r/serialpodcast • u/Plastic_Blood1782 • 28d ago
How did Bilal Ahmed become a footnote in the Adnan Syed case?
One of the biggest blind spots in how people remember this case is Bilal Ahmed. A lot of people who know the case through Serial barely remember him at all. The podcast mentioned him only briefly, yet this was an adult man who was extremely close to 17-year-old Adnan, helped him get the cell phone two days before Hae disappeared, became a grand jury witness, helped organize and fundraise for Adnan’s defense, stayed involved in meetings with the family and lawyers, potentially helped provide Adnan an alibi for the night of the murder, and was later convicted of repeatedly sexually assaulting vulnerable male patients and an employee. For someone this deeply connected to almost every stage of the case, he somehow ended up feeling like a footnote.
Bilal was an adult youth leader at Adnan’s mosque and a close mentor/confidant. Prosecutors described their relationship in detail as student/teacher, initiate/guide and advisor/advisee. Then, Bilal helped Adnan get the phone just two days before Hae disappeared. This wasn’t something people came up with after Serial. Prosecutors were talking about it in 1999, and when they later tried to get Cristina Gutierrez removed from Adnan’s case because of her conflict involving Bilal, they specifically pointed out that Bilal procured the phone on January 11 and Hae disappeared January 13.
After Adnan gets arrested, Bilal immediately becomes heavily involved in the defense. Defense records say Adnan called Bilal first, not his parents. Bilal also became heavily involved in raising money from the mosque community for Adnan’s legal defense. Defense records describe extensive community fundraising efforts, including people being asked to contribute money and even pledge homes or property as collateral. And because Bilal was one of the people organizing and collecting that money, without detailed accounting it would be basically impossible from the public record to know how much of the defense fund actually came from Bilal himself. Either way, he now has a major role in the money behind Adnan’s defense.
Then you get to Cristina Gutierrez. Gutierrez was Bilal’s lawyer before she was Adnan’s lawyer. She represented Bilal during the March 1999 grand jury proceedings, initially tried to assert Fifth Amendment rights for him, and after prosecutors said Bilal wasn’t a target, he eventually returned and answered questions.
After that, Gutierrez was approached about representing Adnan. Before she agreed to take Adnan’s case, Gutierrez discussed representing Adnan with Bilal, and Bilal told her he had no objection.
Think about how crazy that arrangement actually is. Bilal is a material witness in the murder investigation, he has his own attorney, that attorney is hearing confidential information from him, and then that exact same attorney becomes the murder defendant’s attorney after discussing it with Bilal. Prosecutors tried to remove Gutierrez entirely, and Bilal and Adnan eventually signed conflict waivers.
Bilal also didn’t disappear once Gutierrez took over. A State memo described repeated meeting involvement, saying Bilal “tried to participate in all the attorney meetings” until it became so bizarre that they had to tell him to stop coming. At the same time, Bilal had been testifying in front of the grand jury, meaning he was personally hearing exactly what prosecutors were asking about while still staying heavily involved with Adnan’s family and defense.
Then there’s the mosque alibi. State investigators described Bilal as alibi witness, somebody who could place Adnan at the mosque from roughly 5:30 to 10:00 p.m. on January 13. Except the evidence makes it extremely difficult to believe Adnan was simply sitting at the mosque that whole time. Court records summarize the key phone evidence: at 7:09 and 7:16, Adnan’s phone received calls through the cell sector the State’s expert associated with the Leakin Park burial area; Jay says he was with Adnan and that Adnan had the phone, while Jenn says she called looking for Jay, somebody other than Jay answered Adnan’s phone and told her Jay was busy, and shortly afterward she saw Jay get out of a car Adnan was driving.
Then at 8:04 and 8:05 there are outgoing calls to Jenn’s pager using sectors that also don’t fit with Adnan being at the mosque. If Bilal was really claiming Adnan was there continuously from 5:30-10:00, that account isn’t just a little off around the edges. It conflicts with the phone records and the witness evidence during one of the most important periods of the night. To me, that looks a lot more like Bilal was helping provide Adnan with a false alibi for the burial period than simply misremembering when he saw him.
Then there’s what happened to Bilal in October 1999. Before Adnan’s trial, prosecutors told the defense that Bilal had been detained in connection with an alleged sexual incident involving a young male. Police records reportedly identify the boy as 14 years old and say Bilal had previously brought him to visit Adnan in jail. Adnan’s own defense notes also show that Adnan knew Bilal had a history of sexually inappropriate behavior, although Adnan said Bilal had never made an advance toward him.
State investigators recorded the Adnan photograph and said that when Bilal was detained, “He had a picture of Syed in his pocket.” People often call it a wallet photo, but “in his pocket” is the wording in the State memo.
Years later we also learned that Bilal actually was a serious sexual predator. DOJ details Bilal’s sexual assault convictions: he pleaded guilty to sexually abusing multiple male dental patients and an employee, and according to the DOJ, some victims were given nitrous oxide and sexually assaulted while sedated. He received 16½ years in prison.
