This is one of the key pieces of evidence in the case. That information was not public. It gives massive credence to her testimony. The defense couldn’t counter it at trial. IMO there’s only two possibilities, either Jay did tell her about it… or…. We have to get into police coercion and conspiracy theories.

How do you see it?

There’s a persistent argument that Jay’s unreliable timeline somehow exonerates Adnan Syed, but even if you disregard everything Jay said about the timeline of events on January 13, 1999, the evidence against Adnan remains strong.

Let me clarify: I am not suggesting we act like Jay does not exist at all; I am suggesting we ignore everything he put forward about the sequence of events on the day of the murder.

Here’s what still looks damning for Adnan (not exhaustive):

1. Adnan Asked Hae for a Ride Under False Pretenses

Adnan asked Hae for a ride after school while his own car was parked outside. He later lied repeatedly about this. This isn’t based on Jay’s testimony—it’s from witness statements at school and Officer Adcock.

2. The Nisha Call at 3:32 PM

Adnan’s phone called Nisha for over two minutes at a time when Adnan claimed he didn’t have the phone and was still at school. This comes directly from phone records and has nothing to do with Jay’s statements. Even if Jay said nothing, this call doesn’t align with Adnan’s claims.

3. Adnan Spent the Day With Jay

Adnan admitted spending much of the day with Jay and lending him both his car and his brand-new phone, activated just the day before. Adnan himself acknowledges this, despite claiming they weren’t close friends.

4. Adnan’s Cell Phone Pinging Leakin Park

On the evening of January 13, 1999, Adnan’s phone pinged a cell tower covering Leakin Park—the same night Hae was buried. His phone doesn’t ping this tower again until the day Jay was arrested. Adnan claimed to be at mosque, but the only person who supposedly saw him there was his father. Whether Jay’s timeline matches or not is irrelevant here. The phone records independently place Adnan’s phone near the burial site, where calls were made to both his and Jay’s contacts.

5. Jen Pusateri’s Statement

Jen independently saw Adnan and Jay together that evening. Her statement to police is her own and not tied to Jay’s account. She says she saw them with her own eyes, not because Jay told her.

6. Motive, Opportunity, and No Alibi

Adnan remains the only person with a clear motive, opportunity, and no confirmed alibi. His actions and lies after Hae’s disappearance are well-documented and unrelated to Jay’s timeline.

How Jay Becomes Involved

Adnan’s cell records led police to Jen, who led them to Jay. Jay then took police to Hae’s car—a crucial piece of evidence. That’s not Jay’s timeline; it’s what police say happened.

This fact implicates Jay in the crime because, even without his testimony, he knew where Hae’s car was hidden - something only someone involved in the crime or with direct knowledge of it could know.

Miscellaneous Evidence/Information That Looks Bad for Adnan

• A note from Hae found in Adnan’s room, asking him to leave her alone, with “I will kill” written on it.
• Adnan’s fingerprints on the flower paper* in Hae’s car.
• His palm print on the back of the map book.
• Hae’s car showed signs of a struggle, and she was murdered via strangulation—a method often indicating an intimate relationship with her attacker.
• Stealing Debbie’s list of questions during the investigation.
• Claiming he remembers nothing about the day his life changed forever.
• Never calling Hae after she disappeared, despite calling her phone several times the night before.

Again, none of this depends on Jay or his version of events.

The Core Problem for Adnan and his Defenders

When you look at all of this, it’s clear the argument against Adnan doesn’t hinge on Jay’s testimony about what happened that day. Jay’s timeline may have substantially helped build the prosecution’s case, but the evidence against Adnan is corroborated by phone records, witness statements, and his own actions. The case against him is much stronger than many people seem to claim, at least from my own perspective.

Ironically, Adnan’s defenders rely on Jay’s testimony more than anyone else because they need it to be entirely false to argue Adnan’s innocence (e.g. the burial time, the trunk pop etc.). In fact, they need Jay to disappear outright, because unless there was a mass police conspiracy against Adnan, Jay was most certainly involved in the crime.

