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On February 9th, 1999, 42-year-old Alonzo Novok Sellers left Compton State College where he was employed as a maintenance worker and drove down Franklintown Road toward his home. The road was long, lonely, and bordered on both sides by the rows of tall tulip plants that called Leakin Park home.
Winter had stripped the trees of their leaves, leaving their branches near bare and casting shadows that resembled reaching arms. The remnants of their decaying leaves were strewn across the forest floor, forming a thick mat of humus rich in life. Colonies of microorganisms thrived within the dark, moist layer of fresh soil unaffected by the pockets of snow that had resisted the rising temperatures of the coming spring.
However, the rotting plant matter wasn't the only thing feeding these microscopic colonies. Something else lay beneath the leaves, or perhaps I should say, someone. Alonzo cruised down the winding road, paying little mind to the cycle of life and death that surrounded him. Eventually, the blur of trees gave way to the quaint countryside homes of Woodlawn, a small town suburb of Baltimore County, Maryland.
Alonzo pulled up to his home and made a beeline for his refrigerator. He grabbed a 22-ounce Budweiser, cracked it open, and took a long, thirsty swig. The maintenance worker then got into his car, turned onto Franklintown Road, and headed back to Compton State College, beer in hand. As he drank and drove, the rather large lager proved to be too much for his blotter.
He was less than a mile from work at that stage, but decided to pull over to relieve himself in Leakin Park. Alonzo crossed the road and disappeared into the dense thicket of foliage on the opposite shoulder. He trudged through the brush before he found a secluded spot 127 feet into the woods of the park. He was about to unzip his pants when something protruding from the layers of dead leaves beneath him caught his eye. It looked like hair.
The long, straight, black strands seemed out of place. Alonzo crouched down to get a better look and immediately realized why. There, sticking out of the dirt a few feet from the hair, was the tip of a human foot. The maintenance worker had stumbled upon the body of a missing teenage girl, a discovery that would result in a controversial legal battle that lasted over two decades.
It became the subject of several podcasts and documentaries, which exposed the myriad of mistakes and misleading evidence that led to a heavily disputed conviction. This is the story of Hae Min Lee, Adnan Syed, and the broken justice system that failed them both. Part 1. Love and Remember Me Forever
This book is open to those whose heart is innocent. This may make you angry, sad, happy, mad, or cry. So do enter at your own risk. Dedicated to those who I love and love me back. Do love and remember me forever since I'll always love you all. So sit back and enjoy. Why? Because my life won't be considered typical to most. On April 1st, 1998.
A. Min Lee wrote these words in a journal she bought at a Monet exposition as a rather poetic introduction to her life. Unaware that they were an ominous premonition of what was to come, the high school junior's life would indeed prove to be anything but typical. However, not in the way she had hoped. Whilst Hay chose to start in the middle of her story, I'd like to take you back to where it all began, before she was lost in the controversy surrounding her alleged killer.
On October 15th, 1980, A Min Lee was born into this world bursting with potential. She grew up in South Korea before emigrating to America in 1992 with her mother, Young Kim, and her little brother, Young Lee. A's father had no interest in leaving his homeland, so much so that he refused to emigrate and cut off all contact with his wife and children for several years.
Seemingly undeterred by his abandonment, Hay thrived in her new life in Baltimore County. She went on to enroll in Woodlawn High School's Magnet Program and blossomed, despite becoming a teenager in an unfamiliar place, filled with people she didn't know who spoke a language she hadn't yet fully grasped. The students were drawn to the warm, vivacious extrovert who wasn't afraid to speak her mind. As she grew,
so did her popularity and promise as an athlete and intellectual. Hay became a star lacrosse and field hockey player, as well as the manager of her school's wrestling team. She was beautiful on the field. We all bobbed and weaved, but she danced. I would say that she loved lacrosse, but it would be just as true to say she loved everything. She loved life and explored everything with the same verve, and she was hell-bent on bringing you along for the ride.
said Catherine Arrilt, a former teammate. Hay's tendency to pour her very soul into everything she loved was celebrated by her close friends, Krista Meyer, Debbie Warren, and Aisha Pittman. They remember her as being expressive, passionate, and poetic, especially when it came to her relationships. When Hay fell in love, she fell hard and fast. This sentiment was scribbled throughout her diary.
