THOUGH THE SERIAL podcast finished its 12-episode run earlier this month, the case at the centre of the story still rumbles on.

The massively popular podcast examined the case of Adnan Syed, who was convicted in 2000 of killing his ex-girlfriend, Hae Min Lee. For 15 years, he has maintained his innocence.

Throughout the show, listeners heard much about the only witness that could connect Syed to the murder – Jay Wilds, who aroused suspicion in journalist Sarah Koenig with his changing story and cagey behaviour. Despite being tracked down by Koenig, he refused to be formally interviewed for the podcast.

Now, though, he has chosen to break his silence in an interview with The Intercept’s Natasha Vargas-Cooper. In the interview, he says he and Adnan were never friends:

I only smoked with him two or three times… We were friendly, we were cool. I might have sat next to him in class, and joked or something. But he didn’t call me unless he needed something.

He also attempted to explain the many inconsistencies in the story he told the police by saying he was afraid of being prosecuted for his drug dealings:

…I wasn’t openly willing to cooperate with the police. It wasn’t until they made it clear they weren’t interested in my ‘procurement’ of pot that I began to open up any.

Rabia Chaudry, the woman who first brought Adnan’s story to the attention of Koenig, has tweeted about the inconsistencies between the narrative put forward in the podcast and the one Jay recounts in the interview.

The question of whether Jay knew if Adnan intended to kill Hae that day still looms large:

And Rabia points out that Jay says he first saw Hae’s body at his grandmother’s house, when he told police he saw her in the Best Buy car park:

Sarah Koenig has not yet responded to the interview, the second part of which will appear on The Intercept in the coming days.

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