are irrational thinking is but I think I don't know very little talking like that but it's you but .

you're one of them. I mean, you're you're basically thing i'm still coming to this irrational oh yes.

I I hundred percent because I hundred percent in ali and .

others told me that their community is judgemental. Right and wrong is drummed into you early and often, adults judge kids behavior, which then gets reflected back onto their parents. This is certainly not unique to their community.

And the other thing that isn't unique is how close is IT is information in gossip travel swiftly. And you don't want to be the one who goes against the grain or says something that could hurt IT. None, or his parents.

No one wants to end up in hot water. I live in a small town. I understand that. But what I hadn't totally understood, I think, is how scared people were when annon got arrested.

I got an anonymous tax recently that said, quote, i'm a muslim male who attends the bottom or mosque. My father and announce father are good friends that have known each other for years. A non story has always been an urban legend to us.

Kids growing up in the muslim community clouded in mystery and used as a cautionary tale. Some people did speak out on tape. I mean, roban sad children obviously did.

And there are others too. But there's also a significant faction of people, including inglis, who are scared. Ali said his parents were especially protective, like a tent on the protective scale, so that after a done was arrested, they were frantic about his safety. His own life changed because .

of IT drastically. I would be even go to the mailbox and my dad, like where you're going.

Are you serious? That really happened.

That really happened that you may 明白 了 because .

your mail box was like at the end of the .

driver at the open， the. Front door is going where you go me is that a girl are you gonna give a ride because they think that none give her a ride. And so they think that that reason he they picked him up because you were right. And there is a growing um that I used to I used to give right to in the morning live in the story for me and after I got picked up SHE aim and was knocked on the and you can pick me up was going on and night I went crazy my that dropped her off the school and in the car told her don't ever ask my .

son for oh my god .

really ah and I think that's just the general for the I can speak of everybody but I think this is how the community have become because it's just that fear that a stuck and that's how IT is。 And even now, if you go to like a party and try to talk about a on case, everyone just gets quiet not because they're saying he did IT or he didn't do IT or not is just kind of like you do know if you don't talk about IT than IT doesn't.

A bunch of people I talk to told me they feel guilty towards and none that they let him down because they let him stray or didn't protect him or didn't mentor him or didn't show enough a trial or didn't visit him in jail. Even once you're run the fence about his innocent, said, please tell IT none I love him or please tell him i'm sorry and I often say back you should tell them yourself you can write to him, you know and then sometimes comes a pause. The reason ali agreed to go on tape was that he wanted me to know this .

about a non and. Eleven is more into middle school that when we would get picked for sports are and none was very athletic talk good looking um kind of the job role and I was more child short kind of the nurse, you know, kind of all so um he never made me feel that he always made drag up picture for team. If other is made fun of me on my athletic permanent, I couldn't shoot or I couldn't kick the ball and he would start poking fun, he would always have my back and kind of tell them, stop IT or or kind of watch out for me, kind of like in order, brother. And i'll never forget that a .

none was a kind of kid.

D who'd stand up when your parents came into the room mill. He said that parties or events, he'd be the first one to ask, how can I help you on t do you need help setting up those tables? Uncle, this was what ali disguised an anonymous had to say.

Normally, I probably wouldn't pursue rumors that on their face aren't connected to the primate hand, but in this case I decided IT was worthwhile. D because of where these rumors come from, I think these rumours are coming from a feeling that a handful of people have. I heard this from about four people, people who knew and not growing up, that IT none was capable of committing this crime.

I think they believe they saw things in his personality that they think I am not seeing, namely that he's duplicitous. The term psychopath gets thrown in. Sometimes people told me he used his charm and his smarts to deflect suspicion, or whether out of things when he got caught, pretty much what the judge said to a meda sentencing.

Which brings me to the only rumour I heard that at least partly checked out, IT. Was this a non stole money from the mosque? Donation money? I heard various versions of how this happened or could have happened.

But from what I can tell, the basic story is people who come to pray on fridays. And it's a lot of people, many hundreds, some of them put donation money into boxes, and that's what had none schemed. Two people told me they, sam, do IT. One person told me he'd seen at several times he wouldn't on tape, but the other guy did.

