Serial S01 - Ep. 1: The Alibi

The first episode of this series is free, but to hear the whole thing, you'll need to subscribe to the New York Times, where you'll get access to all the serial productions and New York Times shows. And it's super easy. You can sign up through Apple podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. And if you're already a time subscriber, just link your account and you're done. In this American life and WB Easy Chicago, it's serial, one story told week by week, I'm Sarah Canig. For the last year, I've spent every working day trying to figure out where a high school kid was for an hour after school one day in 1999. Or if you want to get technical about it, and apparently I do, where a high school kid was for 21 minutes after school one day in 1999. This search sometimes feels undignified on my part. I've had to ask about teenagers' sex lives, where, how often, with whom, about notes they passed in class, about their drug habits, their relationships with their parents, and I'm not a detective or a private investigator. I'm not even a crime reporter. But yes, every day this year, I've tried to figure out the alibi of a 17-year-old boy. Before I get into why I've been doing this, I just want to point out something I'd never really thought about before I started working on this story. And that is, it's really hard to account for your time in a detailed way, I mean. How'd you get to work last Wednesday, for instance? Drive, walk, bike? Was it raining? Are you sure? Did you go on any stores that day? If so, what did you buy? Who did you talk to? The entire day, name every person you talk to. It's hard. Now imagine you have to account for a day that happened six weeks back, because that's a situation in the story I'm working on, in which a bunch of teenagers had to recall the day six weeks earlier. And it was 1999, so they had to do it without the benefit of texts or Facebook or Instagram. Just for a lot, I asked some teenagers to try it. Do you remember what you did on that Friday? No. Not at all. I can't remember anything. Wait, nothing? No. I can't remember anything that far back. I'm pretty sure I was in school. I think. No? That's Tyler. He's 18. My nephew, Sam. He's 18 too. Not clear. In school, probably. I would be in school. Actually, I think I worked that day. No, yeah. Why worked that day? I went to school. I was about it. Actually, on second thought? I don't think I went to school that day. You don't think you went? No, I didn't. I would definitely didn't. Here's Sam's friend, Elliott. He seemed to have better recall. Actually, I may have gone to the movie that night later. Do you remember what you saw? Yeah, I think I saw 22 jump street. OK. And did you go with friends? Yeah. I went with Sam and kid Sean Carter, a bunch of people. Wait, Sam, my nephew, Sam? Yeah, yeah. Oh, OK. So Sam says he was at work. Oh, then it wasn't that night, Sam. One kid did actually remember pretty well because it was the last day of state testing at his school. And he'd saved up to go to a nightclub. That's the main thing I learned from this exercise, which was no big shocker, I guess, is that if some significant event happened that day, you remember that plus you remember the entire day much better. If nothing significant happened, then the answers get very general. I most likely did this or I most likely did that. These are words I've heard a lot lately. Here's the case I've been working on. Almost 15 years ago, on January 13, 1999, a girl named Hayman Lee disappeared. She was a senior at Woodland High School in Baltimore County in Maryland. She was Korean. She was smart and beautiful and cheerful, and a great athlete. She played field-talking in the cross. And she was responsible. Right after school, she was supposed to pick up her little cousin from kindergarten and drop her home, but she didn't show. That's when Hayley's family knew something was up when the cousin's school called. About a month later, on February 9, Hay's body was found in a big park in Baltimore, really a rambling forest. A maintenance guy who said he'd stop to take a leak on his way to work discovered her there. He'd noticed a bit of her black hair poking out of a shallow grave. The cause of death was manual strangulation, meaning someone did it with their hands. A couple weeks after that, so six weeks after she first went missing, Hay's ex-boyfriend, a guy named Adnan Sayed, was arrested for her murder. She's been in prison ever since. I first heard about this story more than a year ago when I got an email from a woman named Rabia Childry. Rabia knows Adnan pretty well. Her younger brother, Saad, is a non-spec friend. And they believe he's innocent. Rabia was riding to me because way back when I used to be a reporter for the Baltimore Sun, and she'd come across some stories I'd written about a well-known defense attorney in Baltimore who'd been disbarred for a mishandling client money. That attorney was the same person who defended Adnan, her last major trial, in fact. Rabia told me she thought the attorney botched the case. Not just botched it, actually, but through the case on purpose so she could get more money for the appeal. The lawyer died a few years later. She'd been sick. Rabia asked if I would please just take a look at Adnan's case. I don't get emails like this every day, so I thought, sure, why not? I read a few newspaper clips about the case, looked up a few trial records, and on paper, the case was like a Shakespearean mashup. Young lovers from different worlds, thwarting their families, secret assignations, jealousy, suspicion, and honor besmirched. The villain, not a more exactly, but a Muslim all the same. And a final act of murderous revenge. In the main stage, a regular old high school across the street from a 7/11. Hi, are you Rabia? Hi, am I saying your name correctly? Rabia, OK. I went to go see Rabia. She was surrounded by paper. Files, loose stacks, binders, some crappy looking boxes. All court documents and attorneys files from Adnan's case. Some of the papers were warped and discolored. Why do they look wet? They look wet. These have been-- yeah, these have been damaged because these-- She explained that it was because the boxes had been in her car on and off for 15 years. Rabia is a lawyer herself. She mostly does immigration stuff. Her