Confessions of a Serial Alibi (11 page)

Sometimes I text Gary something and he doesn’t text me back. That usually means something within itself. During those times I find that most often if I’m asking something stupid, he will ignore me. I know this because I usually already know Gary’s position and my question is pretty asinine. I’ve only had a lawyer maybe two times in my life. Once was for a discrimination lawsuit. The other was when I purchased my home through private sale. Neither time did I ever get to know the attorneys as anything more than hired hands. This time around with Gary Proctor, things have been quite different. If you’re talking about an amazing attorney, you must be talking about Gary Proctor.

CHAPTER SIX

THE CHALLENGE

People always question why it is that I made the decision to “lawyer up” when I got re-involved in this case. My response has always been: how could I not? Challenging the word and testimony of a successful state’s attorney is not something that I take lightly. It’s actually something that took me a lot of courage to do. I’ve never been in trouble with the law, so the idea of being on the wrong side of it (in any sense) is very concerning to me. I’m a middle class, stay-at-home mom who loves her life, pays her taxes and until lately, never really questioned whether if those who defend the law are the good guys. So when faced with a situation in which I was starting to believe that one of our civil servants may not have done things on the up and up, I was pretty stunned. I take full responsibility for my stupidity. My preconceived notion that all prosecutors were the good guys was foolish and unseasoned. To find out that Urick wasn’t the man in the white hat (as Olivia Pope would say) was a hard truth to digest. Not only that, but feeling as if my reputation had been served up on the courtroom floor in exchange for professional bragging rights made me livid.

It’s a funny thing to find out through the grapevine that another person has misspoken about your words and intentions. It’s another thing to find out through a podcast simultaneously with millions of other people. From the moment that I heard Urick’s post-conviction hearing testimony I instantaneously felt like I had been taken advantage of. In my entire life I can’t recall ever having felt so duped and foolish. Of course I wrote my second affidavit as an attempt to correct what I saw as a miscarriage of justice, however the contents of that affidavit was also my opportunity to speak out about the miscarriage of trust that I felt I had experienced with Kevin Urick. I wrote my affidavit with pride because I had hoped that others would read it and know, at last, my version of what happened. Some people find it pretty convenient that I say he misinterpreted or misrepresented the contents of our conversation, as to say that I’m now lying about it. I say to those people that it’s pretty convenient that Urick didn’t testify with his version of our conversation until six months after he influenced me not to participate with Justin Brown. Six months is a pretty substantial amount of time. I bet six months was plenty of time for Urick to feel comfortable with the idea that I wasn’t going to participate in the hearing at all. After all, by then I was assumed to have been a hostile witness.

If I truly felt as Urick said I did, wouldn’t it have been better for me to tell Justin Brown that myself? If that was the actual conversation that transpired, why didn’t Urick just encourage me to call Brown and tell him? How awkward would that have been if I had actually been present at the 2010 post-conviction hearing? Do you think his remarks would have been the same? I seriously doubt it.

That’s why I made the decision to release a copy of my affidavit and interview with TheBlaze. The day that my affidavit was made public was a pretty big deal for me. It was one of the best days of this entire experience. Almost as good as testifying at the post-conviction hearing in 2016. For a short time, it felt as if I was using my own voice. It felt like I was both doing the right thing and addressing the man who I felt had violated me in front of the court. I know that when Kevin Urick gave that testimony he had no idea that it would be featured in an internationally-known podcast. However, in life such as in court, that’s like saying that a dirt bag who rapes a woman at a public concert has no idea that other people are videotaping it. That, my friends, is the power of God. Proverbs 12:19 says, “Truthful lips endure forever, but a lying tongue lasts only a moment.”