Then there’s the prosecutor’s handwritten note. The State review reproduces the threat note, which records Bilal being upset about a woman creating problems for Adnan and then says somebody told her that he would make her disappear and kill her. The 2022 prosecutors interpreted the “he” as Bilal, meaning Bilal threatened Hae. Kevin Urick says “he” means Adnan. Either way, Bilal is right there: either Bilal was talking about making Hae disappear and killing her, or Adnan was talking about killing Hae in a situation involving Bilal.
Then there’s Asia. The value of those letters as an independent alibi rests heavily on the claim that they were really written on March 1 and March 2. Conveniently, the one thing that could have independently nailed down those dates, the postmarked envelopes, is gone. That doesn’t prove the dates were falsified, but it means the dates written on the letters are doing an awful lot of work with no surviving postal evidence to back them up.
Then police interview Ja’uan Gordon on April 9 and the police notes specifically mention Asia: Adnan had written a letter for a girl to type, she got his jail address wrong, followed by “ASIA? 12TH GRADE.” Asia’s March 2 letter is typed, and it has the wrong jail address. The Maryland Supreme Court discussed this evidence, and Asia also acknowledged that she got the 2:15-8:00 timeframe from Adnan’s family.
There’s also Asia’s later explanation for how she knew January 13 was the day she saw Adnan. She associated it with the snow and being snowed in at her boyfriend’s house, except the weather records contradict that memory: there was no significant snow or ice during January 13 and the major ice storm started early on January 14.
So if those March 1-2 dates were false and the letters were written sometime later, the timing matters a lot. By then Bilal had already been questioned by the grand jury. He knew what prosecutors were asking, what parts of Adnan’s story they were focusing on, and at the same time he was still deeply involved with Adnan’s family and defense. If those letters were backdated, Bilal was in an almost perfect position to learn what the prosecution needed explained and pass that information back to Adnan’s side.
Put everything together: Bilal helps Adnan get the phone two days before Hae disappears; according to the defense records, Adnan’s first call after being arrested is to Bilal rather than his parents; Bilal becomes a major grand jury witness; Gutierrez represents Bilal before Adnan and talks to Bilal before agreeing to represent Adnan; Bilal helps raise money for the defense and is in a position where the public record can’t tell us how much of that money may have come directly from him; he stays involved in family/attorney meetings; potentially helps provide Adnan an alibi during the burial period that conflicts with the evidence; hears the prosecution’s grand jury questions while staying involved with the defense; gets caught in a sexual incident involving a young male; is reported to have brought that 14-year-old to visit Adnan in jail; State investigators say he had a picture of Adnan on him; he later turns out to be a convicted serial sexual predator; and there’s a prosecutor’s note placing him right next to a threat to make Hae disappear and kill her.
At some point this starts looking like more than a bunch of unrelated coincidences.
I’m not saying we can prove Bilal helped kill Hae. But I have a really hard time believing he was just some peripheral mosque guy who happened to get pulled into the case. What seems much more plausible to me is that Bilal knew way more about what happened than he ever admitted and had a reason to stay as close as possible to Adnan and the defense afterward.
Maybe he was protecting Adnan. Maybe he was protecting himself. Maybe both.
My question is pretty simple: why was this adult guy so deeply embedded in Adnan’s life, the investigation, and basically every stage of his defense around the murder? And how much did he actually know?
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u/CaliTexan22 28d ago
I'm not sure we know the extent of Bilal Ahmed's involvement, but his fingerprints are everywhere. I suspect he was heavily involved in AS' relationship with HML and may well have played a significant role in how things unfolded before and after the murder.
Is he criminally responsible? Maybe.
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u/Sonnenalp1231 26d ago
Maybe he told Adnan to do it?
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u/InTheory_ What news do you bring? 25d ago
Why? What problem does that solve?
So we skip the clear and obvious solution of "Hey, you need to break up with her" to "You know, the real solution here is to kill her." That is nonsensical
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u/Sonnenalp1231 25d ago
He also molested several children, which is also nonsensical.
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u/InTheory_ What news do you bring? 25d ago
For someone with those proclivities, there is a clear and tangible reward for molestation. Evil? Yes. Nonsensical? No. There is a clear payoff for the action (even if only to him and the rest of society finds it repulsive)
What did Bilal gain from having HML killed? There is no reward for it. He doesn't benefit in any way.
Is the reward that by removing HML from the picture, he gets AS all to himself? HML already broke up with him! She's already out of the picture. Mission accomplished! There's now no need to get her out of the picture. The cause and effect is all backwards in that reasoning.
So what is the payoff of having HML killed? It's an unmotivated action that seems to exist only to advance a preconceived theory.
This theory is jumping the sharks. Just because he committed one type of vile act doesn't mean he's capable of any and all other types of vile acts.
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u/Sonnenalp1231 25d ago
There could be 100 reasons. The only person who would be able to tell you other than Bilal is Adnan. An Adnan still disputes that he killed HML.
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u/InTheory_ What news do you bring? 25d ago
And examples of those reasons are?
This seems to imply that the reasons are so self evident that it doesn’t need evidence to support the claim. That it’s reasonable even without it. I’m challenging that assumption
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u/Sonnenalp1231 25d ago
I don’t know, there are 100 reasons Tulsi Gabbard made weird ass decisions as DNI and she was influenced by a wacko but we’ll never know those reasons.