office takes up the corner of a much larger open space that I think is a Pakistani travel agency, though it's hard to tell. It's in this little strip mall. Across the parking lot, there's a new Pakistani restaurant, an African evangelical church, an Indian clothing shop, a convenience store. On the sidewalk outside, I found a teeny-weeney bag of marijuana. Baltimore County is like this, at least on the west side. So we're a lot of middle class and working class people go. Many immigrants included to get their kids out of the badass city, though the badass city is close by. Rabia is 40. She's short, and she's got a beautiful round face. Framed by hijab. She's adorable looking, but you definitely shouldn't mess with her. She's very smart and very tough, and she could crush you. Her brother's side was at Rabia's office, too. The first time I went. He's 33, a mortgage broker, more laid back than Rabia. They told me about Adnan Sayyad, their friend. Not just a good kid, but an especially good kid. Smart, kind, goofy, handsome. So that when he's arrested for murder, so many people who knew him were stunned. He was like the community's golden child. Really talked more about that. He was an honor role student, volunteer EMT. He was on the football team. He was a star runner on the track team. He was the homecoming king. He led prayers at the mosque. So everybody knew Adnan to be somebody who's going to do something really big. I later fact checked all these accolades, of course, and learned that Rabia was mostly right, though she sometimes gets a little loosey goosey with the details. Adnan was an EMT, but he didn't volunteer. He was paid for it. He was on the track team, but he wasn't a star. He did play football, and he did lead prayers on occasion. He wasn't homecoming king, but he was prince of his junior prom. In this at a high school, it was majority black. They picked the Pakistani Muslim kid. So you get the picture. He was an incredibly likeable and well-liked kid. This conversation with Rabia inside, this is what launched me on this year-long obsession is maybe too strong a word. Let's say fascination with this case. By the end of this hour, you're going to hear different people tell different versions of what happened the day Haley was killed. But let's start with the most important version of the story. The one Rabia told me first, and that's the one that was presented at trial. The state's case against Adnan went like this. He and Hay had been going out since junior prom, but Adnan wasn't supposed to be dating at all. Adnan was born in the US, but his parents were from Pakistan, and they're conservative Muslims. No drinking, no smoking, no girls, all that. Sad and Rabia's parents are the same way. Their families were friends. But even though Adnan and Sad and their buddies were Muslims, they were also, shall we say, healthy American teenagers who are going to do what teenagers do so long as they didn't get caught. So Adnan had to keep his relationship with Hay's secret. The state used this against him in two ways. First, they argued he'd put everything on the line. His family, his relationships at the mosque, to run around with his girl. So that when she broke up with him eight months later, he was left with nothing, and he was outraged. He couldn't take it and he killed her. And the second way they used it is they said, look at what a liar he is, how duplicitous. He plays the good Muslim son at home and at the mosque, but look what he was up to. Side remembers the prosecutors closing argument at trial. His family didn't know that he actually drank, he smoked, he was having sex. This was proof of bad character, someone who could be a murderer. But Side says, if a non-skillty of anything, it's of being a normal kid with immigrant parents. So like the prosecution had painted a non as a totally like a bipolar or like a maniac or a dual personality. We all grew up with that dual personality. I mean, I'm the same way. I was like, they could paint the same thing because I was actually a homecoming king, which I don't know if my sister even knows. She did not know. So I mean, I was dating a girl that was- And why is homecoming king bad? Is that such a good thing? We don't go to homecoming. We don't- Because it's a dance. It's a dance, it's a mixed gender. So I was in the same boat. My parents, my sister, they didn't know about this at all. I mean, right now, more than ten years later, she's finding out. You know, I would admit, you know, on one side, like my family thinks I'm a virgin, but on the other hand, I've played, you know. But it's the true. Tema, Tema, look. Exactly. See that? Like that right there. I mean, it's kind of making her feel uncomfortable. You know, she's like, whoa, whoa, whoa. So just on motive alone, Side and Rabia found the whole thing ridiculous. As for physical evidence, there was none. Nothing. Apart from some fingerprints in his car, which Adnan had been in many times, there was nothing linking him to the crime. No DNA, no fibers, no hairs, no matching soil from the bottom of his boots. Instead, what they had on Adnan was one guy's story, a guy named Jay. He's the third person you need to remember in this crime story, besides Han Adnan. Jay was a friend of Adnan's. They'd been in school together since middle school. They weren't super close, but they had mutual friends. He had a cold weed and Han Adnan smoked together. The story Jay told police had problems, because it kept changing from telling to telling. But they were able to bolster the main plot points using cell records from Adnan's phone. By the time I left Rabia's office that first day, I understood only one thing clearly, though maybe not the thing Rabia inside wanted me to understand. But what I took away from the visit was, somebody is lying here. Maybe Adnan really is innocent. But what if he isn't? What if he did do it? And he's got all these good people thinking he didn't. So either it's Jay or it's Adnan, but someone is lying. And I really wanted to figure out who. In the early morning of February 28th, 1999, Adnan was arrested by Baltimore City detectives. He was asleep in his bed when they showed up at his house. They took him straight from his untidy bedroom to an interrogation room at homicide downtown. What Adnan didn't know is that just hours before they picked him