The Case Against Adnan Syed (2019): Season 1, Episode 1 - Forbidden Love - full transcript
HAE MIN LEE: This book is open to
those whose heart is innocent.
If you feel any guilt
reading this, you should stop.
This book is full of my expression.
This may make you angry,
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.
Eighteen-year-old Hae Min Lee
disappeared on January 13th
after leaving Woodlawn High School.
On February 9th police found
her half-buried body
in Baltimore's Leakin Park.
She had been strangled.
...key details they had
withheld as they sought a suspect.
They now have one in custody.
The police suggest
the suspect had a motive
in the form of a fatal
attraction to his victim.
The subject is
identified as Adnan Masud Syed,
17 and a former football
player who is described
as an A student, friendly to everyone.
News of Syed's
arrest is met with disbelief
by the community in Woodlawn.
They can't believe the boy
who had so much promise
now faces a murder rap.
Baby Sidney. Yusuf?
I'm here.
What happened to you?
Sydney.
Sydney! Hi.
Come, on Leda. Where's your blankie?
- Here.
- Benjamin.
Okay. Eunice, you all right?
You're all right, okay? Come on.
Want to sit with me?
Come on, you can sit.
She's shy.
Yeah, he used to help me, too.
- He used to help you?
- Yeah.
I'm sorry.
When Adnan went to prison,
it was like a big piece
of all of us had died.
We thought he was gone forever.
But then Rabia,
while she was in law school
and while she was raising two daughters,
she was always there for us and
she was still fighting for Adnan.
Adnan would've been forgotten by
everyone if it wasn't for Rabia.
It doesn't look like a baby's room yet.
Nothing's in here... because we painted.
But this will be the nursery.
I've got a couple of weeks
to get it set up.
When Adnan was incarcerated,
My older daughter...
In '99, how old was she?
She was only two.
This will be my third baby,
and I hope that this baby
will get to know Adnan uncle
in a normal environment.
These are some of the most important
documents related to Adnan's case,
and they're the ones that I've
been carrying around with me
'cause I can't keep all of his
15 boxes of files with me.
This is a flier that I made at home
when we were raising money
for Adnan's second appeal.
( SERIAL PODCAST THEME MUSIC PLAYS)
For years I've been saying to Adnan,
we should go to media,
we should go to journalists,
because they can do things we can't do.
I went to my laptop and I started
looking for a reporter who had
covered the case in 1999
for the Baltimore Sun.
And the first name I came
across was Sarah Koenig.
She was a producer at NPR,
and I thought,
okay, well, she's not in Baltimore
anymore, but maybe this will work.
I went to go see Rabia.
She was surrounded by paper;
Files, loose stacks, binders,
some crappy-looking boxes,
all court documents and attorneys'
files from Adnan's case.
I didn't even know what a podcast was.
Nobody realized...
Even Sarah Koenig herself,
I didn't think, went into this
um, thinking I'm going to do
like 10, 12 episodes on this,
or it's going to turn into anything big.
Adnan Syed's story
has captivated millions
since the 2014 launch
of the podcast Serial.
The podcast was
downloaded more than 100 million times.
Turning the Syed
case into a global sensation.
It spun out of
control very, very quickly.
It just became a pop culture phenomenon.
Please welcome Sarah Koenig!
You are the world's
first superstar podcaster.
Colbert Report, Saturday Night Live,
it was everywhere.
And I'm so honored
and pleased to get to present
this award to Serial and Sarah Koenig.
We did not expect Serial to get
very much attention at all.
It's a ten-hour audio documentary
about an old murder
that I did not solve.
I personally went back and forth.
Did he do it? Did he not?
I think Adnan probably did it,
but this case reeks of reasonable doubt.
Serial turned everything
into a point of investigation.
Turning listeners
into armchair detectives.
There are lengthy discussion
groups on the website Reddit,
conspiracy theories are floated.
Do you buy the cops are
trying to frame Syed angle?
Serial is what brought obsessed
people on Reddit to the case,
who brought new evidence to the case.
An appeal is now forthcoming,
one that could lead to a
new trial, a plea deal,
or perhaps a decision by the
State to drop it entirely.
Serial was the first
time that I was able to see
the case from the perspective
of other people.
What I realized then
was that Serial, at least,
was not going to be a story
that was going to exonerate him,
and that in the absence
of a real smoking gun,
evidence of his innocence
or someone else's guilt,
that this ambiguity
would always haunt us.
State of Maryland vs. Adnan Syed.
Mr. Urick, I know you have preparation,
but if we're gonna get this
through sometime this year,
we've gotta be prepared
to start quickly, okay?
- Please call your first witness.
- Thank you, Your Honor.
At this time the
state will call Mr. Young Lee.
Good afternoon, Mr. Lee.
What, if anything,
happened in January of 1999
regarding your sister?
Um, she was missing.
I'm going to ask you to remember
back to January the 13th.
Do you remember what happened that day?
Yes. I do, um,
at first we knew something was wrong
when we got a call
from my cousin's teacher
asking us to pick her up
from the school.
This was strange because
it was my sister's job.
Do you know about what
time you received the phone call
that Hae had not picked up your cousins?
- Around 3:30.
- What, if anything, happened next?
I called my sister's workplace,
her best friend, Aisha,
and I called the school.
Her brother called to tell me,
and the immediate thing
I did after that was page her
and then continue paging her,
just worrying
but not knowing what to do.
I can remember what she was wearing
and hearing her speak,
because that was the last
time I would hear her talk.
And, you know, she was...
I can remember she was wearing
like a gray or black plaid, um, skirt...
and a white sweater.
And that just, like, stuck with me,
because she always dressed up.
I can actually still in my mind see it
'cause I have a photographic memory
and that has never left my mind.
I remember seeing her
exactly where I saw her.
I can see that staircase.
I still see her there.
After a while my mom was real worried
and asked me to call the police.
On my arrival, I spoke
to the victim's brother,
and he advised me that his
sister had not returned home.
My grandmother brought down the diary
that my sister writes in.
Then I found the phone number,
then I called that number.
Who did you believe you were calling?
I believe I was calling Don,
my sister's new boyfriend.
What happened when you
called the number?
I ask, may I speak to Don?
But after speaking
to the person, the receiver,
I knew it was Adnan.
- Who is Adnan?
- Um, him, right there.
ADNAN (OVER PHONE): The day she went
missing was just a normal day to me.
I think I had told her that day,
I was going to go get my cell phone.
So I... I called her the night before,
and I think she wrote
the number down in her diary.
I've never talked
to a police officer before.
And when he called me, I was like...
I was literally high on marijuana
and there's a cop calling me.
So when he asked me about Hae,
I just remember kind of like, hey,
did I ask Hae for a ride that day?
I spoke to, uh, Mr. Syed,
and he advised me that, uh,
he was supposed to get a ride
home from the victim,
but he got detained at school and
felt that she just got
tired of waiting and left.
He asked if a police report
was going to be made
'cause I had told him the
circumstances why I was calling him.
What did you tell him, if you remember?
I told him yes, a police
report's going to be made.
Now I'm thinking,
Hae's mom's gonna kill her now
when she gets home because
now the police are involved,
and no way am I thinking
something bad happened to her.
I did go to bed worried,
but at the same time I was like,
well, maybe, like,
she doesn't have her pager on
or, like, she left it in her car.
Maybe she's with this new
boyfriend and not responding.
There's a number of places
that she could be.
Mr. Lee, after January the 13th
did you ever see your sister again?
No, I didn't.
Did you ever learn of her whereabouts?
Uh, no.
You don't go in all areas in Baltimore.
There's a few areas you stay in,
and there's some areas,
if you don't need
to go into that area, you don't.
When I was growing up,
some people would, like,
use fake addresses
to get out of the city schools
and come in to Woodlawn.
It's a world of difference
between Baltimore County
and Baltimore City.
Literally, it's a world of difference.
It's better than
when we lived in Baltimore,
it'd be two o'clock, three o'clock...
pow-pow-pop-pop.
The numbers of deaths have reached
over 300 in certain years.
Um, unfortunately, having
taught almost 20 years,
I've had probably, I don't
know, four or five students
who have died during that time,
Hae being one of them.
Hae was my intern. She would
come in at 7:15 every morning
and stay for an hour and a half.
She would bring her coffee in
and do work on the computer for
me or help me grade my papers.
She was like a daughter to me.
She always had some
cute little outfit on.
And her hair was long
and shiny and beautiful.
She liked fashion.
She definitely liked to draw
and maybe that's the way
she set her mind aside from all
the troubles that were going on.
At the Museum of Art
there was a Claude Monet exhibit.
We took the French kids
to get a little culture.
April 1st, 1998.
I got this today, at Monet exhibit,
from the French field trip.
I thought it would be cool
to write stuff in here
about my life.
So I guess I would just
start with my life so far.
Why? Because my life won't be
considered typical to most.
Woodlawn High School
was kind of a hodgepodge
of all different ethnicities,
all different backgrounds,
especially when it came
to the "Magnet" program
because we were students
from all over Baltimore County.
We had our own curriculum,
it was a lot more rigorous.
We were doing college-level work.
That included Hae.
I don't even remember
exactly how we met.
It just feels like I, you know,
always knew her in high school,
but it was probably in French class.
Her best friends were
Debbie Warren and Aisha Pittman.
Debbie was more of the straightlaced
and follow the rules.
Aisha was a great student
as well, but I think
she would be more of the one
to break off and cut class.
But I don't think she'd be
caught 'cause she was too smart.
We all cut classes, and it
wasn't just the two of us.
Pretty much everyone
in the "Magnet" program did,
and they just let us.
Like, we were the "good kids" of school.
How about any school
activities while you are here?
Um, I played field hockey for two years,
I've played lacrosse for two years,
and I also manage boys wrestling.
- Hmm, that's a lot to do.
- Yeah.
Do you have time to, um, have
a job while you're doing this?
Yeah, I try to manage my school
work and my after-school work.
Me and Hae played field hockey together.
That's when we became friends.
Both of us were fans of sports
but didn't really ever
pay attention to them.
So, like, she was a fan
of the Dallas Cowboys,
but probably rarely watched
an actual football game.
She liked the blue and silver.
She was just so light and bubbly,
and it was really hard to be
in a bad mood around her.
But if I had to break
it down to one word,
I'd say goofy is the best one.
Whatever she was
into, she was very into.
If it was her relationship,
like, she would talk about it
in such glowing, flowery terms,
or playing field hockey or lacrosse
when we'd come off in the huddles.
April 30th, 1998.
I have to write right now,
so I can tell about the game.
We won!
Dundalk was burning with rage.
I scored three at the beginning
and Isha scored two.
What a great way to end the season.
- I - played soccer, and the lacrosse
and soccer locker rooms
were next to each other.
So then that's how I would see Hae,
and we'd always cheer each other on.
But I was definitely
always closer to Adnan.
I was never someone
who really studied, like, too hard.
I just really enjoyed
going and hanging out,
and, like, I played sports and stuff.
But I was fortunate. I had a bunch of
different friends I would hang out with.
Adnan was tremendously popular
and well-liked and well-adjusted.
He was always joking
with the teachers about stuff,
just, like, confident in that way.
