Hae Min Lee /// Part 1 /// 696 | Forensic Files

in 1970 two University students who had recently fallen in love were murdered in
an apartment in Columbus Ohio their names were Mary Petry and Bill sprock the crime was so brutal it drew
comparisons to the Manson family murders That Shook the country less than one year earlier police received hundreds of
tips but within a few months the case went cold now a reporter and the sisters of the two victims worked together
piecing together new forensic evidence and they are told by Columbus Police this case can still be solved 50 years
later listen to Mary and Bill an Ohio Cold Case wherever you get your podcast [Music]
thank you [Music] foreign [Music] garage wherever you are whatever you're doing thanks for listening I'm your host
Nick and with me as always is a man who has the power to help you believe again here is the captain it's good to see you
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Heyman Lee was born in 1980 and after immigrating to the United States with her mother and brother in 1992. she
spent most of her teen years growing up in Baltimore County Maryland hay was a great student she was
incredibly smart with many friends and played lacrosse and field hockey hey attended the magnet program at her
school Woodlawn High School this is where and when she and fellow classmate Adnan Syed really became
acquainted Adnan is a popular student athlete as well and the two hit it off and started
dating sometime in early 1998. the relationship becomes pretty serious as far as high school relationship
standards go the two go to prom together November 1st 1998 pay breaks off the relationship
according to Hayes diary Adnan does not take this well the relationship then becomes something
of an on-again and off-again relationship and it appears the two officially and finally break up just
before Christmas 1998. January 1st 1999 hay is interested in a new boy and it's an older boy from her
work his name is Dawn and the two go on their first date together on January 13 1999 Heyman Lee is last
seen at school then at about 3 30 PM that day Hayes family becomes concerned when she fails
to pick up her little cousin later she is reported missing less than a month later Hayes body is
discovered partially buried in Lincoln Park in late February police subpoena adnan's
cell phone records and begin questioning the persons listed on adnan's call list
on February 28th 1999 Baltimore Police interview Jay Wilds a guy who says that he is very good
friends with Adnan Jay tells police that Adnan showed him Hayes lifeless body in
the trunk of her car after Adnan asked Jay he helps Adnan bury the body in Lincoln Park
in September of 1999 Jay Wilds signs a plea deal agreeing to testify that he helped Adnan dispose of the body
in February of 2000 Adnan Syed is convicted of first-degree murder then in 2014 this closed case would change
dramatically with the launch of a podcast called Syria the serial podcast featured the Heyman
Lee murder case and took a closer look at the case four and against Adnan Syed new interest in the case led to special
appeals in the Maryland courts since then the murder conviction has been vacated charges dropped conviction
reinstated and appealed again this week we check in with our friends Brett and Alice from the prosecutors
podcast for a discussion about the Heyman Lee murder investigation the case for and against Adnan Syed and where
this very complicated case sits today this is true crime garage [Music] [Applause]
[Music] foreign two of the things that that I thought you did incredibly well with your coverage of this very
complicated case was to be one to be very expansive on on every different aspect of this case though the one
aspect that I thought was so necessary with your expansiveness and how much you go into great detail was the timeline
because on serial it's a whole different package presentation than what you get when I tuned into the prosecutors for
your coverage of this complicated case where they're being a little more theatrical they're kind of bouncing
around a little bit and the timeline's Not So Clear in fact the timeline they give is a very short very brief almost a
glimpse of the true timeline and you guys gave a very detailed and expansive timeline
obviously we don't have time to go through that here today because I think to get through that timeline it took
what two three full-length episodes that you guys did and what I want to hone in
on for we we got a bit of a uh a complicated situation here ourselves because we're going to have a lot of people that
will listen to these episodes and there's going to be a small portion of that audience that has no clue of the
case that we're talking about so they're hearing about this case for the first time and then we'll have the large
majority that are well aware and have listened to cereal maybe even had gone back and listened to it a second or
third time because it was so good but for you and we'll start with uh Alice because she's the the only lady in the
room sorry Captain what were some of the key Parts in the timeline for you yeah thank you guys for uh you
know having us on and talking about this I think it's really important to talk about the timeline and here's the thing
about the way we structure all our episodes we always have a timeline and this case was no exception and the
reason it's no exception is that when you lay out the facts and you lay them out in context and in relativity to each
other a lot of the story comes through whether you are leaning one way or the other the timeline is an incredibly
important part of any type of case and we always tell our listeners we want you to think for yourselves we want you to
go to the primary sources and to engage with the evidence and don't have someone
just tell you what it is and part of that is knowing where each of the pieces of the timeline each piece of the case
fits together in relation to another thing especially I know that cell phone calls are a huge huge deal in this case
and once you put all of these cell phone own pings within the timeline and see where it fits within the story it tells
a much different story than cherry picking pieces and bits of the timeline or pieces and bits of these cell phone
pings so I think one very important thing that we do in the timeline as we do in all our cases is to put kind of
those cell phone pings which have drawn a lot of controversy from all sides of you know the this this entire kind of
story but puts them into context of where they fall and how certain stories fall apart when you look at the Timeline
based on these cell phone pings yeah and I'll just add to that I mean I've been listening to y'all show for a long time
and you guys often do a timeline as well and I think you probably see the same thing we do when you actually lay out
when events occur and you lay out what's happening in relation to other things a
lot of times by by the time you finish the timeline you actually have a pretty good idea of the story even if you
haven't gone that deep into the evidence and I think you talk about cereal cereal
is an amazing piece of entertainment and one of the reasons is because it kind of
keeps you guessing the whole time and we always find that we're we want to be entertaining but we also want to be
enlightening and the way to do that is not to hide the ball for people so we always want to lay out a timeline and
obviously the events of that day are important but so are the events that surround it when you look at their
relationship they data for a long time they broke up a couple of times they got back together
they had broken up in early December but then at Christmas they're giving each other gifts and you have to wonder if it
wasn't in maybe even both of their minds that this is going to be a breakup like
the last two this is going to be one way to get back together but then hey Falls kind of head over
heels for Dawn and a week before this all happens she's changing her instant messenger profile
to talk about how much she loves Dawn and how her job is to stare into his baby blues and her number one thing is
being his girlfriend very public thing particularly at that time in 1999 and the kind of thing that you could imagine
might have came as is a surprise to Adnan even if he knew that she was dating so the guy she's been dating for
a week and all of a sudden she's completely replaced him with this guy and I think when you look
at that timeline you realize that the events of January 13th sometimes you think oh that was a month after they
broke up but not really not really not if you compare it to other sort of emotionally charged events that are
occurring with this case being so polarizing especially on social media did you guys have any hesitation to
cover it that's a great question it is a polarized case I think um the reason it took us you know uh
several years to to cover it was not so much because we were afraid of blowback or anyone
um being angry with us because people will be angry at you no matter what you do more so it's because we didn't want