Even if Jay’s story was partly fabricated or fed to him by police, it doesn’t erase the facts: Adnan’s phone pinged Leakin Park, he had no alibi, and he was with someone who led police to Hae’s car.

Make of that what you will, but to me, it looks like Adnan killed Hae Min Lee.

Edit: Corrected flower to flower paper as it was pointed out that the actual flowers weren’t in the car.

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I think if Serial had never existed, I might have been okay with Adnan doing his time and receiving parole. However, Serial changed the game for me. If you believe Adnan is guilty as I do, I think Serial should be considered as additional criminal behavior. Serial allowed a cold blooded murderer to lie to the masses about his crime, smear his victim and ultimately weasel his way out of prison. We can’t pretend murdering Hae Min Lee was his only crime. He showed no mercy or remorse when he decided to participate in the podcast. I think that speaks to whether Adnan has the capacity to change and grow or whether he will always center himself as the most important “victim.”

i cant help but notice that there is a call that pings at lenscrafters… where don was working that day. yes adnan and jay were under possession of the phone, but it bothers me that don wasn’t looked into at least a little bit more. maybe i missed it, but does anyone recall this being brought up?

There is a theory that the cell site id and antenna direction database field on the cell records is the first AT&T cell site id + antenna direction encountered by the network.

For outgoing calls from Adnan this would be from Adnan in all cases.

For incoming calls to Adnan, the first cell site id + antenna direction encountered would also be from Adnan in most cases, such as calls from landlines.

However, if the person calling Adnan was calling from an AT&T cell phone, then the first site id + antenna id encountered during the call would be of the caller.

In Adnan’s records, are there any known AT&T numbers (such as Bilal) that we can analyze? It could really help to prove the reliability of the incoming calls.

That being said, if Adnan was in contact with someone calling from Leakin park, that is not exactly exculpatory, and we also have Jenn’s testimony indicating that she was the caller around 7pm, and she didn’t have an AT&T cell phone, so it seems pretty likely his phone was in Leakin park that night, unless she’s part of the conspiracy.

so fucking stupid. But as the song went on, I literally cried. I was doing dishes and I cried so hard. This is actually the reason for my post, because that dumb musical song made a grown ass man cry whilst doing his dishes alone in his apartment on a Sunday afternoon.

EDIT: I hate musicals in general.

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It's February 26, 2000. Adnan Syed was found guilty of first degree murder yesterday.

The day before yesterday, you were appointed Grand High Exalted Mystic Arbiter of Sentencing. It is now your solemn duty to impose a just and proportionate sentence upon this young man, based on your thorough knowledge of the case. You are not bound by Maryland minimums. You are not bound by federal guidelines. You are exalted and mystic! Only your judgment matters.

What is your sentence?

Baltimore Sun NewsCrime and Public Safety Adnan Syed case: Prosecutors mulling what to do with ‘Serial’ subject’s convictions Adnan Syed speaks to the media at his home last year. Amy Davis/Baltimore Sun Adnan Syed speaks to the media at his home last year. Baltimore Sun reporter Alex Mann By Alex Mann | UPDATED: November 22, 2024 at 6:21 PM EST

Baltimore prosecutors are still mulling what to do with the case of Adnan Syed, whose decades-old convictions were reinstated earlier this year.

At a status conference in Syed’s case Friday, sprosecutor Clara Salzberg, chief of the Baltimore State’s Attorney’s Office’s Post Conviction Litigation Unit, said her team needed more time to decide what to do with a request to vacate Syed’s convictions filed by the previous administration in the state’s attorney’s office.

“We are asking for an additional 90 days … to allow us to take the time that we need to conduct the review of what was filed and to determine what are the appropriate next steps for our office to take,” Salzberg said.

Syed’s lawyer, Assistant Public Defender Erica Suter, did not object to the prosecutor’s request. Also the director of the Innocence Project Clinic at the University of Baltimore School of Law, Suter didn’t say anything else during the brief court hearing.

David Sanford, an attorney for Young Lee, the brother of the woman Syed is accused of killing in 1999, Hae Min Lee, said he would object to any further delays in the case.

