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Hae Min Lee attended the magnet program at Woodlawn High School near Baltimore, Maryland. She was described by her friends as athletic, beautiful, cheerful, and a fun person to be friends with.
Hae disappeared on January 13, 1999. She had attended the school that day, and many kids had testified seeing her leave campus. Police began searching for her on the same day. But Hae' partially buried body was discovered in Leekin Park, Baltimore on the 9th of February. The cause of her death was strangulation.
On 12 February, the Baltimore City Police Homicide Divison received an anonymous call advising them to focus on Hae's ex-boyfriend Adnan Seyed. It had been six weeks when the trial began. Adnan was arrested for the murder of Hae Min Lee. And the key witness of the state was Jay Wilds.
Jay Wilds is a very mysterious character in this mystery. He initially denied any knowledge of the crime, but eventually told the police that Adnan had killed Hae and even showed Jay the body in the parking lot of Best Buy! He claimed that Adnan had previously told him that he'd kill Hae, but Jay didn't take him seriously. But when Adnan called him and asked him to come to Best Buy, Jay was shocked to see the dead purple body of Hae in the trunk of the car. He helped Adnan bury Hae's body in Leekin Park at around 7pm.
This was the State's case against Adnan. But there were many discrepancies in Jay's statements. We'll get back to that later. Lets first cover some of the very unusual aspects leading to the trail.
Mr. S(His name was not provided) had found Hae's body. His story of how he found it is very bizarre though. In his own words: " I grabbed a beer out of my refrigerator. I was drinking it on my way back to school where I work and had to go to the bathroom. So I pulled over and went further into the woods so that nobody would see me urinating and when I discovered what looked like a body..."
This would seem perfectly normal, only if the Hae's body was not found behind a tree log 127 feet into the woods next to a stream, impossible to see. He was given a polygraph in which he failed. The deception was obtained in his statements. Even after such suspicious activity, the detectives ruled him out as he had apparently no connection with Hae.
Before we head towards Jay's story and its discrepancies, we'll have a look at Adnan Seyed.
Adnan Seyed was from a conservative Muslim family. He was a model kid in their society. He was bright and was into athletics too. He was deemed very sweet and polite by many and many people just couldn't believe that a boy like Adnan could ever kill somebody.
Adnan from the beginning never changed his stance of claiming innocence. He says that he was really sad when Hae broke up with him, but never felt obsessive, not even close to killing her. When the trial was going on, the police found out the exact timing of Hae's murder. And according to that timing, if Adnan was to kill Hae, he would have to reach Best Buy from school and strangulate her in 21 minutes. While this seems easy enough, Adnan claims it is not possible.
Sarah Koenig, the host of the podcast-'Serial' tried taking this route. She made it to best buy from Woodlawn in exactly 18 minutes, giving Adnan only a room of 3 minutes to strangulate Hae and then dumb her in his trunk, and that too in broad daylight. Even though this is possible, it would need flawless execution, not even wasting a moment, which doesn't seem practical.
When Serial made finished their investigation, Sarah claimed that not enough evidence was against Adnan, and as a jury, she'd have to acquit him. And this is absolutely true. Many mistakes were made by the police. The biggest being- Lack of forensics :
A bottle of liquor was found near Hae's body that had mouth samples on it but never came back for DNA tests.
Red and blue fibers were found under Hae's body and they weren't tested with the DNA on a rope which was nearby. The reason given by the police was lame- They didn't think that the rope might have been connected somehow.
Summer, a friend of Hae's, after listening to Serial came forward and said that on the day that Hae went missing and then ultimately died, she was with Hae for a little while after school, and they were discussing some game that they were coaching. She said that Hae was in a hurry no doubt, but there was no way that Hae could have been at Best Buy at 2:36 p.m. (By the call records Adnan had called Jay at 2:36 p.m. to show him the dead body of Hae).