along with the name Adnan Syed. Hay tackled her program's college-level work with ease, but truly stood out in her French class where she was an intern for her teacher, Hope Schaab. Schaab remembers her fondly, recalling how she arrived at 7:15 a.m. every morning to help with admin and grading papers before school started. "She was like a daughter to me," said Schaab. Hay never ceased in her pursuit of a bright future.
on top of her sports, studies and internship. She also had a job as the sales team manager for LensCrafters, a retail optician chain store in Owings Mills Mall. It was part-time, though she never treated it as such. She dreamed of becoming an optician someday and was determined to put the work in to make it happen. If anyone on this cruel, beautiful planet deserved to see their dreams realized, it was her.
Tragically, she would never get the chance. On January 13th, 1999, Hye Min Lee disappeared. Part two, without a trace. The morning of January 13th began like any other for the high school senior. Though the story of what happened that afternoon seems to change depending on who you're asking. Hye arrived at school early as usual and attended all her classes. That much is clear, however,
The details surrounding her movements after the final bell rang at 2.15 p.m. are murky, to say the least. The theory at the time was that Hay had left when school ended to fetch her six-year-old cousin from daycare and head to her shift at LensCrafters. However, Debbie Warren told the police that she saw the senior at 3 p.m. that day near the gym. Allegedly, Hay had told her that she was going to see Don Kleindienst, her new boyfriend and coworker,
In a later statement, Debbie's story changed. She told investigators that she last saw Hay in the school's lobby between 2:45 and 3:15 p.m. that fateful day. She stated that the senior was on her way to pick up her cousin and attend a sporting event at another school. She also mentioned that Hay never left earlier than 3:00 p.m. to make it to her cousin's daycare. At that stage, Debbie was thought to be the last person to see Hay alive.
until detectives questioned Inez Butler Hendricks, a teacher who ran the school's concession stand. She stated that she saw Hay leaving the grounds in a hurry at 2:15 p.m. These conflicting eyewitness reports make it difficult to build a reliable timeline. Nevertheless, after driving out of the school parking lot in her 1998 Nissan Sentra, Hay disappeared.
The Lee family realized that something was wrong when they received a call from a teacher at the daycare later that afternoon. Hye never came to pick up her cousin. The Lees were concerned, but genuinely thought that Hye would eventually come home. She didn't, leaving young Kim distraught. This was completely unlike her daughter, so she had young Lee, her son, call the police and report Hye as missing.
To their credit, the Baltimore County Police took the report seriously and launched an investigation into her disappearance immediately. While the detectives began calling Hay's friends to ascertain her movements that day, the Lees searched for potential clues at home, starting with her diary. Young flipped through his sister's most private thoughts until he arrived at a page with a phone number. Don's name had been scribbled below it 127 times.
Young called the number, thinking Hye's boyfriend would answer, but someone else picked up. He recognized the voice immediately. It was Adnan Syed, Hye's ex-boyfriend. The pair had known each other since 9th grade and began dating in early April 1998. It was your typical whirlwind high school romance. Adnan was immediately taken by Hye, and she was just as smitten with him.
The tall, tremendously popular football player was a gentle soul with a big heart who worked as an emergency medical technician at the time. Hay gushed about his romantic gestures in her diary, reminiscing about the time he surprised her with a single rose in her physics class and made her junior prom night unforgettable. Adnan was nominated as prom prince and another girl, Stephanie, was named his prom princess. As per tradition, they danced together.
Though Hye was understandably crestfallen, she didn't want to ruin Adnan's moment and tried her best to hide it. But he saw right through her. In true rom-com fashion, he stopped what he was doing and whisked her onto the dance floor. Adnan got his first kiss that night, something he still remembers as one of the happiest moments in his life. The pair were inseparable that year, but things soon soured.
Adnan's Muslim faith dictated that dating outside of his religion and before marriage was haram or sinful. They were forced to keep their relationship a secret from his parents and other Muslim students, which inevitably became too much to bear. They broke up for the first time that November. The pair were back together by December, but it didn't last long. Hay started to develop feelings for someone else. Don Kleindienst,
The tone of her diary quickly became conflicted. It was obvious that she loved Adnan deeply. However, she was falling for Don too, hard and fast. A was overcome by guilt and confusion and, once again, Adnan saw right through her. Though she hadn't acted on her feelings, he became paranoid that she was seeing someone else, which only pushed her closer to Don.
in late December. Hay ended things with Adnan. She went on her first date with Don on January 1st, 1999 and began professing her undying love for him just over a week later. Adnan took it hard, but the pair eventually reconciled and remained good friends, even exchanging Christmas presents before they went into their senior year.