“The office claims it needs an additional three months to review documents it has had for over two years,” Sanford said, adding, “At this point, this is frankly absurd.”

That prosecutors are still mulling how to proceed in this case adds intrigue to a legal saga made famous by the hit podcast “Serial,” which chronicled Syed’s prosecutions. The Supreme Court of Maryland reinstated Syed’s convictions in August, capping off an appeals process dating to September 2022and placing Syed’s fate in the hands of a new state’s attorney.

Though the state’s attorney’s office successfully moved to vacate Syed’s convictions in September 2022, the office doesn’t have to take the same position now that the Supreme Court has ordered a redo of the hearing that set Syed free.

On the campaign trail, Bates said Syed’s convictions should be undone. When his office received the case following the state Supreme Court’s ruling, he said they needed to evaluate the case.

“Ninety days is what we’re confident today will at least give us the time that we need to have more clarity about what our next steps will be,” Salzberg told Baltimore Circuit Judge Jennifer B. Schiffer, who is now presiding over the case.

Schiffer ordered prosecutors to file anything new in the case by Feb. 28.

Syed’s legal saga traces to 2000 when a Baltimore jury found Syed guilty of murder, kidnapping, robbery and related charges in the death of Lee, his high school sweetheart. Prosecutors postulated at the time that Syed couldn’t handle it when Lee broke up with him, so he killed her.

Lee, 18, was strangled to death and buried in a clandestine grave in Leakin Park.

Syed’s convictions withstood multiple appeals, but he always maintained he was innocent. Years turned to decades behind bars.

His break came in 2021 when Suter approached city prosecutors about modifying his sentence under a new law allowing people convicted of crimes before they turned 18 to petition a court to change their penalty. The subsequent review spawned a full-throttled reinvestigation of the case, which, prosecutors said, revealed alternative suspects in Lee’s killing not before disclosed to Syed.

The revelation, prosecutors said, led them to doubt the “integrity” of Syed’s decades-old convictions. They moved to vacate the guilty findings.

On a Friday afternoon in September 2022, Baltimore Circuit Judge Melissa M. Phinn scheduled a hearing for the following Monday. Prosecutors then informed Young Lee, saying he could watch it by Zoom, but a lawyer for Young Lee insisted his client, who lived in California, wanted to attend in person and wasn’t given enough time to travel.

Phinn proceeded with the hearing, ordering Syed freed after 23 years of incarceration.

Young Lee raised questions about his role in the hearing, appealing before prosecutors dismissed Syed’s charges in October 2022. He argued that the short notice violated his right as a crime victim and the intermediate Appellate Court of Maryland agreed in March 2023, ordering Syed’s convictions reinstated for a do-over of the hearing to vacate them.

Syed swiftly appealed to the state’s highest court, arguing that Young Lee got adequate notice and that the prosecutor’s decision to dismiss his charges nullified the appeal. Young Lee followed up with his own appeal, with his lawyers arguing the appellate court’s ruling didn’t go far enough for crime victims.

The state Supreme Court’s decision was split. The three dissenting judges argued, in part, that it was up to the legislature, not the judiciary, to decide whether to clarify a crime victim’s role in such a proceeding.

Originally Published: November 22, 2024 at 1:50 PM EST

My issue is not whether the sentence itself deserves to be vacated. Even if someone was guilty beyond a doubt in a case like this, let alone a minor, 30 years without parole is just beyond shocking from a legislative POV.

It’s beyond extraordinary compared to most jurisdictions across the world where it would have hovered between 10-15 years for the sentence itself in identical circumstances.

The legislation which allows this is punitive to a far greater extent than what is usual.

In most European jurisdictions, a 17 year old who killed his ex-girlfriend in a crime of passion and has shown good behaviour in jail would be out in 10-15 years and that is if there is not a exception carved out already to cap the sentence at that.

As per Council on Criminal Justice, Long sentences are imposed more frequently and are longer on average in the U.S. compared with most other countries, according to the analysis produced for CCJ’s Task Force on Long Sentences by Prof. Lila Kazemian of the John Jay College of Criminal Justice. The average long sentence in the U.S. is more closely aligned with criminal justice practices in Mexico, El Salvador, and other Latin American countries than with those of peer nations in Europe.