He was stealing from the mosque every friday.

This is a guy I can't name, whose voice we ve also changed. See explanation .

above because he was looked upon like the golden child, and he was his dad was very religious. And you know, he would go out on missions, work and so on. So you in his family was looked at, you know, very good religious family, and he was you, he was collecting money or already know the city box that will go around on friday after career.

You know, he was, does he? He was, he was in charge basically of collect, you know, getting all the bus together and counting the money. And in IT, all OK.

And he was parked in thousand dollars every week and nobody questions. You know, good little, most small kids, you know, stealing from the mask. You are you serious and creating you and image.

You saw him actually take money.

Now I absolutely saw him taking IT, and I also have done IT.

This guy estimated that a non had stolen many thousands of dollars over time. Tens of thousands may be a hundred thousand dollars. This sounded fantastical to me.

So I checked with muckle ll. patel. He was president of the islamic society of vultures at the time.

He said he'd never heard of a non taking donation money, but that IT does happen from time to time. Someone's stealing are trying to. There are people who take shoes, he added.

My own brand new shoes were stolen twice, said that happened once in new york and once in ball. But if IT none did take money, he said, there is no way IT was a big amount. He said, on average, people donated about twenty five hundred dollars at friday prayers, maybe up to three thousand dollars.

If IT was a special occasion, that money was used to pay the bills. He said, keep the electricity and heat on. If they were even one hundred dollar short on any given week, they may have noticed.

So sure, maybe twenty bugs or forty bugs here there, but not hundreds and thousands out of the question. And none says it's true. He did take donation money.

When I first asked him about IT, he was unhappy. I've asked him so many, Frankly, insulting things, so many nose and inappropriate questions, and he's never given me push back. But this was the last straw.

What does that have to do with the case? He wanted to know he's never claimed that he's innocent of killing hay because he's a perfect or even a good person, he said. So why talk about this? And why the double standard? Why wasn't I going into? Everyone else is caused and pulling out skillings that made them look bad. Why do I protect other people and call him out on everything? He's endured other stuff in my reporting that he didn't think was fair to him.

You go from my savor to my execution or on IT, you know, I just to like around me.

But now he was sticking up for himself. He said he's seen pissed and hurt. And I understood IT. I mean.

it's a very uncomfortable thing for me to talk about you to say it's a very shape thing that I did. You know, i've never do that. I've never I don't see, I don't understand. And I just think it's really .

unfair me if if you don't want to talk about this that your projective like i'm not going to force you .

to talk about IT you don't want to talk about the only thing I don't talk about, you understand, say so it's put me and predicament like it's like you're basically like publicly shaming me for something that I i've never denied that I did anyone and IT has nothing to do with the case but you won't do IT to other people. Those I mean, it's like why do I have keep called out on my stuff that has nothing to do with the case, but you know do no 86他们。

A couple of days and phone calls later, always calm, and he told me his stealing story. IT was during the summer, maybe the summer before .

eighth grade. He said like the friday rares um a lot of time there would be one adult and he would get like four or five kids together and he would say he look, I want you got to go around and collect you know money from people who stand there you know have a different days. There was a different ways.

So IT was usually anywhere from like four to five of us. We all have little box or something, and people would come and they would put funny. And usually like IT would be, I mean, I do not trying to see sound like ocean eleven and whatever, but IT was like thousands of dollars in cash, like one, five, ten, twenty and maybe like fifteen hundred, two to three thousand dollars in cash.

And I don't really remember who i'm not saying IT wasn't me saying IT wasn't me now IT just the idea came up like a man we could take like sixty, eighty dollars. We could go to the movies, go to the mall. We can play, in our case, you know, like eating stuff like that.

So eventually you could be a thing where like one or two of us would like pocket, it's point out of bill and impact out though. And the other three or you know two or three of us, we do IT. And the other two can keep what? And I mean, IT IT was, you know, I was wrong. He was very wrong, you know, I mean, that is nothing that i'm proud of, is not you are very shamed of, you know, I, I, I don't say that we were kids to try to put IT in context or try to making sense. I mean, well, maybe I am right, but this is, you know, and what made you.

what made you realize? What made you stop and what made you realize that was wrong?