Because we came from
all different communities,
sometimes you went through
the cultural differences.
Like with Adnan's family where he
wasn't allowed hang out with girls.
I could never just call his
house and say, hey, what's up?
If I needed to get a hold
of him, I'd have to page him
or call his cell phone.
And a lot of families were like that.
You know, because that's just how
immigrant communities are.
I can hang out with my
friends until whenever.
My mom, really, she just
didn't want us to date.
She's like, look, just no girls.
Adnan was always a good student.
And if you ask him why he was
always a good student, he's like,
'cause I used to see you
getting into so much
trouble for not being a good student.
I didn't want to get in trouble.
We're a close family. You can
see old pictures of my parents.
There's my dad in his pinstriped
suit and his slicked back hair,
and there's my mom
in her bell-bottom jeans
and her floral shirt.
We joked that our baby brother
was an accident,
'cause, you know,
we were four years apart
and he showed up 12 years later.
My mom, she's
hilarious. Like, she's a character.
And my dad, he used to do
everything to make my mom happy.
All I know is, like,
a solid family home.
When I was younger,
being religious was more
of like a cultural thing
than a religious thing...
like hanging out at the mosque
and stuff like that.
You know, kind of like
identifying with my people.
But it's a really close-knit community.
The policing in the community was
through what we call auntie network.
Like, I remember I was talking in
Woodlawn library to some girl,
and she gave me her number or whatever.
And by the time I got home,
my mom was like,
"Yeah, so you were talking
to some girl at the library."
When Adnan and I would hang out,
mostly we'd meet at the mosque,
and then just do little dumb
things that teenagers do,
drive around in a car, playing
loud music or something.
We both had girlfriends,
and we had girlfriends
that were our high school girlfriends.
We weren't able to have them come
over to our house and hang out.
However, we were able to hang
out with them in school,
after school, Friday, Saturday,
go to the movies and whatnot.
On a Friday night the auntie network,
they'd be chasing their kids
around at whatever malls
and busting them.
Red alert! Red alert! There are kids
going to the movies tonight.
We must put a stop to this!
Well, my junior
year, me and Saad had just decided,
yo, we'll be the first
Muslim guys to go to our prom.
I was kind of like
a scaredy-cat, and I was like,
well, I don't... I don't
even know who to ask.
I happened to run it by Debbie.
I think I asked her if Hae
would've been interested.
I don't think I would've had
the courage to just ask Hae.
Debbie told me, yeah, just ask her.
And, uh, she said yeah.
They were both, you know, had
my ear on liking the other one.
There was a lot of
note-writing, I remember that.
And then my saying, okay,
enough with the note-writing,
just talk to each other! So high school.
But it was sweet. It was, you
know, it was young love.
It was... it was cute.
April 27th, 1998.
Eek! 20 days since I wrote.
Oh well. Let me fill you in.
School is still a bitch,
but I'm surviving it.
And prom was the 25th,
and I better tell about it
while it's still fresh in my mind.
I wore this dress that's blue
and sparkles as purple in light.
First, he dropped me off
at Isha's, still not dressed.
I seriously freaked because I thought
we were going to be late for prom,
but he got his tux.
We took our pics,
one together, one of me,
and one with me, Isha,
Becky, and Debbie.
I was so crazy.
She had some sparkly silver shoes.
It was like a blue dress
and it was like down, like,
probably like halfway between,
like, her waist and her knee.
She looked beautiful.
I swear, he is like the sweetest guy.
Let me tell you why.
He was the prom prince,
and Stephanie McPherson was princess.
I remember I was
surprised when they announced me.
I was actually, like, super
worried, like in scared,
because now it would
definitely be a picture of me
in the yearbook.
When they announced Stephanie,
it was kind of weird in a way.
At the end of eighth grade
me and Stephanie
we were kind of like dating
a little bit, but not really.
We were, we called each other
boyfriend and girlfriend.
I wasn't really sure,
like, the etiquette was.
Like, well, do I dance with my date?
Do I dance with Stephanie?
And Hae had this...
One of her favorite songs
was the song by the duo
called K-Ci and JoJo.
And they started playing that song.
Traditionally, they were
supposed to dance together,
to my song, K-Ci & JoJo's "All My Life."
I tried to act natural and not jealous,
but it did kind of bother me.
But I took the pic of them
dancing and sat next to Deb,
who went on about how neat it
is for Adnan to be the prince.
Ten seconds later, guess who dances
with me and not with Stephanie?
Adnan!
Now, how could I not fall
in love with this guy?
("ALL MY LIFE" PLAYING)
I was, like, all about my hair...
In high school.
I used to use, like, a ton of
product, Pantene Pro-V Shampoo.
I used to use the Pantene hair gel,
and so I didn't like having the crown on
'cause I thought it was
messing my hair up.
Hae was like, no, no, you gotta
wear it, you gotta wear it.
She was, like,
holding my arm real tight.
It was a nice feeling. It was kind
of like she was showing me off.
And the crown matched her dress.
Like, the crown had a blue top.
Someone asked me was she the queen,
and I just immediately thought of it,
I said, no she's my queen though!
And Hae was like, aw, and I was like,
thank God I said something
smart for once.
And I remember our first
kiss was at the prom.
My whole life, that was one
of the best moments of my life.
Like, one of the happiest times.
When I came home that night, as
soon as I got in the front door
the hallway light went on.
I knew it was my mom.
I was like, holy crap!
I hurried up and threw the crown
and my tuxedo under the stairs.
She was like, "Oh, Adnan,
where have you been?"
I was like, "Oh, you know,
just out hanging out."
She was like, "It's
one o'clock in the morning."
I was like, "Oh yeah, Mom,
you know, I'm tired."
I'm going to go to sleep."
Parting is such a sweet sorrow.
The moment he went out
the door, I missed him.
I went to sleep and dreamed.
Since then, I keep on falling
deeper and deeper into him.
He's the cutest, sweetest,
and coolest guy,
and he loves me.
The bad thing is that we
have to keep things secret.
But it's okay, 'cause love conquers all!
- You want an egg with it or...?
- Mm?
I think somebody's
knocking at the door, Yusuf.
All right. Welcome Rabia.
(WELCOMING RABIA IN ARABIC)
You want me to make some food for you?
No, I can't eat right now.
- You look jittery.
- Do I look nice?
You look so nice, oh my God.
I'm jealous. I wish I could
have something like this.
Is uncle coming to the...?
- He said he's not feeling well.
- Yeah.
When he sees something,
you know, he get very depressed.
- It's hard for him, super duper.
- He'll feel better if he goes.
No, no, no.
Nobody has to know
that that's Adnan's dad.
He can just sit in the, you know...
We can just put him in the back
quietly and he can sit there.
- Yusuf, go.
- I'll try to ask it'll be tough for him
When seated.
...when all the people
are coming up to him...
- And talking to him.
- Yeah, talking to him.
Like, he built, like, a bubble
in order to survive
everything that's happened.
Yeah.
- Let me go talk to him.
- You know, it's okay.
If he's not up to it, it's fine.
When the pressure of Adnan came...
I actually took early retirement.
It was too much pain.
It is extremely hard,
and you have to go through it
day in and day out.
And you know that he is innocent. Why?
There's more hurting really here.
Tonight is the first time,
um, really since 1999
that the entire community
is going to get together.
You know, the first year there were
a lot of meetings at the mosque.
And then he got convicted, and, um,
you know, that was
kind of the end of it.
People don't understand
that when you come from...
Especially from South Asia,
Pakistan, India, Bangladesh,
the judiciary and the police
are very corrupt,
and people are terrified of them.
So it was a terrifying experience
for them to have to go to court,
but they have a lot of faith
in the American justice system.
I'm going to stand so everybody can
see me, and so I can see everybody.
And, uh, good evening.
Thank you guys all for coming.
I know there are people here who have
never ever met Adnan in their life,
and I know there are people here who
have known him since he was a child.
There are so many layers in this story
that have caught global attention,
and we're hoping that
God didn't bring us
this far for nothing.
When you are working on a case
that you think is a wrongful conviction,
you're only on one side and that
side is getting to the truth.
And that truth is...
is there for everybody.
It's not just there for the defendant,
it's there for the victim.
Something that gets lost in all of this
is the person who lost their life,
and that's Hae Min Lee.
She was born October 15th, 1980,
and she would've been 35 years old
if she was alive today.
My prayers are always not
just that Adnan's exonerated,
but that God brings a truth to light.
Because that is justice for Hae.
What a mess the
freezing rain left behind.
Accidents all over the place.
A drive through
western Baltimore County,
and it was more of the same.
You dodge falling branches
on side streets just
about everywhere you go.
It's been almost a disaster here,
even though schools have been off,
which has been good.
A lot of people in
the area didn't have power,
because of that big ice storm
that came through.
So when she originally went missing,
nobody really thought a whole lot of it.
We just assumed that she was
with her new boyfriend.
She kept promising me, like,
she was so looking forward
to my 18th birthday party,
which was the 15th, and obviously,
she went missing the 13th.
I pretty much invited everybody
that was part of our class.
I remember eating pizza,
and I hadn't had a warm meal,
'cause it was, like, the snow,
the ice storm, and there was no power.
I think it was like
8:30 or so, and Adnan came in.
But he and Jay and Stephanie
came in together.
Jay was eccentric.
Some people described him
as like Dennis Rodman.
He had piercings and he listened
to heavy metal and rock music.
I did not hang out with Jay personally,
but Stephanie asked
if he could come with her.
You know, Hae was the... she
was the primary conversation,
but we thought, well,
let's try to have fun.
Maybe she'll show up.
We get to the end of the
night, and she never showed up.
For her not to call or page
or e-mail or anything...
it was just really weird.
That's when I knew, like, something
really had to be wrong with her.
They started to look for her.
They had the dogs down in the
creek looking for her scent.
My parents were
constantly asking me, like,
is there any place
you think she could be?
And it was like, at this point I
would definitely say something,
I wouldn't try to protect her
with so many people being worried.
(WOMAN SPEAKING KOREAN)
The cops were at the
school asking questions.
I was asked by the detectives,
being that I was younger in age
and close to a lot of
the circle that she ran in
if I would make up some
questions that I could give
to the girls to kind of ask around
to see if any of the "Magnet"
students knew what was going on.
Obviously an ex-boyfriend is going to be
somebody of interest,
and the only one I strictly remember is,
was there a certain place
that Adnan and Hae would go
and hang out and spend time together,
where they could be away
and not be discovered.
I said to her, would you
please ask around,
and she put those questions
in her agenda book.
Each student had to carry
around an agenda book,
and it was the only way that they could
get out of the class
to go to the bathroom.
The teacher would sign off.
Adnan did not have his agenda
and he really had to go to the bathroom,
and so he said, Debbie,
can I borrow your planner?
He came to me and wanted to know
why I was asking questions about him.
And he said, please don't do that,
because I don't want my parents
knowing my business.
May 1st, 1998.
Adnan is the sweetest guy.
I love him to death. Guess what he did?
He went out and picked up
a single rose for me.
And he gave it to me in
Physics. Everyone was staring.
All I could do was just look surprised
and just kiss him
in the middle of class.
All day I walked around with my rose.
