Jennifer Pusateri is possibly my biggest source of confusion in this case. I've worked my way through the major figures involved in the investigation, trying to understand their personalities and motivations. This has helped me immensely in seeing the case through the eyes of the people involved. However, there's one fairly key person that I just don't get...and that's Jenn.
Like with Jay, I want to make a disclaimer before I launch into my analysis. Jenn is a person, she's alive, and she is not in prison. She has a life, and she stays private. Jenn is not currently involved in the case, though I don't know what may happen when Adnan's new trial begins. She declined to speak to Sarah for Serial. I don't want to disrespect Jenn and start gossip about her, but I feel like she's important enough that I (and you) need to understand her in order to get a full picture of the case. So I apologize to Jenn for this analysis, which will inevitably get personal and judgy. The best I can say is that it's my observation and my inference. If I'm wrong, I'm wrong. If I say something untrue, don't believe me. I, too, am just a person.
So back to Jenn...what do we know? At the time of Hae's murder, she was 18 years old. She was in Jay's graduating class, Woodlawn class of 1998. She was attending college at UMBC (University of Maryland, Baltimore County), and she was majoring in biology. She was in a sorority with her best friend Kristy. She had a job as a lifeguard during her winter break. She may have also had a job at a discount store, maybe at the same store as Jay worked in, but whether that was seasonal or permanent, we don't know.
And some more (things from Undisclosed and Adnan's Story, not Serial): Jenn was 5'4" and 180 pounds. Her race is listed as white. She wore tan corduroy pants and a purple sweatshirt to one of her police interviews. During January 1999, her daily routine involved driving all her family members to school or work before heading to her own work or leisure activities, and later she would go pick everyone up. Jenn hung out with Jay a lot, both at her house and other places like Champ's sports bar. Jenn and Jay would go out in groups with other friends, including Jenn's younger brother. Jenn seemed to be a good friend, or at least a concerned one-she tried to make it to different people's parties and get-togethers as much as she could, even bringing Jay along to some of them. Jenn knew Stephanie and her friend group, including Adnan and Hae. She didn't really like Hae because she thought she was stuck up.
And those things leave me...where? With several facets of a person that don't seem to add up. I'm not saying every person's personality has to meet a stereotype, but I'm getting nowhere with Jenn. It's not that I have too much info to cram into a single person like with Hae and to some extent Jay, but it's more like the things I know about Jenn seem contradictory. It's like I end up with only half a person in the end.
Let's start back at the beginning. Jenn was 18. She was a recent high school graduate. She was in college. Ok. Got that. She was attending UMBC, which is one of a few different University of Maryland locations. We know she was home for winter break, but it's not clear whether she lived on campus during the school year. (Since the phone number designated as "Jenn's" was the Pusateri home phone, I'd say she probably lived at home and commuted to school.) It seems that her family had only one car (or maybe they were serious about environmentalism).
Then let's jump to the sorority. Jenn was in a sorority. So was her best friend Kristy, who also lived off-campus (in an apartment with her boyfriend). I find it odd that UMBC would even have sororities, since it seems to be a satellite campus. I also find it odd that people in the sorority would live off campus, possibly with inconsistent access to transportation. Jenn also just doesn't strike me as a sorority girl.
So what kind of girl does Jenn strike me as? Well, again, I'm not sure. To be honest, I kind of imagine Peppermint Patty from Charlie Brown, though that's mostly because I think Jenn's voice from her interview tapes sounds like her (fun fact: Peppermint Patty was voiced by an 8-year-old boy). Jenn was average height and pretty overweight. I have a hard time imagining tan corduroy pants and a purple sweatshirt looking especially fashionable (though police are pretty bad at filling out reports like that in a useful, realistic way-maybe the clothes were brand-name).
We hear from Kristy that she and Jenn were on the phone constantly-that Kristy knew what Jenn was wearing in the morning. Maybe that's just a figure of speech to note how close they were, but Jenn does not seem like the kind of person who would care enough to tell her BFF what she was wearing in the morning. And if my BFF called to say she was wearing that tan and purple outfit, I don't think I'd be too impressed.
