Who killed Hae Min Lee?
On January 13, 1999, an 18-year-old girl named Hae Min Lee disappeared. She was last seen leaving Woodlawn High School in Baltimore County, Maryland. Less than a month later, Lee's body was discovered. She had been strangled to death, and her body buried in a public park. Through a confluence of events and the information provided by one particular witness, police came to believe Lee's ex-boyfriend, Adnan Syed, was responsible for the crime. At trial, Syed is convicted for Lee's murder and sentenced to life in prison. To this day, Syed maintains his innocence. Some people believe him. Some don't.
That is the setup for Serial, a spin-off of the radio series This American Life and produced by WBEZ Chicago, which delves into a topic as a serialized narrative where a nonfiction story is unraveled week by week. In the first season, hours upon hours of investigation by host Sarah Koenig and other veteran staffers of This American Life have gone into analyzing aspects of the prosecution's case against Syed and whether it fits with the circumstances surrounding Lee's murder. While there are certain pieces of evidence that seem damning to Syed, the case is paper thin and riddled with holes.
Serial has been the most popular podcast in this country and others for weeks, breaking download records, and critics have called it revolutionary and "The Wire of podcasts" in its ability to marry a true crime procedural format to something akin to an old-school radio show and make it compelling. The case touches on big issues: culture, race, Islamophobia, and how those elements are treated by the justice system. However, in recent weeks there's been a bit of a backlash against Serial. Various columns have been written arguing the podcast is exploitative, manipulative, violates journalistic ethics, and approaches the case involving people of color from a position of white privilege.
Follow beneath the fold for more.
Simple logic dictates that there cannot be multiple veridical interpretations of reality. Whatever happened, happened. Someone choked the life out of Lee, someone buried her body, and that someone is responsible for her murder.
The most fascinating thing about Serial is that it's a search for truth with all of the complications inherent to that kind of quest, and structured to reveal the facts like a nonfiction novel. It presents a situation where the pieces of the puzzle don't fit exactly right in any configuration. Memories are contradictory and fuzzy. The varying accounts by the people involved may be self-serving, self-deceiving, or honest mistakes that are just plain wrong. And the deceptions drive the tension of the narrative Serial presents because someone is lying and responsible for something truly horrific. And if that someone is not Adnan Syed, then the horror has been compounded.
Image of Adnan Syed from 1998. Syed is currently serving a sentence of life plus 30 years at North Branch Correctional Institution in Western Maryland for Lee's murder.
From Caitlin Francke at the
Baltimore Sun (June 7, 2000):
Adnan Masud Syed maintained his innocence at his sentencing on first-degree murder and kidnapping convictions, even as his attorney asked Judge Wanda K. Heard for mercy when punishing Syed because the killing was "a crime of passion."
"He made a bad decision," Syed's attorney, Charles H. Dorsey III, told Heard.
But then, moments later, Syed, an honors student at Woodlawn High School at the time of the killing, told the judge he did not kill Hae Min Lee, 18.
"I have maintained my innocence from the beginning," said Syed, who worked as a paramedic.
Syed, of the 7000 block of Johnnycake Road, said he planned to appeal his conviction, which occurred in February.
Yesterday's hearing was marked by the emotional testimony of the victim's mother, Youn Wha Kim, a native of Korea. Through an interpreter, she said that she moved her family to America so she could give her children a "decent education and a decent future."
"I would like to forgive Adnan Syed, but as of now, I just don't know how I could," Kim said. "When I die, my daughter will die with me. As long as I live, my daughter is buried in my heart."
Last year, a woman by the name of
Rabia Chaudry approached journalist Sarah Koenig and requested that she look at Syed's story. Chaudry is a national security fellow at the New America Foundation, and both a community activist and an attorney with a background in immigration and civil rights law. She's also a friend of the Syed family. Chaudry had seen
an article Koenig had written while she was a reporter with the
Baltimore Sun in 2001. The article concerned the disbarment of attorney M. Cristina Gutierrez for improper conduct dealing with the misuse of client money. Gutierrez had been Adnan Syed's attorney at trial. Chaudry believes Gutierrez not only botched the case, but intentionally threw it in order to run up her billing for representation on appeal.
