Murder by nature

The Adnan Syed Case Part 2

• Jazmin Hernandez • Season 1 • Episode 18

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Intro

“Welcome to Murder By Nature, where we discuss True Crime, Mystery disappearances, and unsolved cases! I’m Jazmin Hernandez, your host!


Thank them for listening and being a part of this community. 


Today we will be talking about part two of the Murder of Hae Min Lee and the Investigation of Adnan Syed. We left off right when Adnan was arrested. I am doing this in two parts as I believe these are two different sides of this murder. 


References:


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Intro

“Welcome to Murder By Nature, where we discuss True Crime, Mystery disappearances, and unsolved cases! I’m Jazmin Hernandez, your host!


Thank them for listening and being a part of this community. 


Today we will be talking about part two of the Murder of Hae Min Lee and the Investigation of Adnan Syed. We left off right when Adnan was arrested. I am doing this in two parts as I believe these are two different sides of this murder. 


References:



The Trial

March 31, 1999, she felt it. The courthouse that day was packed with people from Adnan’s mosque, The Islamic Society of Baltimore. They’d raised tens of thousands of dollars for his defense, they offered to put up their own houses and other properties to secure his bail. Adnan’s attorneys during his case's bail phase were two guys named Chris Flohr and Doug Colbert. Chris Flohr remembers the busloads of people who came to Adnan’s bail proceedings, filling the courtroom and hallways. He said he’d never seen anything like it, before. Adnan’s attorney Doug Colbert stated at the bail hearing. “Many of the people here are people who you would almost say they’re extended family, they care for each other’s children, it’s one of the old fashioned sense of community, and so the people who are here in this courtroom represent the doctors and the teachers and the lawyers and the accountants and the correction officers as well as three religious leaders, imams, who are from different mosques here in Baltimore. So the community here Judge is here to say first of all, that they commit themselves to promise to vow that they will not only supervise Adnan should he be released should bail be set. But at the same time, they will also accompany him to court as well.


After he finished, the prosecutor, Vicki Wash, took that same crowd, the people Doug Colbert

describes as “solid, respectable folk, who make sure Adnan does the right thing,” The same people who are likely to help Adnan run away to Pakistan, and that’s why he shouldn’t get bail.


Your honor, the fact that the defendant has strong support from the community is what

makes him unique in this case. He is unique because he has limitless resources; he has the

resources of this entire community here. Investigation reveals that he can tag resources from

Pakistan as well. It’s our position, your honor, that if you issue a bail, then you are issuing

him a passport under these circumstances to flee the country. We do not want another.

Sheinbein situation, your honor. There is a pattern in the United States of America where young Pakistani males have been jilted, have committed murder, and have fled to Pakistan, and we have been unable to extradite them back. He gave me a specific instance that’s occurring now, that’s pending in Chicago, where the factual pattern is frighteningly similar. Again it’s a young

Pakistani male who was jilted by his girlfriend who fled the country and they have had no

success, and he indicated it would be a dim situation indeed if the defendant would flee to

Pakistan. We have information from our investigation that the defendant has an uncle in

Pakistan and he has indicated that he can make people disappear. Ultimately Adnan was denied bail.


Adnan prepares for his day in court on Dec 15, 1999. As the trial started to come, the Syed family hired Maria Cristina Gutierrez to represent Adnan. During the trial, the most incriminating piece of physical evidence against Adnan Syed was a fingerprint. On a map. Police found it in the backseat of Hae’s car. On the back cover was a partial print of Adnan’s left palm. One page was ripped out from the map. At trial, they pointed out that the page showed Leakin Park. The defense argued, ‘well, you can’t put a time stamp on fingerprints; Adnan had ridden in and driven Hae’s car many times; all their friends said so. The ripped-out page showed a whole lot more than just Leakin Park. In fact, it showed their whole neighborhood, the school, the malls, probably ninety percent of where they most often drove. And that page didn’t have Adnan’s prints on it. His palm print was only on the back cover of the book. Plus, thirteen other unidentified prints turned up on and in the map book. None of them matched Adnan or Jay. So, the prints weren’t exactly conclusive.