We know Jenn's physique, and we know she worked as a lifeguard. She must have been able to pass a swimming test. Was she athletic? Was she stocky in a softball player kind of way? Or did she struggle with her weight? And did that make her insecure?
There's not much we know about Jenn's hobbies. She "hung out" with Jay. It's possible they played pool together. She may have smoked with him. It's also possible that video games had a place in there somewhere. We do know that Jenn and Jay hung out in public at a sports bar, and they also spent time with other friends in a larger group.
About Jenn's relationship with Jay: what was it? They knew each other from school, maybe as far back as middle or elementary school. Jay started dating Stephanie at the end of middle school, so Jenn had to know about that, but Jenn and Jay had no problem being friends. So maybe in the same way Kristy and Jenn were BFFs, Jenn and Jay were best girl/guy friends.
I get the impression that Jenn was not very feminine. Her voice is lower-pitched, she was bigger, she may have worn neutral or unfashionable clothing. She seemed to enjoy going along with Jay to smoke pot or watch TV at a sports bar. I see her sort of as a girl that guys like to hang out with because they don't want to date her. She could have been the joking, fun type with whom to eat cheeseburgers and watch baseball and play video games.
And from there, I naturally begin to wonder who did Jenn date? Or want to date? Or not want to date? (I identify as LGBT, so this pondering may say more about me than about Jenn.) Jenn definitely had both male and female friends, and she definitely hung out with both groups, sometimes all together. When Jenn was at a bar with Jay, what were here expectations and intentions? Did she want to watch the game and eat fries? Play pool and laugh and talk about girls? Was Jenn one of the boys? Did she have or want to have a girlfriend?
Or was she interested in dating Jay? Stephanie was on the "go away to college" track, so perhaps Jenn was waiting for that relationship to dissolve so she could start a relationship with Jay. Or maybe...she was already kind of dating Jay. Adnan believed Jay was cheating on Stephanie with one or multiple "white trash" girls. Adnan told Hae about this, and it seems he also told Christina Gutierrez, who then round-about-ly asked Jay about it during the trial (Step-ping out, remember?)
If Jay and Jenn were having sex, what did that mean to them? And did it mean the same thing to both of them? Did Jenn want Jay because she was attracted to him? Did she want him because she was desperate? Was she desperate because she was just an uncool straight girl? Or was she desperate to hide her sexuality? And then, what about Jay? Did he want to date Jenn? Did he like her because she was easy? What did he know about what she was feeling, and vice-versa?
There is no proof Jenn and Jay were romantically involved. There is an instance where she refers to Jay as her boyfriend, then a couple hours later says she doesn't have a boyfriend. (The first time the cops approach Jenn, she and Kristy are getting in the car to go somewhere. Jenn tells them she's going to see her boyfriend and she can't talk right now. She proceeds to go see Jay-maybe at the video store, or maybe somewhere else. Later, when giving her first interview at the police station, the cops ask her questions to fill out paperwork, including boyfriend's name. She says she doesn't have a boyfriend and the cops check the box that says "none.") So...that might mean or maybe not mean something.
Moving into Jenn's interactions with the police: Her statements are pretty incoherent most of the time. In the audio tapes of Jenn's police interviews, she sounds spacey. There are pauses after statements like "he said" or "I said," like she has to strain to remember. Once you've read the transcripts of her entire interview, it's obvious her more put-together thoughts are the ones chosen for Serial's audio. The transcripts are hard to read, and not just because they're true transcripts complete with ums and uhs. (Note: I majored in C&J in college, and I've worked with transcripts.) There's an immense amount of skipping around, like saying "he said," and never getting around to relaying what he said. Jenn also mixes up gender pronouns a few times. It's like Jay told her a story about Hae and Adnan, but Jenn isn't sure which character is which. I wonder if she was high-maybe when talking to the cops, or maybe when she was hearing the story. Or maybe Jay was high when he was telling the story.
Then there's the stuff about Nicole's mom. (Refresher: Jenn and Jay were at Champ's with this chick Nicole and they saw a news clip about Hae being missing. Later they were in a car together and Nicole was telling about how her mom found a strangled body in Leakin Park. Nicole was talking about something that happened in 1998, but Jenn somehow remembered it and then reported it to the cops as Nicole's mom found Hae's strangled body in Leakin Park in February 1999.) What was going on there? With both Jay's story about Adnan and Nicole's story about her mom, Jenn has a hard time keeping track of the details.