Everyone was telling me
how cute it is and all.
I came home and put it in the
heart vase I got from prom.
He's picking me up after SATs,
and we're going to go somewhere.
I can't wait!
I was so happy to have her in my life.
Like, she was probably one of,
if not my closest friend at the time.
I used to make cards for her
and stuff like that.
Sometimes I would come
visit her at nighttime,
and I would talk to her
through the window.
Like, she would open
the window up, and like,
we'd just be standing right there.
We might kiss and stuff.
Me and my baby went out after school.
We dropped Stephanie at Garlands
to get her car from Jay.
Then me and Adnan made out
in the parking lot.
Then I went to practice.
Because we
couldn't go to each other's house,
we used to hook up at Best Buy.
We used to do that at nighttime
when it was dark outside.
Or we would go to, you know,
like a hotel room.
I guess it seemed like it was
a normal progression of things.
I would just tell my mom I was
spending the night at Saad's house.
She told her mom she was
going to Aisha's house
to spend the night.
Anytime she was actually
sleeping at my house,
he would always stop by,
because he lived right
in my same neighborhood.
So he would come by and knock
on my window.
Neither of their families could know,
so they had, like, methods of
being able to call each other.
My baby's been gone since the 16th.
He went to Texas with his father
for some Muslim convention thing.
He called me on Friday,
twice, with calling cards.
Isn't he sweet?
I would page her
and then when I would call her,
she would already have called,
like, the weather or time.
The current temperature is...
So when the call comes
through, it wouldn't actually ring.
It'd just be call-waiting 'cause
you could just click over.
I used to listen to the phone.
And he'd say, Mom, everybody's
doing it, you know,
all the Pakistani children doing it,
but their parents doesn't know it.
But I said, I know it.
My mom, like, she would get mad at me,
but it would just be funny to me.
'Cause she was always mad
at me about something, right?
But I've never wanted to hurt my
mom, though, you know what I mean?
That's why I would always
try to hide stuff from her.
My mom and Adnan
would go back and forth.
My dad would just be like, look,
I just came back from work,
and I'm tired, you know.
He's doing really good in
school. He couldn't be doing
whatever you say he's doing
and be doing good in school.
Do I dare to pull him
away from his religion?
Ms. Salick was all up
in my face about it.
She said stuff like,
well, Adnan used to be
so religious and strict last year,
but this year, he is so loose.
Like I changed him.
And I don't want to pull
him away from who he is,
But I do know one thing;
I love him and he loves me.
Adnan would tell me
about her and he said,
you know, me and her are
perfect, but she's frustrated.
She wants a normal relationship
where she can go over
to her boyfriend's house
and have dinner with his family.
And, you know, you're in high school,
so everything's so much more dramatic.
It's like Romeo and Juliet.
With her mom, it wasn't a strict game.
It's just that her mom wanted to meet
the family of who she was dating, so...
that obviously wasn't going to happen.
On the weekends she went to go work
at her uncle's convenience store.
It was right near Camden Yards.
Her mom made her go and live there
above the store for like a week.
It was definitely a consequence
of her seeing me.
I had fun today.
Probably the last fun I'll have
before I get locked away for a week.
We'll survive, me and my baby.
I know for sure.
She talked about her
mom being very strict,
so that caused a lot of tension,
and then also having
a lot of responsibility.
She lived with her grandparents,
her mother, her uncle,
two younger cousins, and her brother.
Being, like, the oldest one, you know,
she helped translate for them
and things like that.
So she kind of felt like she had
equal footing in the household.
She could do what she wanted to.
If I want to have a boyfriend I
should be able to have a boyfriend.
Damn my grandma and mother.
I'm pushing Adnan away.
I can't get close,
and he can't get close to me.
I can't believe things are
about to blow up in my face.
My life's a bitch.
She was always looking for an escape
from what her home environment was.
Now that I think about it,
I would drop her off or pick her up,
but I had never been in her house.
Only like in the very front door.
I know sometimes that
she would tell me okay come pick me up.
When we were in the car,
I would say, well, hey,
where do you want to go?
She was like, I don't care,
hurry up, let's just get away.
No, no. She didn't...
She didn't like, you know...
She didn't want people around
her mother and her family life.
She just... These are my friends,
this is my good life over here,
this is my home life.
And, you know, school in general
was a force of separation
from that side of her that she
didn't really want to reveal.
In public, she was
just like a positive ray of light.
She was never the person
that you would see down.
I think maybe being one way publicly
but privately, you know, to go
through what she was going through,
I think that probably put on
her a great amount of stress.
Sometimes she would get upset
like when she would talk
about her back home in Korea.
We were in bed together, and,
like, she got really upset,
like, she got super upset.
It was almost like a standoff almost.
Like, I'm at one edge of the
bed, and she's at the other.
She was weeping.
She had her face down, she had
her, like, her legs curled up.
I'd never seen nothing like that before.
And that's when she... She told me,
she had been sexually abused
when she was in Korea.
And I was in shock, 'cause I'd
never, ever experienced that,
I didn't know anyone
who had been abused.
I didn't know anything
about that type of abuse.
I kind of had a feeling
like I shouldn't touch her
while she's talking about this.
So, you know,
so I just kind of listened.
What was upsetting to her
is what happened
is the person never, like,
got in trouble for it.
She was a young girl,
this was an older person
and she couldn't do anything
about it in a way.
So just things like that
that I guess I have insight in
because I knew her,
and, you know, even with me I didn't
really get the full depth of it.
You know what I'm saying?
Like, you guys don't know Hae.
People who have researched
this case don't know Hae.
She did confide in me about that.
I don't think it's something
she would've been willing
to testify about, or
if that would've happened, it
probably would've been years later.
And she, of course, was never
given that opportunity.
I suspect that that was why
she associated her family
with a culture that she just
didn't want to be a part of.
Ultimately, at the end of the day,
she didn't have an escape from that.
I mean, that was her household,
and she didn't really have
a choice to exist outside of that.
August 27th, 1998.
Now that I look back at the
last five months, I regret it.
Why? Because I have lost myself.
All the lies I told
my mother, my family.
Did I mention my grandparents
bought a cord phone
to replace the cordless in the kitchen,
to stop my excessive use of phone?
Did I push them so far
that they did that?
It seems like my life has
been revolving around him.
Where's me? Love hurts.
Things were closing in
on her, that's the way she felt.
And she liked to be free and open,
and it reminded her of,
you know, her mother's
control over her,
her uncle's control over her.
That had been so much of her life.
The last thing she wanted
was that in her relationship.
That became more of a public issue
when Adnan's parents came to the dance.
The reason they did that
was because my dad didn't
believe that Adnan was dating.
I don't believe you, I don't
believe you. He's not dating.
He can't get these
good grades and be dating.
You don't believe me?
You don't believe me?
Let's go take a trip to the school.
I just remember her
freaking out about it, like,
he's here with his parents,
like, what do we... like, what...
And I just know that
she wanted to get out of there.
I just remember that moment
and him sitting there
embarrassed and frustrated
at the same time.
Okay, here it goes.
I'm really getting annoyed
that the situation
is going the way it is.
At first, I kind of want
to make this easy
for me and for you.
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.
This was definitely written
probably the Monday
or Tuesday after homecoming.
The more fuss you make,
the more I'm determined
to do what I got to do.
I'll be busy today, tomorrow,
and probably till Thursday.
I've got other things to do.
Better than give you any hope
that we'll get back together.
I really don't see that
happening, especially now.
I never want to end this
like this, so hostile and cold.
Hate me if you will,
but you should remember
that I can never hate you.
So this was definitely
not their last breakup.
They got back together after this.
You can't make logic out
of a teenage life.
You just can't. Teenagers
are all over the place.
You fall in love, you fall
out of love, you go back.
You think you're old enough
to make your own decisions,
but then you're not really old enough...
To make your own decisions.
And you make some choices
that sometimes are good
and sometimes are bad.
The State's next witness
is Ms. Debbie Warren.
Ms. Warren, will you step up
to the witness stand?
Ms. Warren, did you become aware
of any breakups in their relationship?
They had broken up probably two times
before their final breakup
between December and January of '99.
Were you ever aware
that Hae dated anyone else
after the final breakup?
- Yes, she did.
- Who was that?
Um, Donny.
December 6th.
What's the matter with me?
Every time I close my eyes,
I see my baby,
but I keep on thinking
about someone else...
Don Clinedinst.
Why? I don't know.
But I keep wanting to get closer to him.
I'm going to have to get
my thoughts straight.
I do love Adnan,
but today I kept on imagining
Don over my body instead of Adnan.
Don is what I would go for in my past.
Blond, blue eyes, white,
built, sexy, and nice Camaro.
They worked together at LensCrafters.
My assumption was that he was someone
around the same age
working at LensCrafters.
When I actually met him, I was like,
oh, he's a lot older than us.
I knew his name, I knew
that he worked with Hae,
I knew that he was 22 years old.
I sensed her just falling head
over heels way too quickly,
and it was just too much too soon.
She just came from a relationship
that had the element of sneaking around,
and she's doing the same thing again!
I guess we were in the part where we
were transitioning towards friendship.
Did the defendant ever discuss
the fact of Donny with you?
He told me that he thought
that Hae was having
a relationship with him
while she was still with Adnan.
They portrayed it as if, you know,
I was angry with her, upset with her,
that the final straw was
when I found out she started dating Don,
as if she didn't tell me
that she started dating Don,
as if she didn't introduce me to Don.
January 12th, 1999.
I love you, Don.
I think I found my soul mate.
I love you so much.
I fell in love with you
the moment I opened my eyes
to see you in the break room
for the first time.
Thinking back to
the last day you saw Hae,
January 13th,
what was she doing at that
particular point in time?
She was in a rush to go somewhere.
She would've come out of the staircase
directly out of these doors,
down this walkway
and right there to her car.
She was intending to pick up her cousin
directly after leaving
and then going to see Don.
She was happy. She was excited.
I was guarded and cautious
and warning her, but...
I've gone over it in my mind
again and again and again.
I feel like the day she went missing,
we should've all, like, gotten together
and, like, made a huge thing about it.
I don't know, just like
we should've done more, maybe.
Maybe I should've done more.
I look back on that and feel like I was
stunned into inaction.
And I think it's just that part of you
that wants to think
that something is okay.
I don't know that it ever fully hit me
that something could be wrong
until her brother told me
they found her body.
9-1-1. What's your emergency?
The defense will
call Alonzo Sellers to the stand.
Mr. Sellers, please step all the way up
to the witness stand, please.
All the way up here.
Listen to Ms. Gutierrez who
has some questions for you.
Mr. Sellers, let
me direct your attention
back to February the 9th, 1999.
Do you recall that day?
Well, sir, you recall
the day that you found
the body in Leakin Park, don't you?
That was a pretty important
day for you, was it not?
- Objection!
- If you explained that...
I would know what you're talking about.
Okay, now...
on that day you left
- your work at Compton State College?
- Yeah.
You traveled from Compton to your home
by way of Franklintown Road?
Yes, I traveled that way, yeah.
And that's an area
where there aren't any houses,
it's just woods?
I guess it is. It's a park.
Apparently a passerby
discovered the body
of an 18-year-old female.