Even so, their amicable breakup didn't protect Adnan from the cloud of suspicion that followed him when Hay vanished without a trace. Part Three: Beneath the Leaves Mere hours after she disappeared, the hunt for Hay Min Lee was in full swing. Officer Scott Adcock called Adnan around 6:30 p.m. that evening. The 17-year-old stated that he hadn't seen Hay since earlier that day at school.
He explained that he was supposed to get a ride home with her, but got held up. He assumed that she had gotten tired of waiting and left. Officer Adcock then called Don, but for some reason, couldn't get ahold of him until 1:30 a.m. the following morning. The 22-year-old LensCrafter's employee maintained that he last saw Hay on the evening of January 12th and had no idea where she was. The Baltimore County Police grew concerned
She had a new boyfriend, a new year of sports and studies ahead of her, and a ticket to fly to France in February. This was no runaway case. This was life or death. The authorities canvassed parking lots for Hye's car and deployed a canine team to scour the wooded areas surrounding her school. Their search turned up nothing. Woodlawn's Korean community stepped up to help the Lee family and combed the neighborhood in groups.
but their efforts were in vain. She was nowhere to be found. The Baltimore County Police quickly realized that finding the missing senior would be anything but a walk in the park. Ironically, that was all it took in the end. On February 9th, one month after 18-year-old Haymin Lee went missing, Alonzo Sellers found her partially decomposed body in a shallow grave beneath the leaves of Leakin Park.
The news brought her family and friends to their knees. The Lees and their community gathered at their home, where they mourned their agonizing loss. A friend of the family recalls how it seemed as though they had died with Hay. The tight-knit students of the magnet program were just as devastated, but none more than Adnan. Margaret Mews, their art teacher, vividly remembers seeing him in the nurse's office the morning after the discovery of Hay's body. He was hysterical.
He fell into her arms, weeping and crying. - I can't believe she's dead. - Over and over. However, Hay wasn't just dead, she was murdered. The following day, an autopsy revealed that the senior had been strangled and her death was labeled a homicide. This came as no surprise to the police who suspected foul play the moment her corpse was found. Leakin Park had a reputation for being Baltimore County's very own dumping grounds.
This left little for the police to go off of, so they started with the man who somehow managed to stumble upon her corpse, Alonzo Sellers. During his interrogation, the maintenance worker's story of walking into the woods to urinate sounded innocent enough. However, trudging 127 feet through thick brush to find privacy seemed excessive. Not to mention he couldn't explain why he crossed to the other side of the road to do it. That's not all.
Alonzo also had a criminal record, rife with deviant behavior. Aside from probation violations and second-degree assault, the maintenance worker had several indecent exposure charges on his rap sheet. In one instance, he ran from police wearing nothing but sneakers and a hoodie.
In another, which occurred just before Hay was murdered, he stood completely naked in front of a uniformed police officer's car and shook his penis at her. Alonzo submitted to a polygraph test, which included questions such as, "Are you attempting to withhold any information?" and "Had you ever been to the spot where the girl was found before?" Deception was detected in his responses and he failed.
The examiner noted that Alonzo was nervous about an important meeting he had that day and recommended that he be tested again at a later stage. In the second test, Alonzo was exclusively asked questions about the method of Hay's murder. This time, he passed. It's common knowledge that polygraphs measure stress and not honesty, making them unreliable. However, both tests should have raised serious questions.
Firstly, an examiner always establishes a baseline of the interviewee's vitals to see how they change in response to certain questions. If the deviation is substantial, it indicates deception. As Alonzo was already stressed when he arrived for the first test, his baseline vitals would have been elevated. However, when responding to each question, the deviation from his baseline was significant enough to detect deception. Secondly,
Although Alonzo passed the final test, he was never asked questions about withholding information or having been to the scene before. None of this proved that Alonzo was lying or guilty, but it certainly warranted further investigation. Perhaps he knew more about Hay's murder or who committed it. We'll never know though. The police immediately ruled him out. Part four, an anonymous call.