Regardless of the quality of her words, the police seem to believe Jenn. After working with her for a couple of days, they intensely question Jay. From this comes "the story" that (somewhat) lines up with the phone records and ultimately makes the jury vote to convict Adnan.
In order for Jenn to tell a convincing story about something that probably didn't happen (or at least, happened very differently), she had to have believed Jay. And what would make her do that? Their friendship? Romance? A desire to be cool? Involved in something important? Maybe all of the above. She had to be really dedicated to telling the story and supporting Jay, because one of the people present for Jenn's second interview was her mom (the police and an attorney were also present). As far as I know, none of the other young people's parents (perhaps with the exception of Stephanie's) were involved in deep, intrusive police questioning. Adnan was uncomfortable talking to the cops in front of his parents (issues like romance were coming up), so he arranged to speak to detectives later. I'm confused as to why Jenn (a legal adult) wanted her mom to be there while she lied to the cops. What must the mom have thought of Jay and the people her daughter was hanging out with?
As far as I can tell, Jenn kept up her usual routine after talking to the cops. There's nothing to suggest she broke ties with Jay. Jenn testified as a witness for the prosecution in Adnan's trial (second trial only, I think). When Sarah approached her for Serial, Jenn didn't want to talk, but she said she believed Jay in 1999, and she continues to believe him now. I guess this isn't a surprise seeing how close they were back at the time of the murder.
What is a surprise, though, (at least to me) is where Sarah found Jenn. She was working at a discount store. Jenn must be in her mid-thirties now, and in 2014 she was working at the same kind of job she had when she was in college. Now, maybe she's a big-time manager or maybe it's her second job on top of something else, but it seems like a bit of a lackluster career for someone who was in college studying biology. I don't know what Jenn actually got a degree in or even if she finished college, but I can't help but wonder...did the incidents of 1999 mess with her more than she realized? Did hanging out with Jay and lying to the cops affect her ability to concentrate, tear her up with guilt, make school more difficult? Would her life be different now had she not sided with Jay and testified for the prosecution? We can only wonder... And with Jenn, that's all I do.
Like with Jay, I want to make a disclaimer before I launch into my analysis. Jenn is a person, she's alive, and she is not in prison. She has a life, and she stays private. Jenn is not currently involved in the case, though I don't know what may happen when Adnan's new trial begins. She declined to speak to Sarah for Serial. I don't want to disrespect Jenn and start gossip about her, but I feel like she's important enough that I (and you) need to understand her in order to get a full picture of the case. So I apologize to Jenn for this analysis, which will inevitably get personal and judgy. The best I can say is that it's my observation and my inference. If I'm wrong, I'm wrong. If I say something untrue, don't believe me. I, too, am just a person.
So back to Jenn...what do we know? At the time of Hae's murder, she was 18 years old. She was in Jay's graduating class, Woodlawn class of 1998. She was attending college at UMBC (University of Maryland, Baltimore County), and she was majoring in biology. She was in a sorority with her best friend Kristy. She had a job as a lifeguard during her winter break. She may have also had a job at a discount store, maybe at the same store as Jay worked in, but whether that was seasonal or permanent, we don't know.
And some more (things from Undisclosed and Adnan's Story, not Serial): Jenn was 5'4" and 180 pounds. Her race is listed as white. She wore tan corduroy pants and a purple sweatshirt to one of her police interviews. During January 1999, her daily routine involved driving all her family members to school or work before heading to her own work or leisure activities, and later she would go pick everyone up. Jenn hung out with Jay a lot, both at her house and other places like Champ's sports bar. Jenn and Jay would go out in groups with other friends, including Jenn's younger brother. Jenn seemed to be a good friend, or at least a concerned one-she tried to make it to different people's parties and get-togethers as much as she could, even bringing Jay along to some of them. Jenn knew Stephanie and her friend group, including Adnan and Hae. She didn't really like Hae because she thought she was stuck up.