Koenig, now a member of the staff with This American Life, decided to investigate the story and it became the foundation for the spin-off podcast, Serial, produced by Koenig and This American Life senior producer Julie Snyder. Since it debuted on October 3, Serial has become the most popular podcast in the world, with each episode drawing 1.26 million listeners. It's the top podcast in the U.S., Canada, the U.K., and Australia, and in the top 10 in Germany, South Africa, and India. The series has inspired parodies, podcasts to review the Serial podcast, thousands of regular amateur detectives in Reddit threads, and talk of adapting the series to TV or film.
Koenig and the This American Life team spent the last year investigating, interviewing experts and the people involved, reviewing every piece of information about this case and putting together the pieces. The result is something utterly fascinating. Each episode feels like a chapter of a mystery novel in which the answers feel just a little out of reach. Koenig's narration is perfect in being evocative and empathetic. And the way Koenig tells the story comes off like a friend reciting a tale over a glass of wine.
Producer Dana Chivvis, production and operations manager Emily Condon, host and executive producer Sarah Koenig, editorial adviser Ira Glass, and executive producer Julie Snyder.
There are three people central to this story.
- Adnan Syed: He was 17 years old when he was arrested for the murder. Before then, Syed was the child of conservative Muslim parents who had emigrated from Pakistan. He was an honor roll student, ran track and played football, the junior-prom prince, and worked as an EMT. However, Syed also liked to party, do drugs, and hid some things from his parents. But no one, either teachers, friends or acquaintances, remember him being violent or threatening. Syed had been in a relationship with Hae Min Lee for the better part of a year prior to her death. But the relationship ended about a month prior to Lee's disappearance.
- Jay (real name: Jay Wilds): Depending on who you ask, he was either a friend or "acquaintance" of Adnan's. He was a year older than both Adnan Syed and Hae Min Lee and had already graduated from Woodlawn High. Jay described himself as the "criminal element of Woodlawn," since he sold marijuana and had previous run-ins with police, and would go on to have some violent offenses that occurred after the trial. He is described by people that knew him as erratic and reminiscent of Dennis Rodman. He was the boyfriend of one of Adnan's friends, Stephanie. Jay's testimony at trial represented the only direct evidence tying Adnan to Hae Min Lee's murder.
- Hae Min Lee: The daughter of Korean immigrants, who moved to the United States as a pre-teen, Hae Min Lee was a fellow student in Woodlawn High's magnet program with Adnan. She was also an honor roll student, played lacrosse and field hockey, was the manager of the boy's wrestling team and aspired to be an optician.
The backstory to this crime seems to be the only events that everyone agrees about, although the interpretation of those events varies among the participants. For those unfamiliar with both the podcast and case, here's a condensed version.
In April of 1998, Syed asked Lee to their junior prom, and it led to a romantic relationship between the two. Based on the accounts of friends of both Syed and Lee, as well as Lee's own diary, there weren't any signs of violence, aggression, or trauma by either partner toward the other during this time. Like any couple, they had their ups and downs, and some friends of Lee remember Adnan being clingy in wanting to know where Lee was at different points in the day. But most of the people interviewed by Serial describe it as more annoying than creepy.
Sarah Koenig: They hung around all that summer before senior year. They’d meet up after work and drive around. They were seventeen. They were in love. They were active. They’d have sex whenever and wherever possible. Sometimes at motels or the car or at a park or at other people’s houses or apartments. Sometimes they’d fight and then they’d quickly make up. A couple of times, Hae called it off but then would ask for Adnan back after a day or two or three.
However, both Syed and Lee were keeping the relationship secret from their families out of fear neither would approve of the pairing. The religious constraints of Syed's family forbid any dating or fraternization with girls. And this eventually came to a head in the winter of the same year when Syed's parents caught him with Lee at the homecoming dance, chastised him in front of his classmates and Lee, and then made him leave. Syed and his friends remember it as not a big deal to them, and being something that they laughed about after it happened. But according to Lee's friends, as well as Lee herself in her diary, this is the beginning of the end for her and Syed's relationship. By the beginning of 1999, Lee is dating a new 20-year-old guy named "Don," who was her co-worker at LensCrafters. The last entry in Hae Min Lee's diary occurs on January 12, 1999, in which she professes her love for Don.