Interestingly, the investigation into Don Kleindienst was also cursory at best. Even though Hay spent her last night alive with him and allegedly planned to see him the day she disappeared, why didn't the police dig deeper into Don? Because he had what the police apparently considered to be an airtight alibi. Don claimed he was working at the LensCrafter store in Hunt Valley that day. Rather than requesting physical proof to corroborate this,
Detective simply spoke with the manager of the store in Owings Mills Mall on February 1st, who we only know as Kathy M. Kathy confirmed Don's alibi and they took her word for it. Despite knowing that a consultant working with the police noted potentially suspicious behavior during a conversation he had with the 22-year-old in January. According to the consultant's report, Don was polite and helpful,
but didn't seem emotional or overly concerned about his girlfriend's disappearance. He did offer up a theory though. Don felt that Hay had gone to California to stay with her estranged father after an argument with her mother. The consultant then concluded his report with an eerie observation. He noted that the 22 year old appeared to be far less enthusiastic about the relationship than Hay was. This was the last time Don was contacted by the police.
even after his girlfriend's body was discovered in a shallow grave. There's also the matter of the undated unsigned note found in the Baltimore Police Department's files. "None of Hay's girlfriends liked new boyfriend. New boyfriend assaulted Debbie," it read. This information is by no means credible as we have no idea who made the claim nor has Debbie ever confirmed it. However, the fact that the police never bothered to follow up on it is worrying to say the least.
Don Kleindienst was never questioned about it, let alone considered a person of interest in Hay's murder. Investigators ignored every potential suspect after they received an anonymous tip on February 12th. According to Detective Darrell Massey, the caller sounded like an Asian male and insisted that the police concentrate on the victim's ex-boyfriend, Adnan Syed. That was all it took. At this point in the story,
I feel it's important to clarify something. I'm not alluding to anyone's guilt, nor am I hoping to prove anyone's innocence. This is where our story transitions from Hye Min Lee's murder to the state's case against Adnan Syed, one riddled with holes. Only Hye and her killer truly know what happened on January 13th, 1999. I'm simply trying to highlight the failings of the criminal justice system.
At the time the anonymous call was made to the police, Crimestoppers had publicized a $3,075 reward for any information related to Hay's murder that resulted in an indictment. While this might have influenced the caller, their suspicions weren't necessarily unfounded either. Adnan's teachers recall him as being a good student who was exceedingly kind to his fellow classmates. Even Debbie remembered him as being well-liked and well-adjusted. That said,
the 17-year-old was certainly not perfect. Several of the couple's friends thought that Adnan could be possessive at times. A single entry in Hye's diary reflected this sentiment, where she fumed about him getting angry that she was spending so much time with her friend, Aisha. The most damning information in Adnan's case, however, was a letter Hye wrote to him after one of their breakups. In it, she criticized him for being overly dramatic and not respecting her decision.
Still, there's no evidence that Adnan was ever abusive, controlling, or toxic, and the pair remained close. Investigators from the Baltimore City Police Department, who took over once it became a homicide case, immediately launched an in-depth investigation into the 17-year-old. They subpoenaed AT&T Wireless for his cell phone records to piece together where he was on January 13th and began interviewing those he called that day.
one of whom was fellow student, Jen Pusateri. Jen was questioned by the police on February 26th and stated that she didn't know anything. Later that same day, lead detectives Mac Gillevery and Ritz interviewed Adnan at his home while his father was present. The 17-year-old struggled to remember what he did six weeks earlier on January 13th. To him, before learning of Hay's disappearance, it had been a normal, unmemorable Wednesday.
He did, however, state that he hadn't organized a ride home with her that day, which contradicted the phone call he had with Officer Adcock. Adnan's best friend, Saad Chaudhry, advised him to get an attorney, but the football player refused. In Adnan's mind, he was innocent until proven guilty. "Never in a million years would I have imagined that I would be charged with Hay's murder," he later said. Part Five: Confessions of a Weed Dealer
The following day, Jen was re-interviewed by the police with her attorney and suddenly had a lot to say. Allegedly, on the evening of January 13th, she picked up a friend named Jay Wilds from Westview Mall. According to Jen,
Jay revealed that Adnan had murdered Hay that afternoon and stashed her body in the trunk of her car. Adnan then supposedly drove it to Leakin Park, where he buried her body with Jay's help before they abandoned her car in an alley in Southwest Baltimore. Jen claimed that she took Jay to a dumpster outside of a drugstore the next day, where he got rid of his clothing.