I mean, I wish I could say that I was like, you know, some feeling of religion or something, or feeling of wrong. But I wasn't, I mean, was just got caught red hand. And so to speaks.

annon says he was caught red handed by shameen, his mother. He says he found some money in his pants pocket and asked him where he came from and the truth came out. He says he was horrified. That was the classic i'm not angry. I'm disappointed, more disappointed than sh'd ever been in him, he says, announced back then he didn't think he was hurting anyone.

They spend so much time at the mask, and they shoveled snow, and they help set up events and clean up and said to himself was a in to taking twenty bugs from the till of the family store at the end of the night. He says the course as an adult, he knows how wrong that is. But back then in eighth grade, he didn't fully get IT announce.

Telling of the stealing episode is a much more boys will be boy's version than what i've heard from other people who told me they saw on his actions something more malignant. A couple of people I talked to from the mos community said this was so low to take the harder cash of hard working people. And at the mask of all places, this was a terrible thing.

Other people said. Mister patel, then president of the mosque, was thoroughly unruffled by the whole thing. He obviously didn't, but immoral less said.

So what is certainly does not a murder or make to him. He said, if a Young person does something like this, it's not even necessary a sign of bad character. Other mosque friends agreed they didn't see how was connected to the crime.

And also, some people told me, theyd shop lifted before the'd broken the rules. So people in glass houses, man. And in the end, these guys all said, what most of a nan's old friends say.

He didn't have IT in him to kill someone. IT wasn't in his DNA. To me, this question is the hard center of a Nancy case.

Can you tell, really? Can you tell if someone has a crime like this in him? I think most of us think, if we know someone well, can tell, we act as detectives all the time, gathering evidence, certain scenes we remember, or the look on someone's face, or that thing he said when he got mad, and then we act as a judge of character.

This is just a human thing, but course it's slippery because it's so subbed. One person's evidence of good character is another person's evidence of questionable character. Case in point, I heard from many people that at none was the opposite of violent, that he was someone who would take the heat out of ten situations.

I've never even seen him in a fight, and i've never even seen him matted anybody.

This is artificial pal who knew IT down from the mosque. That's his real name. And his .

row voice exactly, pretty funny, like that. I let me, and he, like I, somebody told me that he said something about me and some other person or something, and I went up there to confirm him, and he was like him. And I don't know what you heard that was anything like.

And I was like me, if you ever said something like that, boba always, you know, getting all around here. And he just came and kiss me on my cheeks. And the dad, just like, defused me like, completely like.

I miss that he kissed you on your cheeks.

He kissed me always cheek like, and just like completely like defuse me like I even be any anymore. So I mean, that's why. Like I killing I mean killing somebody I mean that's just so like I don't even know how to say this is just so out of like you know like his personality that I would say so .

for active that kiss on the cheek is a tel is the real adnan. But for that other guy who said IT non style and who thinks that one might be guilty of the crime is in prison for that same peacemaker, quality was something he brought up to me as evidence that a none was full of shit.

No, taking up the tension out of a situation. He was icebreakers. Er, and I and I and I and I knew that whatever coming with, whatever coming out, now, half of the time I regia sweet talker to take the eat away. And half of the majority of which IT was a lot.

Here's the curious thing though, the same people who tell me they think that none was capable of killing, hey, or that stealing from the mosque was a great evil, or that IT none was a pathological liar. They also tell me to a man that IT none was a great.

such a good.

This is the same anonymous person who thought had not had taken many thousands from the donation boxes.

Is so smart, you so friendly, and so so many positive things.

and they don't feel fake to you like that part feels real too, is what .

you just try and you helpful. And all you think a person .

concert of contain both those things inside their personality.

I think it's very easy. I think that if you if you corner anybody and to a corner, you know they I know, and different people for different reasons.

Almost of the hundreds of killers i've evaluated have been pretty ordinary people.