up, the cops had interviewed his friend Jay. This is a taped interview of Jay Blackmail, 19 years of age, working offses of homicide, specifically the Curls Conference room. The police recorded two taped interviews with Jay, and I'm going to play you the second one from a couple weeks later, only because the sound quality is much better. Just a warning that the tape is a little upsetting to hear in parts. Why don't you go ahead and tell us what you know about the death of Hayley? I had left out one shopping with a friend of mine, an ex friend of mine, Adnan. We had had a conversation during the conversation stated that he was going to kill that bitch, referring to Hayley. I took it with context, didn't stand out my head any-- Jay says he didn't take it too seriously. The cops have him start again from the top. On the morning of the 13th, Jay says Adnan had left school and driven to Jay's house. Jay graduated from school the year before and was working, but not on that day. January 13th happens to be the birthday of Jay's girlfriend Stephanie, and Jay, who didn't have his own car, needed to go buy something for her. So Adnan comes over, according to Jay, they go shopping at the mall. What should you do then? You left the mall, I took him to school, I dropped him off in the back of the school. He went up to the class, he left his cell phone on the car with me, told me he'd call me. I went back to my friend Jen's house when we were from the call. Okay, now at this point, you know why he's leaving the car with you. Yes. And why is that? Because he said he was going to kill Hayley. And the reason you have the car and the cell phone was why? To pick him up from wherever he was going to do this today. Okay. And you had talked about this while you were shopping. That day? The details of the car and all. The events, how they were going to plan out. That day, he told me, yes, he told me, I'm going to leave you with my cell phone and my car. I need you to come get me. Yes. After he killed Hayley, yes. Later that afternoon, the call comes. You received a phone call from Adnan. Yes. On his cell phone. Yes. And the conversation was what? That bitch is dead. Come and get me. I made that spy. Jay drives to Best Buy. And sees Adnan in the parking lot. I noticed that Hayley wasn't with him. I parked next to him. He asked me to get out the car. I get out the car. He asked me am I ready for this? And I say ready for what? And he takes the keys, he opens the trunk. And I can see his lips all blue. And she's like, pretzled up in the back of the trunk. And she's dead. They leave the parking lot. Adnan's driving Hay's car with her body in the trunk. Jay is driving Adnan's car. They ditch Hay's car at the I-70 Park and Ride. And then, to hear Jay tell it, they just kind of tool around Baltimore County together for a while, if nothing had happened. Buy some weed, cruise around, make some calls. After a while, Jay drives Adnan back to Woodland High School. Why did you take him back to school? He told me that I had to take him back to school because he needed to be seen there. So he was he going to a certain event? Oh, it's practice, track practice. Track practice. So he wanted an elbow. Yeah. He wanted to be seen by the people at track. And you guys had discussed that. He just told me that he needed to be seen. Yeah. He told me that he needed to be seen at track practice. You took him back? Yes. Are you having any conversation with Adnan at the time? To the fact, yes, don't tell anyone. He said that he couldn't believe he killed somebody with his bare hands, did all the other motherfuckers referring to hoods and dogs and stuff. I think they're hardcore, but he just killed a person with his bare hands. So at this point, he's bragging about it. He was proud of it? Yes. After track practice, Jay picks Adnan up again. They drive around some more. By this time, his family was worried, and they'd called the police, who in turn called a couple of his friends, including Adnan. The call comes in on his cell. The cops ask if he's seen hay or knows where she is. Jay says, after the call, they drive to Jay's to get some shovels. Go retrieve Hay's car from the parking ride. They drive around some more, and finally end up at Leacon Park, where Adnan proceeds to bury hay. It's evening by now, maybe 7 or 8 p.m. And he asked me if I was going to help. And I told him, "Fuck no," and he started to shovel and dirt on top of her. Matt, we leave there. Let me stop that. You helped him dig the hole? Yes. How long did it take you both to dig the hole? 20-25 minutes. How deep did you make the hole? Oh, maybe six inches at the most. It wasn't very deep at all. Who did most of the digs? It was. Both of you? Yeah. Equal work. I wouldn't say that, but yeah, okay. So those are the key points. Adnan told Jay in advance he was going to do it. He did it. They buried her. Jay's story wasn't just the foundation of the state's case against Adnan. It was the state's case against Adnan. And the picture, Jay, drew. It's cold. I mean, he's not describing a crime of passion here. This is something much darker. To methodically map out the death of your friend. To strangle her with your own hands, so close up like that. That would mean Adnan wasn't just a killer, but a master liar and manipulator. A psychopath, probably. Adnan's in a maximum security prison in Western Maryland. He calls me at my request about twice a week. He talks to me from a bank of eight payphones in the recall. A pretty large room where other guys are sitting at tables with metal seats attached to them. Playing chess or cards or using the microwave or watching TV and get a little loud sometimes. Once I asked if all eight phones were always occupied and he said usually not, because guys who've been in for a long time, often they have no one to call. When I first met Adnan in person, I was struck by two things. He was way bigger than I expected. Barrel chested in tall. In the photos I'd seen, he was still a lanky teenager with struggling facial hair and sagging jeans. By now, he was 32. He'd spent nearly half his life in prison becoming larger. and properly bearded. And the second thing which you can't miss about Adnan is that he has giant brown eyes like a dairy cow. That's what prompts my most idiotic lines of inquiry. Could someone who looks like that really