And those things leave me...where? With several facets of a person that don't seem to add up. I'm not saying every person's personality has to meet a stereotype, but I'm getting nowhere with Jenn. It's not that I have too much info to cram into a single person like with Hae and to some extent Jay, but it's more like the things I know about Jenn seem contradictory. It's like I end up with only half a person in the end.
Let's start back at the beginning. Jenn was 18. She was a recent high school graduate. She was in college. Ok. Got that. She was attending UMBC, which is one of a few different University of Maryland locations. We know she was home for winter break, but it's not clear whether she lived on campus during the school year. (Since the phone number designated as "Jenn's" was the Pusateri home phone, I'd say she probably lived at home and commuted to school.) It seems that her family had only one car (or maybe they were serious about environmentalism).
Then let's jump to the sorority. Jenn was in a sorority. So was her best friend Kristy, who also lived off-campus (in an apartment with her boyfriend). I find it odd that UMBC would even have sororities, since it seems to be a satellite campus. I also find it odd that people in the sorority would live off campus, possibly with inconsistent access to transportation. Jenn also just doesn't strike me as a sorority girl.
So what kind of girl does Jenn strike me as? Well, again, I'm not sure. To be honest, I kind of imagine Peppermint Patty from Charlie Brown, though that's mostly because I think Jenn's voice from her interview tapes sounds like her (fun fact: Peppermint Patty was voiced by an 8-year-old boy). Jenn was average height and pretty overweight. I have a hard time imagining tan corduroy pants and a purple sweatshirt looking especially fashionable (though police are pretty bad at filling out reports like that in a useful, realistic way-maybe the clothes were brand-name).
We hear from Kristy that she and Jenn were on the phone constantly-that Kristy knew what Jenn was wearing in the morning. Maybe that's just a figure of speech to note how close they were, but Jenn does not seem like the kind of person who would care enough to tell her BFF what she was wearing in the morning. And if my BFF called to say she was wearing that tan and purple outfit, I don't think I'd be too impressed.
We know Jenn's physique, and we know she worked as a lifeguard. She must have been able to pass a swimming test. Was she athletic? Was she stocky in a softball player kind of way? Or did she struggle with her weight? And did that make her insecure?
There's not much we know about Jenn's hobbies. She "hung out" with Jay. It's possible they played pool together. She may have smoked with him. It's also possible that video games had a place in there somewhere. We do know that Jenn and Jay hung out in public at a sports bar, and they also spent time with other friends in a larger group.
About Jenn's relationship with Jay: what was it? They knew each other from school, maybe as far back as middle or elementary school. Jay started dating Stephanie at the end of middle school, so Jenn had to know about that, but Jenn and Jay had no problem being friends. So maybe in the same way Kristy and Jenn were BFFs, Jenn and Jay were best girl/guy friends.
I get the impression that Jenn was not very feminine. Her voice is lower-pitched, she was bigger, she may have worn neutral or unfashionable clothing. She seemed to enjoy going along with Jay to smoke pot or watch TV at a sports bar. I see her sort of as a girl that guys like to hang out with because they don't want to date her. She could have been the joking, fun type with whom to eat cheeseburgers and watch baseball and play video games.
And from there, I naturally begin to wonder who did Jenn date? Or want to date? Or not want to date? (I identify as LGBT, so this pondering may say more about me than about Jenn.) Jenn definitely had both male and female friends, and she definitely hung out with both groups, sometimes all together. When Jenn was at a bar with Jay, what were here expectations and intentions? Did she want to watch the game and eat fries? Play pool and laugh and talk about girls? Was Jenn one of the boys? Did she have or want to have a girlfriend?
Or was she interested in dating Jay? Stephanie was on the "go away to college" track, so perhaps Jenn was waiting for that relationship to dissolve so she could start a relationship with Jay. Or maybe...she was already kind of dating Jay. Adnan believed Jay was cheating on Stephanie with one or multiple "white trash" girls. Adnan told Hae about this, and it seems he also told Christina Gutierrez, who then round-about-ly asked Jay about it during the trial (Step-ping out, remember?)
If Jay and Jenn were having sex, what did that mean to them? And did it mean the same thing to both of them? Did Jenn want Jay because she was attracted to him? Did she want him because she was desperate? Was she desperate because she was just an uncool straight girl? Or was she desperate to hide her sexuality? And then, what about Jay? Did he want to date Jenn? Did he like her because she was easy? What did he know about what she was feeling, and vice-versa?
