Serial - Episode 1

Serial Podcast

In June, while I was in Victoria, a friend told me about this podcast.  It's done by a reporter about a story recommended to her.  The story is about a teenage boy who was found guilty of murdering his ex-girlfriend when they were both in high school.  The 'problem' is, he was convicted on the first-hand witness accounts of only one person - whose story changed constantly.

The reporter - Sarah Koenig - goes through the story step-by-step in a 12 part podcast, investigating every part of the mystery she can think of.

Overall Story Synopsis: On January 13, 1999, a girl named Hae Min Lee, a senior at Woodlawn High School in Baltimore County, Maryland, disappeared. A month later, her body turned up in a city park. She'd been strangled. Her 17-year-old ex-boyfriend, Adnan Syed, was arrested for the crime, and within a year, he was convicted and sentenced to spend the rest of his life in prison. The case against him was largely based on the story of one witness, Adnan’s friend Jay, who testified that he helped Adnan bury Hae's body. But Adnan has always maintained he had nothing to do with Hae’s death. Some people believe he’s telling the truth. Many others don’t.

Sarah Koenig, who hosts Serial, first learned about this case more than a year ago. In the months since, she's been sorting through box after box (after box) of legal documents and investigators' notes, listening to trial testimony and police interrogations, and talking to everyone she can find who remembers what happened between Adnan Syed and Hae Min Lee fifteen years ago. What she realized is that the trial covered up a far more complicated story, which neither the jury nor the public got to hear. The high school scene, the shifting statements to police, the prejudices, the sketchy alibis, the scant forensic evidence - all of it leads back to the most basic questions: How can you know a person’s character? How can you tell what they’re capable of? In Season One of Serial, she looks for answers.

Episode 1: It's Baltimore, 1999. Hae Min Lee, a popular high-school senior, disappears after school one day. Six weeks later detectives arrest her classmate and ex-boyfriend, Adnan Syed, for her murder. He says he's innocent - though he can't exactly remember what he was doing on that January afternoon. But someone can. A classmate at Woodlawn High School says she knows where Adnan was. The trouble is, she’s nowhere to be found.

The story starts innocently enough, Hae Min and Adnan were high school sweethearts who thought they were in love.  They did typical high school sweetheart stuff.  Hae Min kept a journal, which again sounded very typical of a high school teenage girl.  Both Hae Min and Adnan were the children of parents who had immigrated to the US and had strict cultural and religious views.  But both didn't follow their parent's same views or religion.  Adnan, although raised a Muslim, didn't take it very seriously and had no problem dating a non-Muslim.  While he joked to Hae Min about going to hell for dating her, he apparently didn't mean it.  Although, according to Hae Min's journal, this bothered her quite a bit.

Adnan's mother was quite strict about her son dating girls - in general.  In her view girls are either relatives or wives, nothing else.  She even confronted him at a high school dance when she found out he was there with Hae Min.  While Adnan was not impressed, he was also not angered (so he says).  And what's also interesting is that his mother was the only one in his family who felt this way, his father and brothers were more open to embracing the American lifestyle and actually told her to leave Adnan alone.

On the day Hae Min was murdered, a girl named Asia claims she, her boyfriend, and her boyfriend's friend say Adnan at the library around the time the murder was supposedly being committed.  She even wrote an affidavit outlining what she saw.  But for some reason Adnan's defense lawyer never followed up with her, and she was never called to the stand at his trial as a witness.  During the podcast Sarah tries to investigate why this might be, but can't ask his lawyer, she's dead!  Other defense lawyers do point out that eye witnesses are tricky, but the fact that she never actually spoke to Asia is a major oversight.  Years later Adnan's new lawyers try to enter Asia's affidavit into evidence without success - Asia refuses to testify and then claims she doesn't remember writing/signing an affidavit .  She was scared and reacted badly.  Later, after the judge denied the affidavit from being entered into evidence, Asia admits she remembers the whole thing in detail, but was scared out of her mind when someone showed up at her door to talk about it.

Interestingly, Asia never realized she was Adnan's only means of defense.  She assumed, because his lawyer didn't follow up with her, that there was some sort of physical evidence that proved beyond a reasonable doubt that he was guilty.  She didn't realize until Sarah told her that there was actually no physical evidence what-so-ever to prove he did it.  Obviously she felt terrible and wanted to help.

We also learn that the prosecutions entire case is based on the first-hand testimony of some guy named Jay - a friend of Adnan's from high school.  Jay claims that Adnan was very angry that Hae Min broke up with him and wanted revenge.  He further claims that Adnan told him about the plan for killing her in advance, but he didn't believe Adnan was serious.  Then, the day of the murder, he claims to have met Adnan at the Best Buy in their town - Jay driving Adnan's car, Adnan driving Hae Min's car - Hae Min was apparently dead in the truck of her car.  Apparently they parked her car and drove around for a while in Adnan's car doing nothing, then went back and took Hae Min's body to the middle of no where and buried her in a shallow grave.  Jay admits to helping Adnan do this.

The problem is, Jay's story changes over time.  And he's the only one who apparently saw anything, or knew anything.  Every one of Adnan's friends are shocked that he was capable of such a crime and they all knew him as a very laid back guy.  Apparently this wasn't enough to put doubt on Jay's story.