strangle his girlfriend? Idiotic, I know. When he first heard Jay's story of the crime, Adnan didn't say, "Well, it didn't happen like that," or "I didn't mean for it to happen like that." He said, "It didn't happen. None of this is true, at all." He says he had nothing to do with Hayes murder, and he doesn't know who did. Hayes was Adnan's first serious relationship with a girl. He says he loved her in the way of high school love, but then also in the way of high school got over her. So that when they broke up for good, sometime before Christmas break of senior year, he says he was sad for sure, but not obsessed or anything. I just sometimes wish like they could like look into my brain and see how I really felt about it. And no matter what else someone would say, they would see that this guy had no ill will towards it. Whatever the motivation is to kill someone I had absolutely, it didn't exist in me, you know what I mean? No one can ever say why. People can say why. Oh man, he's mad, he's mad, he's mad. But no one can ever come with any type of proof or panic or anything to ever say that I was ever mad at her, that I was ever angry with her, that I ever threatened her. You know, that's the only thing I can really hold on to. It is like my only firm hand holding this whole thing is that no one's ever been able to prove it. No one ever was able to provide any shred of evidence. And it had anything but friendship towards it, like love and respect for her. That's the end of the day, man. The only thing I can ever say is, man, I had no reason to kill us. He's adamant about this, you can hear it, right? He's staunch. The problem is, when you ask Adnan to go back and tell his version of what happened that day, to refute Jay's story, everything becomes a lot mushier. Yes, he hung out with Jay on the 13th, both during and after school, but he doesn't remember exactly where they went or what they did or what time it was. Here's what he's got. January 13th unfolded like any other day, a normal, mostly uneventful day. He says there are a couple of things that do stand out, though. That day was Stephanie's birthday. Stephanie was one of Adnan's best friends, and also Jay's girlfriend. Adnan had gotten Stephanie a birthday present, stuffed reindeer, which he'd given to her in second period, Miss Efron's English class. And it occurred to me that day that I was going to ask her boyfriend Jay, did he get her a gift? So sometimes during the day before noon. Wait, Adnan, just hold up for a second. Why did you care whether Jay got Stephanie a present? Like what's it to you? Well, Stephanie was a very close friend of mine, as I mentioned, and I just kind of wanted to make sure that she also got a gift from him. You know, she had mentioned to me that. She was looking forward to getting a gift from him. She mentioned she was really happy to get the gift that I gave her. So as I would with any friend, we didn't want to check on that. I kind of had a feeling that maybe he didn't get her a gift. And I had free periods during school, so it was not abnormal for me to leave school to go do something, and then come back. So I went to his house, and I asked him, you know, did you happen to get a present for Stephanie? He said, no. So I said, if you want to, you can drop me back off to school. You can borrow my car, and you can go to the mall and get her a gift or whatever. And just come pick me up after a track practice that day. So then what happened? Well, then when school was over, I would have went to the library. I didn't usually check, but if I was going to check my email, it would be a library computer. Sometimes I would go there, because track practice didn't start until around, maybe three o'clock or three thirty-ish. So I didn't start right after school. So there was a period of time, of almost like an hour, an hour to change. You know, that was kind of free time. This hour and change after school, this is the crucial window. This is the time when the state says, hey, was killed. School got out at 2.15. People remember seeing her after her last class, heading to her car. According to Jay's story and the cell phone records, she was dead by 2.36 pm. So sometime in those 21 minutes, between 2.15 and 2.36, she was strangled. So that's obviously the same window a nun needed to account for. To quote a nun, my case lived and died in those 21 minutes. So where does a nun say he was? Well, maybe the library, but nobody testified to that at trial. Then to track practice, he does remember being at track one day when it was snowing, which might have been that day. The coach testified that a nun probably was there, but he can't be a hundred percent sure, 'cause as a rule, he didn't take attendance. After school is when his memories become non-specific. Usually we did this, or we probably would have done that. Probably track practice would have ended like at say 4.30. Jay did come to pick up a nun after track. That part of nun seems to more or less remember. It was Ramadan, so a nun would have been fasting all day, and hungry. It probably would have been close to time for me to break fast. He would have came to pick me up, and we would have wiped over something to eat. And we would have smoked a weed after, right? And then I would have had to have gone, been home by around 7, 8 o'clock, right? Or usually like the last 10 nights of Ramadan, my father would spend the night at the mosque. And so a lot of times I would take a food, other than my mother would make food for him, and I would take it like usually before 8 o'clock, right? 