The detectives and medical
examiner were there
throughout the evening
trying to locate any type
of physical evidence
or other trace evidence.
We just want to know who did it and why,
because she's just a nice person.
Police are not saying how Lee died
or how long her body may
have been in Leakin Park.
They continue to search
for the 1998 Nissan Sentra
she was driving.
You know, I'm the one that told Adnan.
I said, you know, they found Hae's body.
She's not alive anymore.
And it was like a pin drop
on the other side
of the phone, like complete silence.
I just kept saying like, are you okay?
What do you need me to do?
Like, just say something.
And he said, is Aisha home?
He said I'm going to go to her
house, can you just call her
and tell her I'm headed that way?
Everyone there was just sad
and devastated, including Adnan.
By the time I got there,
he had been there a few minutes.
He just kept saying things like
they had the wrong person,
like this can't be Hae.
He picked up his cell phone
and he started
calling the police
that were investigating,
and the lady said, you're
going to have to call back
and talk to homicide in the morning.
And he just kind of busted out crying.
In the days after that,
it slowly sunk in and it was...
He was an emotional mess,
pretty much is what
I can boil it down to.
It was just really tough, you know,
just to go through
the motions of everything.
But it was like you had to,
because, like, your life wouldn't stop.
I remember crying with
the girls, Debbie and Aisha.
I have a clear recollection
of going up to Adnan
and hugging him and just
saying I'm so sorry,
and I wrapped my arms around him...
but I got a very just stern...
And I don't know if that
was a cultural thing,
I don't know if I should've hugged him.
I don't know if it was
something to read into or not,
but it wasn't reciprocated back.
I think I took it a little personally.
We planned a memorial for Hae.
We invited her mom and her brother.
When someone close to
you dies, it hits you hard,
and it makes you appreciate
life and it should.
Life is short and you should experience
and live every moment of it.
Like, it's
horrible enough that someone dies,
but for someone to be murdered...
like, who could've done it,
like, why would someone
have done it, you know?
Somebody knew somebody
that I cared about
well enough to get close to them
that they would never
breathe another day,
and that, you know, it sticks with you.
It could've been anybody.
In the 72-hour
window after the victim was found,
I will say there wasn't any
particular person of interest.
I think the trend and the
culture of everybody believing
the husband did it,
the boyfriend did it,
if you get in that narrow
path of thinking,
you only hurt yourself in an
investigation. You really do.
When we got news
that they found Hae's body,
we asked who found her body,
and they said a hiker.
And our immediate reaction, I remember,
is Krista was saying that...
Then who's this hiker?
I have nothing to support...
that he didn't.
Don't think he wasn't looked at.
I certainly understood some
prior documented issues,
but that in itself
doesn't make him a killer.
It makes him an unusual person.
I always knew it had to be
someone close to her,
because strangulation always is.
You know, it's not the kind of
thing a complete stranger does,
unless it's a serial killer.
Don was new to us,
so he was a possibility.
And what does a man in his early 20s
want with a girl that young?
Let's talk about Don for a second.
And what makes him important.
Well, you know, he's somebody
who was very close to the victim.
It's our responsibility as
investigators to go beyond,
frankly, what law enforcement
has already done
and to consider other suspects.
- Rabia.
- Oh, hi.
- Tyler Maroney, nice to meet you.
- Nice to meet you, too.
Thanks for coming all
the way to New York.
Oh gosh, not at all. I'm so excited.
The failure to investigate
Don more thoroughly
just really stands out
as a major mistake.
I never thought about him
over all these years, to be honest.
- Why?
- Because I thought he was at work.
We know that Hae spent
the evening with him
the night before,
got home late at night.
According to Don he was supposed
to see her after work on the 13th.
He says he gets home
around seven o'clock,
and when he gets home, the police
has called looking for her.
The police don't get ahold
of him until 1:30 that night.
This is the first time that we know
that Don had contact
with the police, right?
That's a big gap. Where was he?
What was he doing in that whole time?
Why didn't he try to contact
her or call the police back?
In that time period,
the police did start
canvasing parking lots.
They even contacted Harford County,
which is where Don lived,
and asked them to take
a look for her car then.
Nobody had bothered, not even
the police had bothered
to get his actual time sheets
for that day.
These weren't retrieved
until October of that year
by Adnan's attorney.
When they also produced
that to the prosecutor,
it came with a letter that said
that Don's mother is his manager.
His alibi was really his mom.
These things kind of
cumulatively make me suspicious,
but, you know, I have
to keep pulling myself back,
because I know that when you
look at something in hindsight,
- which is what happened with Adnan...
- Yeah.
...people thought, oh okay,
now that he's been arrested,
oh, that was kind of suspicious
and that was kind of sus...
But there's also the fact that
there's a witness at the school,
a classmate of Hae's,
who says that she saw Hae
before she was leaving school
and that she had told her she was going
to meet with Don at the mall.
It made Debbie suspicious
enough of Don that she actually
started kind of... she wanted
to investigate him herself.
And this is in police statements.
She told police she did this.
Somehow I got in touch with him online.
That was our initial contact.
And he was eager to give
me his information
and talk to me and everything.
He was very open.
Pretty much everything
after that was telephone.
You know, I just tried to find
out how much he cared about her,
what he knew about her disappearance.
And I don't recall when it was we had
that seven-hour
conversation, but we did.
It was spring break and my sister was
attending College Park,
she lived on campus.
I was going to go stay
with her for that whole week.
So I had told, you know,
told Don all of this and he,
you know, oh, let me come visit
you while I'm there. So, okay.
I guess it was that evening
that was the first time
he had really expressed,
like, romantic interest.
And it was kind of odd.
I didn't really know
what to do with that. But, um, you know,
he made it very clear that that's
what he was interested in.
And I guess to some extent I went
along with it for some time, um...
but you know, I... I did make it
clear to him that I was not,
you know, sexual... that that,
you know, not something...
Not something we were
going to be involved in.
How that all ended up
playing out, I just...
My mind completely blocks
it off after that.
I don't... I don't have
much recollection.
I wasn't sure if he was, you know,
trying to recapture what he
had with Hae in some way.
Well, I knew... That was a learned fact.
Don't think he didn't go uninvestigated.
Would a mother lie for him? Sure.
He could've caught equal attention
that the defendant did,
but he didn't have any phone
calls come in about him.
It's the 12th of February, 1999.
I'm in the office
and I answered the phone.
It was an anonymous caller.
An Asian male, probably Korean, said,
"You should concentrate
on the victim's boyfriend."
Well, you know his name? Yeah.
And that's when he provides the name.
Once the information started flowing in,
you gotta go where it takes you.
I write up my report
and I contact MacGillivary,
the primary investigator,
to take this information
and try to corroborate it.
Progress report,
Lee homicide investigation,
Detective Gregory S. MacGillivary.
On February 26th, along with
Detective William F. Ritz,
I interviewed one Adnan Syed
at the family home
in the presence of his father.
When asked if Syed had
a relationship with Lee,
Syed replied in a soft voice, yes.
However, he didn't want
his father to know.
The only thing I was concerned about was
just not meeting in front
of my mom and dad.
And they were asking me
questions, but they were
just like pretty general
and vague questions.
On January 13th, he had
occasion to be at Woodlawn High School,
however, doesn't remember the events
that occurred in school that day.
If you didn't do anything,
then what is there
to worry about in a sense?
I don't have to account for anything
because I didn't do anything.
Syed indicated that
he had occasions to be a passenger
in the victim's auto, however,
not on the date in question.
I know there's
things that don't look good for me,
you know, and this is one of them, but
to be honest, I have no idea
how to explain that then.
A formal interview will
be conducted in the near future,
investigation to continue.
That night I remember my parents
were yelling at my brother like,
well, if you didn't date that girl
we wouldn't have this problem.
You know, I was like, Adnan, you know,
if you have anything to do with
this, you need to get an attorney.
He was just so lax, like,
okay, you know,
in this justice system, you are
innocent until proven guilty.
I tend to look back on these things,
and they have a little more meaning
than they did back then, right?
I wish I knew what I knew back then,
it's like I would've taken
it way more seriously.
Like, I have to account
for what I was doing.
I have to be prepared.
Never in a million years
would I have imagined
that I would be charged
with Hae's murder.
In the morning, you know, I woke up
to these people talking in the hallway,
and it was a police officer
standing in my doorway.
My older son, he woke up
and he tried to get up,
so he push him back.
He said, no, you go back,
because he was afraid, you know,
he was going to see him
handcuffing his brother and take him.
Unbelievable.
When a son has never given
you a problem in 17 years,
and all of a sudden,
he's being told that he has
done such a wrong thing.
They put me in the back of a police car.
I said, ma'am, can I ask you
what this is all about?
And she said, they'll tell
you down at the station.
Eyewitness news was there tonight
when family members first found
out about the teen's arrest,
an arrest that Lee's family says
brings them much-needed peace.
I remember the exact picture that I saw.
It's his black and white picture and
he has a little bit of a mustache.
And you can't even absorb
this 'cause I'm just...
I'm seeing arrest, murder, Adnan Syed.
He's a sensitive guy. He's gentle.
He has no kind of delinquency record.
He's not violent. He's just a kid.
He's a baby.
He's like my little brother.
When I got to the police station,
they put me in like a little room.
I sat there for a while.
It could've been five minutes,
it could've been five hours.
The two detectives came in,
Ritz and MacGillivary.
They said, you know why you're here.
You're being charged with Hae's murder.
At some point,
they mentioned Jay's name,
like Jay told us or Jay's going to say
that you did this or did that.
And I was just thinking, Jay? Jay who?
The only Jay I know is Jay Wilds.
What does that have to do with anything?
I was thinking, like, the
charges would just be dropped,
like this is some huge mistake.
Like, how am I going to explain
this on my college application?
Do people at school believe this?
Like, it's going to be so weird.
When they arrested him, it felt like
they gotta have the wrong guy.
When you hear, like, he strangled her,
if he did what he did,
then who's the person that
I saw everyday in class?
Finding out that Hae died, it was like
an unstoppableforce of,
like, sadness and grief.
But then to be arrested for it?
It's almost like there's
a flood outside your house,
before you can even
come to terms with that,
now there's a fire inside your house.
You don't really have time to
come to terms with anything.
You're just trying to survive.
Convicted murderer Adnan Syed
is getting a second chance
to prove his innocence.
Syed won a motion to appeal
and present new evidence
to fight his case.
The hearing is
scheduled to last three days.
It will determine
whether Syed's conviction
will be overturned or if
the case will be retried.
- Man, Rabia I feel very excited.
- You feel good?
Can you believe, I
mean, three days will decide
if Adnan going to come home or stay.
How important it is, you know.
Yeah, but, inshallah, he's coming home.
I don't know. I just
feel it in my heart.
Syed's bid to be retried
hinges on two arguments:
that his attorney failed to use
alibi witness Asia McClain,
who said she was with Syed
the day of the murder,
and that a cell phone expert, who helped
place Syed's phone where Lee was buried,
now says his findings
were based on unreliable data.
Anyone can critique what you did,
but we were working in real time.
You may not have dotted all the I's,
but arrest, the bar is not as high.