to just um pile on this case has obviously been covered by a lot of different content
creators and we've always said we don't want to just be another voice in the wind for any case there are a lot of
very very worthy cases to cover and we like to do you know as thorough research as possible and that takes time as well
and this no doubt because of the trials that have occurred because of a lot of trial transcripts and you know content
that's out there there's a lot of things that you have to digest in order to do the case justice so part of the reason
it took us a while to cover it was the amount of research it required but also wanting to make sure that when we did
cover it it was to add value in the case and not just repeat what's already been
said before and we knew how everyone came out there'd be people who were upset about it I mean that's just the
way it is and that's fine and you know we've never shot away from controversy and we've certainly never changed our
position based on what's going to be the more popular View and I will say this the thing that when we when we started
to record this and and first episode and we're getting ready I was really nervous
about it but I was nervous because I felt like we owed it to we owed it to hay and we owed it to Adnan to get it
right and to be as straightforward as we could be with it we're prosecutors we look at this from a different
perspective but we did not come into this thinking we want to make we want to make sure
that it looks like Adnan side is guilty we want to support our our friends in the prosecution team in in Baltimore
whatever we didn't do that we were always going to go through the file and it's lengthy it takes a lot of time to
go through the entire case File to read the defense file to read the appeals in this case and there's a lot of
information out there beyond what you hear in in podcast that took a lot of time but once once we
got through that a story emerged from for us that we were going to share with our audience and we
were going to do that whether people were happy about the outcome or not that's one thing that I was very curious
about as prosecutors let's step aside from the podcast world for a moment just go into prosecutor world but you know on
True Crime garage we we are so invested in the investigation or The Manhunt finding out who did it and then and then
apprehending them that's the the parts that we really dive into and we really want to cover and go through that that's
where our interests lie but as a prosecutor by the time you guys catch your case
they've already told you this is who we think did it and here's a whole bunch of
reasons why so where an investigator when they catch a case they are often trying to sort out exactly what happened
and then even in some jurisdictions and a lot of a lot of jurisdictions uh hopefully one day maybe all of them
that police protocol becomes okay this is this is a homicide and we we will investigate it as such until the
evidence proves otherwise but when a prosecutor catches their case as said they they already have either a
grand jury or police telling you this is who we think did it and here's the the evidence to why so how do how do you
guys look at a case when you first pick it up and and what do do you reinvestigate everything that was done
do you do you tear through everything that's done and and let the evidence lead you to what you believe the outcome
to be or do you immediately start building your case against the person that they've told you I think this is
actually a place where we have a we have an advantage because you're right I mean
there are some cases and Alice and I've been involved in them where you're with your investigators pretty early on and
you really are sort of directing the investigation those are a lot of fun but a lot of times you're 100 right one day
somebody walks into your office they have a file they plop it on your desk and they say hey we think this guy did X
Y and Z let me know if there's enough you know we're ready to we're ready to charge this guy and our job when you're
a prosecutor is not unlike what you're doing when you're a podcaster you take that file
and you're looking through it and you're as we often say your ethical obligation
is not just to prosecute and it's not just to win it is to ensure that Justice is being done and that the person who
you are Prosecuting is guilty and that there is the evidence to convict them so when you look through that file you're
looking for what are the elements of this offense do we actually prove that how do we know this happened what are we
relying on what is our evidence can you trust this eyewitness why didn't they test for fingerprints is there any
DNA like you're going through you're thinking through all the holes in your case for several reasons number one
because you want to get it right number two because you know one day a defense attorney is going to look at that same
file and they're going to be looking for those holes so that's what we do in our
job and when in in the podcasting world it's the same thing you get this file and you read through it and you're
looking for holes and you're looking for what did the police miss or what are other people missing who are criticizing
what is the defense making too much of what are they getting wrong what are they getting right where are the
weaknesses and where the where are those strengths and I think that is an advantage because we do it every day in
our jobs it helps us actually when we look at these cases to really break them down and figure out whether or not they
hold up and for those who are not familiar with this case I'm going to give a little bit of a spoiler alert
here but if you were to go back and listen to serial you learn very quickly into the very first episode that this
story is going to be about the murder of a a young woman Heyman Lee who had her whole life ahead of her she was very
bright young woman making moves to to further her experience and go off to college and she probably would have went
on to do great things however she is killed and her ex-boy boyfriend Adnan Syed is convicted originally you know
he's he's charged and they build a case against him and then he's later convicted so much of his the case
against Adnan as as it were presented by the podcast serial was that they were able to convict him heavily in part due
to Jay Wilde's testimony against him now how would you guys you two as prosecutors handle a situation like this
because your your main witness in this case is a not credible and B not even likable like what what is the strategy
when you are dealt this card in your attempt to convict the accused so that's a really good question and of
course Jay wilds and his changing story are uh you know endless endless fodder for conversation about this case and one
thing that we emphasize in all of our episodes is that you are given your witnesses as you are we don't coach our
Witnesses we prep them and know what they're doing but know what they uh want to say and if their inconsistencies we
pick those apart and the reality is that you will always have witnesses who have
differing stories because memories fade people get nervous on the stand they may
be trying to minimize their part in whatever uh whatever story they're trying to tell because we all put
ourselves number one and honestly the type of witness that Jay Wilds is on the stand for Adnan syed's trial is not
unlike most Witnesses in General whether they are lying or not and so this case is not out of the ordinary with respect
to a major witness having changing stories it's something you have to deal with it is something that you certainly
turn over to the other side so that it is all completely fair game and fodder for cross-examination and the reason you
have it all out for the jury to hear is they hear all of the Father for cross-examination they are
cross-examined and you compare against all the other facts in this case now Adnan Syed was not convicted based on
just one person's testimony it was a long trial there was a lot of evidence that came in that had nothing to do with
Jay Wilds but the jury gets to listen to All of the versions of Jay's story hear
him cross-examined hear him taken apart and also hear all of the other Witnesses
who are called to trial as well as the experts and the evidence put against it and the jury is charged with weighing
whether they believe Jay or any of the witnesses for that matter and way whether this man should be convicted
this is is all incredibly important and why we say it's important for you to read everyone who's interested in this
case to read the trial transcript because you begin to see that there is no hiding the ball there can't
be any hiding of the ball it is all out for the jury to consider it which was done in this case and one of the things
that you do when you have witnesses like that and you really do often have them because as we always say it'd be great
