SERIAL SHOCK TWIST
For decades, student Hae Min Lee’s family believed justice had been served for her murder. But after a hit crime podcast found faults in the case, Adnan Syed’s conviction has been overturned
When Hae Min Lee first met Adnan Syed, they were seated together during a science class. It was the start of their ninth-grade year and though they were friends, they never socialised together.
Hae was born in South Korea and emigrated to the USA with her mother and brother when she was 12. Adnan was Pakistani-American, and the pair knew their parents would disapprove of their friendship. It wasn’t until two years later that they became a couple, when Adnan asked Hae to be his date at the school prom.
Although their relationship developed between March and November 1998, eventually their family situations became too complicated, and Hae ended the relationship. She later wrote in her diary that Adnan seemed possessive and hadn’t taken the break-up well. Weeks later they got back together, only to break up again shortly after.
MISSING
By January 1999, Hae, 19, had been on a date with another man. Two weeks later, on 13 January, she disappeared.
After being seen leaving school for the day at around 2.15pm, she failed to pick up her six-year-old cousin from daycare and her family reported her missing. She was never seen alive again.
Baltimore Police spoke to her friends during the investigation, and interviewed Adnan and her new boyfriend. It wasn’t until weeks later that a driver, who claimed he’d pulled his car over to relieve himself in the woods, stumbled across Hae’s strangled and partially buried body in Leakin Park. At first suspicion fell on him. He was a known flasher and had walked a long way from his car to the spot where Hae’s body lay. However, it was eventually concluded that he had simply wanted privacy.
But suspicion turned to Adnan, then 17, after an anonymous phone call told investigators to consider him.
There was no physical evidence linking him to the murder, but investigators concluded Adnan had murdered Hae in the car park of a local shop, at around 2.36pm, before placing her dead body into the boot of his car and later burying her. Although Hae was a strong, athletic girl, Adnan had supposedly strangled her, without sustaining any injuries.
This story was corroborated by mobile phone data, which seemed to place him near the site where Hae’s body was found and bombshell evidence from a former friend of Adnan, Jay Wilds, who claimed he’d heard him talk about killing Hae, seen her body in the boot of Syed’s car and even helped bury her.
Jay later claimed he’d thought Adnan would get