From this point forward, memories from all of those involved either become foggy or contradictory. At around midnight on January 13, 1999, Syed called Lee three times. According to Syed, he did it to give her his new cellphone number, since he had just purchased the phone two days prior. January 13 is also the birthday of Jay's girlfriend and Syed's friend, Stephanie. Syed let Jay use his car and cellphone that day. According to Syed, in his interviews with Koenig in the present day, he did this in order for Jay to go purchase Stephanie a gift. At around 2:15 PM, school was let out for the day and Hae Min Lee is seen for the last time alive.
Lee was supposed to pick up her little cousin from Campfield Early Learning Center at 3:15 PM. She was also the manager for the Woodlawn's men's wrestling team, which had a match that night. When she was a no-show, the search began to find her.
Twenty-seven days later, Lee's body is found buried in a shallow grave in the city's Leakin Park by a man referred to as "Mr. S." by Serial. Three days after the discovery of the body, an anonymous caller tells police to look at Lee's ex-boyfriend and that Syed had once talked about the steps he would take if he killed Lee. Police subpoena Syed's phone records and notice six calls to a woman named Jennifer Pusateri on January 13. Pusateri was a friend of Jay's, not Syed's. At first, she denies knowing anything about anything. Eventually, she returns to the cops and leads police to Jay. He in turn claims to be an accessory in Syed's murder of Hae Min Lee, and leads police to Lee's abandon car. Jay's account (or accounts) of what happened on January 13 becomes the sole basis for the murder charge against Adnan Syed.
This is the theory of the crime presented by the prosecution at trial based on Jay's testimony and other circumstantial evidence:
- Before January 13: The state argues Adnan Syed was an obsessed ex-boyfriend that couldn't let go of Lee. Syed had lied to his family and went against the tenets of his religion to be with Lee. And in the end, he had been embarrassed at Homecoming and was left behind for Don at LensCrafters. The state pointed to excerpts from Lee's diary where she worried about how their relationship conflicted with his religion.
I like him, no I love him ... It's just all the things that stand in the middle. His religion and Muslim customs are the main things. It irks me to know that I’m against his religion. He called me a devil a few times. I know he was only joking, but it’s somewhat true ... He told me that his religion means life to him. He tried to remain a faithful Muslim all his life but he fell in love with me which is a great sin. But he told me there is no way he’ll ever leave me because he can't imagine a life with me. Then he said that one day he’ll have to choose between me and his religion. I love him so much and when it comes to choosing, I’m gonna let him go his way. I hate the fact that I’m the cause of his sin. He said that I shouldn’t feel like I’m pulling him away from his religion but hello! That’s exactly what I’m doing.
- The morning of January 13: According to Jay's testimony, Syed bought the phone for the purpose of killing Lee. The true reason Jay was given the car and the phone was so he could be contacted and pick Syed up after the murder was complete.
- The afternoon of January 13: The prosecution puts forward the theory that the murder of Hae Min Lee occurred on January 13 during a 21-minute window. The state contends that Syed asked Lee for a ride after school in order to get her alone. Between 2:15 PM (the end of school) and 2:36 PM (the time of a call placed to the cellphone), Syed strangled Lee and then called Jay to help move the car and dispose of the body. Furthermore, they use the call log from Syed's cellphone, along with calls pinged particular cellphone towers, and Jay's testimony to create a story of what both Jay and Syed were doing on the afternoon and evening of January 13.