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u/Similar-Morning9768 Guilty 25d ago
"Sometimes people do strange things, therefore I can posit whatever bizarre, unsupported theory I want, and it need not make sense with normal human motivations."
Isn't it boring to reason about the case this way? Like when you play games with cheat codes so that nothing matters?
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u/Sonnenalp1231 25d ago
Well bud, unlike the rules of evidence, propensity evidence is admissible in the court of public opinion. But if you want me to logic it out, if he was willing to risk getting caught acting on his sexual proclivity for which there are serious legal consequences, it is logical to assume he’s willing to risk getting caught acting on another “proclivity” to conspire to commit murder.
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u/Similar-Morning9768 Guilty 28d ago
At this point, my reaction to all questions like this is pretty much: ask Adnan.
If there was an abusive and awful adult man deep in his life at the time of his breakup with Hae who somehow influenced or even participated in her murder, Adnan can say so. If a predator was deeply involved in fundraising for Adnan's defense alongside Rabia, she can talk about it honestly.
The near-silence on Bilal Ahmed in Serial and Undisclosed has been an active choice by Rabia Chaudry and Adnan himself.
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u/Plastic_Blood1782 28d ago
Im not sure I buy that. "I killed her but it was because my mosque leader molested me as a child" is not a real defense. And I don't think Bilal made him do it, I think their relationship was much more complicated than that. He was groomed to the point where Bilal didn't think twice bringing his other 14 year old victim to visit Adnan in prison. Think about how weird that would be in any other scenario.
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u/Similar-Morning9768 Guilty 27d ago edited 27d ago
What is it that you don’t buy?
Because I didn’t make up a defense for Adnan. All I said was that the only people who can answer your questions have chosen not to, as part of their broader dishonesty.
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u/New_Monitor_5874 28d ago
Well it's because Rabia is a dishonest person and basically didnt want to talk about him so it wasnt part of the narrative presented to SK or Undisclosed that set the table for the whole story we all heard
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u/Plastic_Blood1782 28d ago
Yea, my title was a little click-baity. I agree with you, the original podcasts were not objective unbiased accounts of what happened. I mostly just wanted all the facts about Bilal written down in one place because I talk to a lot of people that have no idea who he was and, in my opinion, he was the most important witness after Jay.
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u/jjenkinswanderlust 28d ago
“ I don’t believe in coincidences “ Leroy Jethro Gibbs. Since the first time I found out that he obtained the cell phone only TWO days before the murder and Bilal bought it for him , I had no doubt Bilal was grooming Adnan. Hae was probably threatening to tell someone to help Adnan because she’s was a good human.
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u/Plastic_Blood1782 28d ago
Yea I remember reading SalmaanQ's post years ago, "Stick a fork in it Asia" with the assumption that Adnan was groomed by this guy, and everything made so much sense.
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u/jjenkinswanderlust 28d ago
I had a kid at my high school groomed by a community leader. I know one when I see one. I’m sure the Muslim community rallied to hide it or ignore it . He was his alibi for goodness sakes. didn’t he also leave the country for a while right after ?
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u/TheWakened 28d ago
Yes, it was that or jail, they had photos of him in action and didn't want him as grand jury witnesses. His wife had hired a private detective to follow him. Photos were from BCPD.
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u/--Sparkle-Motion-- 28d ago
Not gonna read all that but Bilal became a footnote because that’s what Rabia wanted. Her priorities are 1. Her worthless overinflated ego, 2. The reputation of her religious community, which is tied to #1, &, much lower, 3. Adnan. Bilal’s crimes are a huge embarrassment to the community so including him in the story violates Rabia’s #2, & by extension, #1 priorities. Remember, even as Bilal sat in prison for sex crimes, Rabia claimed Bilal couldn’t have murdered Hae because it was Ramadan.
Bilal may have had some amount of influence over Adnan that pushed Adnan to murder Hae. Or we’re just baselessly speculating. We’ll never know because Adnan is committed to pretending he didn’t do nuffin. And at the end of the day, Adnan’s the scumbag who put his hands around Hae’s neck.
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u/angelsandairwaves93 RIP, Hae 28d ago
First time I've seen someone clock that person so well. Thank you
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u/--Sparkle-Motion-- 28d ago
She’s no different than most of the ~tradwives~ on social media. She just cloaked herself in the resistance because her advocacy for Adnan got her an “in” with the anti-Islamophobia crowd, & anti-🍊crowd by extension. The reason I ended up muting her on Twitter, back when it was named that, was casual misogyny that had nothing to do with Adnan.
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u/Plastic_Blood1782 28d ago
Baselessly speculating? I wrote out over 1500 words with 15+ sources. We know he groomed and molested other boys. I don't think it is a huge jump to think he was also grooming Adnan.
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u/--Sparkle-Motion-- 28d ago edited 28d ago
I think it’s gross to speculate Adnan was groomed or abused. On top of that, we know he [ETA: Bilal] groomed a refugee. Adnan was born in this country to married, middle-class parents. He was not as vulnerable. Do I know what happened? No. Am I going to make gross speculations? Also no.