Just after midnight on February 28th, detectives Ritz and McGillivary brought Jay in for questioning to corroborate Jen's story. The 19-year-old Woodlawn graduate was a weed dealer and an adult video store employee who was dating Stephanie, the prom princess of junior year. Jay first met Adnan when Stephanie told him that the football player wanted to buy some pot. They would occasionally smoke together, but that's about it.
until January 13th, apparently. After a 45-minute conversation with detectives, which, for some reason, was never recorded, Jay made the confession that would seal Adnan's fate. In his recorded statement, the 19-year-old claimed that he went to a mall with Adnan on the morning of Hay's disappearance. Allegedly, Adnan said he was going to kill Hay for breaking up with him. The pair then drove to school,
where Jay asked if he could borrow Adnan's car to buy Stephanie a birthday present. Adnan agreed and gave Jay his cell phone, saying he would phone it later when he needed to be picked up. At 3:40 p.m., Adnan called and apparently asked Jay to meet him on Edmondson Avenue. Jay arrived to find him standing by an unfamiliar car. According to the 19-year-old, Adnan then opened the trunk and showed him the dead body of Hae Min Lee.
Jay remembers Adnan saying, "I did it, I did it. You didn't fucking believe me. I did it." Jay then alleged that he and Adnan drove to a nearby commuter lot in separate cars where they left Hay's Nissan Sentra with her body still in it. He claimed that the pair drove to Patapsco State Park in Adnan's car and smoked a joint before he dropped the football player off at track practice around 4:30 p.m.
He apparently picked Adnan up two hours later and drove them to McDonald's to get some food. This is when Officer Adka called Adnan about Hay's disappearance. According to Jay, they then drove to his house, grabbed his shovel and pick, and drove back to the commuter lot so that Adnan could fetch Hay's car and drive it to Leakin Park. Jay followed in Adnan's car. Allegedly, the pair then got busy digging the shallow grave in which Hay's body would later be found.
Jay insisted that Adnan was the one who physically buried it. They left her body beneath the leaves and abandoned her car in a grassy area behind row houses in West Baltimore. Jay claimed that Adnan then dropped him off at home, where he discarded the clothes he was wearing in a trash can. At this point, I'm sure you've already noticed that Jay's story doesn't entirely line up with Jen's. Perhaps he was trying to protect her from being incriminated. Maybe he was hiding something.
The police weren't interested in finding out though, because he then led them to Hay's car. The 1998 Nissan Sentra was parked in the 300 block of Edgewood Street in a grassy area behind row houses, just as Jay had said. The police immediately considered this discovery as evidence of the 19-year-old's credibility. One can see why.
However, they neglected to consider that just because Jay knew where Hay's car had been abandoned doesn't mean he was telling the truth about how it ended up there or who killed her. They ignored any line of inquiry that didn't lead to Adnan, which inevitably resulted in his arrest.
At 6:00 a.m. on February 28th, the Baltimore City Police swarmed Adnan Syed's home, arrested him, and formally charged the 17-year-old as an adult for the first-degree murder of Hae Min Lee. Part 6: I'll be alright. Adnan, who was suddenly struck with the severity of his situation, told detectives Ritz and McGillivary that he wanted a lawyer.
Unbeknownst to him, his family had already hired one for his bail hearings, Chris Flohr. Flohr remembers arriving outside the station, where he introduced himself through an intercom and requested that investigators stop questioning Adnan until he was present. He hasn't asked for you, said a voice. He doesn't know I exist, Flohr exclaimed. Astonishingly, the attorney was never admitted into the building. Flohr was stunned.
He had never experienced this before, especially when dealing with a minor in police custody. The residents of Woodlawn were shocked at the news of Adnan's arrest, particularly those he went to school with. Several students who were interviewed by reporters insisted that he was innocent. They spoke highly of his character and claimed that the police were using him as a scapegoat.