if your best witness in a drug conspiracy was the little old lady in the choir from the church but usually
it's not going to be a lot of times your Witnesses initially when they interact with the police will lie to them
sometimes they lie to us I mean we've been in the room when a witness broke and admitted what we knew to be true
because we had independent evidence and from that point before they were they were honest but they certainly got
cross-examined about that at trial and what you have to do is you have to take the other evidence and look at it and
with Jay Wilds he has a story that is inconsistent in many places but is consistent in a lot of places and we lay
out those consistencies essentially Jay's story is that Adnan the day of the murder told him to take his self on his
car to pick him up later that he was going to to kill hay and there are cell phone number one he absolutely did that
there's no question there's no just there's no dispute that he gave Jay his cell phone his car there's also
Witnesses who heard overheard Adnan Syed that morning tell hay that he would need
a ride because he didn't have his car because it was in the shop which isn't true and Adnan actually would tell a
police officer that very same day that he was supposed to get a ride with hay but by the time he showed up she had
already left so he missed it so things like that are backing up this story that Jay tells Jay knew the location of Hay's
car which up to that point had not been found and when you look at the location of the car and you look at those cell
phone pings that night there's an outgoing call to Jen pusateri that pings over where the car was found the college
in pusateria was to meet them so that she could pick up Jay and take him home things like that are backing up his
story they're supporting his story Adnan even says he was with Jay when he got the call from the police
their hay was missing so there's just there's so many things about Jay's story that aren't in dispute facts that you
just can't deny and so even if they're inconsistencies and there always will be the overarching story one that by the
way he told to Jen fusateri that night and that she actually told to the police first she's the first person to tell the
story of the police not Jay so you know if you think Jay is somehow being Guided
by the police to to frame Adnan well that doesn't make any sense because they would have had to have done that with
with Jen first and when Jen tells that story her lawyer is sitting with her and her mom's sitting with her which is a
much better situation than Jay who did not have an attorney when you combine all those things together you start to
think yeah there's some inconsistencies there are some problems but we can bolster the things that matter and we
can surround it with all these other facts and at the end of the day the jury is going to believe look I don't know
that everything he said was true but what I do know is true is that Adnan did it
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thank you so let's stay on Jay Wilds for a little bit a lot of people believe Jay Wilds
lies about everything that he had ulterior motive for placing the blame on Adnan a lot of people also believe that
he made a plea deal with law enforcement before giving them any information well
I mean I think people have speculated several things about why Jay may have made up quote unquote made up the story
Jay was someone with a criminal record he was someone who sold drugs he had been involved in altercations with the
police before his lawyer which he did not get until much later than he should have had one
and this is something we point out when we talk about our in our episodes you want to point to some police misconduct
some real policeman misconduct Jay's second interview he should have had an attorney he asked for an attorney by
that point he'd incriminated himself in this murder as an accomplice and they didn't give him one and when he did get
an attorney it was someone who had been a public defender who'd actually been a prosecutor and a public defender and had
gone in private practice who I think was the best thing that ever happened to Jay
because she was a really good lawyer and I think she recognized some of those issues and was able to get him a pretty
good deal now one thing I'll say about that the deal he made was he would plead guilty to
accessory after the fact which is a very serious felony and you know he was looking it up to five years I think
everybody thought he would get time but I think if you read between the lines what actually happened there was some of
the things that had happened when the police were talking to him led the judge to go ahead and give him probation
instead it's a good deal but I think it also helps Jay that at least according to the story he tells
his involvement in the crime is all after hey is is deceased I think this is very important because for so long when
I looked into this case I thought well of course Jay is lying and he has reason to lie and he's not going to face any
consequence but that's not true he was going to face consequences for his actions and for his
involvement and this murder case now that's 100 right I mean the first time they bring him in it's not like he's
sitting there with his lawyer and has uh you know an immunity agreement on the table he he walks right into and this is
not unusual either I mean we see this all the time and I'm always surprised by the number of people who in their first
conversation with the police will admit to everything and then they get a lawyer
involved in the lawyers like man I wish you just answered me earlier right and Jay
that first interview he walks right into this accessory charge and he was looking
at a at a good amount of time the first time he's told this story so yeah you're
you're absolutely right that deal that he ended up making wasn't made until much later when he finally did get a
lawyer frankly much later than he should have and I think if anybody would have had a complaint had let's say he had
been he had gone to trial and been convicted I think he actually would have had a pretty good argument on appeal
that a lot of his statements were taken in violation of his constitutional rights and that doesn't help add
non-side at all because Adnan can't defend his constitutional rights but they're you know do not do not do not
mistake our sort of General defense for the prosecution in this case to mean that there weren't some some real
misconduct going on there absolutely was which is probably not surprising to most
people who are familiar with Baltimore and she just it didn't really involve add-ons ad so much as some of the things
the police did when getting Jay's story were were in violation of his rights well and let's stay on that a little bit
there for a second with the with the conspiracy theory that the Baltimore Police wanted to do a frame job on Aden
on Syed and that they actually knew the location of the vehicle the missing yeah
Heyman Lee's missing vehicle and that they they kept that purposely had Jay lead them to the vehicle even
though they again according to the conspiracy theory already knew of its location or may have placed it there
through and through Blue Blood right here and that's not going to change however we've covered enough cases in
the Baltimore area to see obvious clear signs of corruption with certain pockets
of that Police Department um and other politicians in in that that city as well so if if it were to be the strangest of
conspiracies that would were to be true Baltimore's a likely venue for that but what would be
the motive I don't understand what the motivation would be or where that that conspiracy the seed of that conspiracy
theory even comes from it's a really good question and there is a lot to unpack there and look we we are the
first ones we we'd like to think that we are the first ones to call out police misconduct when we see it it absolutely
does exist and we'd like to think and we do think in our experience that it is a
small percentage of what there is but let's talk about this particular case in the Baltimore Police here
in order for this to have been a massive frame job conspiracy there are so many things you'd have to believe that don't
make any sense in this case so let's just take the two people that you have at the story when the police are trying
to decide who to frame you have Jay Wilds who has a criminal record he's a black man living in Baltimore who's
already had scuffles with the police he's known to be a drug dealer he is often around people who
um are in trouble with the law he himself has described himself at this time as a criminal element of Baltimore
so he views himself as a criminal and then you have on the other hand Adnan Syed an honors student who regularly
attends mosque with his family is involved in his mosque um and he is in the honor classes with
the rest of the honors students applying for colleges likely going to get into college a smart boy a very