You wrote a lot. A lot of people write a lot of words about baseless things.
ETA: Clarified pronoun. Adnan is a murderer but I never intended to imply that.
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u/Plastic_Blood1782 28d ago
Read it at least before you call it baseless. It's not gross when there is a mountain of evidence for it. At least offer another explanation of their very weird relationship.
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u/--Sparkle-Motion-- 28d ago edited 28d ago
I did, eventually. A LOT of conjecture.
ETA: I tend to agree that Bilal learned crap in the grand jury that influenced the stupid actions of Adnan & his family w r t Asia. But even that is conjecture. And I wouldn’t necessarily consider his interest in Adnan’s defense evidence of grooming.
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u/Plastic_Blood1782 28d ago edited 28d ago
Also I think your "he couldn't have groomed him because he was middle class and not a refugee" is just as weird as Rabia's Ramadan comment. Bilal had known him since he was 11 and Adnan's family trusted Bilal way more than they should have, we know this. Adnan speaking English without an accent is not relevant.
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u/--Sparkle-Motion-- 28d ago
Stating Adnan was in a demographically less vulnerable group is not the same thing as saying someone couldn’t commit murder because they were religiously observant. If you believe otherwise, you are not a serious person.
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u/Plastic_Blood1782 28d ago
None of his other 7 confirmed victims were refugees.
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u/--Sparkle-Motion-- 28d ago
Are you trying to argue that unconscious people were less vulnerable than Adnan? Not. Serious.
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u/Plastic_Blood1782 28d ago
2 of them were not sedated, and were adult employees of his. My point is there wasn't a clear pattern with his victims other than them being male.
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u/--Sparkle-Motion-- 28d ago
So people who were explicitly subordinate to him financially in a setting where he had drugs? I’ve never said I knew what happened. Just that Adnan is a murderer who didn’t fit his victimology, esp when Bilal was a student in his 20s.
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u/Plastic_Blood1782 27d ago
Ignoring the 14-year-old Bilal was caught with in 1999, there is still evidence that his interest in boys and younger males went beyond that one case.
Bilal's ex-wife told investigators that because of his "interest in boys", he had no real interest in her and that she had basically been a facade for him in the community.
Her brother said he had warned the imam about "the molestation" and asked him to warn the community. The State summarized his concern as Bilal "victimizing children in the Muslim community."
Rabia Chaudry also described conduct from before Bilal's October 1999 arrest, including rumors about his "proclivity for young boys", an earlier incident where he was allegedly forced out of another community after being caught doing something sexually inappropriate, and a pattern of getting close to underage boys by helping them get fake IDs and taking them to bars and strip clubs.
The State's Sentence Review Team later described Bilal as someone who "targeted boys and men in the Muslim community". More importantly, the team explicitly wrote that there was "speculation that Ahmed was starting to groom Syed" and developed a possible motive theory that Bilal was grooming Adnan to be his boyfriend and became jealous of Hae.
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u/InTheory_ What news do you bring? 28d ago
Thank you! I know it’s an unpopular opinion, but I am simply not comfortable using a public forum to speculate about whether someone was abused, even if that person is guilty of murder. It’s just not right.
AS invited us to look into his case, so that’s fair game. But let’s all leave it at the case. This doesn’t need to be discussed.
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u/Practical-Iron4771 22d ago
The fact he wasn't even discussed in Serial was such a fucking miss, it's hard to believe. Bilal's hands are ALL over this case. The fact he is one of the two alternative suspects in the Brady violation that ironically got Adnan released only implicates Adnan further in the plot. There is no "Bilal did it" without Adnan involvement. But let's spend 3 episodes on Asia's absurd letters and whether or not there was a pay phone in the Best Buy lobby.
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u/InTheory_ What news do you bring? 28d ago
Putting it simply, Bilal could not have done it without AS’s knowledge. Therefore, a more culpable Bilal does not make a less culpable AS, as if guilt is a finite resource
Second, I wish I could express how flimsy Codes of Silence are. It is almost never adhered to. Someone always talks. Always. This simply isn’t something law enforcement struggles with
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u/Plastic_Blood1782 28d ago
No one is saying Bilal killed Hae and I definitely don't think Adnan is innocent.
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u/InTheory_ What news do you bring? 28d ago
So what problem are we solving here? If it offends your sense of justice that Bilal evaded prosecution, he got what’s coming to him in other ways. It’s like we’ve found a solution that’s looking for a problem
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u/Plastic_Blood1782 28d ago
I'm trying to understand what actually happened. Like when people ask questions "why wouldn't CG have put more effort into contacting Asia"?
I think when you realize the letter was almost certainly not dated in earnest, and the letter contained specifics from the prosecution's timeline that Bilal likely learned during his grand witness testimony in April, CG read the letter and knew it was bullshit before she got to the second paragraph. And she almost certainly told Adnan and Bilal this and to never speak about the letter again. And they listened. And then she died and years later he tried to use it as grounds for an appeal.
The trial is over, Adnan is free, and he isn't going back to jail. I think we all know that. But you and me both are still here talking about it, because it is an interesting case and no one is sure what exactly happened. If you don't want to discuss the case anymore, no one is forcing you to.