- The evening of January 13: Jay testifies that they ditch Lee's car, with her body in the trunk. Jay then says he and Syed drove around smoking marijuana before he took Syed to track practice around 4 PM in order to establish an alibi. After track practice, Jay picks up Adnan and they go to the home of a friend of Jay, "Cathy" (not her real name), and get high some more. Cathy testifies that Adnan was behaving weird and she overheard him talking with someone on the phone, saying, "What do I do?" Beyond that, Cathy, Jay, and the call log establish that, at least in this part of his story, Jay and Adnan were together that night. According to Jay, around 7 PM, Adnan and Jay get shovels from Jay's home and return to Lee's car. They retrieve her body from the trunk of the parked car, and then proceed to bury her in Leakin Park. Some time later, Jennifer Pusateri picks up Jay, and Jay proceeds to tell her about what happened.
Hae Min Lee's car. According to Jay, Lee was strangled inside this vehicle.
Now if all the pieces really fit together that simply, there would be no podcast. The investigation by
Serial shows that almost every element of the prosecution's theory of the crime has problems. Of course, it would have been better for Syed if his attorney had presented these problems at trial, instead of it being fodder for a podcast 15 years later.
Syed's memory of January 13, 1999, is non-descript. As Koenig mentions in the podcast, it's made up of a lot of maybes and could have beens. According to Syed, he probably stayed on campus and went to track practice at 4 PM. He was picked up by Jay after track, they smoked weed, and he probably went to meet his father at a mosque around 8 PM, since it was during Ramadan. However, fuzzy memories don't make for good storytelling in front of a jury. And this is something that 12 Angry Men makes a point of really well, but if someone asked me to remember what happened six weeks ago Wednesday, I couldn't give you an hour-by-hour account of my movements. And that's me sitting here comfortably typing this sentence. If I had been told that my ex-girlfriend had disappeared, while stoned, I might not be able to put together my thoughts to give a halfway-decent "I don't know" to that question. Beyond that though, there are many, many problems with this prosecution.
- No one remembers Adnan being obsessed about the breakup: To the contrary, according to friends and family, Syed was dating other girls and seemed to have moved on by the time of Lee's disappearance. No one, either students or teachers, remembers him acting strangely. Lee's diary doesn't mention a pattern of Syed pestering her or menacing her. In fact, from all outward appearances, friends claim they seemed to remain friends. However, this doesn't mean that he wasn't privately stewing about the end of their relationship. But the state's motive for the crime doesn't exactly fit what people remember about Syed's behavior.
From a blog post by Rabia Chaudry:
What really happened in this case (beyond the fact that there was no physical evidence against Adnan) was the prosecution used every negative stereotype about Muslims and Islam and threw it at Adnan, seeing every single thing he did through that filter. The undercurrent of their case is deeply anti-Muslim and Islamophobic, it plays on the fears of nonMuslims about us. Honor killings, religious confrontations, controlling, angry and abusive men, honor besmirched by a young independent woman who left for another man. That was the narrative, the motive framed by the state.
As if young women don’t leave Muslim men every day and survive to tell the tale. As if a Muslim man couldn’t move one from one woman to the next without a fit of rage. As if a Muslim born and raised in the West, having never even visited his parent’s home country, couldn’t be as American as a blue-eyed blond teen in Arkansas. As if a Muslim man couldn’t actually just be a really and genuinely nice person without raising suspicions that he could be a sociopath.
Adnan didn’t just have the prosecution working against him. He also had deeply ingrained fears and suspicions of Muslims working against him.
- Syed's attorney had info about an alibi and did nothing with it: Three days after Syed was arrested, a fellow classmate by the name of Asia McClain wrote him a letter. McClain claimed that she had seen Syed in the Woodlawn library (across the street from the high-school) at around 2:30 PM when the prosecution and Jay say he was in the Best Buy parking lot murdering Lee. She later signed an affidavit attesting to that memory. McClain was never contacted by Syed's attorney. Now there are a few caveats about this affidavit. For one thing, when Syed's new attorney and investigator contacted McClain during his appeal, she rebuffed any opportunity to repeat this story. And went even further by contacting the prosecutor and claimed she had been harassed into signing the affidavit. When Koenig and the Serial staff got in touch with her in the present day, she re-affirmed her original account. But there's a new wrinkle. McClain claimed she remembered seeing Syed because she thought it happened on the first day it snowed that year. According to Serial's research of weather patterns in Baltimore that year, the first day it snowed was actually a week earlier. So did she see him on January 13, 1999, or is she mixing it up with her memory of a different day?