We're looking for 51 percent for arrest,
and a hundred percent for conviction.
those whose heart is innocent.
If you feel any guilt
reading this, you should stop.
This book is full of my expression.
This may make you angry,
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.
Eighteen-year-old Hae Min Lee
disappeared on January 13th
after leaving Woodlawn High School.
On February 9th police found
her half-buried body
in Baltimore's Leakin Park.
She had been strangled.
...key details they had
withheld as they sought a suspect.
They now have one in custody.
The police suggest
the suspect had a motive
in the form of a fatal
attraction to his victim.
The subject is
identified as Adnan Masud Syed,
17 and a former football
player who is described
as an A student, friendly to everyone.
News of Syed's
arrest is met with disbelief
by the community in Woodlawn.
They can't believe the boy
who had so much promise
now faces a murder rap.
Baby Sidney. Yusuf?
I'm here.
What happened to you?
Sydney.
Sydney! Hi.
Come, on Leda. Where's your blankie?
- Here.
- Benjamin.
Okay. Eunice, you all right?
You're all right, okay? Come on.
Want to sit with me?
Come on, you can sit.
She's shy.
Yeah, he used to help me, too.
- He used to help you?
- Yeah.
I'm sorry.
When Adnan went to prison,
it was like a big piece
of all of us had died.
We thought he was gone forever.
But then Rabia,
while she was in law school
and while she was raising two daughters,
she was always there for us and
she was still fighting for Adnan.
Adnan would've been forgotten by
everyone if it wasn't for Rabia.
It doesn't look like a baby's room yet.
Nothing's in here... because we painted.
But this will be the nursery.
I've got a couple of weeks
to get it set up.
When Adnan was incarcerated,
My older daughter...
In '99, how old was she?
She was only two.
This will be my third baby,
and I hope that this baby
will get to know Adnan uncle
in a normal environment.
These are some of the most important
documents related to Adnan's case,
and they're the ones that I've
been carrying around with me
'cause I can't keep all of his
15 boxes of files with me.
This is a flier that I made at home
when we were raising money
for Adnan's second appeal.
( SERIAL PODCAST THEME MUSIC PLAYS)
For years I've been saying to Adnan,
we should go to media,
we should go to journalists,
because they can do things we can't do.
I went to my laptop and I started
looking for a reporter who had
covered the case in 1999
for the Baltimore Sun.
And the first name I came
across was Sarah Koenig.
She was a producer at NPR,
and I thought,
okay, well, she's not in Baltimore
anymore, but maybe this will work.
I went to go see Rabia.
She was surrounded by paper;
Files, loose stacks, binders,
some crappy-looking boxes,
all court documents and attorneys'
files from Adnan's case.
I didn't even know what a podcast was.
Nobody realized...
Even Sarah Koenig herself,
I didn't think, went into this
um, thinking I'm going to do
like 10, 12 episodes on this,
or it's going to turn into anything big.
Adnan Syed's story
has captivated millions
since the 2014 launch
of the podcast Serial.
The podcast was
downloaded more than 100 million times.
Turning the Syed
case into a global sensation.
It spun out of
control very, very quickly.
It just became a pop culture phenomenon.
Please welcome Sarah Koenig!
You are the world's
first superstar podcaster.
Colbert Report, Saturday Night Live,
it was everywhere.
And I'm so honored
and pleased to get to present
this award to Serial and Sarah Koenig.
We did not expect Serial to get
very much attention at all.
It's a ten-hour audio documentary
about an old murder
that I did not solve.
I personally went back and forth.
Did he do it? Did he not?
I think Adnan probably did it,
but this case reeks of reasonable doubt.
Serial turned everything
into a point of investigation.
Turning listeners
into armchair detectives.
There are lengthy discussion
groups on the website Reddit,
conspiracy theories are floated.
Do you buy the cops are
trying to frame Syed angle?
Serial is what brought obsessed
people on Reddit to the case,
who brought new evidence to the case.
An appeal is now forthcoming,
one that could lead to a
new trial, a plea deal,
or perhaps a decision by the
State to drop it entirely.
Serial was the first
time that I was able to see
the case from the perspective
of other people.
What I realized then
was that Serial, at least,
was not going to be a story
that was going to exonerate him,
and that in the absence
of a real smoking gun,
evidence of his innocence
or someone else's guilt,
that this ambiguity
would always haunt us.
State of Maryland vs. Adnan Syed.
Mr. Urick, I know you have preparation,
but if we're gonna get this
through sometime this year,
we've gotta be prepared
to start quickly, okay?
- Please call your first witness.
- Thank you, Your Honor.
At this time the
state will call Mr. Young Lee.
Good afternoon, Mr. Lee.
What, if anything,
happened in January of 1999
regarding your sister?
Um, she was missing.
I'm going to ask you to remember
back to January the 13th.
Do you remember what happened that day?
Yes. I do, um,
at first we knew something was wrong
when we got a call
from my cousin's teacher
asking us to pick her up
from the school.
This was strange because
it was my sister's job.
Do you know about what
time you received the phone call
that Hae had not picked up your cousins?
- Around 3:30.
- What, if anything, happened next?
I called my sister's workplace,
her best friend, Aisha,
and I called the school.
Her brother called to tell me,
and the immediate thing
I did after that was page her
and then continue paging her,
just worrying
but not knowing what to do.
I can remember what she was wearing
and hearing her speak,
because that was the last
time I would hear her talk.
And, you know, she was...
I can remember she was wearing
like a gray or black plaid, um, skirt...
and a white sweater.
And that just, like, stuck with me,
because she always dressed up.
I can actually still in my mind see it
'cause I have a photographic memory
and that has never left my mind.
I remember seeing her
exactly where I saw her.
I can see that staircase.
I still see her there.
After a while my mom was real worried
and asked me to call the police.
On my arrival, I spoke
to the victim's brother,
and he advised me that his
sister had not returned home.
My grandmother brought down the diary
that my sister writes in.
Then I found the phone number,
then I called that number.
Who did you believe you were calling?
I believe I was calling Don,
my sister's new boyfriend.
What happened when you
called the number?
I ask, may I speak to Don?
But after speaking
to the person, the receiver,
I knew it was Adnan.
- Who is Adnan?
- Um, him, right there.
ADNAN (OVER PHONE): The day she went
missing was just a normal day to me.
I think I had told her that day,
I was going to go get my cell phone.
So I... I called her the night before,
and I think she wrote
the number down in her diary.
I've never talked
to a police officer before.
And when he called me, I was like...
I was literally high on marijuana
and there's a cop calling me.
So when he asked me about Hae,
I just remember kind of like, hey,
did I ask Hae for a ride that day?
I spoke to, uh, Mr. Syed,
and he advised me that, uh,
he was supposed to get a ride
home from the victim,
but he got detained at school and
felt that she just got
tired of waiting and left.
He asked if a police report
was going to be made
'cause I had told him the
circumstances why I was calling him.
What did you tell him, if you remember?
I told him yes, a police
report's going to be made.
Now I'm thinking,
Hae's mom's gonna kill her now
when she gets home because
now the police are involved,
and no way am I thinking
something bad happened to her.
I did go to bed worried,
but at the same time I was like,
well, maybe, like,
she doesn't have her pager on
or, like, she left it in her car.
Maybe she's with this new
boyfriend and not responding.
There's a number of places
that she could be.
Mr. Lee, after January the 13th
did you ever see your sister again?
No, I didn't.
Did you ever learn of her whereabouts?
Uh, no.
You don't go in all areas in Baltimore.
There's a few areas you stay in,
and there's some areas,
if you don't need
to go into that area, you don't.
When I was growing up,
some people would, like,
use fake addresses
to get out of the city schools
and come in to Woodlawn.
It's a world of difference
between Baltimore County
and Baltimore City.
Literally, it's a world of difference.
It's better than
when we lived in Baltimore,
it'd be two o'clock, three o'clock...
pow-pow-pop-pop.
The numbers of deaths have reached
over 300 in certain years.
Um, unfortunately, having
taught almost 20 years,
I've had probably, I don't
know, four or five students
who have died during that time,
Hae being one of them.
Hae was my intern. She would
come in at 7:15 every morning
and stay for an hour and a half.
She would bring her coffee in
and do work on the computer for
me or help me grade my papers.
She was like a daughter to me.
She always had some
cute little outfit on.
And her hair was long
and shiny and beautiful.
She liked fashion.
She definitely liked to draw
and maybe that's the way
she set her mind aside from all
the troubles that were going on.
At the Museum of Art
there was a Claude Monet exhibit.
We took the French kids
to get a little culture.
April 1st, 1998.
I got this today, at Monet exhibit,
from the French field trip.
I thought it would be cool
to write stuff in here
about my life.
So I guess I would just
start with my life so far.
Why? Because my life won't be
considered typical to most.
Woodlawn High School
was kind of a hodgepodge
of all different ethnicities,
all different backgrounds,
especially when it came
to the "Magnet" program
because we were students
from all over Baltimore County.
We had our own curriculum,
it was a lot more rigorous.
We were doing college-level work.
That included Hae.
I don't even remember
exactly how we met.
It just feels like I, you know,
always knew her in high school,
but it was probably in French class.
Her best friends were
Debbie Warren and Aisha Pittman.
Debbie was more of the straightlaced
and follow the rules.
Aisha was a great student
as well, but I think
she would be more of the one
to break off and cut class.
But I don't think she'd be
caught 'cause she was too smart.
We all cut classes, and it
wasn't just the two of us.
Pretty much everyone
in the "Magnet" program did,
and they just let us.
Like, we were the "good kids" of school.
How about any school
activities while you are here?
Um, I played field hockey for two years,
I've played lacrosse for two years,
and I also manage boys wrestling.
- Hmm, that's a lot to do.
- Yeah.
Do you have time to, um, have
a job while you're doing this?
Yeah, I try to manage my school
work and my after-school work.
Me and Hae played field hockey together.
That's when we became friends.
Both of us were fans of sports
but didn't really ever
pay attention to them.
So, like, she was a fan
of the Dallas Cowboys,
but probably rarely watched
an actual football game.
She liked the blue and silver.
She was just so light and bubbly,
and it was really hard to be
in a bad mood around her.
But if I had to break
it down to one word,
I'd say goofy is the best one.
Whatever she was
into, she was very into.
If it was her relationship,
like, she would talk about it
in such glowing, flowery terms,
or playing field hockey or lacrosse
when we'd come off in the huddles.
April 30th, 1998.
I have to write right now,
so I can tell about the game.
We won!
Dundalk was burning with rage.
I scored three at the beginning
and Isha scored two.
What a great way to end the season.
- I - played soccer, and the lacrosse
and soccer locker rooms
were next to each other.
So then that's how I would see Hae,
and we'd always cheer each other on.
But I was definitely
always closer to Adnan.
I was never someone
who really studied, like, too hard.
I just really enjoyed
going and hanging out,
and, like, I played sports and stuff.
But I was fortunate. I had a bunch of
different friends I would hang out with.
Adnan was tremendously popular
and well-liked and well-adjusted.
He was always joking
with the teachers about stuff,
just, like, confident in that way.
Because we came from
all different communities,
sometimes you went through
the cultural differences.