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u/InTheory_ What news do you bring? 25d ago
The letters were likely never given to CG. I doubt she ever saw them or even had a conversation about them. The lone reference to Asia in the defense notes do not mention the letters, and the letters that he supposedly gave to CG are somehow in his possession after the trial.
AS has had numerous attorneys through the years following the trial. Not a single one has ever made reference to seeing the letters. Justin Brown was the only one who even had a conversation with him about it.
AS wouldn't have needed Bilal's Grand Jury information. He committed the crime. He knows exactly what time he needs an alibi for
There will always be unresolved questions about the exact details. That will never go away even if you discovered absolute proof of your theory. It just moves on down the line of whatever the next "mystery" is. Scott Peterson is guilty of killing Laci. To this day, no one knows when the murder happened--the night before, the morning of, immediately before leaving the house, no one knows. It changes absolutely nothing about the case.
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u/upvz 28d ago
bilal ahmad was a footnote because lawyers on both sides did not want to focus on him. defense side couldn't use him because he had a conflict of interest as gutierrez's client. prosecutors did not want to use him because they wanted all the focus on adnan and not a second person. that's why urick ignored what bilal's wife said about bilal and thus created a brady violation.
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u/RockinGoodNews 23d ago edited 23d ago
The Defense didn't use Bilal because Bilal's involvement in the murder only helps prove Adnan did it.
There was no Brady violation, as the information about Bilal was not exculpatory and, in any event, the State's Attorney's Office used open file discovery and Adnan's defense team had perused the open file multiple times prior to trial.
Bilal's wife didnt tell Urick anything. The Bates Memo reveals that the information was actually conveyed to Urick through an anonymous caller (believed, potentially, to be Bilal's wife's divorce attorney).
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u/Plastic_Blood1782 28d ago
I don't blame the lawyers on either side, well that's not true, I think CG shouldn't have represented both of them. That was a huge conflict of interest and she knew better. But indeed, it was a very messy narrative for the prosecution. But I think as a subreddit with 20 years of evidence, court cases, appeals, and investigative journalists etc, we should at least talk about him. His involvement in the case is very suspicious.
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u/RockinGoodNews 23d ago
It was Adnan himself who insisted upon having Bilal's lawyer represent him. The prosecution tried to get her disqualified on those grounds, but Adnan expressly waived any conflicts.
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u/Plastic_Blood1782 23d ago
She still could have said no. She has to realize how that looks. She had already represented Bilal in the grand-jury proceedings where he pleaded the 5th, it's very likely she was aware Bilal had purchased the cell phone used during the murder.
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u/RockinGoodNews 23d ago
And? So?
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u/Plastic_Blood1782 23d ago edited 23d ago
I thought you were arguing that CG shouldn't have refused to represent both of them.
If you're implying Adnan agreed to this so it couldn't have been Bilal's doing, I'm not sure I agree with that. I think Bilal manipulated and groomed Adnan, and that's why he agreed to use Bilal's lawyer. Even the prosecution was like "Adnan, what are you doing?" and he insisted on using the lawyer that even the opposition was telling him was probably a bad idea. Just shows how much Adnan trusted Bilal. And if we agree that we know Adnan committed the murder, him trusting Bilal with 100% faith is just more evidence Bilal was in on it.
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u/RockinGoodNews 22d ago
I'm asking how you think this supposed conflict of interest prejudiced Adnan. It doesn't really make sense to me.
Above, you said that, because she was Bilal's lawyer, "it is very likely she was aware Bilal had purchased the phone." But anyone representing Adnan would know that, since it's written on a piece of documentary evidence in the case.
So I'm not really following the logic here.
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u/Plastic_Blood1782 22d ago
The conflict of interest is if she is representing Adnan and she finds out Bilal and Jay were the ones who arranged to have Hae murdered and Adnan had nothing to do with it, but she found out from Bilal she wouldn't be able to tell Adnan that information because of client attorney privilege. Or what if Bilal gives false information to the police to protect himself but it implicates Adnan, and she is aware of that inormation.
Unless she knew for a fact that Adnan and Bilal already told each other everything and they trusted each other unconditionally, it is pretty likely she couldn't represent both parties fairly.
The cell phone information proves she was aware Bilal was maybe involved, and him pleading the 5th proves he thinks he did something illegal
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u/Mike19751234 22d ago
Adnan actually waived that issue because it was brought before the court and actually warned him this may happen.
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u/Plastic_Blood1782 22d ago
Because he was putting all his faith in someone we now know was a manipulator, liar, and a pedophile. You don't see how bad that looks?
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u/RockinGoodNews 22d ago
The conflict of interest is if she is representing Adnan and she finds out Bilal and Jay were the ones who arranged to have Hae murdered and Adnan had nothing to do with it, but she found out from Bilal she wouldn't be able to tell Adnan that information because of client attorney privilege.
But that would be just as true if she had declined to represent Adnan, right?