Some students, including Hye's friends, even approached their principal and demanded to speak with the police in Adnan's defense. The police told the teens that they had DNA evidence linking the 17-year-old to Hye's body, which was an outright lie. The only forensic evidence they had against Adnan were fingerprints found in Hye's car, which was expected as he often got lifts from her. Interestingly,
The police never took DNA swabs from Don Kleindienst. This is concerning, as it was discovered that Anita Baird, Don's mother, was the manager of the Hunt Valley LensCrafters he claimed to be working at on January 13th. And Kathy M, the manager at the Owings Mills Mall store who confirmed his apparent alibi, was Anita's girlfriend. Though this weakened Don's already feeble alibi,
The police disregarded this information and relied almost exclusively on Jay's statements, even though the details of his story continued to change in every single interview. Initially, Jay asserted that Adnan first showed him Hay's body on Edmondson Avenue. Next, it was at Best Buy. Then, he told a detective that it happened on Franklintown Road.
When Jay was first interviewed by the police, he claimed that he and Adnan went to McDonald's that afternoon. In the second interview, he stated they had gone to a friend's house. The 19-year-old also said that Adnan had confessed to murdering Hay at Best Buy, which changed to Patapsco State Park the next time he was questioned. When speaking with a friend, however, he claimed that Hay was killed at the library. Jay was clearly struggling to get his story straight.
But the police didn't seem to care. Many have since alleged that the police were blinded by racial bias, which may explain why they all but ignored Don. A pre-trial memo found in the original police document supports this idea, as it suggested that Hay's death was the result of a Muslim honor killing. Nevertheless, the state went ahead with its case against Adnan.
despite relying almost entirely upon the inconsistent statements of a known criminal, who should have been deemed an unreliable witness. On December 8th, 1999, Adnan Syed went to trial at the Baltimore City Circuit Court. In the prosecution's opening statement, they argued that a phone call listed on Adnan's cell phone records was him calling Jay to show the weed dealer Hay's body.
The call was made at 2:36 p.m., meaning their argument relied on Hay already being dead by then. They supported their theory with a 1999 statement made by Inez Butler Hendricks, who claimed to have seen Hay leaving school at 2:15 p.m. This couldn't be true, though, as students had to wait for the bus loop to clear before they could leave. By that time, it would have been 2:30 p.m., but like many issues with the state's case,
This was only brought up years later. Debbie Warren, a friend of both Adnan and Hay, testified that she saw Adnan at school at 2:45 p.m. that day, which made it impossible for him to have murdered Hay by 2:36 p.m. More so, in her initial statement to police, she claimed to have seen Hay at school at 3:00 p.m. near the gym. However, because Debbie's story changed in her second statement, her credibility as a witness was ruined.
allowing the prosecution to uphold their argument. Adnan did his best to recall his movements on January 13th. The then 18-year-old claimed he went to the Woodlawn Public Library after school that day, where he stayed until about 3:30 p.m. However, his alibi was less than airtight. It was his word against the state's. If only someone had seen him at the library that day. Still, his alibi wasn't the only problem he faced.
The Sayeds had hired Maria Gutierrez to represent him, which would prove to be an innocent but grave mistake. On the sixth day of proceedings, a mistrial was declared when the jury overheard the judge calling Gutierrez a liar. In spite of this, the Sayeds continued working with the attorney, who went on to represent Adnan in his second trial. It commenced on January 10th, 2000 and ended in disaster for the 18-year-old.
Debbie, who had already lost the jury's trust, testified that she no longer remembered what time she saw Adnan on the day Hay disappeared. There was now nothing standing in the way of the prosecution's story. They stuck to their timeline and accused Adnan of murdering Hay for breaking up with him and dating someone else. "Solely because of hurt pride, he chose to kill," said prosecutor Kevin Urick. The court had heard enough. The proceedings took six weeks.
But it only took the jury two hours to decide his fate. On February 25th, 2000, 18-year-old Adnan Syed was found guilty of first-degree murder, kidnapping, robbery, and false imprisonment. He was sentenced to life in prison with an additional 30 years. As Adnan's family erupted into distraught wails, he turned to them and calmly said,
I'll be all right. I have faith in the Lord. I know I didn't kill her. The Lord knows I didn't kill her. Part 7: Podcasts in Pursuit of Justice Adnan spent the next few years of his young life in a cramped prison cell with a single barred window. However, he was by no means idle and worked tirelessly to win another chance at proving his innocence. Adnan appealed his conviction in 2002, but it was promptly denied.
