The Case Against Adnan Syed

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.

Newsman: 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.

Newsman 2: ...key details they had withheld as they sought out 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.

Newsman 3: The subject is identified as Adnan Masud Syed,

17 and a former football player who is described

as an A student, friendly to everyone.

Newsman 1: 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 crying) -(distant dog barking)

Shamim Rahman: Baby Sidney. Yusuf?

-(baby crying) -I'm here.

What happened to you?

-(crying continues) -Yusuf: Sydney.

-(giggles) -(chuckles)

Sydney! Hi.

Come, on Leda. Where's your blankie?

Nice.

-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.

-Woman: He used to help you? -Yeah.

I'm sorry.

-(child fusses) -(Yusuf trills)

Yusuf: 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.

Rabia: It doesn't look like a baby's room yet.

Nothing's in here... (chuckles) 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.

Sarah Koenig: 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.

Newswoman: Adnan Syed's story has captivated millions

since the 2014 launch of the podcast Serial.

Juliana Goldman: The podcast was downloaded more than 100 million times.

Newsman: Turning the Syed case into a global sensation.

Rabia: 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.

Rabia: Serial turned everything into a point of investigation.

Newswoman: Turning listeners into armchair detectives.

Newsman: 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.

Judy Woodruff: 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.

-(Rabia cooing) -(cat meows)

Rabia: 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.

Bailiff: 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.

Kathleen Murphy: 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?

Young Lee: 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.

Murphy: Do you know about what time you received the phone call

that Hae had not picked up your cousins?

-Young Lee: Around 3:30. -What, if anything, happened next?

I called my sister's workplace,

her best friend, Aisha, and I called the school.

Aisha Pittman: 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.

Krista Meyers: 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.

Officer: On my arrival, I spoke to the victim's brother,

and he advised me that his sister had not returned home.

Young Lee: My grandmother brought down the diary

that my sister writes in.

Then I found the phone number, then I called that number.

Murphy: 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: The day she went missing was just a normal day to me.

I think I had told her that day that 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.

Kevin Urick: What did you tell him, if you remember?

I told him yes, a police report's going to be made.

Adnan (over phone): 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.

Aisha: 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.

Murphy: Mr. Lee, after January the 13th

did you ever see your sister again?