Now the second piece of evidence which happens to be one of the small and big things that seals the case on Adnan is the Nisha call. Between noon and five pm that day, there are

seven outgoing calls on the log; six of them are to people Jay knows, the seventh is to Nisha, someone only Adnan knew. Adnan’s story is that he and his cell phone were separated that day, from lunchtime all the way until after track at around five something. But The Nisha Call happens at 3:32 pm. Smack in the middle of the afternoon. 


In Jay’s second taped statement, Detective MacGillivary asks Jay about all those afternoon calls on the log between three and four o’clock. Again, Jay says this is when they were driving all around Forest Park and Edmondson Avenue looking for weed. The detective asks him Did anybody else use the phone? Yeah. Umm, Adnan, I can’t remember whether he received a call or placed a call, but I remember he was talking to a girl umm, I can’t remember her name. He put me on the phone with her for like three minutes, I said hello to her. Where did she -uh- live? Uhh, Silver Spring. Do you recall her name? No. I don’t. Do you have any idea why Adnan would call this individual in Silver Spring after he had Just strangled his girlfriend? I don’t. And… uh, I have no idea why he would call, and their conversation didn’t pertain to anything that he had just done.


The cops went and talked to Nisha, she was a high school student. And she told them, Ummm, it’s a little hard to recall, but I remember him telling me that Jay invite- invited him over to a video store that he worked at. And, he basically well Adnan walked in with his cell phone and then like- he told me to speak with Jay and I was like ‘okay’ cause Jay wanted to say hi so I said hi to Jay. And that’s all I can really recall. This was Nisha’s testimony at the first trial. 


Now what is the big red flag here is that Nisha is saying this call happened at the video store. Jay didn’t have that job yet on January 13. Jay didn’t start working there until the very end of January. 


Then there is the prosecution’s timeline of the crime. When and where Hae Min Lee was killed?

The State contended that Hae was killed between 2:15 and 2:36 p.m. at the Best Buy parking lot, about a mile from Woodlawn High School. That’s the twenty-one-minute window in which to commit the murder. Adnan wrote it is virtually impossible if you consider the following facts, which he then listed. For example, “when the final bell rings at 2:15, you can’t just leave and jump in your car,” he wrote. “There are 1500 other students filling the hallways

and stairwells of a four-story building.” Then you have to get out of the school parking lot, but the parking lot is encircled by the school bus loop, so you can’t get your car out until the buses fill up and leave. Which, Adnan wrote, “took about ten to fifteen minutes.”


At trial, the prosecutors are very clear the 2:36 call is the ‘come and get me, I’m at Best Buy’ call. Jay never says the call was at that time. In fact, he repeatedly says that Adnan called him around 3:40 or 3:45. Jenn also says that’s about when Jay left her house that day. But there is no incoming call at or near 3:45 on the call log. So, the prosecution has to go with 2:36 because it’s the only one that sort of lines Jay’s story up with the log. Kevin Urick addressed this head-on in his opening statement to the jury. He told them,“look at the big picture.” The main plot points in Jay’s story have been consistent. He tells them that Jay “has consistently given the same story about what the defendant did. Consistently, he tells Jennifer a consistent story, he tells police a consistent story about the defendant, he tells consistently the defendant’s involvement, the defendant’s actions on that day. He has never wavered on that point.”


In Jay’s statements, while the particulars shifted, the spine of his story did not. Adnan told

Jay was going to do it; Adnan showed him the body, buried her in Leakin Park, and ditched her car. Jay has been consistent on those points. Cristina Gutierrez cross-examined Jay, and she pointed out that he lied to detectives about various things, including the location where he says Adnan showed him Hae’s body in the car's trunk. He told the court, “I told them the truth; I did not show them a location that was true.’. Yes, I told some lies, but I told the truth. Overall, I told the truth.




The second trial started in Jan of 2000 after the other trial was declared a mistrial. The was a piece of evidence that the prosecution team wanted to show the court, and Cristina said she had not seen that piece. The judge asked the lawyers to come to the bench, and they argued, calling her a liar. After a break, Christina asks for a mistrial. The judges says he’s gotten a note from Alternate Number 4. “In view of the fact that you’ve determined that Miss Gutierrez is a liar, will she be removed? Will we start over?” The judge said, “your motion for mistrial is granted.” 