'Cause that's the last evening prayer. Did you ever leave the campus before the end of track practice? Did you ever go? No. Okay. No. You're sure? I want to say that I'm 99 percent sure. Okay. The reason why I can't say a hundred is because, I mean, I do kind of understand that it comes across. I don't know if it does or doesn't, but it seems like I remember things that are beneficial to me with things that aren't beneficial to me. I can't remember. It's just that I don't really know what to say, you know, beyond the fact that a lot of the day, and I do remember it, it's in pieces that comes from what other people have said, you know, that they remember right, and they kind of are jobs, I remember. Yeah. I don't really know what to say. And I completely understand how that comes across. I mean, the only thing I could say is, it was just a normal day to me. It was absolutely nothing abnormal about that day. A non-nose better than anyone how unhelpful this all is, how problematic, because it plays both ways. If he's innocent, right, it's any other day. Of course, he doesn't remember. But you can also read it as, how convenient, he doesn't remember the day. So no one can fact-check him or poke holes in his story because he has no story. I definitely understand that someone could look at this and say, "Oh man, you've got to be lying." It's so coincidental that he doesn't remember what he did. It's a particular time. I mean, I completely understand that. And I get that. That's, you know, like I said, that's the biggest, the hardest thing I've dealt with for these times, 15 years is that I don't. There's nothing tangible I can do to remember that day. It's the truth. There's nothing I can do to make me remember. I pour through the transcripts. I look through the telephone records. I mean, what else can I do? There's nothing I can do. So, you know, I have to never be able to explain it. And it is what it is. If someone believes me or not, you know, I have no control over it. A non-s trial was a long ordeal. Jay was on the stand for something like five days. A cell phone expert testified for two days, a lifetime when you're discussing cell tower technology. There were absences and some bad weather closed the courts, so it was six weeks before both sides rested. But the jury, they moved like lightning. After just a few hours, including a lunch break, they convicted a non-a first-degree murder. Robbie a childry was there in the courtroom when it happened. She says his mother was crying. She was crying. Robbie hadn't sat through the whole trial, so the first time she fully understood that the case came down to those 21 minutes was during closing arguments. When the prosecutor brought out a dummy's head and strangled it in front of the jury. That evening, after the verdict, Robbie went to see Adnan in lockup. And so I went to go see him. So this is the same day he's been convicted. And this is the first time I actually had a conversation with him about, you know, what's going on. And I was like, you know, the whole thing was turning on these 20, 25 minutes. Like, you know, where were you? And he's like, look, she disappeared in January. You know, in March, you're asking me, like, where were you after school for 20 minutes on a specific day? Like, no, all the days are the same to me, you know? But then he mentions that there was this one girl, an alibi girl. He's like, the only thing I could offer is he's like, I remember, he's like, there's a girl I go to school with, who her name's Asia McLean. He's like, right after I got arrested, she wrote me a couple of letters. And she said she also wanted to see my family. And she said she specifically remembers me being at the library, at the public library, right after school. The Woodland Public Library is just across the parking lot from Woodland High School. It's not technically part of the campus, but it might as well be. He said I gave those letters to Christina Gutierrez to my attorney. He's like, but, you know, apparently, we didn't really check out, so he's like, I don't know. So, they're not helpful to us. So, this is the first time I heard of this girl, Asia McLean. I had never heard of her before. Nobody had mentioned her before. Were you like, Florida, like, wait, wait, wait, wait, what? I mean, what, like, I wasn't Florida at the time because I thought, I thought, if he, if this girl wrote, and the attorney, what criminal defense attorney is not going to check out a potential alibi. So, I asked him, I said, do you have a copy of those letters? He said, yeah, I have a copy. He said, send me a copy. Adnan sends the letters to Rabia and here's what she reads. The first letter, the first of two, is dated March 1st, 1999, that is one day after Adnan was arrested. At the top of the letter, she notes, "I just came from your house an hour ago." "Dear Adnan, I hope I spelled it right." "I'm not sure if you remember talking to me in the library on January 13th, but I remembered chatting with you." She says, "We aren't really close friends, but I want you to look into my eyes and tell me of your innocence. If I ever find otherwise, I will hunt you down and whip your ass, okay friend?" At the bottom, she added a little note, "My boyfriend and his best friend, remember seeing you there too." That's letter number one. Then the next day, on March 2nd, she writes at none another letter. This one's typed. It's Chad Ear. She talks about the gossip in school, the bits and pieces of evidence about the crime that are circulating, what the students are saying, what the teachers are saying. About her visit to his house, "Your brothers are nice. I don't think I met your mother. I think I met your dad." Does he have a big gray beard? They gave me an just and soda and cake. There's a whole bunch of people at your house, I didn't know who they were. I also didn't know that Muslims take their shoes off in the house. Thank God they didn't make me take mine off. My stinky feet probably would have knocked everyone out cold. "Why haven't you told anyone about talking to me in the library?" She asks him. "Did you think it was unimportant? You didn't think that I would remember? Or did you just totally forget yourself?" Anan says now that he does, in fact, remember seeing Asia in the library. And the thing he remembers about it is so high school. Asia used to go out with an Anan's friend Justin, and Justin had confided that Asia was a proper young lady, in other words, Justin wasn't getting any. So Anan remembers thinking he would now get to tease Justin about seeing Asia with her new boyfriend. Maybe the new guy was getting lucky. Ha ha. Anyway, Rabia calls Asia up. It's been a year since she wrote the letters, but she agrees to meet. And she told me that day after school I went to the library and Anan was sitting at a computer checking email or something, and I sat down next to him and we started chatting. And Anan was a very popular boy in school, he's handsome and popular with the ladies. So she was speaking to him and her boyfriend shows up a little bit later with a friend. And she said her boyfriend was really