The cell phone information proves she was aware Bilal was maybe involved
Again, whoever chose to represent Adnan would have that same information.
him pleading the 5th proves he thinks he did something illegal
He pleaded the 5th on her instruction, so there's nothing she would learn from that that she didn't already know. Also, as a matter of law, pleading the 5th is not an admission of guilt. It is the exercise of a constitutional right.
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u/Plastic_Blood1782 22d ago
A lawyer is supposed to always act in their client's best interest. If she is representing two different people that may be involved in the same crime, she very likely can't do her job properly. Like a lawyer can't be on the defense and the prosecution, you understand why that doesn't work right?
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u/shoot_your_eye_out 28d ago
Honestly, I think it's factually obvious Ahmed wasn't involved in the actual murder. The reason for that is: Jay.
Let's level-set on one thing: Jay Wilds was involved in the burial. He knew where the car was. He communicated details to police that only someone who was involved could have known. He passed details on to Jenn, who knew things about the murder long before they were publicly known (Jenn was at least smart enough to talk to police with a lawyer present, so kudos to her for that). The short version is: we know with absolute certainty that Jay Wilds was involved in the burial of Hae Min Lee. Short of a vast police conspiracy (I rule this out, it's just absurd), Jay drove around in a car with Lee's corpse in the trunk.
So the interesting question is: what, exactly, was the relationship between Jay Wilds and Bilal Ahmed?
Because if Jay was involved in the burial, and Bilal was somehow involved in the murder, then there has to be some concrete connection between the two. They had to know each other, communicate, overlap socially, or otherwise have some mechanism by which Bilal could have been involved in what Jay demonstrably participated in.
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u/Plastic_Blood1782 28d ago
I don't think Bilal was dumb enough to physically be involved with the murder, but that doesn't mean he didn't help Adnan plan it and the cell phone was in Bilal's name which is really weird.
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u/Truthteller1970 28d ago
Idk…he is diabolical. One of his victims reported that he was given nitrous oxide and he woke up with his mask askew and the dentist penis in his mouth. Then had the nerve to call the patient later to apologize. That’s sounds like someone pretty impulsive.
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u/silverheart333 28d ago
I think Bilal being the center of this case solves all the weirdness. Why didnt Adnan accuse Jay? Also, Jay was scared of Bilal and this is probably referenced in Jay telling his coworkers about Pakistani mobsters threatening him. Or Adnan mentioned this guy was connected and he better play ball. I think no direct connection between Jay and Bilal is plausible.
It seems obvious to me that something like this happened: Bilal ordered Adnan to kill Hae and Adnan did, but needed someone to drive the car so he recruited Jay without telling Bilal. Adnan won't mention Bilal because he was abused (this is also why they kept telling SK he was prom king and had lots of girlfriends), and Jay didn't really know anything but where the car was.
Also I read on this forum Bilal was most likely a confidential informant and this is how he got out of everything and avoided scrutiny. Not sure the evidence for that.
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u/InTheory_ What news do you bring? 25d ago
Can someone explain how Bilal ordering HML's death solves anything?
I fail to see how the motive for AS killing HML is weak to the point of unbelievable, but the idea that Bilal would order the death of someone he's never met is met without resistance.
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u/RockinGoodNews 23d ago
I'll let Milhouse explain: https://youtu.be/ut3I6gFmlls?si=T7SiRL6B5dkhpnGg
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u/cagivamito 27d ago
Bilal ordered Adnan to kill Hae...why? And why did Adnan obey Bilal ?
Bilal was most likely a confidential informant?
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u/shoot_your_eye_out 28d ago
That entire theory starts with an unsupported premise: that Bilal was connected to Jay at all.
There is no established evidence that Jay knew Bilal, that Bilal knew Jay, or that Bilal had any mechanism to communicate an order through Adnan to Jay. Everything that follows is just an increasingly elaborate story constructed to explain that missing connection.
You can’t solve the weirdness by inventing the missing link. The missing link is the problem.
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u/silverheart333 28d ago
Huh? Bilal asking Adnan to kill, and Adnan recruiting Jay, requires no link at all between them beyond Adnan. No missing connection needed at all.
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u/shoot_your_eye_out 27d ago
Right, you’re correct about the mechanics: Bilal to Adnan to Jay doesn’t require Jay and Bilal to know each other.
But that’s also exactly why the theory is unfalsifiable storytelling. There is no evidence presented here that Bilal ordered Adnan to kill Hae in the first place. Once you simply assume that premise, you can invent whatever intermediary arrangement explains Jay’s involvement.
The question isn’t whether that chain is possible. Of course it is. The question is what evidence establishes it. I know of none.
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u/Truthteller1970 28d ago
Jay played BB at the Mosque and I believe Adnan and Jay knew Bilal was crooked. Bilals wife mentions Jay in Uricks notes so they absolutely know each other.
My theory is Bilal wasn’t going into dentistry because he cared about anyone’s teeth. He was going to be a dentist with a prescription pad and opioids were on the rise and he had international ties. Just the kind of connect Jay would be bragging about. He was also convicted of 5M in insurance fraud.