This is Charles, knowing he's a forensic psychologist and a lawyer he teaches at the sunni buffalo law school. He told me he evaluated several thousand criminal defendants and testified in more than seven hundred trials as an expert witness, mostly lately homicides committed by people in intimate relationships, in homicides committed by Young people. Ewing had listened to about half the episodes of the show.

Obviously, he can't weigh in on a non psychological health and be ridiculous, but I wanted him to find out what's a valid way to try to understand what's going on when someone killed someone else. What's the range of options here, ewing said. Most of the time he's doing insanity evaluations or evaluations for extreme emotional disturbance. And usually in cases where there's not a question of whether the defendant did IT, more a question of why. And again, most of the people he's evaluating are pretty ordinary.

Some are extraordinary. There are some serial killers, some spring killers, some really awful psychopath individuals. But for the most part, people kill, not in a premeditated way.

They're not evil, they're not social pathetic. They are not cycle pay athi. Um they kill because something happens that pushes them over the edge.

In other words, murder isn't usually, strictly speaking, a plan event. A lot of people who know if none, they can cut their heads around the idea that a non planned to kill. Hey, I hear IT all the time.

Here's this old oodle m classmate, Peter billings. Ly, I still, I still. The whole idea of premeditation just doesn't fit for i'd done.

Um no, I doesn't fit all, but I don't yeah, I don't. I doesn't fit not one bit with the person I knew. Course, there are some planned murderer, but i'm sure this was not a plan murder.

That's jane efron who taught hay in a non english, a woolen. Her father was a cut. I can't buy that because that destroys everything that I feel about these kids.

So I absolutely, I think IT was passion and overdose, of emotion, of love, of jealousy, resentment, all of those things. It's sneaks in on you and IT dominate your thinking and you can't get away from IT. But that's what i'm comfortable thinking planned premeditated murder of my lord know. I asked you, in can, in otherwise seemingly Normal kid, up and do something like this, plan something like this, or even do IT impulsively, is snapping a thing because people say that all the time, also, like maybe snapped.

or maybe, you know, snap, people sometimes lose IT. And when they lose IT, it's not always or once. I've seen a lot of cases in which people have over uh, a relatively short period of time, nursed feelings of rejection or anger or hostility.

And they've slowly risen to the point at which the individual decides to kill somebody, those feeling summer for a while. And one of the thoughts is, maybe I should kill this person, i'm not going to kill this person, and I want to kill this person. But what if I did? And the person thinks about IT and then maybe confronts the other person, the person who is the objective, the frustration, the anger.

And then at that point, the victim, or would be victim, says or does something that trigger IT that provokes the ultimate killing. Now the law looks at that is premeditated. I'm not sure that he really is premeditated in the sense that we Normally think of IT IT doesn't have to be like a sudden impulse to violence.

So that was news to me that there's a sort of liminal phase, a simmering contemplation. What if I killed this person? And that can take the place of actual cognizant planning, but end up in the same result. The other thing i've considered in my more reaching moments is whether IT none did IT, but doesn't know he did IT and not the only person has entertained that one. Here's a nonce friend.

Laura. I mean, I remember the cops telling me, sometimes they have murderer standing with a nike in their hand next to the body, saying to them that they didn't do IT because you brain goes into the shock and IT shutt down and like, well, maybe that happened. Maybe is an action. Maybe he got, man, I mean, bigger man, maybe maybe you've posted for a moment and IT was in an accident.

Apparently this is not as outlandish as IT might sound.

People can go into what's called the dissociated state, where they're really psychologically, not where they are physically. Probably half of the people have evaluated who killed other human beings, have some degree of em eja for what they've done.

Did you say half.

half the people? yeah. About half yeah. And it's it's not total and eja usually, although I seen some people who have a complete amnesia for for killing, but IT can be partly I don't really recall the details. I don't recall doing this because .

literally like the memory isn't in their brain anymore or or IT never was in their brain or yeah.

I don't think we know the mechanism by which this kind of denial or amnesia combination works. But um in the cases that i've been involved in where people have had some kind of amnesia or partial amnesia or denial IT doesn't last forever. It's it's very difficult to maintain that kind of facade.