- Other witnesses claim to have seen Lee beyond the 2:36 PM window: The Serial staff tested whether it was possible for someone to make it from the high school to Best Buy in 21 minutes after school. While it was possible (just barely, if there were no delays, and assuming that traffic flow in 2014 is the same as it was in 1999), there are serious problems with this window. For one thing, people remember seeing Lee around school late enough that it becomes highly unlikely that she could of a) made it to Best Buy and b) been killed in enough time for Syed to make a phone call to Jay saying it's over at 2:36.
- Jay's story constantly changes: This is, by far, the biggest problem with this case. The only thing tying Syed to the crime is Jay's word. And Jay's word is shit. In his first interview with police, Jay says he met Syed on Edmondson Avenue and was shown Lee's body in the trunk of her car. In the second interview with the cops, Jay says that was a lie and then switches to meeting Syed at the Best Buy. In some of his interviews, he refused to dig Lee's grave. In others, he did help. In some interviews, Jay says he and Syed drove to Patapsco Park to smoke weed. In others, they just drove around getting high near Woodlawn High. There are dozens of places between his taped interviews with police and his testimony at trial where details in Jay's story shifts or disappears. Add into this that there are seemingly weird circumstances surrounding Jay's interaction with police and prosecutors. Jay's home and belongings were never searched by police. And Jay never served a day in jail for his part in this crime. Even accepting his (final) version of events, this is still a guy that helped a murderer bury a young girl's body and the state of Maryland let him walk out the door?
Sarah Koenig: The cops have a struggle with Jay. I have a struggle with Jay. He's the biggest mystery of this whole case for me. The cops interview him at least four times that I know about. Two of those are on tape. And Jay also tells this story at trial – not once, but twice cause the first proceeding ended in a mistrial. So, at least, say, six times he's told what happened. And each time, some details shift. Some of these discrepancies seem small to me and understandable but some are significant and confounding. That distance between where a certain detail starts and where it ends up – how far it slides and why it slides. I've spent untold hours trying to measure that distance – trying to weigh it for clues as to what might actually be true.
- The cellphone evidence doesn't fit Jay's story: And even if it did, it doesn't exactly prove anything. The state used the call log, and the cell towers pinged by incoming and outgoing calls, to build a map of Jay and Syed's alleged movements on January 13. According to Serial, most of the movements do not match any version of Jay's story. In fact, the majority of the prosecution's own tests didn't match their presented timeline. However, the state did use the tests that did match as proof to buttress Jay's story at trial. Koenig makes mention of a Washington Post story from June of this year about how cellphone evidence is being misused. The FBI's preferred methodology is that cellphones select "the closest tower with the strongest signal" when receiving or making a call. However, telecommunication experts say this is inaccurate.
This is a map of the key locations in the story and the cell towers that were triggered by Adnan's cell phone on January 13, 1999. (click on it to make it larger)
From Tom Jackman at the
Washington Post:
Numerous experts and telecommunications workers say the FBI analysis techniques are wrong: Cellphone signals do not always use the closest tower when in use but instead are routed by a computerized switching center to the tower that best serves the phone network based on a variety of factors. In addition, the range of cell towers varies greatly, and tower ranges overlap significantly, and the size and shape of a tower’s range shifts constantly, experts say.
- Was there a payphone at Best Buy?: A significant part of the prosecution's timeline is that Syed called Jay after the murder took place in the Best Buy parking lot. How did he do that without a phone? According to Jay, he used a payphone at Best Buy to call the cellphone. Jay even drew a map for the cops indicating where the payphone was located. There is no record of this phone ever existing. It seems strange that no one, either the police or the attorneys involved never checked this detail. The closest thing anyone can come to the payphone existing is a listing on The Payphone Project, which lists the locations of payphones. The Best Buy is located at 1701 Belmont Avenue, Baltimore, Maryland. The Payphone Project shows a payphone listed as existing at a Ramada Inn at the same address. Apparently, the Ramada Inn was razed and the Best Buy built in its place in 1995. Whether the payphone in question was put back when the Best Buy was built is unknown. However, maybe the payphone existed. Or maybe this is another indication of Jay making up the story as it goes along, and he mentioned the payphone because he remembered it being there when the Ramada Inn was at the same address.