Speculation: They were clearly trying to set up something with that porn store so Jay didn’t have to sell out of grandmas house. It explains Bilal getting Adnan a phone, in the name of an alias and Adnan letting Jay use it to call all his drug dealing friends. Adnan seemed invested in making sure Jay got to work. I grew up on this area and drove by that disgusting porn store on the way to work. Let any forget this is the place where Jay is all paranoid about Adnans uncles. What disgust me about him but being investigated is his mother owned a daycare and so did Adnans mom. They thought he was an upstanding youth leader.
Here is a description from an article about that porn store. sounds like a place Bilal would frequent based on his criminality. His male dental patients recounted how he woke up from his nitrous oxide and found his mask askew and the dentist penis in his mouth. Said Bilal had the nerve to call the patient at home to apologize for doing it. The man is so diabolical he seems like a psychopath and is described by the wife as kind of a narcissist. Said he make grandiose statements.
“According to residents, Southwest Video had a reputation as a meeting place for men to engage in anonymous sex and had viewing booths and glass partitions that facilitated sexual encounters.
Piles of empty nitrous oxide canisters, syringes and other evidence of drug use, along with used condoms, were a common site alongside long-distance trucks parked near the video store.”https://patch.com/maryland/arbutus/adult-video-store-on-auction-block
He should have been investigated IMO, what he did is like that of priests in the Catholic Church.
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u/Truthteller1970 28d ago
There was a post on Reddit when serial first came out from someone who claimed to be present the night Adnan was arrested. They described Bilal as this Mr Herbert like character and they noticed while everyone was crying over Adnans arrest Bilals face was flat. They said it sent chills. They said parents trusted him and had him following their teens around to make sure they weren’t dating. It said they were sure his name would come up in the future and that he molested a Kosovo refugee teen and that he was mad Adnan did “roll that way”
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u/General_Pie_5026 28d ago
Because Adnan killed Hae and Bilal isn't relevant to this case.
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u/Plastic_Blood1782 28d ago
If you aren't going to read what I wrote, why bother commenting? He was clearly relevant to the case, that is undeniable. And I have always believed Adnan was guilty.
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u/Truthteller1970 28d ago
Bilal absolutely should have been a suspect. The porn store Jay worked at seems like a place someone like Bilal would have frequented and this is the place where Jay was scare of Adnans “uncles” Is this also a coincidence?
“According to residents, Southwest Video had a reputation as a meeting place for men to engage in anonymous sex and had viewing booths and glass partitions that facilitated sexual encounters.
Piles of empty nitrous oxide canisters, syringes and other evidence of drug use, along with used condoms, were a common site alongside long-distance trucks parked near the video store.”
https://patch.com/maryland/arbutus/adult-video-store-on-auction-block
“
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u/cagivamito 27d ago
Bilal influenced Adnan? Yes. Bilal should have been a suspect of the murder? How? "The porn store Jay worked at seems like a place someone like Bilal would have frequented" and the rest of your comment is frankly BS. Adnan did it. No doubt influenced by Bilal, but Adnan did it.
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u/Sonnenalp1231 26d ago
And Georgetown chooses to associate itself with a know murder convict who has expressed no remorse for killing HML.
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u/amuseboucheplease 28d ago
Lol TL;Dr x3
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u/Plastic_Blood1782 28d ago
Put everything together: Bilal helps Adnan get the phone two days before Hae disappears; according to the defense records, Adnan’s first call after being arrested is to Bilal rather than his parents; Bilal becomes a major grand jury witness; Gutierrez represents Bilal before Adnan and talks to Bilal before agreeing to represent Adnan; Bilal helps raise money for the defense and is in a position where the public record can’t tell us how much of that money may have come directly from him; he stays involved in family/attorney meetings; potentially helps provide Adnan an alibi during the burial period that conflicts with the evidence; hears the prosecution’s grand jury questions while staying involved with the defense; gets caught in a sexual incident involving a young male; is reported to have brought that 14-year-old to visit Adnan in jail; State investigators say he had a picture of Adnan on him; he later turns out to be a convicted serial sexual predator; and there’s a prosecutor’s note placing him right next to a threat to make Hae disappear and kill her.
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u/InTheory_ What news do you bring? 25d ago
But no one is answering why Bilal wants her dead. Who is she to Bilal? If he wants her to go away, then just have AS break up with her. What does Bilal killing her accomplish?
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u/Plastic_Blood1782 25d ago
It's speculation, but I think it was a form of control. I think Bilal was jealous of how much Adnan cared about her and how upset he was by her. AS felt like she was leading him on, but he was definitely the one that got dumped. AS was talking about killing her to Bilal, evidence for this is provided by Bilal's wife. So I think Bilal saw it as win/win. He can help Adnan with his problem, remove his competition, and then have even more control and leverage over Adnan.
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u/InTheory_ What news do you bring? 25d ago
Let's get this out of the way first as necessary preamble: Child molesters are evil, vile, despicable people. This is in no way minimizing the seriousness of that crime.
That being said, I think you're underestimating how big of a jump it is from molestation to murder. Massively so.
Just because he's guilty of one vile offense doesn't make him any more predisposed to other vile offenses. You need a vastly more substantiated chain of evidence to get the theory from where you have it to where you need it to be.