Um what I find is that over time people do recover traces of what happened and and they know what happened. But I ve also seen people who have a genuinely snapped and whose uh committed a homicide and then they realize what they've done in the immediate reaction for most people is, oh my god, look what i've done. And what am I gna do about IT? I've got ta figure out some way to cover this up.

Do you think IT, is there another scenario where you IT starts out as a lie, as a sort of cognizant lie, like, I didn't do this and nothing to do with this, and then over time, you truly believe that lie like you, you kind of a race, a race. The fact that you're lying and IT just becomes the truth of IT for you. I think that happens.

I I haven't seen that happen in homicide cases, but I certainly seen IT happen in an ordinary life.

less often in homicides.

Yeah, I I ve never seen that. And it's probably just because of in, in, in most homicide cases, the evidence is pretty overwhelming that, uh, you did IT.

Off the top of my head, I can think of five different people in the story whom other people have told me they think are either pathological liars or psychopaths. But I shouldn't trust anything they say. This term psychopath gets thrown around so easily as a kind of catchall term for a cold hearted and calculating killer. If IT none did this, and if he did IT the way j tells IT, he is so cold hearted.

I mean, jay told the cops that announced to him, quote all the other mother fuckers referring to like hoods and thugs and stuff, think they are hard core, but he just killed a person with his bare hands and quote, if IT none said that, does that mean the fifteen years since has been this very, very long? Can but he's calculating enough to only pretend to be the Normal sounding person he is with me on the phone using told me a psychopath usually means a person who has little or no conscience is glib, who can't empathize or relate to other people's feelings. They can read other people very well, but they don't have genuine empathy.

Another factor to be sure is this um what's known in the professional as superficial charm uh these are people who come across very smoothly and effectively manipulate other people and manipulate them without them knowing .

IT very often. Now i'm running through my head everything you're just said saying if IT applies, of course and some of the some of I I can say like yeah maybe another stuff i'm like, no, I don't think so.

I mean, so IT really does seem like a none is like really functioning really well and is just fine in person like he's he seems very adaptable and he's always had like a job with responsibility lit ie s and he's not gotten into he's not been disciplines really ever x up for having a cell phone and like doesn't appear to have any kind of anti social behaviour. He got lots of friends. He's Scott. He's maintained his relationships outside the prison with his family and with friends, certain friends. I mean, is that something to take that I should be taken into account?

I think so. yeah. IT certainly cuts against a theory of IT he's a psychopath, or that is some kind of pathological person.

But IT doesn't rule IT out, right? And in the fact is, most psychopaths aren't killers and most cures aren't psychopath. There's there's a very limited overlap between those two fears.

Finally, I was doing, should I be influenced by the fact that a none has so consistently maintained his innocence all these years? A ewing said in his experience, people who are wrongfully convicted always maintain their innocence, even when IT hurts them, like in sentencing or parole. But on the other hand, he said, just because you say you didn't do IT even for decades doesn't mean you didn't do IT.

That just aren't any rules for this stuff. Here's what I take away from this conversation with Charles viewing. I don't think that none as a psychopath, I just don't.

I think he has empathy. I think he has real feelings, because i've heard and seen him demonstrate impaired and emotion towards me and towards other people. He is able to imagine how someone else feels.

But on all the other options is a tsap could IT not initially have been in some state of amnesia and denial, and then the planted that with actual lying, it's possible. Could you've had simmering ing feelings of anger and resentment that then boiled over in a not quite by accident way? It's possible.

Could he be truly innocent? It's possible, ewing said. He's often asked, understand, how do you know this person isn't lying to you? And his answer, he said, is always the same. I don't know. In the course of his career, he's been fooled.

A handful of people who are listening to the story have told me one thing they think makes a none look guilty is the way he talks about, or rather doesn't talk about other people involved in the case, especially jay, that if we were really innocent, we would hear him being matter. I know we've already talked about this.

Why doesn't he sound more mad? But there's another factor I haven't mentioned, and that is, as a defense attorney explained to me, no good can come, and in fact, only harm can come from a non attempting to contact or influence people on the outside who are connected to his case. That's kind of inmate behavior, one or one.