In trial two, the denfenses strategy remained the same as they felt like the first trial was going really well and they had a chance to win. Their strategy was to try to show that someone else had killed Hae. During that second trial, it takes some doing, but Guterries finally gets Mr. Sellers on the stand. He so desperately didn’t want to be there, the courthouse staff basically had to prevent him from leaving the building. So, even though he’s her witness, he’s a hostile witness. Now she did not care too much about Mr. Sellers. Her main focus was Jay, and at the second trial, this is what Nisha tells the court. “Nisha starts to answer, “basically, Jay had asked him to come to an adult video store that he worked at.” But then Urick interrupts her, and he says, “no, don’t-- tell us the content of the call.” Now if I had to guess, I’d say that the prosecutor is trying to get her not to mention the video store because it contradicts their story. So, Nisha says, “okay. He just asked me how I was doing, et cetera,” then she

goes on. She doesn’t mention the video store to Urick again.


The production team is relying heavily on phone calls and phone records to collaborate with Jay’s accounts for the day. The error in the defense case is the cell phone records. Her main

argument was that the way the State’s expert, Abe Waranowitz, tested the sites wasn’t valid because he used an Ericsson phone to make the calls, a different brand than Adnan’. But she didn’t do with the cell phone evidence to attack the State’s timeline. Call by call, tower by tower, or point out clearly that a significant swath of the day, the hours between noon and six p.m. on the call log, do not match Jay’s testimony. 


At the end of the second trial, Adnan decided to fire Cristina over the Asia letters and not follow up properly. We will get to those later. 


The Sentencing

On February 25, 2000, Adnan Syed was convicted of the murder of Hae Min Lee. The proceedings took six weeks, but the jury’s deliberation only took two hours. “I’ll be all right,” Syed said after his sentencing. “I have faith in the Lord. I know I didn’t kill her. The Lord knows I didn’t kill her.” His attorney Charles H. Dorsey III (who replaced Gutierrez after the conviction), pleaded with Judge Wanda K. Heard to reduce the sentence. “I have maintained my innocence from the beginning,” Adnan said.


At the trial, Lee’s mother, Youn Wha Kim, delivers a heartwrenching testimony through an interpreter. She explained that her hardships emigrating from Korea were necessary to provide her family with a better life and give her children a “decent education and a decent future.” “I would like to forgive Adnan Syed, but as of now, I just don’t know how I could,” she said. “When I die, my daughter will die with me. As long as I live, my daughter is buried in my heart.” She nearly collapsed when she left the stand, and she eventually had to be escorted outside.


The Alibi

Adnan’s defense team was in high gear and made a shocking discovery. Adnan had an alibi. During the closing arguments, the prosecution team stated that Hae would have been murdered within 21 mins after school finished to make Jay's story plausible. Adnan told Rabi that one of his classmates wrote him a letter that stated she remembers speaking to him in the library on the 13th. He told her he gave these letters to his lawyer Cristina Guterize and she told Adnan that she spoke to Asia, and the dates were incorrect, so he never brought it up again. The biggest flaw was this would place Adnan somewhere else and not with Hae. There was just one issue. They needed to find Asia. Adnan’s lawyer had Asia’s letters and affidavit and sets out to find her. They hired a private investigator to locate her but they returns with terrible news. She won’t testify. The PI never spoke to her but her fiance made it very clear, that Asia would not be involved and to leave them alone. It was devastating to Adnan and his loved ones. All of these years had been passed in the hope that when post-conviction came around Asia would corroborate her letters and affidavit and he would be given a new trial. As the case started to grow Asia grew curious as one would and called Urek from the prosecution team. She felt like he would tell her the truth and trusted he would want to do the right thing. Asia recalled when she spoke to him he told her that they had witness, DNA evidence, and cell phone records that made this an airtight case and she wasnt need. It wasnt until Asia heard Ureks testimony on the stand that she made contact with Adnan’s lawyer. See Urek told the court that Asia told him she was pressured by the Syed family and she didnt see Adnan that day. Asia was upset as that was not what she said at all. When Asia spoke to Adnan’s lawyer she told them the conversation with Urek and that she was not pressured. She didn't know she was his alibi, and seeing her made the case timelines incorrect. She wrote a new affidavit. 