popular uh student at Woodlawn High School he is the prom Prince you know he's not only liked by students uh he's
liked by teachers he is really kind of the shining example of what a what you'd want in a student so between these two
people it really boggles my mind why the police would choose to frame the honor student who has absolutely no criminal
record over the the person who's known to have a criminal record who it you know continues to to be involved in the
selling of drugs that they would choose Adnan to be the one to frame and then on
top of all that why would they have the person that this entire frame job relies
on would be the person who is least credible someone who does have a criminal record and if in fact they
wanted their entire frame job to rely on Jay Wilds someone who in the court of law as we've already seen is going to
have a lot of credibility issues why would it be that the main point of their frame job would be to have him lead them
to the car when they've already put out a bolo be on the lookout for every police officer to be on the lookout for
Hayes car for weeks and they're not able to find it I mean those of us who work in law enforcement or law enforcement
adjacent recognize that even if you're alleging cons even if you're alleging you know corruptness within a department
there are many individual actors within a department usually a a bad actor is not going to be an entire department
think about all the people you can barely get people to you know turn in their time sheets on time much less all
be part of this big conspiracy where there's a be on the lookout for Hayes car and no one happened to accidentally
slip up and actually find the car if you're the police and say you know be on the lookout but don't actually be on the
lookout because we're going to have our criminal element of Baltimore find the car for us so that he can be our main
witness against this honor student I mean I mean that is that is such a difficult and also frankly stupid frame
job don't put out the bolo pretend to put out a bolo but don't actually put out a bolo it wasn't a pretend bolo they
they really did have these announcements out to all law enforcement and not just
their own Department across jurisdictions to be on the lookout for this car you'd have to be coordinating
this Frame job across multiple jurisdictions when we know that it's really difficult to have all of your
jurisdictions row in a line we talk about this uh a lot of times when there are jurisdictional fights between the
state and the local and the federal law enforcement agencies you're looking at this times 10 across basically the
Eastern seaboard I'm not saying that police corruption doesn't exist but this police corruption would be one
beyond the imagination of any Hollywood writer and when you look at the facts of
what is happening in this case it is so incredibly unlikely and also kind of the
worst way to go about a frame job because if they knew where Hayes car was they took they you would have to believe
that they took this incredibly risky risky step of leaving it there for weeks unprocessed not looking for evidence
or by the way if you know where where her car is why not just plant something of adnan's in there that is a great way
to frame someone to put their DNA in there or to put you know a report card or whatever in her car instead you're
gonna have to go through this you know hoop jumping exercise of having your witness Jay Wiles lead you to a car
where you knew it was and you could have actually planted much better evidence to
frame him frame Adnan if that's what you wanted to do I like what you said there
Alice about risking leaving the vehicle there okay look God bless Baltimore and the good people of Baltimore but it is
not the safest the city in in America and it is certainly a city that has higher rates of crime and to where do
they when he does when Jay does lead the police to the vehicle what part of Baltimore is that vehicle found
is it just east of uh Lincoln Park it's pretty close to Lincoln Park which as everybody knows in Baltimore and
anybody's seen the wire is where everybody dumps the body so not necessarily the best part of Baltimore
right so to and and they put out the Bolos to be on the Lookouts a couple of times leading up to him
leading them to the vehicle and this is over the course of a couple weeks correct
yes they they were looking for the car since she disappeared but when they found her body they really picked it up
including asking for the entire Eastern Seaboard to look for right and so if you
know that the vehicle is there and you're going to build a lot of your case around that vehicle you in that City
you're running the risk of somebody's jacking that car and stealing your stealing your evidence right like
stealing stealing your your what you're going to one build your case on into give some credibility to your already
questionable witness that you're going to eventually put on the stand and Nick that's a great Point not only are the
police looking for it you know this this case was on the news it was parked you know like in an Alleyway what if so you
let's say you have all of your police law enforcement on board to not call it in even though there's a bolo they know
where the car is but not a single police officer calls it in how do you prevent all of the individual passer buyers who
are not part of law enforcement who may have accidentally seen it and think oh my goodness I just saw that the police
are looking for this car and I this is my daily route to work I'm just a private citizen I'm gonna call it in you
know that that is a huge risk especially if we're talking about weeks of letting
this car sit out in the open it wasn't in a garage it was in an Alleyway you know not a lot of people traveled this
Alleyway but it was still out in the open so you're facing a lot of risk that a you know a good Samaritan who's not
part of law enforcement will accidentally call The Car in and just two other points I want to make we've
been talking about the evidence that would be lost and I think that's a huge point and it makes you wonder if they
wanted to do that all they had to do was process the car not tell anybody they had it and then use it have him lead you
to the lot where it was it's not there but it's because you've already claimed it you could have done that the second
thing is they don't know what they're going to find in it you know what if they do this whole frame job with with
Jay and they go out to the car and they open the front door and there's a Serial
Killer's driver's license sitting in the in the driver's seat he lost it and now
they're like well shoot what do we do now we got into this whole frame job going and here's the evidence of the
person who actually did it and the last thing talk about cell phone pings if you
assume that the police either knew where it was or planted it there so he could go find it it just so happens to be
exactly where the cell phone pinged when Adnan and Jay were together when Jay is
going back to talk to Jen and one thing we know for certain is that at the point
the police talked to Jay for the first time they did not have that information they would not have known that so that
is either an incredible coincidence or or something else is going on with this Frame job I've always struggled with
this case whether or not addon was innocent or guilty it's a red light case for me and I think one of the issues in
this case is because there's a time period where she goes missing in a time period where she's found and the
information we get from the eyewitnesses becomes a little blurry it becomes a little confusing so it's always a
problem everybody talks about this you guys talk about it on your show the more time between when someone goes missing
when the police go into action when the body's found when a suspect is arrested when Witnesses are interviewed the more
time that passes the more you're going to have confusion and you have that in this case and you see it in things like
nobody can really confirm when you know hay was interviewed by the news you would think that would be something
everybody could confirm and for a very long time people thought that happened on the day she disappeared seems like it
actually didn't seems like it happened about a week before that stuff like that eyewitness accounts of seeing hey go get
some french fries or do this or do that or she was supposed to go to the wrestling match there was no wrestling
match that night so though there are little things that you certainly lose which is by the way another reason why
when the police find the body a month after she disappears if they had the car they would have
processed it right then because every second to pass is the seconds that you're going to lose
evidence you know you may have DNA that degrades the car might get stolen as we talked about
you need to talk to people you need to move forward but the thing about it is I think there's been a lot made of sort of
memories changing and people forgetting but and that was a huge focus in cereal the very first episode of cereal she