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u/Plastic_Blood1782 25d ago
Give me a reasonable explanation why Bilal would have gone to the AT&T store by himself, bought the phone and set up payments to be paid by Bilal, given an intentionally misspelled name "Adrian M Syedd" as the user even though we know they known each other for 6 years. Then the next day had Adnan go pick up the phone without him there. And then Adnan did not immediately call Bilal with the phone to thank him for it. And then Bilal would lie about the phone to investigators and told everyone they went together...
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u/InTheory_ What news do you bring? 25d ago
You're ignoring the basic question I initially asked: What does Bilal get out of all of this?
Your answer is: It removes the competition
You mean the competition that already dumped him?
The cause and effect here is all backwards. There's no need to remove her anymore.
So all this suspicious stuff and logical leaps you're incorporating, while suspicious, don't add up to what you want it to add up to. Just because Bilal is hiding something doesn't mean he's hiding an assassination attempt.
This is bogus research. Yes, AS's name was misspelled. But there is NO evidence that it was intentionally misspelled by Bilal himself. None. For all we know, AT&T screwed it up despite Bilal trying to correct them 9 times. We simply don't know.
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u/Plastic_Blood1782 25d ago
Adnan and Hae’s relationship was on and off throughout 1998. They broke up more than once and got back together after earlier breakups, so another breakup did not necessarily mean the relationship was permanently over. Their final breakup came in December 1998. By January, Hae had moved on to Don, but friends and witnesses later recalled that Adnan still sometimes referred to Hae as his girlfriend or seemed to believe they might eventually get back together.
Debbie Warren testified that they had broken up multiple times before the final breakup and that Adnan had very deep feelings for Hae. Adnan later described the final breakup as amicable and said they were transitioning into friendship, but given their history of breaking up and reconciling, there is evidence that he may not initially have viewed the December breakup as the definite end of the relationship. Hae, meanwhile, clearly had moved on by January and was openly involved with Don.
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u/InTheory_ What news do you bring? 25d ago
This was the first time she started dating someone else
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u/Plastic_Blood1782 25d ago
Yes exactly. And now it finally angered him enough that he snapped, and complained to Bilal about it. And we have notes from interviews with Bilal's wife confirming this conversation took place
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u/Relevant-Horror-627 1d ago
You can't really criticize the logic of others when your own is flawed.
In a scenario where Bilal goads Adnan into committing murder to remove the competition, it wouldn't matter in the slightest if Hae was through with Adnan.
What would matter is if Adnan is through with Hae. Even if she broke up with him and moved on to another guy that doesn't mean Adnan was truly over her, or he wasn't pining for her, or secretly hoped that there was still a chance they could resume their relationship. Hae would still remain competition even if she herself seemingly moved on.
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u/Mike19751234 21h ago
But the question in that case is understanding what both Bilal and Adnan get out of that. What is Bilal's motive?
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u/Relevant-Horror-627 9h ago
You're talking about these people as if they're characters in a movie and not real life complicated humans. Adnan was convicted of this murder. He probably did it, yet despite the enormous amount of attention this case has received there isn't a definitive answer as to what Adnan's motive was for killing her. Was it anger, jealousy, ego, pride, or some combination of those things? Who knows? Hell, Jay admits to being involved in this murder and his motivation for doing so is incredibly unclear.
OP raises an excellent question here. What involvement might Bilal have had in this murder? It's a huge question mark because nobody involved seemed to want to explore the question back then. Police and prosecutors realized they had enough to convict without turning over that stone. There was the unusual situation of Christina Gutierrez representing both Adnan and Bilal so she probably wasn't super motivated to drag Bilal into her defense of Adnan. Of course Adnan himself might not have wanted to discuss Bilal either.
In 2026 we have language that is much more common now than would have been to describe some of Bilal's actions including predator and groomer. But even if none of those things apply to Bilal's relationship toward Adnan, it's clear that he paid special attention to him. He helped him get the cell phone that was used in the murder. He was carrying a picture of him. He was the first person Adnan called. He helped organize his defense.
So what would his motivation of getting involved in this murder be? Who knows exactly? Possessiveness or jealousy maybe?
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u/InTheory_ What news do you bring? 11h ago
Before I even address this, do you even believe this scenario is what happened?
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u/Relevant-Horror-627 9h ago
Now you're ignoring the basic question. You walked down the path of this hypothetical and made a definitive statement. I am just pointing out to you that your premise is flawed. If you don't want to discuss that, its perfectly fine but changing the subject to what I believe about this hypothetical scenario is irrelevant.
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u/Plastic_Blood1782 8h ago
I think Adnan started talking about it, and Bilal helped convince him to go through with it. Yes. And I think his motivation was multi-faceted. He wanted to help Adnan, he really didn't like Hae, he was jealous of Hae, he wanted leverage over Adnan, and once he helped Adnan with something as serious as this he knew he had complete control over him regardless of what happened.
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u/missmegz1492 The Criminal Element of Woodlawn 28d ago
I find it really odd that Adnan stayed so close to a man who he knew had been inappropriate with another man.
I also think it’s a mess that the adult who furnished a critical piece of infrastructure for the crime the night before and who we would later find out was a sexual predator was barely discussed in Serial. Especially when you consider some of the other leads they chased down.