Why are US sentences so extraordinarily long and punitive?

Did Don Clinedinst kill her if so what evidence would we have? I’m a senior and I have to do a project on this case in school. I read on multiple sites about a coworker seeing scratch marks on his hands and wrists: photo evidence wasn’t shown. Hae had DNA under her fingernails which wasn’t tested. He and Debbie a friend of haes stayed on the phone for 7 hours shortly after haes disappearance. Which is odd considering they were supposed to hangout the day she was murdered. Why wasn’t he concerned? But it gets worse during this phone call Don expressed interest in Debbie. Debbie says that the reason she called was because she suspected Don after the phone call she didn’t anymore. Don also stated in this call that he suspected Adnan. I can’t find a motive for why he would do it but he wasn’t ever actually taken to trial. Or seen as a suspect. Don also didn’t have a solid Alibi. As we found out it was forged by his mother who was a manager at LensCrafters at the time. My question is: is Don a plausible suspect? Or just a shady boyfriend? What more evidence would we have to think he is a reliable suspect in this murder

EDIT: The surplus amount of rudeness I’ve received from simply asking a question and wanting to know how others felt about how I viewed this case is insane. I’m no detective but neither are you. I’m a senior turning to Reddit. Which some people feel is a “stupid” idea. I’d like to reiterate that my original question was “is Don a plausible suspect” if you feel he is not just say that and give the evidence you’ve found to show he isn’t I’m just trying to understand this case not make a fight.

The serial podcast has become one of the interesting things i've began to learn about and has developed theories like is adnan really innocent and if so how what evidence do we have to prove that?

I am a senior and we have recently been studying the serial podcast and trying to come up with who we believe did it. I believe Jay did. In my english class we have a project and we have to prove who believe did it and as much as i've listened to that podcast and developed all these reasons on why it's hard to find evidence supporting my reasonings so i have made a account on here to ask my question is Jay wilds guilty and if he is what evidence do we have?. I am also doing a project on how cristina guteriez is corrupt and i've found some evidence but i beginning to wonder is there things i've missed and if so what is there evidence and things i don't have is jay even really guilty what do you think?.

is it just me or are the LOADS of episodes missing from the pocket cast feed suddenly, but available else wear.
?I've found this RSS (https://feeds.simplecast.com/xl36XBC2) but it still misses episode which are shown on fmplayer..? https://player.fm/series/serial

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Got to episode 5 of The Good Whale.

Suddenly the podcast broke into a goddamn Disney musical number from the point of view of the orca.

That was certainly something.

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I’m listening to Bob Ruff’s response to The Prosecutors podcast, and I’m impressed by how much research he’s put into the case. Personally, I think Adnan is guilty, but Ruff comes across as genuine and really seems to want to believe in Adnan’s innocence. I’m just curious why Ruff keeps accusing Brett and Alice of lying, especially when they reference their sources. What does he think their agenda is in making Adnan appear guilty?

Trailer is available now. Series launches Nov 14th.

also just wondering if there is any opinions on the judicial system on how they didn’t provide enough evidence for the trial and how they didn’t test the prints.

I finished every episode of Serial and finished every spin-off show like S-Town and Nice White Parents. I absolutely loved all of it and even though I finished everything a month ago, I still feel dissappointed that it's over.

Does anyone have recommendations for what to listen to next?

I loved the storytelling of these series, the interesting topics, and the way they sort of expanded my worldview. It's hard to point to any particular seasons or series as my favorites because I loved them all, but I would say S-Town, Season 2, and Nice White Parents are in my top 3.

Any recommendations at all would be greatly appreciated!

An alternative suspect sometimes pointed to in the case of Hae Min Lee is Jay Wilds, who claims to have helped Adnan bury Hae’s body on January 13th. I think his admission that he was involved and his subsequent changing stories/lies make him a reasonable enough alternative suspect - but here is why he ultimately isn’t a viable one. At least not if you believe he did it without Adnan’s knowledge.