spends half the first episode saying things like if someone asked you what you were doing six weeks ago would you
be able to tell them and all that stuff but there are some huge pieces of information
that we knew immediately you know there's this eternal debate about whether or not Adnan asked hey for a
ride that day that very day that she went missing he told a police officer he asked her for a ride
so like we can debate that and we can debate how people's memories shift and maybe people forgot certain things but
we have contemporaneous evidence that he did that things like that I think are are much harder to chalk up to to
Memories fading now I will say this a big problem we have is investigations happening 17 18 19 years later
we talk about that some in our case as well where people are asked to explain things that happened 19 years ago 20
years ago and and they don't remember they don't remember what happened at all and that adds another level of confusion
but I think you can get down to some pretty important facts that we know because of documentation in and
around the event there will always be some stuff lost and there's a lot of that in this case but I don't know how
important it really is at the end of the day yeah I think that's incredibly important
to know here because with any case even if there was no lag in the investigation
you're going to have either inconsistent stories or people's memories are just going to not be perfect we've talked
about this a lot that circumstantial evidence is just as weighty as direct evidence but the the reality in the
court of law but the reality is that direct evidence eyewitness testimony is faulty not just because of memory but
because our brains process things differently and we may not always know that what we are witnessing at the time
is going to be of evidentiary value later so we're not taking notes at the time we're not making sure to parse
through every detail for purposes of regurgitating at a later time which is why I witness testimony is not the
golden standard necessarily taken in conjunction with other evidence can be very helpful but in this case I think so
much hay has been made about um parts of people's memories that we can't remember but you have to parse through
what is important for purposes of the elements of the crime that Adnan was charged with or and whether it's just
going to be ancillary to the real story here and when you look at the brass tacks and things that we can confirm a
very a very sturdy story actually begins to emerge and it doesn't really matter the the things that are gray on the
outside because they don't go to the core of what happened that day and whether it's important for purposes of
um the charges that were brought against Adnan and the ultimate conviction Brett what was your and I wanna
focus in on the timeline still here when you're putting together your bullet points for this very expansive timeline
what was the one item on that timeline that you were looking forward to diving deeper in and
figuring out the details of such and it doesn't have to be something that pointed toward
guilt or toward innocence it could be something that that had little to do with the case at all but when you're
putting together this this very big timeline what was the one thing that that jumped off the page to you that you
said that now I want to know more about that and what did you learn so there are
a couple things it's hard it's hard to narrow it down to one you know I'll say one thing that that really jumped out to
me and I think is has jumped out to a lot of people and that's there's always this question
about Lincoln Park and there's questions about cell phone pings and how accurate
they are and sometimes you'll hear people say things like the cell phone data is useless now I
pulled up a Entertainment Weekly article which as we all know is the ultimate source of news and one of the bullet
points about this is the cell phone pings mean nothing which is so absurd on so many levels because number one cell
phone calls tell you who you were calling tell you what time and even to the extent people argue that some of the
cell phone pings are unreliable they're incoming calls and the same data sheet that says incoming calls are not
reliable for location specifically says that outgoing calls are and so a lot of people focus on there are two
incoming calls that ping off the leak in park Tower and some people debate can you trust those or not well one thing
that I thought was interesting is the phone there's only one other time that the phone actually pings in leaking
Park and it's on January 27th and on January 26th sort of late at night J and Jen pusateria are together
she gets pulled over the police get Jay of the car they start to harass him I think is how he put it he starts to kind
of fight back and eventually they arrest him so Jay gets arrested late at night on the 26th the next day
on the 27th is the only other time the cell phone pings in Lincoln Park and it pings from an outgoing call
which means unlike the incoming calls the night of the the murder this is one that everybody agrees is accurate and it
puts that cell phone adding on cell phone in Lincoln Park and it's to someone that Jay knows and I think the
natural sort of question I had was is that Adnan driving into Lincoln Park having heard that Jay has been arrested
seeing whether or not the police are there and driving by the location of the burial seeing that there are no police
there and calling Patrick to try and figure out what exactly happened to Jay why has he been arrested so for me that
was a time that was a time period that really stood out seeing that the body had not been recovered either right
exactly and the the thing is too that is adnan's cell phone in Lincoln Park the very same park that he will later
say that he has no awareness of the of its existence he's not been there he doesn't know the people
put bodies there correct yeah and then that's 100 true and that's one of those things and there's another there's
another point when you you read through various uh parts of the case File where before that call even happens
the the bus I think the track team or one of the teams is actually driving through Lincoln Park and adnan's on the
bus and they're talking about how this is where they bury all the bodies and it's just the notion that this park
where all the bodies end up which is a couple miles away from Woodlawn that everybody in high school wouldn't know
about that I think is pretty silly but when you combine that with the fact that add-on absolutely was in that park with
his cell phone making phone calls I think it really makes you question a lot of of what you've been told about about
this case and about Adnan and we were all in high school once and I've got to tell you
there it's very difficult for me to believe that the teenagers are not talking about the park nearby where the
bodies are found um like I that that has to have been something that comes up uh especially
around Halloween time or just anytime you're joking about somebody being missing it that's
but you know what we can we give him the benefit of the doubt and say you know what maybe he never did hear of any of
those things for many of his his friends or or classmates but what we cannot and what is not in dispute is that his
cell phone is in a park that he will later claim that he has no awareness of that Park the name of it or that uh that
bodies sometimes are recovered from that Park so that I mean that that is a pretty big hurdle for him to to clear
after the fact Alice for you what was what was the the moment on that timeline for you that you
wanted to learn more about again it doesn't have to have anything to do with innocence or guilt but just something
that jumped off the page that caught your attention that you wanted to learn more about and what did you learn yeah I
you know I thought it was really interesting we've heard about Jen pussetary a lot I've seen her
um you know talked about and other podcasts and obviously she's talked about her her role in this a lot so I've
I've not really dived into gen pusateri's um uh interviews with the police before we decided to cover this
case and I thought picking apart what she would have known and when she knew it and the fact that she told really Jay
story to the police before Jay told the police the story was enlightening for me
because she would have only gotten her information from Jay which helps put us kind of the timeline of when these
things would have happened because if their impact was a conspiracy and that Jay was coached by the police to tell a
certain story to to be able to frame Adnan it would have had to come at a time before Jen even went to the police
before Jay ever had contact with the police which was not something that I'd really heard before and so again that
timeline of when stories began to take shape and who they were told by um were were very helpful for me in