Because, let's say, caffey changed her story, only remembered something, a sculptor for IT. none. And then the state found out that had none had been writing to caffeine or threatening caffey somehow, or talking smack about Cathy on a podcast then that could be used by the state to chAllenge the validity of Kathy's new information.

A none is a smart guy. He's been an inmate for fifteen years. He knows the deal and he also knows there's nothing he can do to change other people's minds about him.

of course. And genuine doesn't think that I feel something towards the people who put me in prison, then me saying, IT IT really has no validate in my eyes anyway, because come on, you know, if how do you think I did IT or or or or you don't and if you think that I did IT and you can asking because i'm a Normal, you i'm just right. I think what happens if people come expect in a monster and they don't find that well next, they come expected a system and what they don't find, that they don't know what to think in the reality. IT is not just a Normal person.

I know, but I think actually, I think you're that's that's right. But I think also what people do is they put themselves immediately in your position and think, what would I do? How would I be feeling? How would I active some if I thought, you know, someone had done me wrong and put me here and I would be screaming to the rooftops, and they are not hearing you do that?

If someone, I mean, is is really nothing to say, if someone can imagine how I feel, is that this no need for me to saying in which I to someone otherwise, I mean, IT IT is what IT is if a person can figured out, and it's not for me to say.

I think what are none saying is it's a trap to try to convince people. A few weeks ago, after these rumors started surfacing, I got a letter in the mail from a non, I was eighteen, typed single space pages. He gave me his reluctant permission to talk about IT.

He wrote about lots of things, his religion, his case, how he's managed over the past fifteen years. He's a good letter. He's a good writer.

But it's swung from pole to pole, from distrust to gratitude to confusion. And none is obviously aware of this podcast that is out in the world. And I could tell that my story had messed with his equal, liberum, when he was convicted of murder.

He said the biggest shock for him was that people thought he was capable of this hitlist thing that people didn't believe. As I look back now, he wrote, I realised there only three things I wanted after I was convicted, to stay close to my family, prove my innocence and to be seen as a person, again, not a monster. The third one, he says, he is managed inside prison.

Quote, people on here know me as a stand up guy, guards, inmates, staff. People i've been around for fifteen years have seen me everyday, recognize me as someone whose word can be trusted. I guess what i'm trying to say is that I was able to find the piece of mind in prison that I lost at my trial and quote, and now I come along at robbi e's behavior, not his, and yank the door open again to the outside world and to all its doubts about IT nonce integrity, staring up the most painful possible questions about whether he's a monster.

It's his nightmare, basically, to be accused of manipulating everyone around him. Of course, i've had a sense of this feeling from him now and then over the year that we've been talking. But his letter made plain that in forty hours of taped conversations he was wearing every word.

His goal was to keep IT all business. He wanted me to evaluate his case based on the evidence alone, not on his personality. Quote, I didn't want to do anything that could even remotely seem like I was trying to befriend you or curry favour with you.

I didn't want anyone to ever be able to accuse me of trying to appreciate myself with you or manipulate you unquote. And having to do that made him feel bad. He said.

I had a rough year. My stepfather died in April than my father died two months later. And none knew that quote, but I couldn't say anything to you because I had to stick to what I know.

Can you imagine what is like to be afraid to show passion to someone at a fear they won't believe you? I was so ashamed of that unquote. And this second guessing, this monitoring of everything he says to me, and therefore r to the outside world about anything really, but especially about his case.

He writes in his letter that is crazy making, quote, i'm always overthinking, analyzing what I say, how IT sounds, in the fact that people always think i'm lying. All this thinking is to protect myself from being hurt, not from being accused of his murder, but for being accused of being manipulative or lying. And I know it's crazy, I know i'm paranoid, but I can never shake IT, because no matter what I do or how careful I am, IT always comes back.

I guess the only thing I could ask you to do is, if one of this makes any sense to you, just read IT again, except this time, please imagine that I really am innocent, and then maybe I will make sense to you. At this point, he wrote, IT, doesn't matter to me how your story portrays me, guilty or innocent. I just wanted to be over. You will be next time final episode of cereal.

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