The Statement of Facts for Jay’s Guilty Plea & The Location of Hae’s Car

I did a talk about the Adnan Syed case earlier this week, and it led me to reconsider something I had nearly forgotten.* While Jay’s guilty plea was initially held sub curia, a “Statement of Facts” was eventually submitted to support that plea. Here is that Statement of Facts: Download Statement of Facts. Most of these facts are what you’d expect given the narrative and timeline that the prosecution presented at trial. For instance, the Statement of Facts indicates that

This is very much consistent with the State’s timeline, which had the Best Buy call at 2:36 P.M. and very much inconsistent with Jay’s own statements and testimony, which placed that call at 3:40 P.M. or later. Of course, Jay initially said that this call came from a strip off of Edmondson Avenue and not from the Best Buy. Maybe, then, this portion of the Statement of Facts is simply a vestige of Jay’s first recorded statement:

This portion is stating what Adnan did after the Leakin Park burial, but the reference to taking Hae’s car “back to Edmondson Avenue” makes no sense given that there was no initial trip to Edmondson Avenue; in the “Statement of Facts” version, the trunk pop took place at Best Buy, and Edmondson Avenue doesn’t come into play until after the burial. Actually, it doesn’t come into play at all.

According to the official story, on February 28, 1999, Jay led the police to Hae’s car in a grassy vacant lot behind 300 Edgewood Street, which is the same place that Adnan dumped it on January 13, 1999. As you can see from this screenshot, 300 Edgewood is, as described in the Statement of Facts, “a couple blocks from Edmondson”: 

Given this, it doesn’t really make sense that the Statement of Facts references Edmondson Avenue at all because it’s not really a meaningful signpost. Nothing occurred there, and Hae’s car was merely parked 2-3 blocks away from it. Edmondson Avenue would, however, be a meaningful signpost if Hae’s car were at a location directly adjacent to that avenue. 

This is where things get really odd. As we noted on Undisclosed, there is a write-up of the February 27th interview with Jenn in the State’s files. According to that write-up, 

So, where is 600 Edgewood Street? It is directly adjacent to Edmondson Avenue:

If we take a closer look, we see that, next to the Best Market in this image, there is a rear alley entrance that leads to a longer alley behind the 600 Block of Edgewood and a grassy area where people park cars:

So, what does all of this mean? Who knows. When the police interviewed Jenn on February 27th, did they know or have reason to believe that Hae’s car was parked in the rear alley of 600 Edgewood Street? Did Jenn tell this to police? Was the car actually located there (at least at some point)? Assuming that the murder didn’t actually take place at Edmondson Avenue, why was that the murder location in Jay’s initial statement? And why is Edmondson Avenue still being referenced in Jay’s “Statement of Facts” when it had long since been dropped from the State’s narrative? I wish we had the answer to any of these questions.

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*If my memory serves me correctly, this issue was first raised by redditor /u/Pappy_John.

-CM