understanding okay if there were a frame job if there were coaching by the police
they would have had to start coaching Jay well before he even had contact with the police well how would they have done
that how would they have gotten to Jen pusateri before that and and you know one thing that that I didn't quite grasp
on until we dove into this was the fact that when the first time Jen talks to the police you know she she's she kind
of says I don't know anything which I think we could all completely uh empathize with if she she was not there
for the burial she wasn't there for any part of it she heard about something very disturbing from Jay after the fact
that she's afraid she doesn't know what's going on and if she were to say a that she knew anything she could be
incriminating herself or her friend Jay and so I understand the first time she's
saying I don't know anything but then when she goes back and gives her whole statement to the police and she does it
not alone but with her attorney and her mother sitting there it makes the whole situation of police coaching a lot more
difficult you have not only an adult in the room her mother but you also have a professional an attorney sitting there
that type of coaching is is just it's going to be very very difficult and it makes the whole
police coaching aspect of the conspiracy theory a lot more difficult to overcome
to to prove in this instance when you see Jen's Story how she tells it and how it takes shape
um and again that's something that I think the the timeline really begins to tell the story because of when she
speaks and how she could have known her information which was from Jay and just one other thing on that and something I
think we should all remember and I think people forget Jay and Jen I mean they're both
teenagers Jay's out of high school but I think he's 19 at the time Jen may be 19.
they're both teenagers and you have to believe that the police in concocting this Theory have decided we're going to
hang this whole case on these two teenagers one of whom has a criminal record as a drug dealer we're going to
put all our faith which includes keeping our jobs and you know possibly staying out of prison because usually when you
frame people for Crime that's a crime of itself I'm going to put all our faith on
these teenagers and send them forth into the world and here we sit 20 years later
and to this day neither one of them has said it was all uh the police coaches you know we were we were pressured by
the police neither one of them have done that I think that's significant well one
thing I like that you guys did real well was the presentation of Dawn and clearing up the so don is dating
heymanly at the time of of her death and Adnan Syed is the ex-boyfriend now I I haven't gone back and listened to cereal
and again this is not anything critical of their presentation in fact I enjoyed I enjoyed the podcast very much and
every year around Thanksgiving on that long weekend I usually go back and revisit something uh from yesteryear
maybe an old book or something and read it again or pick something up watch watch an old movie for the second time
this year it might be serial uh listening to your guys's episodes piqued my interest and I might have to go back
and listen to cereal again it was that good but I I feel like there if I remember their presentation correctly
yes you're aware of dawn early in the episodes but it's not until late in that first season that the idea is pushed
forward that whoa he may he may be a suspect here he may be somebody that we should have some consideration of did he
do this and with your guys's timeline you you very clearly stated that the police looked at this guy and when they
start looking at him and they start looking into this case they're very quickly led to
Adnan who they believe is a better suspect and can you kind of just take us a little bit and expand on that a little
bit for those that may not be familiar with that part of that detail of the investigation because a lot of people's
perception is what was delivered to them in cereal that that oh we spent so much
time D going through the details of Adnan and Jay and oh here's this other guy that we should give consideration to
when in fact it was it was very likely the reversal and look there's nothing wrong with taking a look at Don and and
seeing whether or not you know there's any connection there certainly the police would have done that he's the
current boyfriend he's going to be an initial suspect they talk to me multiple times
you know they there are notes if you read the case File you know their notes or they're like hey it didn't seem that
broken up about her her leaving because at the time you know for all they knew and I don't know why they really thought
this but there were a lot of people who thought she went to California I don't really understand that and it's we see
this a lot you guys see this a lot in cases where people disappear and inexplicably the police are like well
maybe they ran away it's like no they didn't but there's nothing wrong with looking
at him eliminating him as a suspect and moving on but the problem you have and why we need to move on from dawn is when
you look at the Timeline hay is supposed to pick up her cousin I believe it's her
cousin some people say it's her niece I'm not 100 sure but she's supposed to pick up her cousin and around 3 30 at
her school she's very conscientious about that she does it every day and she doesn't pick her up and what we all know
for certain knowing hey knowing that fact is that by that point whatever was going to happen her it happened now
maybe it was she'd been kidnapped and she was killed later maybe she was killed but the criminal action had
happened and you have Don who is working Don who has a time card a computerized time card that can't be changed later
without it showing up on the time card who is not he's still at work at that time there
are people who say he's still at work the the opportunity for him to do that in that time period is not there nor is
the motive he'd been dating hay for two weeks by all accounts they're very much in the
honeymoon phase that Hayes last diary entry the night before she died is this lovey-dovey thing about Dawn
somehow you have to believe she went from that to they get into some kind of altercation at a time when he's supposed
to be at work he murders her and then somehow he hides the car buries the body nobody notices he gets back to work
nobody notices and he gets up to his house at about the time you'd expect him to be there
how how you can fit all that into the timeline is kind of Beyond me and honestly the only reason to think Don
did it is because you don't want it to be adenone there's no actual evidence that he did
and I just feel like he is one of those victims of True Crime where there are people out there who get wrapped up in
these cases he'd known hey for a couple months he dated it for a couple weeks for his entire life he has had to deal
with people questioning whether or not he murdered her and that's just another tragedy on top
of a lot of the tragedies in this case yeah that might be a little bit of a misfortune but he was dating a girl that
went missing he was dating a girl that was murdered I believe he had just as much motive as Adon because we don't
know if Heyman Lee told him hey I'm not interested in you I'm going to get back with Adnan we don't know that
I think he could have been looked at Harder question harder I mean he was the current boyfriend she goes missing he
doesn't try to call her cell phone no record of that a lot of people state that she was actually going to meet Dawn
before she actually picked up her cousin so there's some question there and then he is just happens the day she
goes missing to be working at a location that he never worked at before never worked out again and the time card I
believe was handwritten by his mother's girlfriend I mean there's just enough for me that he should have been looked
at harder when I'll just address a couple of those number one that wasn't the day she said she was going to meet
up with him this is one of the things people get wrong the day she said she was going to meet
up with him was the day that they were going to play Randallstown in wrestling and she had written a letter for him
that she was going to leave with him that actually was a week before we know that because the person who said
she was going to meet up with him was the other scorer or the wrestling team and she was very upset when she didn't
show up well that happened the week before so that is an example of sort of memory
getting whatever number two she's not questioning the relationship there's no evidence she is
all the evidence is that she is head over heels in love with him number three I can show you the computerized time
card which you could not enter more than a couple days after this happened so you would have to
believe that whoever's helping him get away with this is doing it knowing that he's killed