Not looking for a fight today so let’s be nice please - this is in response to a recent (low effort imo) post about Jay probably being guilty, just looking to have a real conversation about it. With that caveat, let’s get into it.

My claim/argument in this post is that If Jay had something to do with this crime, then Adnan also did. This is because:

1. Adnan and Jay are together for a good part of the morning/early afternoon of January 13, 1999. They are together by 10:45am - when Adnan gives Jay his car and cell phone to go get a gift for his girlfriend leaving him reliant on Jay to pick him up and drop him off, unless he gets a ride from someone else. There is no dispute that adnan did not have his car with him after Jay dropped him off at school at ~11:30 am - 1:10 PM (depending on whose timeline you believe).

Note that Adnan got the cell phone on Jan 12, 1999 from Bilaal, a mentor of Adnan’s and person named in the Brady documents as a potential alternative suspect in this case.

2. If Nisha, Jay and the actual cell records themselves are correct, Adnan and Jay called Nisha together shortly after Hae would have gone missing and/or been killed (3:32 pm for 2m22 seconds)- Both Nisha and Jay recall the same conversation having taken place where the phone was passed between Jay and Adnan who both spoke to her. Jay recalls it happening after the murder on Jan 13, whereas Nisha is less certain of the exact date and time the call was made other than to state that it was a day or two after Adnan got his phone (Jan 12th) - but remembers the same conversation. The Nisha call would put the two together at a crucial time, and this call did happen, per the cell records. Jay does not know Nisha, this is Adnan’s contact - why would he call her on his own?

There are minor discrepancies in Nisha’s recollection, for instance she says they stated they were going to “Jay’s video store” but Jay did not yet work at said store.

However, a separate witness - Cathy- testified that Jay and Adnan mentioned going to a video store before arriving at her place on Jan 13,1999. You can read the testimony here: https://imgur.com/XmTTLvG

This would suggest that Adnan and Jay potentially told both Nisha and Cathy they were at a video store, which helps explain why Nisha would say “Jay’s video store”. She may have connected the two in her mind, since Jay later did work at a pornographic video store.

Keep in mind that Adnan’s only defence to this call is that it was probably a butt dial - a 2 min 22 second long unanswered call, made by Jay accidentally while Adnan claims to be at school and away from his phone (without an alibi to confirm as much). While technically plausible, it would be abnormal for a call to ring unanswered without disconnecting for 2 min and 22 seconds, and doesn’t seem to happen with other unanswered outgoing calls in Adnan’s cell record. AT&T limited call rings in 1999 just as they do now, to 25-45 seconds (4-6 rings) before disconnecting the call. There was no voicemail. This incidence would be extremely anomalous no matter how you cut it.

Someone provided a better overview than I can of this call and why it likely did happen as Jay and Nisha remember it here: https://www.reddit.com/r/serialpodcast/s/SiVMyiBFZE

3. Adnan claims to have been with Jay after school when Jay would have come to pick him up after track practice (begins at 4 ish as per trial testimony, not sure when it would end) and they are together as well at around 6 pm smoking weed for a period of time before he goes to Mosque. This is Adnan’s own claim, not mine or Jay’s or anyone else’s. If you believe Jen and Jay’s testimony, Adnan and Jay would also be together later that evening, corroborated by cell phone records and pings putting Adnan’s phone at the site of Hae’s burial - but we can assume Jay has the cell phone and may or may not be alone for the purpose of this exercise.

Given this information, how and when did Jay do this, and how did he pull it off without Adnan’s knowledge?

Some will argue that the Nisha call didn’t happen. I think it’s unlikely, but anything’s possible! So let’s say it didn’t - There are still more hurdles Jay has to get past to commit this crime:

• we know that Hae went missing in a very tight window of time immediately after school on January 13th.

• if Jay was not at Woodland and able to get into Hae’s car with her when she left the school that day he would have to stop her somewhere in order to gain entry into her car. That or she’d have to be knowingly going to meet him. This is true regardless of who did it.