Like with Adnan's family where he
wasn't allowed hang out with girls.
I could never just call his
house and say, hey, what's up?
If I needed to get a hold
of him, I'd have to page him
or call his cell phone.
And a lot of families were like that.
You know, because that's just how
immigrant communities are.
I can hang out with my
friends until whenever.
My mom, really, she just
didn't want us to date.
She's like, look, just no girls.
Adnan was always a good student.
And if you ask him why he was
always a good student, he's like,
'cause I used to see you
getting into so much
trouble for not being a good student.
I didn't want to get in trouble.
We're a close family. You can
see old pictures of my parents.
There's my dad in his pinstriped
suit and his slicked back hair,
and there's my mom
in her bell-bottom jeans
and her floral shirt.
We joked that our baby brother
was an accident,
'cause, you know,
we were four years apart
and he showed up 12 years later.
My mom, she's
hilarious. Like, she's a character.
And my dad, he used to do
everything to make my mom happy.
All I know is, like,
a solid family home.
When I was younger,
being religious was more
of like a cultural thing
than a religious thing...
like hanging out at the mosque
and stuff like that.
You know, kind of like
identifying with my people.
But it's a really close-knit community.
The policing in the community was
through what we call auntie network.
Like, I remember I was talking in
Woodlawn library to some girl,
and she gave me her number or whatever.
And by the time I got home,
my mom was like,
"Yeah, so you were talking
to some girl at the library."
When Adnan and I would hang out,
mostly we'd meet at the mosque,
and then just do little dumb
things that teenagers do,
drive around in a car, playing
loud music or something.
We both had girlfriends,
and we had girlfriends
that were our high school girlfriends.
We weren't able to have them come
over to our house and hang out.
However, we were able to hang
out with them in school,
after school, Friday, Saturday,
go to the movies and whatnot.
On a Friday night the auntie network,
they'd be chasing their kids
around at whatever malls
and busting them.
Red alert! Red alert! There are kids
going to the movies tonight.
We must put a stop to this!
Well, my junior
year, me and Saad had just decided,
yo, we'll be the first
Muslim guys to go to our prom.
I was kind of like
a scaredy-cat, and I was like,
well, I don't... I don't
even know who to ask.
I happened to run it by Debbie.
I think I asked her if Hae
would've been interested.
I don't think I would've had
the courage to just ask Hae.
Debbie told me, yeah, just ask her.
And, uh, she said yeah.
They were both, you know, had
my ear on liking the other one.
There was a lot of
note-writing, I remember that.
And then my saying, okay,
enough with the note-writing,
just talk to each other! So high school.
But it was sweet. It was, you
know, it was young love.
It was... it was cute.
April 27th, 1998.
Eek! 20 days since I wrote.
Oh well. Let me fill you in.
School is still a bitch,
but I'm surviving it.
And prom was the 25th,
and I better tell about it
while it's still fresh in my mind.
I wore this dress that's blue
and sparkles as purple in light.
First, he dropped me off
at Isha's, still not dressed.
I seriously freaked because I thought
we were going to be late for prom,
but he got his tux.
We took our pics,
one together, one of me,
and one with me, Isha,
Becky, and Debbie.
I was so crazy.
She had some sparkly silver shoes.
It was like a blue dress
and it was like down, like,
probably like halfway between,
like, her waist and her knee.
She looked beautiful.
I swear, he is like the sweetest guy.
Let me tell you why.
He was the prom prince,
and Stephanie McPherson was princess.
I remember I was
surprised when they announced me.
I was actually, like, super
worried, like in scared,
because now it would
definitely be a picture of me
in the yearbook.
When they announced Stephanie,
it was kind of weird in a way.
At the end of eighth grade
me and Stephanie
we were kind of like dating
a little bit, but not really.
We were, we called each other
boyfriend and girlfriend.
I wasn't really sure,
like, the etiquette was.
Like, well, do I dance with my date?
Do I dance with Stephanie?
And Hae had this...
One of her favorite songs
was the song by the duo
called K-Ci and JoJo.
And they started playing that song.
Traditionally, they were
supposed to dance together,
to my song, K-Ci & JoJo's "All My Life."
I tried to act natural and not jealous,
but it did kind of bother me.
But I took the pic of them
dancing and sat next to Deb,
who went on about how neat it
is for Adnan to be the prince.
Ten seconds later, guess who dances
with me and not with Stephanie?
Adnan!
Now, how could I not fall
in love with this guy?
("ALL MY LIFE" PLAYING)
I was, like, all about my hair...
In high school.
I used to use, like, a ton of
product, Pantene Pro-V Shampoo.
I used to use the Pantene hair gel,
and so I didn't like having the crown on
'cause I thought it was
messing my hair up.
Hae was like, no, no, you gotta
wear it, you gotta wear it.
She was, like,
holding my arm real tight.
It was a nice feeling. It was kind
of like she was showing me off.
And the crown matched her dress.
Like, the crown had a blue top.
Someone asked me was she the queen,
and I just immediately thought of it,
I said, no she's my queen though!
And Hae was like, aw, and I was like,
thank God I said something
smart for once.
And I remember our first
kiss was at the prom.
My whole life, that was one
of the best moments of my life.
Like, one of the happiest times.
When I came home that night, as
soon as I got in the front door
the hallway light went on.
I knew it was my mom.
I was like, holy crap!
I hurried up and threw the crown
and my tuxedo under the stairs.
She was like, "Oh, Adnan,
where have you been?"
I was like, "Oh, you know,
just out hanging out."
She was like, "It's
one o'clock in the morning."
I was like, "Oh yeah, Mom,
you know, I'm tired."
I'm going to go to sleep."
Parting is such a sweet sorrow.
The moment he went out
the door, I missed him.
I went to sleep and dreamed.
Since then, I keep on falling
deeper and deeper into him.
He's the cutest, sweetest,
and coolest guy,
and he loves me.
The bad thing is that we
have to keep things secret.
But it's okay, 'cause love conquers all!
- You want an egg with it or...?
- Mm?
I think somebody's
knocking at the door, Yusuf.
All right. Welcome Rabia.
(WELCOMING RABIA IN ARABIC)
You want me to make some food for you?
No, I can't eat right now.
- You look jittery.
- Do I look nice?
You look so nice, oh my God.
I'm jealous. I wish I could
have something like this.
Is uncle coming to the...?
- He said he's not feeling well.
- Yeah.
When he sees something,
you know, he get very depressed.
- It's hard for him, super duper.
- He'll feel better if he goes.
No, no, no.
Nobody has to know
that that's Adnan's dad.
He can just sit in the, you know...
We can just put him in the back
quietly and he can sit there.
- Yusuf, go.
- I'll try to ask it'll be tough for him
When seated.
...when all the people
are coming up to him...
- And talking to him.
- Yeah, talking to him.
Like, he built, like, a bubble
in order to survive
everything that's happened.
Yeah.
- Let me go talk to him.
- You know, it's okay.
If he's not up to it, it's fine.
When the pressure of Adnan came...
I actually took early retirement.
It was too much pain.
It is extremely hard,
and you have to go through it
day in and day out.
And you know that he is innocent. Why?
There's more hurting really here.
Tonight is the first time,
um, really since 1999
that the entire community
is going to get together.
You know, the first year there were
a lot of meetings at the mosque.
And then he got convicted, and, um,
you know, that was
kind of the end of it.
People don't understand
that when you come from...
Especially from South Asia,
Pakistan, India, Bangladesh,
the judiciary and the police
are very corrupt,
and people are terrified of them.
So it was a terrifying experience
for them to have to go to court,
but they have a lot of faith
in the American justice system.
I'm going to stand so everybody can
see me, and so I can see everybody.
And, uh, good evening.
Thank you guys all for coming.
I know there are people here who have
never ever met Adnan in their life,
and I know there are people here who
have known him since he was a child.
There are so many layers in this story
that have caught global attention,
and we're hoping that
God didn't bring us
this far for nothing.
When you are working on a case
that you think is a wrongful conviction,
you're only on one side and that
side is getting to the truth.
And that truth is...
is there for everybody.
It's not just there for the defendant,
it's there for the victim.
Something that gets lost in all of this
is the person who lost their life,
and that's Hae Min Lee.
She was born October 15th, 1980,
and she would've been 35 years old
if she was alive today.
My prayers are always not
just that Adnan's exonerated,
but that God brings a truth to light.
Because that is justice for Hae.
What a mess the
freezing rain left behind.
Accidents all over the place.
A drive through
western Baltimore County,
and it was more of the same.
You dodge falling branches
on side streets just
about everywhere you go.
It's been almost a disaster here,
even though schools have been off,
which has been good.
A lot of people in
the area didn't have power,
because of that big ice storm
that came through.
So when she originally went missing,
nobody really thought a whole lot of it.
We just assumed that she was
with her new boyfriend.
She kept promising me, like,
she was so looking forward
to my 18th birthday party,
which was the 15th, and obviously,
she went missing the 13th.
I pretty much invited everybody
that was part of our class.
I remember eating pizza,
and I hadn't had a warm meal,
'cause it was, like, the snow,
the ice storm, and there was no power.
I think it was like
8:30 or so, and Adnan came in.
But he and Jay and Stephanie
came in together.
Jay was eccentric.
Some people described him
as like Dennis Rodman.
He had piercings and he listened
to heavy metal and rock music.
I did not hang out with Jay personally,
but Stephanie asked
if he could come with her.
You know, Hae was the... she
was the primary conversation,
but we thought, well,
let's try to have fun.
Maybe she'll show up.
We get to the end of the
night, and she never showed up.
For her not to call or page
or e-mail or anything...
it was just really weird.
That's when I knew, like, something
really had to be wrong with her.
They started to look for her.
They had the dogs down in the
creek looking for her scent.
My parents were
constantly asking me, like,
is there any place
you think she could be?
And it was like, at this point I
would definitely say something,
I wouldn't try to protect her
with so many people being worried.
(WOMAN SPEAKING KOREAN)
The cops were at the
school asking questions.
I was asked by the detectives,
being that I was younger in age
and close to a lot of
the circle that she ran in
if I would make up some
questions that I could give
to the girls to kind of ask around
to see if any of the "Magnet"
students knew what was going on.
Obviously an ex-boyfriend is going to be
somebody of interest,
and the only one I strictly remember is,
was there a certain place
that Adnan and Hae would go
and hang out and spend time together,
where they could be away
and not be discovered.
I said to her, would you
please ask around,
and she put those questions
in her agenda book.
Each student had to carry
around an agenda book,
and it was the only way that they could
get out of the class
to go to the bathroom.
The teacher would sign off.
Adnan did not have his agenda
and he really had to go to the bathroom,
and so he said, Debbie,
can I borrow your planner?
He came to me and wanted to know
why I was asking questions about him.
And he said, please don't do that,
because I don't want my parents
knowing my business.
May 1st, 1998.
Adnan is the sweetest guy.
I love him to death. Guess what he did?
He went out and picked up
a single rose for me.
And he gave it to me in
Physics. Everyone was staring.
All I could do was just look surprised
and just kiss him
in the middle of class.
All day I walked around with my rose.
Everyone was telling me
how cute it is and all.