someone and and doing it before the body's even found which I also don't find to be very believable as far as the
phone calls two things never called her either but people say he never called her
that's not actually what he said he said he couldn't recall whether he ever called her number two he was over at
their house he was visiting with Hayes family a couple days after this happened so this
notion that he had no concern about her and wasn't worried about her it just isn't true when you're diving into a
case that's so polarizing and the evidence is drawing you to the conclusion that Adon is guilty was there
a piece of evidence that kept steering you to the direction of maybe that he was innocent well the things for me I
mean number one and this goes back to something we talked about earlier listening to serial I found Adnan to be
likable and I know a lot of people didn't I found him to be like well I wanted him to be innocent and if I
hadn't seen it happen so often that very likable people do really terrible things
I think it would be really hard for me to get past that and I think it's it's hard for a lot of people to get past
that I mean he's not somebody who has a history of violence he's somebody who as
far as we know in prison was was a perfect model prisoner you know if if he stays out of prison I I don't doubt that
he will probably never commit a crime again that you know you compare that to the
person who had to strangle this this this young woman to death and it feels incongruous
you know when you think about evidence look Alonso sellers is not a terrible suspect anyone who
finds the body is always going to be a suspect he has sort of some weird proclivities
Alaska streaking we know that he's assaulted somebody in a vehicle before I mean these are things that make you want
to look at him you know if you're the police there's not a lot of evidence that he's
involved Beyond him finding the body but you know he's he's a he's a decent suspect one thing a lot of people point
to is the DNA that was on hey shoes the problem with that is it's touch DNA on her shoes in the back of her car
and as far as we know it's not connected to anyone obviously if one day you could say Hey
you know advances in technology we were able to show that this DNA is Alonso sellers
that would be a pretty powerful piece of evidence and I think at that point you'd
have to start really looking at what in the world is going on because remember in order for anyone else to have done it
there there has to be that massive conspiracy the one we talked about all of a sudden this thing that seems so
incredible it's impossible to believe that anybody would do this all of a sudden it becomes more likely
now the way you get around that we talk about this some and we'll talk about this a lot on the episodes is if somehow
Jay is involved you know if J is your main suspect a lot of the conspiracy stuff Falls away you no longer have to
believe that the police are coaching him or the police took him to the car it could all just be because
Jay was involved problems with Jay Jay has the same problems as a lot of people there's no apparent motive and because
Adnan puts himself with Jay pretty much the entire day it's hard to even imagine
how Jay could have done it and Adnan not been involved so you know there's no huge red flag sticking out to me I think
and Alice and I talk about this sometimes you look at a case based on the evidence you have
if one day there's more evidence that's when you start to reevaluate it but given what we have now I think you have
a really strong case that adnan's involved and very weak cases against most of the other people that you think
of as being possible suspects yeah and you you know I think I think that's what's really hard about this case is
addon to me is a very likable person and I I find no no joy at all that we conclude that the evidence absolutely
points to Adnan being guilty I don't want this honors student who by all accounts is going was going to be a very
productive member of society to be a murderer to be a murderer who you know is shut away and no longer able to
contribute to society I think this is a tragedy a tragedy not only for Heyman Lee but also for Adnan and what he could
have become as well but like Brett said sue too often we see cases where people who seem like they
couldn't do horrendous things are not only capable um but they do do it and it it often
happens to be the person who looks to have um you know their act together to have
no uh no proclivities to do any criminal element but we we see that enough to know that we can't just buy into what a
book looks like on its cover and so as much as I don't want Adnan to be guilty I can't ignore the evidence
that seems so clear here and there wasn't a piece of evidence that that I thought man I don't know that this could
this could be the bit that um makes him Innocent but I'm just going to ignore it
there really was none of that and remember it's a game of not just it's not just making sure the evidence
fits adnan's conviction but rather if not Adnan who else and in this case every single viable suspect truly Falls
away when you take a hard look at the evidence and the only the only one that it really points to
when you look at the evidence is Adnan whether you start there or not that and the evidence absolutely led me
to his guilt I do want to say this it's only a tragedy for what Adnan could have
become if he is innocent um if he did do this and he got caught got convicted what he would have become
is very likely an abuser or he would have impulsively killed somebody else at some point
um so I do want to be clear about that in my feelings anyway but the but you're you're absolutely right Allison the
evidence to me when you review the totality of it it suggests that portions of J story are truthful
and then if you were to take that bit of knowledge then you have to go okay well
if parts of his story are the truth then you're only left with really three conclusions in my opinion when you start
talking about other other parties and if you know if the this unknown person did
it or if uh don did it very quickly they become problems there there's clear problems with those other Suspects
because of the evidence the evidence suggests that some of Jay's story is correct and so that means three
possibilities to me Jay did it Adnan did it or the two of them did it together I think that's right I mean I I don't I
don't know how you get past that and we talk about the cell phone pings and once again what's helpful and what's not
helpful and if you if you believe I mean look there's a tight timeline here and the
fact that there's a tight timeline it helps Adnan on the one hand because he can say and he says it's in serial and
in the prosecution in my view in their opening statement now thinking they're closing as well made a mistake saying
that the 236 call was the she's dead come get me call because that made the timeline even Tighter and there's no
there's no reason to think that's true Jay doesn't say that Jay doesn't testify to that and there are other phone calls
that make more sense but if you put that aside for a second but the 236 phone call aside for a
second you have a situation where we know Jay has the cell phone in the hour around when hay would have had to
have gone missing and he's making calls and he's taking calls and all those calls are pinging away from the high
school so if he's not near the high school where hay is and he's actually south of
the high school and hey eventually is going to make her way north of the high school to pick up her cousin
where is the opportunity assume for a second that you know well it doesn't matter I guess what their
add-ons doing it but where is the opportunity for Jay to have been involved in the actual kidnapping and
murder of hay because his cell phone by his I mean add-ons doesn't start to move towards the Best Buy until more
like 3 15. at which point she's definitely been grabbed and that's when it starts moving towards the best
spot then it's at the Best Buy for a little while then it starts moving towards Woodlawn and we know that Adnan
has or at least Jay says and not only Jay jyn says in her first statement to the police
she says Adnan told Jay he had to go to some practice of some sort she wasn't even sure what kind she just knew that
he was supposed to go to some practice so he could be seen so he'd have an alibi
and what do you see you see the cell phone start moving North towards the high school according to the
track coach who testified at trial he testified at trial the track started around four o'clock Jay's making phone
calls at 3 48 next to Woodlawn High School so exactly where he'd need to be to be dropping off Adnan so he can go to
track practice you're looking at stuff and it's like how is it possible for Jay to have done
this by himself thank you [Music] join us back here in the garage tomorrow for the conclusion of our interview with
Brett and Alice of the prosecutors podcast until then be good be kind and don't litter
[Music] thank you [Music]