So the questions that remain to be answered (even if the Nisha call is nil) for this theory to make sense are as follows:

1. How did he intercept Hae while driving Adnan’s car?

2. How did he commit the murders without the help of someone else when he is in possession of Adnan’s car and now has a second car (Hae’s car) he has to deal with.

In this scenario, no matter what, Jay would need someone’s help moving Hae’s car to the location it was ultimately found in, and also driving Adnan’s car away from the scene - which begs the question: Who would have the motive to assist Jay in the murder of his “friends” ex gf? What did they gain from it? I know there is this general sentiment here that motive is insignificant to this case in particular because it’s speculative, but I think it’s fair to say that in all murder cases understanding the motive of the killer helps narrow down the list of suspects. The manner of death is relevant as well, but I digress.

Let’s say that even with all of this info we want to argue that it’s still possible that Jay did this without Adnan’s knowledge, how can we reconcile that with the fact that Adnan seems to have spontaneously I.e. it wasn’t planned beforehand according to him - lent his car and phone to his ex gfs killer ON the day he committed the crime? Jay could not have known Adnan would be giving him his car and phone ahead of time if Adnan wasn’t involved, and could not have predicted that he’d have the cell tower data to back up his story - so what are the chances that Adnan got this unlucky.

Even more unlucky that Jay would have committed the crime at the time Adnan had so happened to ask Hae for a ride under the false pretence that his car was in the shop. When he asked for this ride, the car was sitting in the parking lot, and he apparently had not yet decided to lend it to Jay. Why ask Hae for a ride when your car is sitting outside? Adnan then told the same story to a police officer that same day, with the addition that Hae had ended up leaving without him. Adnan then subsequently and for the rest of time changes his story and says he did not ask her for a ride, and would never ask her for a ride. This is very lucky for Jay and very unlucky for Adnan.

Other things to consider:

• Adnan says he and Jay are not even really friends, why on this day in particular would they spend this much time together? Why would he lend out not just his car but his phone as well, to a criminal acquaintance? It’s another unfortunate coincidence for Adnan if he is innocent.

• Why would Jay expect the police to believe him over Adnan? Jay was a young black weed dealer - not exactly the police’s most trusted source of accurate information at the time. Couldn’t they simply charge him for the crime with Jen as an accessory? How would Jay know that they wouldn’t do exactly that?

• Both Adnan and Don are more statistically likely suspects in the murder of Hae due to the intimate nature of their relationship with her. Second to that would be a family member. This is proof of nothing, merely something to consider.

In conclusion: Jay had no motive, and it would have been exceptionally difficult to carry out the crime and frame someone else for it even if he did. If someone other than adnan killed Hae, it most certainly wasn’t Jay.

I would welcome anyone reading this to do the same exercise for Don and really any other alternative suspect. Could they have done it? What are the logistical hurdles that need to be jumped through for that to be the case? Given all the information we have - is it plausible/likely? Is there an alternative theory that would be more easily explained? Etc.

If you believe I got anything wrong in this post - please correct me! Thanks for reading.

Edit to point 1: changed it to say that Adnan was back at school between 11:30 and 1:10.

Edit to point 2: added a note that there are discrepancies in Nisha’s testimony

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Hi all, I teach high school law and love talking about Adnan's case. Is there an edited/highlights version out there i could use in my classroom? 10 hours is too much class time if I do the entire first season.

I love the theme song for this podcast, does anyone else feel the same way?

Listened to the podcast recently and felt pretty sure Adnan was innocent but I’m now second guessing.

I am wondering if anyone had broken down the list of suspects and evidence against them to compare? Like from my perspective these are the possible suspects:

• Adnan with Jay’s help
• Jay alone
• Don because he’s the boyfriend
• The guy who found the body because he found the body
• A stranger or serial killer

We know Hae was definitely killed and at the approx time, and we know it was probably by one of the above people. So what is the evidence for each potential suspect and I guess what’s the motive also?

If anyone has already made a post like this I’m sorry, I can delete it if the mods ask. I’m just starting to feel like it couldn’t really have been anybody else but Adnan so I feel like I want to understand the alternate suspects better.