There is no proof Jenn and Jay were romantically involved. There is an instance where she refers to Jay as her boyfriend, then a couple hours later says she doesn't have a boyfriend. (The first time the cops approach Jenn, she and Kristy are getting in the car to go somewhere. Jenn tells them she's going to see her boyfriend and she can't talk right now. She proceeds to go see Jay-maybe at the video store, or maybe somewhere else. Later, when giving her first interview at the police station, the cops ask her questions to fill out paperwork, including boyfriend's name. She says she doesn't have a boyfriend and the cops check the box that says "none.") So...that might mean or maybe not mean something.
Moving into Jenn's interactions with the police: Her statements are pretty incoherent most of the time. In the audio tapes of Jenn's police interviews, she sounds spacey. There are pauses after statements like "he said" or "I said," like she has to strain to remember. Once you've read the transcripts of her entire interview, it's obvious her more put-together thoughts are the ones chosen for Serial's audio. The transcripts are hard to read, and not just because they're true transcripts complete with ums and uhs. (Note: I majored in C&J in college, and I've worked with transcripts.) There's an immense amount of skipping around, like saying "he said," and never getting around to relaying what he said. Jenn also mixes up gender pronouns a few times. It's like Jay told her a story about Hae and Adnan, but Jenn isn't sure which character is which. I wonder if she was high-maybe when talking to the cops, or maybe when she was hearing the story. Or maybe Jay was high when he was telling the story.
Then there's the stuff about Nicole's mom. (Refresher: Jenn and Jay were at Champ's with this chick Nicole and they saw a news clip about Hae being missing. Later they were in a car together and Nicole was telling about how her mom found a strangled body in Leakin Park. Nicole was talking about something that happened in 1998, but Jenn somehow remembered it and then reported it to the cops as Nicole's mom found Hae's strangled body in Leakin Park in February 1999.) What was going on there? With both Jay's story about Adnan and Nicole's story about her mom, Jenn has a hard time keeping track of the details.
Regardless of the quality of her words, the police seem to believe Jenn. After working with her for a couple of days, they intensely question Jay. From this comes "the story" that (somewhat) lines up with the phone records and ultimately makes the jury vote to convict Adnan.
In order for Jenn to tell a convincing story about something that probably didn't happen (or at least, happened very differently), she had to have believed Jay. And what would make her do that? Their friendship? Romance? A desire to be cool? Involved in something important? Maybe all of the above. She had to be really dedicated to telling the story and supporting Jay, because one of the people present for Jenn's second interview was her mom (the police and an attorney were also present). As far as I know, none of the other young people's parents (perhaps with the exception of Stephanie's) were involved in deep, intrusive police questioning. Adnan was uncomfortable talking to the cops in front of his parents (issues like romance were coming up), so he arranged to speak to detectives later. I'm confused as to why Jenn (a legal adult) wanted her mom to be there while she lied to the cops. What must the mom have thought of Jay and the people her daughter was hanging out with?
As far as I can tell, Jenn kept up her usual routine after talking to the cops. There's nothing to suggest she broke ties with Jay. Jenn testified as a witness for the prosecution in Adnan's trial (second trial only, I think). When Sarah approached her for Serial, Jenn didn't want to talk, but she said she believed Jay in 1999, and she continues to believe him now. I guess this isn't a surprise seeing how close they were back at the time of the murder.
What is a surprise, though, (at least to me) is where Sarah found Jenn. She was working at a discount store. Jenn must be in her mid-thirties now, and in 2014 she was working at the same kind of job she had when she was in college. Now, maybe she's a big-time manager or maybe it's her second job on top of something else, but it seems like a bit of a lackluster career for someone who was in college studying biology. I don't know what Jenn actually got a degree in or even if she finished college, but I can't help but wonder...did the incidents of 1999 mess with her more than she realized? Did hanging out with Jay and lying to the cops affect her ability to concentrate, tear her up with guilt, make school more difficult? Would her life be different now had she not sided with Jay and testified for the prosecution? We can only wonder... And with Jenn, that's all I do.