angry at her because he's like, "Why are you talking to him? High school kids? Why are you talking to him? Is he hitting on you?" And she remembered very specifically that day she went home with her, which she went to her boyfriend's house with him. And they got snowed in, and that snowed really heavily that night. And she remembered that for the following two days, school was closed. So she had very specific details about why she remembered that day. Asia wrote out an affidavit on the spot. In it she says she and Anan spoke for about 15 to 20 minutes while she was waiting for her boyfriend to give her a ride. Quote, we left around 240, unquote. Remember, hay is supposed to be dead by 236. And then the kicker. No attorney has ever contacted me about January 13th, 1999, and the above information. So benefit of the doubt for a second. Maybe Anan never actually showed the letters to Christina Gutierrez as his attorney. Sure he said he did, but who knows. Well, I know. Deep inside Gutierrez's notes on the case, I have boxes and boxes of such stuff. There's this in her handwriting. Asia plus boyfriend saw him in library 215 to 315. Then there's another note dated July 13th. It's more than four months after Anan's arrest. This is written by one of Gutierrez's law clerks who visited Anan and jail. Quote, Asia McLean saw him in the library at three. Asia boyfriend saw him too. Library may have cameras. Why oh why was this person never heard from a trial? A solid, non-crazy, detailed, oriented alibi witness in a case that's so sorely needed alibi witnesses. I can't ask Christina Gutierrez because she died in 2004. So I put that question to a few defense attorneys and they said, "Well, alibi witnesses can be tricky, especially if it's just one person, because then it becomes one person's word over another." A single witness like that can backfire under cross-examination, or they might take the jury's focus away from the weaknesses in the state's case. So there are conceivable strategic reasons why Christina Gutierrez might not have wanted to put Asia McLean on the stand. But what is inconceivable, they all said, is to not ever contact Asia McLean. To never make the call, never check it out, never find out if her story helps or hurts your case. That makes no sense whatsoever. That is not a strategy. That is a fuck up. When I first heard about the long lost Asia letters and the lawyer's mistake, I thought, "Well, their fight is over, right? We've got an alibi witness who has never heard from. It's such a slammed dunk. They're done. They're done." A non-family hired a new attorney who filed a petition in court based on the Asia affidavit. His argument was that a non-strial could have turned out differently if Gutierrez had checked out Asia's story. And so a non should get some form of what's called post-conviction relief. The new lawyer figures he'll get Asia to come to the hearing, she'll vouch for her story. By this time, Asia had finished school and moved away. He finds an address on the west coast, tries calling, sending messages, nothing. Finally, he writes a letter to her and gives it to a private investigator who goes out to Asia's house in hopes of delivering it. Asia's fiance comes to the door, opens it part way, tells the investigator that she cannot speak to Asia, but that from when he knows of a non's case, a non is guilty and deserve the punishment he got. Later, the investigator gets a call from the fiance. We don't have to talk to you, leave us alone. So a non's lawyer calls off the search for Asia, figuring once a witness turns on you like that, it's too risky to keep pushing. And then, at a non's hearing on the new petition, it comes out that Asia had done the very thing they dreaded. Asia had called one of the prosecutors in a non's case, a guy named Kevin Yurick, and undermined her own statement. This is from a recording of the hearing, Mr. Yurick is testifying on the witness stand. Here, how did you learn that we presented the top position? A young lady named Asia called me, and what was she saying? She was concerned because she was being asked questions about an affidavit. She'd written back at the time of the trial. She told me that she'd only written it because she was getting pressure from the family, and she basically wrote it to please them and get them off her back. It was, I don't know what happened to her and why she would do this. Here's Robby again. She says it's not true that Asia was bullied into writing that statement 15 years ago, and she can't file them why Asia would discredit her own statement like that. I don't know why, they were, the affidavit was written voluntarily, I mean, I'm an attorney, I'm a licensed attorney, I work on Homeland Security, like I have no reason to make something like this up, you know. I didn't even know she existed until, until after the conviction. So what do you think happened? Why would they have this sort of violent reaction to helping out and not now? I don't know, it was just really odd. So who knows what would have happened if Asia had shown up? Maybe it wouldn't have made a difference. After all they had the original letters and the affidavit, that's all that should have mattered. But it didn't look good. It'd be natural for the judge to wonder why can't the defense produce this Asia person? Why is she making this call to a prosecutor? I mean, anyone would wonder, I wondered, I wondered if maybe she was pressured into writing that affidavit, and I wondered if she was hiding something. Like maybe she'd lied in those 1999 letters, maybe she didn't really see Adnan at the library that day, and I just wanted to insert herself into something exciting, and maybe now that she was grown up she wanted nothing to do with any of it. So three, four months after I'd first sat down with Rabia, I'd become fixated on finding Asia. I'm like a bloodhound on this thing, because the whole case seemed to me to be teetering on her memories of that afternoon. I have to know if Adnan really was in the library at 2.36pm, because if he was, the library equals innocent. It's so manningly simple, and maybe I can crack it if I can just talk to Asia. I write her a long, gentle pleading letter and send it off to an address I find online. I'm calling people who know her or who I think might know her. I'm checking the same loop of