Today we’re publishing the third and last in a series of exclusive interviews with Jay Wilds. He’s the key witness in the 2000 murder trial of Adnan Syed, who was convicted of murdering his ex-girlfriend, Hae Min Lee, and is currently serving a life sentence at a Maryland state prison. The case was covered by “Serial,” the popular 12-part podcast. But Jay declined to be formally interviewed by the host and producer of “Serial,” Sarah Koenig. These interviews mark the first time Jay has spoken publicly about the case. Links to Part I and Part II of the series can be found at the bottom of this story. The following has been edited and condensed for clarity. —— What has your life been like since “Serial” first aired? The thing that’s been the most scary for my family has been people showing up at my house. Twice I’ve caught people videotaping our home and me. When did you first notice strangers around your house? Right before Thanksgiving. I caught somebody taking a picture of my house. You asked me if I read Reddit. Do you? I can’t. It makes me too upset. My wife has taken screenshots of direct threats and serious accusations about my character.

How does she respond to it? She’s devastated. Because we have young kids around the house, and we used to let them walk to school. Now we don’t, because we don’t know if someone from the Internet is going to take their picture, or harass them. And she is just trying to be protective of them. Have you filed a police report? Yes. We filed a police report. Someone reached out to my wife, somebody that she didn’t know, saying that she was worried for my family. Then this person said she was worried because somebody posted our address on a public forum and said they planned to confront me. A lot of this information, I assume, has been posted on Reddit? Yeah. Now it looks like the moderators of the forum try to delete any personal information of ours after it’s posted. But they weren’t that good about it when the show first started. Sometimes stuff would be left on Reddit about me for days and weeks at a time before it had to be checked, and the post deleted. People were able to go onto my Facebook page and pull pictures of my kids, my dog, my house, my wife. People have also posted information about my family, criminal charges against me, my dad and my uncle. I don’t know why that is at all relevant to what Adnan did. I mean, I know that I was a criminal, and I know that even after this happened, I didn’t have an occupation. I mean, I kept doing my job of criminal shit. But I’m past all that now. I made a good home for my wife and kids.

Do you blame Sarah Koenig for the actions and speculation of the Reddit commenters? I feel like she created an evil archetype of me and sensationalized my motives. It helped fan the flames of this story that people had already moved on from. Have you reached out to anyone at “Serial” about the harassment? Yeah, and I got an email back from Sarah about it. After I had posted the Facebook message, after you and I spoke on the phone, Sarah asked me for another interview. From: Sarah Koenig

Date: Dec 24, 2014 6:56 AM

Subject: Your message

To: Jay Wilds

Cc: Hello Jay, I saw your post on Facebook. I’m raising my hand once again, to ask if you will talk to me. As you probably know, the final installment of my story was last week, but if you wanted to talk, we could always do another episode, so that you can tell your story about what happened to Hae, and about what happened to you. My goal has always been to get this story right. Please know that, to me, this case has never been an entertainment. I am mindful all the time that everyone involved in this case is a real person – not an archetype, not a character, not a stereotype – but a real person. I don’t know if you’ve listened to the podcast, but in every episode I tried to convey that, and to respect that. If you change your mind about an interview, please feel free to contact me at your convenience. Sincerely,

Sarah K. I sent her an email back asking if she’d been leaking court documents or my personal information to Reddit. My wife had told me [that she thought] either Sarah or one of the producers was talking to a moderator on Reddit, and I felt that either Sarah or Rabia Chaudry [Ed. note: an attorney who is longtime friends with Adnan, and who first brought the story to Koenig] were giving confidential information to Reddit. I asked her if that’s true. Then she replied. She said, ‘No,’ but I didn’t believe her. I did not think she was being honest with me. She wrote back [Ed. note: the following is an excerpt from a longer email]: From: Sarah Koenig

Date: Dec 29, 2014 8:14 AM

Subject: Re: Your message

To: Jay Wilds

Cc: ‘You say I am not answering specific questions, but I am. Here is my answer, again, as clear as I can make it: Neither I nor anyone I actually work with – the staff of Serial and of This American Life, has EVER given anything to Reddit. Period. Nor did we authorize or deputize someone else to do so. It would have been stupid and irresponsible for us to have given anything to Reddit. We’re not that dumb, for one thing. And anyway, I don’t believe in crowd-sourcing an investigation. This is not a loophole or a sneaky way to have plausible deniability. It’s a straightforward, complete and true answer. As for Rabia – I’ll say it again: I don’t know. She might have posted it, but I don’t know. I don’t know because she hasn’t told me, and I haven’t asked. Again – do you want me to ask Rabia about this?’ [Ed. note: Chaudry say she ‘never’ posted personal information about Jay on Reddit.] […] You seem to be under the impression that I want to do you harm, or have a secret agenda or have purposely withheld information to make you look bad, or have knowingly reported things that aren’t true. None of that is correct – in fact, the opposite it true. I realize you might not be able to accept that right now – or perhaps, ever – but my intention has been the same from the beginning: To get the story right, and to treat everyone fairly. There are so, so many things I could have reported, but didn’t, because they seemed potentially damaging or unfair, and they weren’t directly related to the crime. Not just about you, but about other people involved in the case. In other words, I’m not out to get anyone, or to damage anyone’s reputation. I only reported information that we deemed relevant to understanding the case. It sounds like you don’t believe Koenig still. I don’t. Has the show affected your employment? Yes. Of course, there’s no way I can actually prove it, you know. But when the podcast started I had a job in construction. I was hired on for a project. About three weeks after the podcast started, when it really started to blow up on the Internet, and my name was out there, and people were speculating, and the word murder would pop up with my name, I was told that—by my supervisor—that they hired too many people for the job, [and] had to let five of us go. But within a week a couple of those people were hired back, along with a new person. I don’t think they got rid of me because they think I committed a murder. But I do think they didn’t want to take [that] on, you know? They don’t need people coming to the worksite, confronting me or harassing other people I work with.