- Cathy's observations may have another side: Cathy's testimony is important for two reasons. It's a witness that places Jay and Syed together on January 13 in a way consistent with Jay's story. And she also provides testimony of Syed acting weird, and worrying about what he's going to say to the cops. However, Lee's best friend, Aisha Pittman, remembers phoning Syed that night, and believes she may have been the person on the other end of that phone call. If so, she believes Syed was worrying about talking to police because he was high and had marijuana in his car.
- The Innocence Project wants to test some physical evidence: There is zero physical evidence in this case tying Syed to the murder. The Innocence Project Clinic at the University of Virginia School of Law wants to test a physical evidence recovery kit (PERK) that was used on Lee’s body to test for possible sexual assault in 1999.
From Lindsay Beyerstein at Columbia Journalism Review:
Under Maryland law, the court must order the DNA test if it deems that the results could exonerate the convicted person requesting it. There’s no guarantee that the court will allow the kit to be tested. Even if the court allows a test, there might not be any male DNA in the kit, as the original swab tested negative for sperm cells, and investigators found no other evidence of sexual assault. If there were male DNA and it matched that of the dead rapist or the other suspect, that would exonerate Syed, but if the DNA matched his, that would make his guilt more likely.
The results of Mr. S.'s first polygraph.
- Mr. S.' trip through the park to pee: The man that found Hae Min Lee's body, which Serial refers to as Mr. S., was a suspect in the case before the anonymous tip that pointed cops towards Syed. Mr. S.'s story for how he found Lee's body was that he needed to use the bathroom on the way to work and pulled over to the side of the road to relieve himself. Mr. S. claims he then walked into the park, and noticed Lee's body. The problem with Mr. S.'s account is that Lee's body was 143 feet from the road, the reason why he walked to the place where Lee was buried doesn't match the terrain of the area, and according to those that were at the scene Lee's grave was hard to spot even when you were near it. Part of the reason Serial refers to him as "Mr. S." is that he has multiple arrests for streaking. Apparently, this raised the eyebrows of the detectives involved with the case, since they asked Mr. S. to take a polygraph. Deception was indicated with the first test, but Mr. S. passed on his second try. When Koenig and others went out to Leakin Park, to the place where Lee's body was found, Koenig said she could understand why Mr. S. walked that far into the park to urinate, since passing cars are still visible from that distance. However, my question is, if this is a guy who has multiple streaking charges, some as recent as a few months before discovering Lee's body, why would he care about someone seeing him piss on the side of the road? It seems like a very opportune time to develop modesty.
- Speaking of the detectives: The two detectives in the case were Detectives Greg MacGillivary and William Ritz. Both refused to be interviewed by Serial, and only reiterated their belief that Adnan Syed was responsible for Hae Min Lee's murder. However, something not covered by Serial (at least yet) is that, on a separate case, Detective Ritz was cited in 2005 by the Maryland Court of Special Appeals for breach of process in questioning a suspect. Does that mean that's what happened in this case? No, but it does make one wonder a little harder about how Jay ended up with a deal with no jail time and no search of his home.
Detective Ritz made a conscious decision to withhold Miranda warnings until appellant gave a statement implicating himself in the crime.
Now, if
Serial has done nothing else, Koenig and her team have destroyed the state's timeline and theory of the case. There is no way a reasonable person could look at this record and vote guilty if they were being objective about the case.
But the criminal standard for a not guilty finding, and believing it's possible someone may have committed a crime are separate things. It's all together possible to believe Syed may have done it, and also think the jury should have found him not guilty. To that end, one thing
Serial has not done is present an alternate theory for the crime. While looking at this case and listening to the podcast, there are certain things that bug me about it. Let me be clear about this, none of what I'm about to list is proof, in and of itself, that Syed is guilty, or is it anyone's duty to prove themselves innocent. However, these are aspects of this story that are impediments to me buying into Syed's exoneration.