Facebook, my life linked in sites over at over at trawling for clues about where she might be or how she might think. If you're wondering why I went so nuts on this story versus some other murder case, the best I can explain is, this is the one that came to me. It wasn't halfway across the world, or even next door, it came right to my lap. And if I could help get to the bottom of it, shouldn't I try? I start running down all the other information in Asia's 1999 letters. She mentioned there were security cameras inside the library. So my producer and I went to see the very nice manager there, Michelle Hamil. Was there a security system back in 1999 that could have been checked at the time? Probably. Yes. I'm going to say yes. Okay. And what system was it? I have no idea. It was an old system. Yeah. But you think probably video? It was video. Okay. It was part of setup every morning you put a video tape in. So that's. And were you guys recycling the video tapes? Yes. Okay. I think it ran for, you know, a week. So you had a Monday tape, a Tuesday tape, a Wednesday tape, and so forth. So even if on the very day that Asia had written her first letter, a non-slor had run out to find the security tape, it probably would have been nonexistent by then. But what about the computer I was supposedly using to check his email? To use the computer did people have to sign in, like write their name down? They did. And what was the system then? A piece of paper and pencil. And those by any chance weren't logged meticulously and kept for 15 years, were they? No bummer All right, we got nothing Then there was the mystery of Asia's boyfriend Derek and his friend Gerard all winter in spring every time I went to Baltimore I went to Derek's mom's house looking for him and to Gerard's window-tinting business and then finally all right So you are Gerard Johnson. Yes, I am You don't know how excited we are to be talking to you. I've been looking for you for like four months You didn't do anything, but we were hoping maybe you remembered this moment On January 13th 1999 Do you have have any memory by any miracle that you went to Woodland public library branch near Woodland High School to pick up Asia McLean with your friend Derek I have no idea Asia McLean. Is that a person or book? That's a person No, no recollection of it Scratched Gerard Derek was my last hope eventually I caught him at home considering I woke him up He was exceedingly courteous. He showed me a photo of Asian him all dressed up. They dated most of senior year What's up here? I saw a senior prom. Yeah, you guys both look really beautiful. Mm-hmm. Yeah, that's my uh, that's Asia But Derek couldn't remember that day either Shocking I know he used to pick Asia up from school almost every day back then either from the library or from the front of the school And he says he spoke to a lot of her friends just to be polite and It's it's very possible that We could have spoken to the gentleman and her on that day But it's very hard to remember, you know 15 years later, but it it sounds you know very It sounds like this definitely could have happened I don't think Asia was Asia's not the type of person that would lie. Just uh, you know That's what I'm wondering. She's definitely not that type of person, you know to get involved With a lie, you know, and she's not that type of person So she It seemed pretty credible to me One day I got a call on my cell phone from a block to number you guessed it Asia I wish I could say that my charming persuasive letter is what prompted Asia to call But the truth is she never got my letter. I had the wrong address But she was calling because I'd followed up weeks later with a one-line email and she was responding to that a little confused I recorded our conversation on the cell, which is why the sound quality is so bad. Sorry about that Asia is now a 33-year-old stay-at-home mother and she has not spent the last 15 years worrying about a non and whether he's guilty Asia said she was spooked when the private investigator came to her house. I don't know if that's why she didn't testify at the hearing or why She made the call to the prosecutor, but she told me that when she got the knock at the door, quote, that was not cool Because to her if I non did do it, quote, the last thing you want is a murderer being pissed off at you knowing where you live But she had a remarkably clear memory of what happened on January 13th, 1999 She had an internship at the time and so she got out of school much earlier than everyone else Derek was supposed to come get her at the library along with Gerard, but they were very late She remembers seeing a non come in after Woodland let out for the day I don't came in he sat at the table and like we weren't like really close friends or anything like that, but you know We you know we knew each other and you know we just Chatted or whatever and I can't remember I think I'm going to ask her how he was doing or whatever and he said fine and You know he told me that him and hey I broke up and I was like oh that's a bummer and And I was like what happened and he was like oh well She Just seeing this other guy some white dude and You know, but he was like chill about it. He just He was just like you know well if you know she doesn't want to be with me and That's fine. You know, I just wish the best for her and that kind of attitude and I'm not sure why Asia's memory of this interaction is so clear all these years later My best guess is that because she wrote it down at the time in those letters and then the affidavit that the details somehow stuck Do you remember what time you were talking this would have happened in the library? Do you remember what time that conversation would have happened? I Don't because I don't school it out around two fifteen those five way around two thirty Because you had said you you got out of school earlier than other people. So were you there were you at the library before two fifteen? Oh, yeah, I have been at the library for a few hours. Oh wow Yeah, I was pretty pissed when they showed up and And you know, and he asked me who who had knowledge and you know, you know those teenagers or boy language He's like, you know, that And I said don't even start with me because you know, you know if you were I was great Don't worry about what that is, you know I remember