Eight years later, attorney Justin Brown filed a petition for post-conviction relief. Brown argued that Adnan had received inadequate legal representation from his original lawyer, Maria Gutierrez, and listed several of her failures, one of which had crippled Adnan's defense in 2000. Someone had seen him at the library on January 13th, 1999.
Asia McClain, who was a fellow student at the time, had spoken with Adnan at the library that day between 2:15 and 3:00 PM, which was exactly when he was accused of murdering Hay. She had even written Adnan a letter detailing their encounter, but Gutierrez never bothered to contact her to testify in his defense. It was discovered that the attorney had been secretly battling serious health and financial problems at the time.
resulting in countless mishandled cases and eventually leading to her disbarment in 2001. She died three years later, leaving a litany of client complaints in her wake. Astonishingly, even with this information, the courts denied Brown's petition in 2012. Not that it mattered much at that point. Adnan's case had already fallen through the cracks of a broken justice system and faded from the minds of a disinterested public.
That is, until Rabia Chaudhry, an attorney and the older sister of Adnan's best friend, sunk her teeth into the state. Rabia was outraged by the blatant missteps made by the Baltimore police, Gutierrez, and the courts as a whole. She felt that Adnan's rights to a fair investigation and trial had been violated every step of the way.
Aware that she couldn't rely on the justice system to do its job, Rabia turned to an objective outsider instead: journalist Sarah Koenig. Koenig was instantly captivated by the complexities of Adnan's case. As a journalist, she thrived on exposing truths that others were too stubborn or complacent to acknowledge. So, she did exactly that.
Koenig drove headfirst into more than a decade's worth of police files, interviews, and court documents. She tracked down witnesses that time had turned into adults and retraced the footsteps of all involved. The journalist compiled her investigation into a podcast well before the true crime genre had any traction and dubbed her passion project Serial. Koenig produced it with the creators of the radio show This American Life.
not expecting it to get much attention. However, after the first episode was aired on October 3rd, 2014, Serial went viral. It was downloaded over 100 million times that year and won a Peabody Award for its raw, compelling expose on the fragility of guilt and innocence. It challenged the unchallengeable and raised serious doubts about the proceedings that led to Adnan's conviction.
Koenig took her listeners through the case over 12 weekly episodes and remained objective throughout. She revealed the existence of Asia McLean to a worldwide audience and questioned the validity of the cell phone records that helped send Adnan to prison. More so, she inspired others to reinvestigate the case, including Rabia Chaudhry.
Rabia, along with three other lawyers, started a podcast in 2015 called Undisclosed to explore the aspects of the story that weren't touched on in Serial.
The team unearthed colossal holes in the state's case against Adnan that completely undermined his conviction and put "guilty beyond reasonable doubt" on trial. In one of Undisclosed's most impactful episodes, the team analyzed the previously unheard audio recordings of J. Wilde's police interviews. They noticed something that could explain his ever-changing version of events: an odd tapping sound.
When Jay became confused or went silent, a very intentional tapping can be heard, after which he would remember a key detail or correct himself. In one instance, he even responded, "Oh, okay." Many have since claimed that this is evidence of police coercion.
Though this allegation has yet to be proven, the undisclosed team brought to light a different wrongful conviction case that painted a shady picture. In this case, Ezra Mabel accused certain Baltimore detectives of coercing a witness, which resulted in him going to prison for murder before he was exonerated after 10 years. One of the accused officers was Detective William Ritz.
Undisclosed also brought several medical experts in to discuss the discrepancies between the autopsy report and the prosecution's accusations. To understand the conclusions they drew, you must first understand the concept of lividity. Lividity, or "liver mortis," is a discoloration that occurs when gravity and loss of circulation cause blood to pool in the lowest points of a dead body.
After a certain amount of time, that blood congeals and the lividity becomes fixed. The coroner noted that Hay's body was found lying on its right side. However, lividity was present and fixed on the front of her body. According to the medical experts, this suggested that shortly after Hay was murdered, her body was left lying face down and stretched out for at least eight to 12 hours before being buried.
This directly contradicted the prosecution's argument that Adnan had murdered Hay by 2:36 p.m. and stuffed her body in the trunk of her car before burying it four or five hours later. It simply wasn't possible. It also challenged Jay's testimony as he claimed that he saw her body pretzeled up in her trunk.