- Why did Adnan loan out his car and phone that day?: Syed's story, even in the present-day, for why he gave Jay his car and phone is that he wanted Stephanie (Syed's friend and Jay's girlfriend) to get a birthday present from Jay. That just strikes me as bullshit. Syed said him and Jay weren't really close and were more like acquaintances. I've known a lot of acquaintances in my life, some of whom were the boyfriends of girls I knew well. But there's not a one of them I would hand over the keys to my car to, and let them use my phone all day to make calls.
- Something happened to Hae Min Lee between 2:15 PM and 3:15 PM: The state was married to that 2:36 PM phone call because it's the only call that can fit into Jay's version of events. But if you throw out Jay's version of the crime and start over from scratch, you're still left with Lee missing the pick-up of her cousin at 3:15 PM. So whatever happened to her that ended with her body in a shallow grave, probably happened in that one hour window after school. And while Jay's story has been all over the place, Syed's has shifted a little too. When police first asked Syed about Lee's disappearance, he told the cop looking for Lee that he asked her for a ride after school, but he had to stay late and she left without him. A few weeks later, Syed is contacted by police again, and this time tells them that he didn't ask Lee for a ride because he drives his own car to school. Flash-forward to the present and Syed still maintains that he didn't ask Lee for a ride. But two of Lee's friends remember him asking her for a ride. One of those friends remembers Lee telling Syed that she couldn't do it because she had "something else to do." Also, I should point out that no one remembers seeing Syed in or near her car that day. And one of the the last people to see her leaving the school in her car, a woman that ran a concession stand named Inez Butler Hendrix, didn't see Syed in the vehicle.
- Why didn't Adnan try calling Hae Min Lee? From the time Lee went missing to the discovery of her body, Syed never tried calling her. That seems strange to me, given the night before her disappearance he called Lee three times at midnight in order to make sure she had his number. So when he hears she's missing, why wouldn't he try to contact her? And hey, maybe he's stoned on January 13, things are weird for whatever reason, and he doesn't want to call her that night. But in the 27 days between her disappearance and Mr. S. finding the body in Leakin Park, why would he not at least once try calling her?
If Adnan was not with Jay, and the phone was with Jay, why is there a two-minute phone call to a person Jay didn't know?
- The Nisha Call: This particular call is a difficult one for Syed and his attorneys to explain. It occurs at a time when Syed maintains he was at school getting ready for track practice and not with Jay and his phone. Jay didn't know Nisha, so there's not a reason for why he would be talking to her for more than two minutes. At trial, Nisha remembered a time when Syed called her, and then put Jay on the phone. However, she also remembered the call was made from the adult video store where Jay worked. Jay didn't have that job on January 13. Similar to the possibility above with the alibi and snow, it could be a situation where memories are mixing. Other theories/explanations for this call have ranged from a butt dial to this was a purposeful call on Jay's part in order to set Syed up.
- The letter found in Adnan's home: When the police searched Syed's home, they found a letter Hae Min Lee wrote him in November of 1998 when they broke up. The note basically tells Syed to get over the breakup and move on. “I’m really getting annoyed that this situation is going the way it is ... you know, people break up all the time. Your life is not going to end. You’ll move on and I’ll move on. But apparently you don’t respect me enough to accept my decision.”
Sarah Koenig: Aisha Pittman read this note at trial, Hae was her best friend. Adnan had shown Aisha the letter, apparently in health class. And they had written notes to each other on the back. Aisha in pencil, Adnan in pen. They were joking, making fun of Hae, making fun of themselves, it’s all just silliness. But then, at the top of the page it says, “I’m going to kill.” In pen.