When I think about Urick I feel so violated and shameful in the sense that my only faults were being naïve and trusting him when I didn’t know where else to turn, allowing my moment of ignorance to be seemingly pitted against me. He opened his vocal coffers to me and seemingly lulled me in with his friendly stature and knowledgeable expertise. He made it feel safe to engage in conversation with him when all the while I was in the midst of what I refer to as the serpent’s lair. Normally I pride myself on the lessons that I have learned in life, whether they come easy or hard. In my opinion, this lesson came at a very expensive price. I’ve learned that the truth can be costly. I feel like not only did Urick rape my integrity when he testified during the first post-conviction hearing, but it is also my opinion that he raped Adnan’s civil liberties. I know what real sexual assault victims go through. It’s fair to say that a similar sense of violation harbors within me. It makes you feel stupid. It makes you want to hang your head low with shame. It makes you feel used and like you want to ball up and disappear, but it also makes you want to rip off his head and shit down his throat. I figuratively chose the latter.

So what do I personally think about Urick’s response to my challenge? Let’s review what was said in TheBlaze interview:

“‘Absolutely false,’ he told TheBlaze. ‘I was not the one that brought up anything about evidence. She asked me, was it a strong case? I said yes. That was about the extent of my response.’ He said McClain had contacted him because she was concerned about having to testify at Syed’s post-conviction hearing. He estimated the call lasted about five minutes. He did not take notes.”

Okay, now at first glance this seems like a perfectly acceptable response, but let’s dig deeper and ask some questions. Let’s play devil’s advocate a bit. Say I called Urick and I had questions about my first affidavit. Why didn’t Urick refer me to an attorney that could assist me? We already know he’s good at that because he helped recommend Jay Wilds an attorney, back during Adnan’s trial. Okay, I digress, let’s continue.

Assuming Urick is telling the truth, in his own words he stated that I said something to the effect of, “Well, did you have a strong case?” Why, oh, why would I ask him this question with no follow-up question about what made his case so strong? Adnan had been in jail for ten years at this point. Obviously the state had a strong case! Since I had no knowledge of trial facts and evidence it only stands logical to assume that I would ask him for more details! For heaven’s sake I didn’t even know that Cristina Gutierrez was already dead by 2010! I didn’t find that out until four years later when I spoke to Sarah Koenig! Nevertheless, the public is supposed to believe that in the course of a “normal” five-minute conversation, my only question to him was whether or not the state had a strong case. Then he simply answers yes and I’m good with that? I mean, come on! Really? No, no way! You’re telling me that you believe a convicted murderer’s attorney tracks me down across the country; I search the Internet, locate the original trial prosecutor, and call him all for a simple “Yes?” Not freakin’ likely! Yet, Kevin Urick says that’s how it all went down.

At second glance Urick is also quoted as estimating our phone call to have only lasted five minutes. However, when I read that article I immediately found that to be untrue. I mean come on, in what language is a conversation of our magnitude able to be completed within the span of five minutes? The minute I saw that claim I scoffed at it and immediately knew that I had to obtain my Sprint phone records to show otherwise. So on January 21st, 2015, I picked up the phone and called Sprint. To my disappointment Sprint was completely useless. Every time I called, a representative assured me that they were going to have my phone records sent to my home. I even paid a fee to insure that this request was being fulfilled. During my multiple conversations I was told that it would take anywhere from two to five days, and sometimes five to seven days. Contrary to what I was being told, every time I waited patiently nothing arrived. Over the course of the next few weeks, various Sprint representatives informed me of many speculations on why my bills weren’t arriving, my favorite being that because I was signed up for e-billing, my phone records were going to my email. Of course I knew this to not be true (no emails from Sprint) so I offered them the opportunity to guess again. No educated guess could be given, so just for kicks I had them change my billing preferences back to physical mail and had the phone records sent out again. Of course, you guessed it, nothing showed up.

On the multiple attempts that followed, I was told to go to Sprint.com and the records would be located there. Unfortunately, that information was also incorrect because you can only see phone records that extend back twenty-four months on their website. Since I had heard this same statement expressed to me many times, I said, “So let me ask you something. When you put that request in to order my records, does that request then go to another department?” After a concerning pause the representative asked me, “What do you mean? I’m sorry, ma’am, I don’t understand you.”