These podcasts and their tenacious hosts laid bare what should have been obvious flaws in the prosecution's accusations, highlighting the failings of Maryland's courts as a whole. Public scrutiny mounted, and the pressure was on for the state to re-look at Adnan's case. However, it didn't go down without a lengthy fight. Part Eight: A Bittersweet Surrender
In 2015, Maryland's Court of Special Appeals allowed Adnan to appeal the denial of his post-conviction relief case. His attorney, Justin Brown, filed a motion for it to be reopened based on new information exposed by Serial and Undisclosed. This included Asia McClain's ignored eyewitness account, Gutierrez's poor representation, and potential prosecutorial misconduct.
Brown also specifically referenced a discovery made by attorney and Undisclosed co-host Susan Simpson.
In short, the cell tower evidence that was subpoenaed from AT&T Wireless and used by prosecutors to determine Adnan's movements the day Hay disappeared was fundamentally unreliable. The state's case depended heavily on his incoming calls, particularly the notorious 2:36 PM call he made to Jay, who had his cell phone.
However, when Simpson examined the original cell phone records that were faxed over to Detective Ritz in 1999, she noticed a message that was clearly displayed on the cover sheet. "Any incoming calls will not be considered reliable information for location," it read. It was impossible to miss. Incredibly, prosecutors ignored this warning, conveniently omitting the cover sheet from Adnan's trial.
and used his incoming calls to help secure his conviction. More so, Gutierrez, who had access to the same cover sheet, did nothing with it. Brown argued that, based on this, the cell tower evidence should have been excluded from the trial. He later supplemented his argument with a signed affidavit from the state's original expert witness on the matter.
Abraham Woronowitz. In it, Woronowitz confirmed that, had he been made aware of the cover sheet, his testimony would have been in favor of the defense. In November 2015, Judge Welch, who denied Adnan's 2002 appeal, granted the then 34-year-old a new hearing, saying it would be in the interest of justice for all parties.
The hearing commenced in February 2016 and included testimony from Asia McLean and an expert on cell phone technology. It was a resounding success. Four months later, Judge Welch annulled Adnan's conviction and granted him a new trial. He was denied bail but, for the first time in 16 years, he had a glimmer of hope. That was enough for him.
The state, however, was desperate to save face. It filed appeal after appeal in an effort to overturn Judge Welch's decision and avoid public humiliation, which saw the dispute being dragged out for two long years. In a shocking turn of events, it worked. Adnan was denied a new trial by Maryland's highest court in March 2019, and his conviction was reinstated.
The court agreed that Gutierrez's representation had been inadequate. However, for some reason, it decided that it didn't prejudice the outcome of the trial. Adnan's legal team scrambled to save him from a life behind bars, but even the United States Supreme Court refused to hear his case. It was over. That's what Adnan thought, at least. That same year, a Baltimore newspaper stunned the world with an unexpected report. In 2018,
prosecutors sent 12 items found on or near Hay's body for forensic testing. Every single item tested negative for Adnan's DNA. It should be noted that J wasn't a match either. This remarkable revelation inspired Adnan's new attorney, Erica Suter, to initiate a year-long investigation that ultimately unraveled the state's case against him. She discovered the existence of two potential suspects in Hay's murder, one of whom had threatened to kill her.
More so, the spot where her car was found was directly behind the home of a suspect's relative. While their identities are not yet known, Suter mentioned that one suspect had failed a polygraph test because he was distracted and was retested using different, less valid questions. Suter added that the original prosecutors were aware of this information but failed to share it with Adnan's defense team.
In September 2022, the state's attorney for Baltimore City filed a motion for Adnan's conviction to be overturned based on this new evidence. A judge vacated his conviction five days later, saying the decision was in the interests of justice and fairness. The 41-year-old was released that same day and walked out of the courthouse, surrounded by a crowd of cheering supporters. Prosecutors dropped the charges against him three weeks later.
Finally, after losing 23 years of his life sitting in a prison cell for a crime he didn't commit, Adnan Syed was a free man. Hae Min Lee, who Adnan has called the true victim of this story, was all but forgotten while his legal battle raged on for over two decades. However, letting an innocent man rot in prison for her murder isn't the justice she deserves.
By exposing America's failing justice system and fighting for reform, we can only hope that the state will learn from its mistakes and bring her story to a much needed conclusion.