(insert Asia Video Clip)


You see, Asia did remember seeing Adnan that day. They spoke for a bit, and he was going to track practice. In her affidavit, she says she and Adnan spoke for about 15 to 20 minutes while

she was waiting for her boyfriend to give her a ride. Quote, "We left around 2:40," unquote. Hae is supposed to be dead by 2:36. She says, "No attorney has ever contacted me about January 13, 1999, and the above information." 


 In 1999 Adnan and Asia didn't realize these details and events would be so important because they didn't know Hae was dead or the time of her death. 


So let's say that Adnan never actually showed the letters to Cristina Gutierrez, and that's why Asia wasn't asked to testify. But Deep inside, Gutierrez's notes on the case is in her handwriting. "Asia plus boyfriend saw him in library 2:15 to 3:15." Then there's another note, dated July 13. It's more than four months after Adnan's arrest. One of Gutierrez's law clerks wrote this, who visited Adnan in jail. "Asia McClain saw him in the library at 3:00. Asia's boyfriend saw him too. A library may have cameras."


It came out that detective Ruiz was known for this type of coring people to not talk about anything that would make his case weak. 



The Appeals

March 19, 2003: Syed’s appeal is denied


Syed’s first appeal is denied by the Court of Special Appeals.


December 30, 2013: Syed's petition for post-conviction relief is denied. After hearings in the Circuit Court between November 2010 and October 2012, Syed’s petition for post-conviction relief is denied, according to court papers.\


February 6, 2015: Syed can appeal the post-conviction relief denial. Syed is given a chance to overturn the Baltimore City Circuit Court ruling that denied him post-conviction relief, thanks to the Maryland Court of Special Appeals.


November 6, 2015: The post-conviction relief case is reopened. The case is reopened to take into account McClain’s new testimony, new cell phone data, and allegations of “ineffective assistance of counsel” as well as “prosecutorial misconduct,” according to Harper’s Bazaar.


February 2016: The hearing takes place. The five-day hearing includes witness testimonies from McClain and a cell phone expert.


June 30, 2016: Syed is granted a new trial. Justice Martin Welch vacates the original conviction, saying there should be a new trial. However, Syed is not allowed out on bail while he waits for the new trial. He ends up waiting more than two years.


March 8, 2019: The trial is then denied. In a sudden twist, the Maryland Court of Appeals voted 4 to 3 to reverse the decision, denying a new trial saying, “There is not a significant or substantial possibility that the verdict would have been different,” 


August 19, 2019: The Supreme Court is asked to examine the case. Syed’s lawyers asked the nation’s highest court to look into reversing the state’s decision.


November 25, 2019: The Supreme Court rejects the bid for a new trial. Without comment, the Supreme Court decided not to open a new trial. “We are deeply disappointed by the Supreme Court, but by no means is this the end of Adnan Syed,” attorney C. Justin Brown told AP at the time. “There are other legal options, and we are exploring each and every one of them.” Family friend and lawyer Chaudry added: “He is hanging in there. He knows that none of us are basically giving up. He has a great legal team. He has a lot of public support, and walking away is not an option.”

The HBO Series evidence

During the HBO series, we hear different sides of this case from Jen, Kristi, and all of Hae’s friends but the ones that stick out the most are from Jen and Kristi. 


Now at court Jay tells the police that he was at Kristi’s house before picking up Adnan and Kristi argues that was incorrect. She also states her interview copy was wrong. She said she was unsure of the correct day, and the police told her it was the 13th.


INSERT VIDEO CLIP of Kristi


When the PI confronted Kristi's schedule, they showed her that she had class every wed at 6pm and she tells them if she had a winter class, then these events did not happen on the 13 because she wouldn't have been able to skip the class and pass it. 