Hae Min Lee /// Part 1 /// 696

Part 1 of 2

www.TrueCrimeGarage.com (http://www.truecrimegarage.com/)

In early 1998 Woodlawn High School senior Hae Min Lee started dated fellow classmate Adnan Syed. The two had a pretty serious relationship but by Christmas of that year the relationship was through. Hae broke things off with Adnan and then she started dating another guy. On January 13, 1999 - Hae Min Lee was reported missing by her family. Less than a month later her partially buried body was discovered in Leakin Park. In 2000 Hae’s former boyfriend Adnan Syed was convicted of her murder. Join Nic & The Captain in the garage as they invite their friends Bret & Alice from the Prosecutors podcast in for a discussion about this very complicated case.

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Check out the Prosecutors Podcast and listen to their new and updated coverage of the Hae Min Lee murder case.

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Brief Summary

Brett and Alice discuss the Heyman Lee murder case, focusing on Adnan Syed's conviction and the role of witness Jay Wilds.

Key points

Heyman Lee's Disappearance. Heyman Lee goes missing after a date, leading to a tragic discovery.
The Impact of Serial Podcast. The launch of the Serial podcast reignites interest in the Heyman Lee case.
Prosecutors Discuss the Case. Brett and Alice from the prosecutors podcast share insights on the complex case.
The Inconsistencies in Jay's Testimony. Jay's story has inconsistencies, but certain facts remain undisputed, raising questions about credibility.
Police Misconduct and Jay's Rights. Jay's interviews raised concerns about police misconduct and his constitutional rights being violated.
The Conspiracy Theory. Exploring the conspiracy theory that the police framed Adnan, questioning the motives behind it.

Episode highlights

Episode quotes

This case can still be solved 50 years later.

A police statement about the cold case.

0:33WatchSep 6, 2023

Tension

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