If the Police Didn’t Interview Nisha Before March 15th, Why Did They Wait Until April 1st/9th?

In yesterday’s post, I laid out the evidence Nisha was interviewed before Jay’s second interview on March 15, 1999. Today, I will approach this argument from a different angle. If the police had not interviewed Nisha before March 15, 1999, the question becomes whether their subsequent actions make any sense.

We know that it was an early priority for the police to locate people whom had spoken to Adnan on January 13, 1999. According to a March 7th Progress Report,

Later, on March 9th, Detective MacGillivaey did talk to NHRNC (Not Her Real Name Cathy), who told him that Jay and Adnan came over to her apartment between 5:15 and 6:00 P.M. on January 13th. And then, on March 11th, Detectives MacGillivary and Ritz talked to Patrice (3:59 P.M. call), with apparent negative results. Jenn, of course, had previously told the detectives that she saw Jay and Adnan together in the Westview Mall parking lot in the 8:00 P.M. hour.

What this means is that the detectives had to be pretty close to the end of their ropes as they talked to Jay on March 15, 1999. Early in that interview, Jay shifted his story from an Edmondson Avenue trunk pop to a Best Buy trunk pop without a great explanation, meaning that he could be thoroughly impeached by a competent attorney at trial. And, at this point, they had no one who could corroborate Jay’s claim that Adnan and he were together during the crucial period of time starting with the trunk pop and ending with Jay dropping Adnan off at track practice. As noted yesterday, the police had already interviewed nearly everyone identifiable from Adnan’s call log on January 13th, and Jay hadn’t mentioned Adnan and he interacting with anyone else* between the trunk pop and track practice. 

But then, something miraculous happened. During his second interview, Jay suddenly remembered a January 13th phone call in which Adnan handed him the cell phone to talk to a girl from Silver Spring. Or maybe it was much less miraculous. The other obvious scenario involves the detectives showing Jay the call log during the three hours pre-interview on March 15th and asking him to explain the 3:32 P.M. call to the number/girl in Silver Spring, which he did.

In either event, the detectives now had a key piece of information: A phone call to someone who could place Jay and Adnan together at 3:32 P.M. on January 13, 1999. Moreover, barring Phil (3:48 P.M. call) having useful information, this was likely the only person who could place Jay and Adnan together between the trunk pop and track practice. And Jay didn’t mention Phil in his second interview.

So, if you’re the detectives, you jump on this information, right? It had been just over two months since January 13th, and every day that passed created the risk of this witness forgetting key details of this conversation or forgetting it entirely. Moreover, if you somehow forgot that Jay made this claim about the handed-off phone call, he repeated it a mere three days later during his ride-along on March 18th.

And yet, the official story is that the detectives sat on this information and waited either 17 or 25 days to interview Nisha, depending on whether you think her interview took place on April 1st or April 9th. Does this make any sense? It seems clear as day that, as of March 15th, Nisha was the most important new fact witness to interview, a claim that seems corroborated by the fact that no new fact witness other than Nisha who testified for the State at trial was first interviewed after March 15th. Can this delay be explained?

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*Except the nameless person who apparently sold them weed.

-CM