I came home and put it in the
heart vase I got from prom.
He's picking me up after SATs,
and we're going to go somewhere.
I can't wait!
I was so happy to have her in my life.
Like, she was probably one of,
if not my closest friend at the time.
I used to make cards for her
and stuff like that.
Sometimes I would come
visit her at nighttime,
and I would talk to her
through the window.
Like, she would open
the window up, and like,
we'd just be standing right there.
We might kiss and stuff.
Me and my baby went out after school.
We dropped Stephanie at Garlands
to get her car from Jay.
Then me and Adnan made out
in the parking lot.
Then I went to practice.
Because we
couldn't go to each other's house,
we used to hook up at Best Buy.
We used to do that at nighttime
when it was dark outside.
Or we would go to, you know,
like a hotel room.
I guess it seemed like it was
a normal progression of things.
I would just tell my mom I was
spending the night at Saad's house.
She told her mom she was
going to Aisha's house
to spend the night.
Anytime she was actually
sleeping at my house,
he would always stop by,
because he lived right
in my same neighborhood.
So he would come by and knock
on my window.
Neither of their families could know,
so they had, like, methods of
being able to call each other.
My baby's been gone since the 16th.
He went to Texas with his father
for some Muslim convention thing.
He called me on Friday,
twice, with calling cards.
Isn't he sweet?
I would page her
and then when I would call her,
she would already have called,
like, the weather or time.
The current temperature is...
So when the call comes
through, it wouldn't actually ring.
It'd just be call-waiting 'cause
you could just click over.
I used to listen to the phone.
And he'd say, Mom, everybody's
doing it, you know,
all the Pakistani children doing it,
but their parents doesn't know it.
But I said, I know it.
My mom, like, she would get mad at me,
but it would just be funny to me.
'Cause she was always mad
at me about something, right?
But I've never wanted to hurt my
mom, though, you know what I mean?
That's why I would always
try to hide stuff from her.
My mom and Adnan
would go back and forth.
My dad would just be like, look,
I just came back from work,
and I'm tired, you know.
He's doing really good in
school. He couldn't be doing
whatever you say he's doing
and be doing good in school.
Do I dare to pull him
away from his religion?
Ms. Salick was all up
in my face about it.
She said stuff like,
well, Adnan used to be
so religious and strict last year,
but this year, he is so loose.
Like I changed him.
And I don't want to pull
him away from who he is,
But I do know one thing;
I love him and he loves me.
Adnan would tell me
about her and he said,
you know, me and her are
perfect, but she's frustrated.
She wants a normal relationship
where she can go over
to her boyfriend's house
and have dinner with his family.
And, you know, you're in high school,
so everything's so much more dramatic.
It's like Romeo and Juliet.
With her mom, it wasn't a strict game.
It's just that her mom wanted to meet
the family of who she was dating, so...
that obviously wasn't going to happen.
On the weekends she went to go work
at her uncle's convenience store.
It was right near Camden Yards.
Her mom made her go and live there
above the store for like a week.
It was definitely a consequence
of her seeing me.
I had fun today.
Probably the last fun I'll have
before I get locked away for a week.
We'll survive, me and my baby.
I know for sure.
She talked about her
mom being very strict,
so that caused a lot of tension,
and then also having
a lot of responsibility.
She lived with her grandparents,
her mother, her uncle,
two younger cousins, and her brother.
Being, like, the oldest one, you know,
she helped translate for them
and things like that.
So she kind of felt like she had
equal footing in the household.
She could do what she wanted to.
If I want to have a boyfriend I
should be able to have a boyfriend.
Damn my grandma and mother.
I'm pushing Adnan away.
I can't get close,
and he can't get close to me.
I can't believe things are
about to blow up in my face.
My life's a bitch.
She was always looking for an escape
from what her home environment was.
Now that I think about it,
I would drop her off or pick her up,
but I had never been in her house.
Only like in the very front door.
I know sometimes that
she would tell me okay come pick me up.
When we were in the car,
I would say, well, hey,
where do you want to go?
She was like, I don't care,
hurry up, let's just get away.
No, no. She didn't...
She didn't like, you know...
She didn't want people around
her mother and her family life.
She just... These are my friends,
this is my good life over here,
this is my home life.
And, you know, school in general
was a force of separation
from that side of her that she
didn't really want to reveal.
In public, she was
just like a positive ray of light.
She was never the person
that you would see down.
I think maybe being one way publicly
but privately, you know, to go
through what she was going through,
I think that probably put on
her a great amount of stress.
Sometimes she would get upset
like when she would talk
about her back home in Korea.
We were in bed together, and,
like, she got really upset,
like, she got super upset.
It was almost like a standoff almost.
Like, I'm at one edge of the
bed, and she's at the other.
She was weeping.
She had her face down, she had
her, like, her legs curled up.
I'd never seen nothing like that before.
And that's when she... She told me,
she had been sexually abused
when she was in Korea.
And I was in shock, 'cause I'd
never, ever experienced that,
I didn't know anyone
who had been abused.
I didn't know anything
about that type of abuse.
I kind of had a feeling
like I shouldn't touch her
while she's talking about this.
So, you know,
so I just kind of listened.
What was upsetting to her
is what happened
is the person never, like,
got in trouble for it.
She was a young girl,
this was an older person
and she couldn't do anything
about it in a way.
So just things like that
that I guess I have insight in
because I knew her,
and, you know, even with me I didn't
really get the full depth of it.
You know what I'm saying?
Like, you guys don't know Hae.
People who have researched
this case don't know Hae.
She did confide in me about that.
I don't think it's something
she would've been willing
to testify about, or
if that would've happened, it
probably would've been years later.
And she, of course, was never
given that opportunity.
I suspect that that was why
she associated her family
with a culture that she just
didn't want to be a part of.
Ultimately, at the end of the day,
she didn't have an escape from that.
I mean, that was her household,
and she didn't really have
a choice to exist outside of that.
August 27th, 1998.
Now that I look back at the
last five months, I regret it.
Why? Because I have lost myself.
All the lies I told
my mother, my family.
Did I mention my grandparents
bought a cord phone
to replace the cordless in the kitchen,
to stop my excessive use of phone?
Did I push them so far
that they did that?
It seems like my life has
been revolving around him.
Where's me? Love hurts.
Things were closing in
on her, that's the way she felt.
And she liked to be free and open,
and it reminded her of,
you know, her mother's
control over her,
her uncle's control over her.
That had been so much of her life.
The last thing she wanted
was that in her relationship.
That became more of a public issue
when Adnan's parents came to the dance.
The reason they did that
was because my dad didn't
believe that Adnan was dating.
I don't believe you, I don't
believe you. He's not dating.
He can't get these
good grades and be dating.
You don't believe me?
You don't believe me?
Let's go take a trip to the school.
I just remember her
freaking out about it, like,
he's here with his parents,
like, what do we... like, what...
And I just know that
she wanted to get out of there.
I just remember that moment
and him sitting there
embarrassed and frustrated
at the same time.
Okay, here it goes.
I'm really getting annoyed
that the situation
is going the way it is.
At first, I kind of want
to make this easy
for me and for you.
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.
This was definitely written
probably the Monday
or Tuesday after homecoming.
The more fuss you make,
the more I'm determined
to do what I got to do.
I'll be busy today, tomorrow,
and probably till Thursday.
I've got other things to do.
Better than give you any hope
that we'll get back together.
I really don't see that
happening, especially now.
I never want to end this
like this, so hostile and cold.
Hate me if you will,
but you should remember
that I can never hate you.
So this was definitely
not their last breakup.
They got back together after this.
You can't make logic out
of a teenage life.
You just can't. Teenagers
are all over the place.
You fall in love, you fall
out of love, you go back.
You think you're old enough
to make your own decisions,
but then you're not really old enough...
To make your own decisions.
And you make some choices
that sometimes are good
and sometimes are bad.
The State's next witness
is Ms. Debbie Warren.
Ms. Warren, will you step up
to the witness stand?
Ms. Warren, did you become aware
of any breakups in their relationship?
They had broken up probably two times
before their final breakup
between December and January of '99.
Were you ever aware
that Hae dated anyone else
after the final breakup?
- Yes, she did.
- Who was that?
Um, Donny.
December 6th.
What's the matter with me?
Every time I close my eyes,
I see my baby,
but I keep on thinking
about someone else...
Don Clinedinst.
Why? I don't know.
But I keep wanting to get closer to him.
I'm going to have to get
my thoughts straight.
I do love Adnan,
but today I kept on imagining
Don over my body instead of Adnan.
Don is what I would go for in my past.
Blond, blue eyes, white,
built, sexy, and nice Camaro.
They worked together at LensCrafters.
My assumption was that he was someone
around the same age
working at LensCrafters.
When I actually met him, I was like,
oh, he's a lot older than us.
I knew his name, I knew
that he worked with Hae,
I knew that he was 22 years old.
I sensed her just falling head
over heels way too quickly,
and it was just too much too soon.
She just came from a relationship
that had the element of sneaking around,
and she's doing the same thing again!
I guess we were in the part where we
were transitioning towards friendship.
Did the defendant ever discuss
the fact of Donny with you?
He told me that he thought
that Hae was having
a relationship with him
while she was still with Adnan.
They portrayed it as if, you know,
I was angry with her, upset with her,
that the final straw was
when I found out she started dating Don,
as if she didn't tell me
that she started dating Don,
as if she didn't introduce me to Don.
January 12th, 1999.
I love you, Don.
I think I found my soul mate.
I love you so much.
I fell in love with you
the moment I opened my eyes
to see you in the break room
for the first time.
Thinking back to
the last day you saw Hae,
January 13th,
what was she doing at that
particular point in time?
She was in a rush to go somewhere.
She would've come out of the staircase
directly out of these doors,
down this walkway
and right there to her car.
She was intending to pick up her cousin
directly after leaving
and then going to see Don.
She was happy. She was excited.
I was guarded and cautious
and warning her, but...
I've gone over it in my mind
again and again and again.
I feel like the day she went missing,
we should've all, like, gotten together
and, like, made a huge thing about it.
I don't know, just like
we should've done more, maybe.
Maybe I should've done more.
I look back on that and feel like I was
stunned into inaction.
And I think it's just that part of you
that wants to think
that something is okay.
I don't know that it ever fully hit me
that something could be wrong
until her brother told me
they found her body.
9-1-1. What's your emergency?
The defense will
call Alonzo Sellers to the stand.
Mr. Sellers, please step all the way up
to the witness stand, please.
All the way up here.
Listen to Ms. Gutierrez who
has some questions for you.
Mr. Sellers, let
me direct your attention
back to February the 9th, 1999.
Do you recall that day?
Well, sir, you recall
the day that you found
the body in Leakin Park, don't you?
That was a pretty important
day for you, was it not?
- Objection!
- If you explained that...
I would know what you're talking about.
Okay, now...
on that day you left
- your work at Compton State College?
- Yeah.
You traveled from Compton to your home
by way of Franklintown Road?
Yes, I traveled that way, yeah.
And that's an area
where there aren't any houses,
it's just woods?
I guess it is. It's a park.
Apparently a passerby
discovered the body
of an 18-year-old female.