that day because that was the the Day that it snowed Were there snow days after that do you remember? I want to say there was because that was I think that was like the first snow of the year Mm-hmm I wouldn't have even remembered if it hadn't been for the snow and the whole You know, I just remember being so pissed about there being late And then getting snowed in it and out and it was the first snow in that year The snow is important hey disappeared on a Wednesday that night. There was a huge ice storm Which is unusual in Maryland It ended up being a state emergency and school was closed for the rest of the week It just started asking me questions about the case wasn't there DNA evidence and what exactly was Jay's part in the whole thing She wasn't sure and none was guilty She said things I've now heard from so many people since he seemed like he cared about hey He didn't seem angry or upset. I thought there was more proof Even that day it did you know I didn't walk away like oh, I just started something, you know what I mean? Yeah, if you want to make this innocence off of this composure at that moment, I would say he's innocent but I mean, I'm 32 years old now and I know that You know those people out there, people of the heinous acts that can keep the Calm demeanor, you know, yeah, and I know that there are people who without Our moments notice and do something that you know they regret for the rest of their lives, so I You know Yeah, even now it'd be nice if there was some technicality something that would prove as innocent great, you know One less evil person I've met in my life, you know, but but I think I think asia like you might be that technicality to see what I mean like you're If you're saying you saw him on this day at that time That means the state's timeline for their this whole their whole theory of the case doesn't make any sense Because they're saying he was in the car with her At the very time that you're saying no, I saw him at the library and we were talking Do you know what I mean like that's exactly the window where they're saying she was murdered In case you couldn't hear that it was a sigh and I completely understand that sigh That's how I feel a lot of the time Because I talk to it non-regularily and he just doesn't seem like a murderer A few minutes after I hung up with asia at non-called on schedule Um, I'm good. I'm good I so I was just talking to asia McLean Okay Yeah, you don't sound very excited I This was not the reaction I expected. I felt like I just interviewed an ivory-billed woodpecker But when I told a non what asia remembered instead of being excited a non-set it was heartbreaking I mean on a personal level I'm happy because in a sense It's you know that I'm not making this up and at least it's nothing else It kind of like at least someone other than rob you knows that you know, this did take place Anything that you kind of support what I'm saying to be the truth that I didn't do this is great But from a legal perspective, it's like I wish you were to came to this realization Maybe like you hear a half ago, do you know what I mean? Because it's kind of like you know, your hipster It's too late I'm sorry, I mean I I definitely appreciate it, you know, and definitely kind of hear the elation of your voice from that. I feel like I'm pulsing from below. No, no. I mean, I see what you're saying. I hadn't thought about it in that way. When I told Robbie I'd talk to Asia, she immediately burst into tears because they were all correct and was too late. The judge ruled on a non-spotition a few weeks before I spoke to Asia, denied. The judge wrote in his opinion that Christina Gutierrez's decision not to use Asia McLean as an alibi witness was strategic. After all, Asia's original letters didn't specify an exact time, and Gutierrez could have reasonably concluded that Asia was offering to lie in order to help a non. And finally, he wrote, Asia's letter contradicted a non's own alibi. Asia said she saw him at the public library, but a non said he was on the school campus the whole afternoon. Maybe the judge didn't understand that with the library is basically part of the campus. But anyway, Asia's story then is legally worthless. A witness who says she saw you at the exact moment when the state contends you were strangling a young woman in a car is worthless. A few days after I spoke to Asia, she wrote me an email. I've been thinking a lot about a non she wrote. All this time I thought the courts proved it was a non that killed her. I thought he was where he deserved to be. Now I'm not so sure. Hey was our friend too, and it sucks feeling like you don't know who really killed your friend. Hey was the sweetest person ever. If he didn't kill Hay, we owe it to him to try to make that clear. And if he did kill her, then we need to put this to rest. I just hope that a non isn't some sick bastard just trying to manipulate his way out of jail. I wrote back, believe me. I'm on exactly the same page. Coming up this season on serial. I think that there are other people involved like maybe I think maybe he was set up. I think he was set up somehow. Clearly you could tell. Something wasn't going on. It wasn't good. I mean it was just strange behavior for anybody. Basically threaten me like you know what happened to Hay. This is what's going to happen to you. That's how I felt that day. What are you thinking right now? You have the same smile I do. I'm literally thinking like could he have gone crazy? James probably he was being blackmailed by Adon. Because Adon knew that Jacob couldn't call the police. Like if this works and he'd I mean every question we've had for the past eight months, he knows it. Yeah maybe. Who else did it? Serials produced by Julie Snyder, Dana Chivas and me. Emily Condon is our production and operations manager. Ira Glass is our editorial advisor. Editing help from Nancy Updike, fact checking by Karen Fregella Smith. Special thanks to Lou Teddy, Jane Marie, Seth Linde, Elise Bergerson, and the entire staff of this American life. To my in-laws, Ethan Shire and Janet Levine for putting me up in Baltimore so many times in the past year. Support for serial comes from MailChimp celebrating creativity, chaos, and teamwork since 2001. MailChimp. Send better email. Serials a production of this American life and WBZ Chicago.