Now Jen is equally as confused as she didnt realzie all the different stories Jay has told and the lies he has said about her picking him up at home. She said that did not happen. 

Other Suspects

Authorities initially considered a possible connection between the murder of Hae Min Lee and the body of another 18-year-old Woodlawn girl, Jada Denita Lambert, who had been found strangled in the wilderness a year prior.


After years of research, the private investigators also believed that there were two more possible suspects. In the HBO docuseries episode four, this evidence is found when trying to look into other possibilities. 


(Play Clip of PI)


Twelve samples of DNA were taken from the scene and the body, but nothing was a match to Adnan. Nothing that police could collect would link him to leakin park or Hae that day. The police had a solid fingerprint from the rearview mirror, but when they ran against Adnan’s, they still were not a match. 


The issue with Don is that Hae spent the evening before she disappeared with Don, and she was supposed to be meeting up with him after school too. Debbie, one of Hae’s best friends, reached out to Don by email to discuss Hae and if he knew anything about her disappearance. Debbie says they started in email and then moved to phone calls, and during spring break in 1999, Don expressed romantic interest in her. She tells HBO she just went for it but lets him know she doesn't do the whole sex thing. To me, this is weird; a few months after your girlfriend is murdered, you start to date her friend. 


In 2018 the Prosecution team made a deal with Adnan’s team; he was to plead guilty, serve four more years in jail, and then be released. Adnan declined the deal. 


In Sept of 2022, Adnan was granted a retrial, with DNA evidence being heard in the courtroom. This new evidence will shed light on the other suspects that could be responsible for Hae Min Lee’s murder. The article releasing the information stated that "The State will be requesting that defendant be released on his own recognizance or bail pending the investigation should this Court grant the instant motion. "that keeping Mr. Syed detained as we continue to investigate the case with everything that we know now when we do not have confidence in results of the first trial, would be unjust."


Prosecutors said in the court filing Wednesday there is evidence suggesting two suspects may have been involved, either separately or together. The suspects were known at the time of the first investigation but not properly ruled out, prosecutors said. Identifying details of the two suspects, including their names, are being withheld because the investigation is ongoing, prosecutors said. References to the suspects were mentioned throughout the motion but prosecutors didn’t state which suspect they were referring to. In their reinvestigation, prosecutors found a document in the state’s trial file detailing one person’s statement, saying that one of the suspects had a motive to kill Ms. Lee and had threatened her in the presence of another person. The suspect said “he would make her [Ms. Lee] disappear. He would kill her,” according to the court filing. That information was never given to the defense, the filing said. Prosecutors are required by law to give defense counsel exculpatory evidence upon request. The reinvestigation also revealed that the grassy lot where Ms. Lee’s car was found in Baltimore was located behind a house that belonged to one suspect’s relative.


Further revelations include that one of the suspects, “without provocation or excuse,” attacked a woman he didn’t know while in her vehicle. One suspect was accused and later convicted of rape and sexual assault. Both incidents occurred after Mr. Syed’s trial, prosecutors said, but they added that they found the information relevant given the possible involvement of the suspects. 


On Sept 19th, 2022, Adnan Syed was vacated of his charges. The prosecution team must now either dismiss the case or file for a retrial. They will have 30 days to decide. I will be updating once released on a podcast and Tiktok, so stay tuned. 

My Thoughts

 My thoughts are and always have been that Adnan is innocent in this case. There is too much evidence that points to the fact that he didn't do this and too much from the state's case that points to they didn't care if there was another person That could have done this. All they cared about was the fact that he was named by a male Korean man and no one else was. There's too much evidence that points to the fact that this could have been don, this could have been sellers, this could have been so many people, but they didn't care they just wanted an on, and that's all to it.


Outro

That brings us to the end of this episode!  As always, thanks for listening to Murder By Nature. If you enjoy our show, please rate and review us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or any streaming platform you are currently on, and be sure to come back Saturday for our new episode. Until then, I am your host, Jazmin Hernandez, don’t forget to stay safe! Don’t get murdered or murder people, you lovely humans!




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