The detectives and medical
examiner were there
throughout the evening
trying to locate any type
of physical evidence
or other trace evidence.
We just want to know who did it and why,
because she's just a nice person.
Police are not saying how Lee died
or how long her body may
have been in Leakin Park.
They continue to search
for the 1998 Nissan Sentra
she was driving.
You know, I'm the one that told Adnan.
I said, you know, they found Hae's body.
She's not alive anymore.
And it was like a pin drop
on the other side
of the phone, like complete silence.
I just kept saying like, are you okay?
What do you need me to do?
Like, just say something.
And he said, is Aisha home?
He said I'm going to go to her
house, can you just call her
and tell her I'm headed that way?
Everyone there was just sad
and devastated, including Adnan.
By the time I got there,
he had been there a few minutes.
He just kept saying things like
they had the wrong person,
like this can't be Hae.
He picked up his cell phone
and he started
calling the police
that were investigating,
and the lady said, you're
going to have to call back
and talk to homicide in the morning.
And he just kind of busted out crying.
In the days after that,
it slowly sunk in and it was...
He was an emotional mess,
pretty much is what
I can boil it down to.
It was just really tough, you know,
just to go through
the motions of everything.
But it was like you had to,
because, like, your life wouldn't stop.
I remember crying with
the girls, Debbie and Aisha.
I have a clear recollection
of going up to Adnan
and hugging him and just
saying I'm so sorry,
and I wrapped my arms around him...
but I got a very just stern...
And I don't know if that
was a cultural thing,
I don't know if I should've hugged him.
I don't know if it was
something to read into or not,
but it wasn't reciprocated back.
I think I took it a little personally.
We planned a memorial for Hae.
We invited her mom and her brother.
When someone close to
you dies, it hits you hard,
and it makes you appreciate
life and it should.
Life is short and you should experience
and live every moment of it.
Like, it's
horrible enough that someone dies,
but for someone to be murdered...
like, who could've done it,
like, why would someone
have done it, you know?
Somebody knew somebody
that I cared about
well enough to get close to them
that they would never
breathe another day,
and that, you know, it sticks with you.
It could've been anybody.
In the 72-hour
window after the victim was found,
I will say there wasn't any
particular person of interest.
I think the trend and the
culture of everybody believing
the husband did it,
the boyfriend did it,
if you get in that narrow
path of thinking,
you only hurt yourself in an
investigation. You really do.
When we got news
that they found Hae's body,
we asked who found her body,
and they said a hiker.
And our immediate reaction, I remember,
is Krista was saying that...
Then who's this hiker?
I have nothing to support...
that he didn't.
Don't think he wasn't looked at.
I certainly understood some
prior documented issues,
but that in itself
doesn't make him a killer.
It makes him an unusual person.
I always knew it had to be
someone close to her,
because strangulation always is.
You know, it's not the kind of
thing a complete stranger does,
unless it's a serial killer.
Don was new to us,
so he was a possibility.
And what does a man in his early 20s
want with a girl that young?
Let's talk about Don for a second.
And what makes him important.
Well, you know, he's somebody
who was very close to the victim.
It's our responsibility as
investigators to go beyond,
frankly, what law enforcement
has already done
and to consider other suspects.
- Rabia.
- Oh, hi.
- Tyler Maroney, nice to meet you.
- Nice to meet you, too.
Thanks for coming all
the way to New York.
Oh gosh, not at all. I'm so excited.
The failure to investigate
Don more thoroughly
just really stands out
as a major mistake.
I never thought about him
over all these years, to be honest.
- Why?
- Because I thought he was at work.
We know that Hae spent
the evening with him
the night before,
got home late at night.
According to Don he was supposed
to see her after work on the 13th.
He says he gets home
around seven o'clock,
and when he gets home, the police
has called looking for her.
The police don't get ahold
of him until 1:30 that night.
This is the first time that we know
that Don had contact
with the police, right?
That's a big gap. Where was he?
What was he doing in that whole time?
Why didn't he try to contact
her or call the police back?
In that time period,
the police did start
canvasing parking lots.
They even contacted Harford County,
which is where Don lived,
and asked them to take
a look for her car then.
Nobody had bothered, not even
the police had bothered
to get his actual time sheets
for that day.
These weren't retrieved
until October of that year
by Adnan's attorney.
When they also produced
that to the prosecutor,
it came with a letter that said
that Don's mother is his manager.
His alibi was really his mom.
These things kind of
cumulatively make me suspicious,
but, you know, I have
to keep pulling myself back,
because I know that when you
look at something in hindsight,
- which is what happened with Adnan...
- Yeah.
...people thought, oh okay,
now that he's been arrested,
oh, that was kind of suspicious
and that was kind of sus...
But there's also the fact that
there's a witness at the school,
a classmate of Hae's,
who says that she saw Hae
before she was leaving school
and that she had told her she was going
to meet with Don at the mall.
It made Debbie suspicious
enough of Don that she actually
started kind of... she wanted
to investigate him herself.
And this is in police statements.
She told police she did this.
Somehow I got in touch with him online.
That was our initial contact.
And he was eager to give
me his information
and talk to me and everything.
He was very open.
Pretty much everything
after that was telephone.
You know, I just tried to find
out how much he cared about her,
what he knew about her disappearance.
And I don't recall when it was we had
that seven-hour
conversation, but we did.
It was spring break and my sister was
attending College Park,
she lived on campus.
I was going to go stay
with her for that whole week.
So I had told, you know,
told Don all of this and he,
you know, oh, let me come visit
you while I'm there. So, okay.
I guess it was that evening
that was the first time
he had really expressed,
like, romantic interest.
And it was kind of odd.
I didn't really know
what to do with that. But, um, you know,
he made it very clear that that's
what he was interested in.
And I guess to some extent I went
along with it for some time, um...
but you know, I... I did make it
clear to him that I was not,
you know, sexual... that that,
you know, not something...
Not something we were
going to be involved in.
How that all ended up
playing out, I just...
My mind completely blocks
it off after that.
I don't... I don't have
much recollection.
I wasn't sure if he was, you know,
trying to recapture what he
had with Hae in some way.
Well, I knew... That was a learned fact.
Don't think he didn't go uninvestigated.
Would a mother lie for him? Sure.
He could've caught equal attention
that the defendant did,
but he didn't have any phone
calls come in about him.
It's the 12th of February, 1999.
I'm in the office
and I answered the phone.
It was an anonymous caller.
An Asian male, probably Korean, said,
"You should concentrate
on the victim's boyfriend."
Well, you know his name? Yeah.
And that's when he provides the name.
Once the information started flowing in,
you gotta go where it takes you.
I write up my report
and I contact MacGillivary,
the primary investigator,
to take this information
and try to corroborate it.
Progress report,
Lee homicide investigation,
Detective Gregory S. MacGillivary.
On February 26th, along with
Detective William F. Ritz,
I interviewed one Adnan Syed
at the family home
in the presence of his father.
When asked if Syed had
a relationship with Lee,
Syed replied in a soft voice, yes.
However, he didn't want
his father to know.
The only thing I was concerned about was
just not meeting in front
of my mom and dad.
And they were asking me
questions, but they were
just like pretty general
and vague questions.
On January 13th, he had
occasion to be at Woodlawn High School,
however, doesn't remember the events
that occurred in school that day.
If you didn't do anything,
then what is there
to worry about in a sense?
I don't have to account for anything
because I didn't do anything.
Syed indicated that
he had occasions to be a passenger
in the victim's auto, however,
not on the date in question.
I know there's
things that don't look good for me,
you know, and this is one of them, but
to be honest, I have no idea
how to explain that then.
A formal interview will
be conducted in the near future,
investigation to continue.
That night I remember my parents
were yelling at my brother like,
well, if you didn't date that girl
we wouldn't have this problem.
You know, I was like, Adnan, you know,
if you have anything to do with
this, you need to get an attorney.
He was just so lax, like,
okay, you know,
in this justice system, you are
innocent until proven guilty.
I tend to look back on these things,
and they have a little more meaning
than they did back then, right?
I wish I knew what I knew back then,
it's like I would've taken
it way more seriously.
Like, I have to account
for what I was doing.
I have to be prepared.
Never in a million years
would I have imagined
that I would be charged
with Hae's murder.
In the morning, you know, I woke up
to these people talking in the hallway,
and it was a police officer
standing in my doorway.
My older son, he woke up
and he tried to get up,
so he push him back.
He said, no, you go back,
because he was afraid, you know,
he was going to see him
handcuffing his brother and take him.
Unbelievable.
When a son has never given
you a problem in 17 years,
and all of a sudden,
he's being told that he has
done such a wrong thing.
They put me in the back of a police car.
I said, ma'am, can I ask you
what this is all about?
And she said, they'll tell
you down at the station.
Eyewitness news was there tonight
when family members first found
out about the teen's arrest,
an arrest that Lee's family says
brings them much-needed peace.
I remember the exact picture that I saw.
It's his black and white picture and
he has a little bit of a mustache.
And you can't even absorb
this 'cause I'm just...
I'm seeing arrest, murder, Adnan Syed.
He's a sensitive guy. He's gentle.
He has no kind of delinquency record.
He's not violent. He's just a kid.
He's a baby.
He's like my little brother.
When I got to the police station,
they put me in like a little room.
I sat there for a while.
It could've been five minutes,
it could've been five hours.
The two detectives came in,
Ritz and MacGillivary.
They said, you know why you're here.
You're being charged with Hae's murder.
At some point,
they mentioned Jay's name,
like Jay told us or Jay's going to say
that you did this or did that.
And I was just thinking, Jay? Jay who?
The only Jay I know is Jay Wilds.
What does that have to do with anything?
I was thinking, like, the
charges would just be dropped,
like this is some huge mistake.
Like, how am I going to explain
this on my college application?
Do people at school believe this?
Like, it's going to be so weird.
When they arrested him, it felt like
they gotta have the wrong guy.
When you hear, like, he strangled her,
if he did what he did,
then who's the person that
I saw everyday in class?
Finding out that Hae died, it was like
an unstoppableforce of,
like, sadness and grief.
But then to be arrested for it?
It's almost like there's
a flood outside your house,
before you can even
come to terms with that,
now there's a fire inside your house.
You don't really have time to
come to terms with anything.
You're just trying to survive.
Convicted murderer Adnan Syed
is getting a second chance
to prove his innocence.
Syed won a motion to appeal
and present new evidence
to fight his case.
The hearing is
scheduled to last three days.
It will determine
whether Syed's conviction
will be overturned or if
the case will be retried.
- Man, Rabia I feel very excited.
- You feel good?
Can you believe, I
mean, three days will decide
if Adnan going to come home or stay.
How important it is, you know.
Yeah, but, inshallah, he's coming home.
I don't know. I just
feel it in my heart.
Syed's bid to be retried
hinges on two arguments:
that his attorney failed to use
alibi witness Asia McClain,
who said she was with Syed
the day of the murder,
and that a cell phone expert, who helped
place Syed's phone where Lee was buried,
now says his findings
were based on unreliable data.
Anyone can critique what you did,
but we were working in real time.
You may not have dotted all the I's,
but arrest, the bar is not as high.
We're looking for 51 percent for arrest,
and a hundred percent for conviction.