- All roads lead back to Jay: Any alternate theory of the crime has to involve Jay. There's no way around that since he led police to Lee's car. Then couple that with the fact that Syed and Jay just happened to spend good chunks of time together on the day Lee disappeared, and you have a whole lot of coincidences and some justified suspicions. Could Jay have murdered Hae Min Lee by himself or with a third-party? Sure, but what's the motive? Some people have speculated that maybe Jay was pissed about Syed's relationship with Stephanie, and decided to seek revenge by framing Syed for Lee's murder. But that's a murder plot worthy of a Bond villain and would require a lot of luck and coincidence. Also, if you're pissed at Syed, why not just murder Syed?
Now, in recent weeks, there's been a bit of a backlash against Serial, and columns written about the show's popularity and what some see as problems. Chief among them is the question of whether or not this podcast constitutes journalism or its the audio-form equivalent of a nonfiction novel? Koenig is telling a serialized story over 12 or so episodes. In order to do that, she has to do a bit of "theatricalizing," and that has led to charges the show is manipulative. There are points where the podcast withholds certain facts until later episodes in order to build tension, just like it would be done if this was a fictional murder-mystery and you were flipping through pages. Add into this that Serial at times becomes as much about Sarah Koenig and her stream of consciousness investigating the case, as it is about the case.
For example, why are some of the people in the podcast only referred to by their first-name and for others their entire name is used? It's not entirely clear. The suspicion is that the people who asked not to be involved with Serial get the first-name treatment. I mentioned Jay's full name above because it's a matter of public record. But Koenig also uses first names to build familiarity. It's "Adnan" and "Hae," not Syed and Lee. But in Jay's case, not knowing his last name helped build the mystery around him and make him stand out compared to the other two big "characters" in the story who we do know more about.
Yearbook pictures.
As the popularity of the podcast has grown, so have charges that the show is exploitative. About a week ago, someone
claiming to be Hae Min Lee's brother appeared on Reddit to complain about the fandom that's come into being around the show. Whether or not the poster was really her brother, the story raised the question of whether the podcast and its fans are treating this like an episode of
Lost or
Law and Order? Some have argued that painting a picture of and defining Hae Min Lee beyond murder victim has not happened in the series. In the latest episode of
Serial, Koenig mentioned trying to contact Lee's family and implied the family wants nothing to do with the podcast. Some aspects of
Serial fit the cable news formula of covering the misery of young girls involved in violent crimes. It's not
missing white woman syndrome, but the way people dissect the story (including me above) fits some of those tropes. Lee is not
Laura Palmer, but in many ways the discussions about the show read the same way as a
Twin Peaks forum debating the identity of Palmer's killer. But, if we're honest, this society has been using murder trials as a form of entertainment all the way back to at least
Lizzie Borden.
Finally, Serial has come under at attack for its treatment of race. Jay Caspian Kang wrote a story for The Awl titled “‘Serial’ and White Reporter Privilege,” in which he accused Koenig and her team of "stomping through communities that she does not understand.” Julia Carrie Wong wrote a piece for Buzzfeed accusing the show of portraying Jay as the "bad minority." One aspect that particularly upsets Wong is that Koenig floats a theory in episode 8 that the jury in Adnan Syed's case connected with Jay more, and were more apt to believe him because he was black. The Baltimore jury was majority African-American, and in their interviews with Serial they believed Jay's testimony, and held it against Syed in their deliberations that he didn't testify in his own defense (in violation of his Fifth Amendment rights). Also, Koenig's theory about the jury seems to have come from Rabia Chaudry.
“You have an urban jury in Baltimore city, mostly African American, maybe people who identify with Jay more than Adnan, who is represented by a community in headscarves and men in beards ... The visuals of the courtroom itself leaves an impression and there’s no escaping the racial implications there.”
Even though this has more of the author's voice in it, the closest thing I can think to matching this series in tone is Errol Morris'
The Thin Blue Line. But I doubt we will get the finality of Morris' film, where all remaining doubts are removed and the mystery is
definitively answered at the end of the story. Koenig has said the story is ongoing, and she doesn't really know how
Serial will end this season.
And maybe that's more true to life. We don't always get the Perry Mason moment where the truth becomes clear. Instead we're left with contradictions, wanting to believe those that seem nice, but left with doubts.