I responded by repeating myself and saying, “When you put in the request to have my bill printed, where does that request go?” The representative then explained that the request goes to another department. I asked if anyone had contact information for that other department. Of course, you guessed it, he informed me that there was no contact information for that other department. So I then asked Luis (the representative) if he had a direct extension so that when I indeed did not receive my records (as he was promising) I could call him back directly. Luis of course denied me such information. Obviously my conversation with Luis was going nowhere so I ended the call.

Finally, the day of February 11th came. Three weeks had passed and by this time I was good and fed up with Sprint. My last conversation with a Sprint supervisor resulted in him literally promising me that I would be receiving the bills in the mail. Of course nothing showed up. After I decided to make this call, I told myself that I was not going to once again explain the situation to someone low on the Sprint totem pole. Upon starting the conversation, I immediately asked to speak with a Sprint supervisor. The highly poor standard of professionalism and customer service of that Sprint employee is what became the inspiration for my YouTube video entitled “Sprint Prostitute.” As I stated before, I took Spanish for a number of years in school. As anyone can tell you about learning a foreign language, the first thing you typically learn is all the curse words! Now I admit, the call quality was a little shoddy and at best, it may be a little hard to determine whether the representative called me or someone else a whore. In any case after having two friends review the audio (one of whom is Mexican and the other lives abroad in Spain) it was determined that the representative was most likely referring to me as a whore in Spanish.

In my opinion it really doesn’t matter. The fact that she was saying the word “whore” (whether in Spanish or not) while on the phone with a customer is unacceptable. What’s even more unacceptable is that once she realized that I indeed spoke Spanish she immediately blind-transferred my call (sent it to another department) in an attempt to evade responsibility. I admit, initially I was very angry, but who wouldn’t be? Shortly after I came to see the humor in the situation. So much so, that I located a website called GoAnimate.com and used their free trial to make a little cartoon about the incident. I then used their program to synchronize the call audio to the cartoon. It turned out so well that I decided to post that cartoon video to YouTube on February 22nd (2015). I was rather successful in my efforts of garnishing a few good laughs from people I knew at the time.

Now, I have worked in retention services at a major call center before and I know how customers can be. However, I also know that you don’t curse at or in front of customers either. I personally would never call for someone to be fired over something so silly, but I do find it highly disappointing that Sprint to this day has never bothered to reach out to me with an apology. I also find it very disappointing that Sprint still hasn’t provided me with my own phone records. In order to have them for the hearing I had to tell my lawyer to tell Justin Brown. I had to give Justin Brown permission to subpoena my own Sprint records.

Ironically it wasn’t until the day after the hearing and after the “Sprint Prostitute” video started to go viral that Sprint reached out to me of their own accord. I think it was via some sort of automated Sprint Twitter customer satisfaction response system. Once again they asked about the problem, but this time I referred them to the video, my account notes and the Facebook Messenger thread of months and months of dialogue with various Sprint employees. Since that dialogue, I have yet to hear from Sprint again. As I sit here writing this now, no one from Sprint has provided me with my own phone records.

Believe it or not, over the last seventeen years this case is not something so easily forgotten. Every few years either in memory or activity, there is something that has resonated with me for one reason or another. I have a paper ream box in my basement with all my high school stuff in it. From photos to greeting cards, to journals and other keepsakes, it’s all there. Every time this case comes up I eventually end up looking through that box again. Sometimes doing this causes me to get really nostalgic, and sometimes I find something I hadn’t found before. It was during one of these moments that I stumbled across the “Urick notations” tucked inside my high school senior book. Needless to say I was freakin’ ecstatic when I found them, because it was purely accidental that I came across them. I had forgotten all about them.

My husband and I moved (October 2015) a couple months after the private investigator came to our home in Oregon. As I stated before, we wanted to be closer to family, so we packed away our belongings and moved to Washington state. I believe it was at the tail end of 2015 (December) and I had already heard Urick’s post-conviction testimony on SERIAL. I had just retained Gary Proctor and was about to start the task of writing my new affidavit. As soon as I discovered the notations tucked inside my senior book, I made it a point to tell my lawyer’s associate (Ali) about the find. My legal team then forwarded a copy of the document to both Vignarajah and Brown at the same time.