And then there was Asia McClain. She had written letters to Adnan when she first came to know that he was arrested. In those letters, she had asked him if he needed any help. Because she was and still is sure that on January 13, she had talked with Adnan in the library. She was waiting for her boyfriend when she saw Adnan sitting in the library, and she claims her boyfriend is also an alibi for him. Adnan didn't remember it. But his lawyer, Guerrero, chose not to bring Asia in for her testimony. Later it was found out that Guerrero was having a mental breakdown during that time, and she didn't fight Adnan's case note-worthily. She was the best during her time, but, unlucky for Adnan, she wasn't in her best mental health during the trial. That still remains the biggest point for Adnan even now as he continuously asks for another trial, based on the fact that he lost because of his lawyer.
As of Asia, during a hearing, on which Adnan's re-trial will either be accepted or declined, she came to court and gave her testimony. But according to the judges, now after all these years, her testimony as an alibi doesn't count much.
Lets finally talk about Jay Wilds. His main story throughout the trial has been the same- Adnan killed Hae and then called Jay. Both of them together buried Hae's body. And the reason why the police believe him is because Jay directly pointed them towards Hae's car, which had not been found even after finding her body.
But the discrepancies in his story do stand out. He often changed the timeline of his story. A lot of the time, he changed the location of where he and Adnan were during that time. He claimed that Adnan had called him by a pay-phone from Best Buy. But after intensive investigation, it has been found that there was no pay-phone at Best Buy.
Jay had a lot of people standing up for him. Like his friend Jen, who claims that yes Jay was with Adnan all day, and Jay had indeed told her that Adnan had killed Hae. Cathy(Her real name is not Cathy. She doesn't want her real name to be made public) told the cops that she was with Jen that day at her house when Jay and Adnan came over there in the evening. She told the police how she found Adnan to be all nervous and then suspiciously speaking on the phone. She even recalls that after a while Adnan and Jay left the house and sat in the car for a long time, before leaving.
Adnan insisted that he and Jay weren't even that close. And Jay told the cops that maybe because Adnan knew about Jay's drug dealing, he made Jay an accomplice, as he had dirt on him.
Jay Wilds frequently seemed to lose his way during one recorded interview, which was marked by knocking or tapping sounds. After hearing these sounds Jay seemed to remember what had happened.
According to attorney Susan Simpson, who took part in both Undisclosed podcast and the HBO documentary The Case Against Adnan Seyed the tapping was evidence that the police were feeding Jay with the elements of his story. As further evidence, Undisclosed podcast notes that at one point Jay says "top spots" which had no connection to the case whatsoever. But the next point Jay makes appears at the top of page 2 of a police document named "Jay's Chronology".
Apart from Jay the biggest enemy of Adnan was Adnan himself. His inability to remember anything from that day proved difficult for his case. A letter was sent to Adnan by Hae, after their break-up, which asked Adnan to please stop obsessing and move on. And after that letter, chits were passed between Adnan and his friend Aisha, and on one of the chits was written- 'I' 'm going to kill'.
Then one day, suddenly a random father Dave calls up the police and says that his daughter Laura knows something. Laura then tells the police that her neighbor had told her that he knew Jay and had seen a dead body in Jay's trunk. Laura remembered asking who was the killer and vaguely remembers the name as Adnan.
The neighbor when questioned claimed that he had said no such thing to Laura and that he had never seen a dead body in his life.
Obviously one of them is lying here. The neighbor was in fact friends with Jay. But Laura, who knew neither Jay nor Adnan and was also not a student of Woodlawn, why would she lie about such a thing?
Adnan had told a detective, during the beginning of the investigation, that he had asked Hae for a ride on January 13 after school. But to another detective, he claims he never asked her for a ride. Many students reported that he had asked for a ride. This is just one small instance of how Adnan is his own enemy. His inability to remember from that day just makes him fall harder.
After listening to Serial, a man named Josh came forward who claimed that he worked with Jay at a store during that time. And he vividly remembers Jay being extremely frightened one night. Jay believed that people were after him... people connected to the murder. Jay was almost in tears.
And finally, there are the call logs. Talking about the call logs itself will take up about 4-5 pages, but I'll make it short. Adnan's cell phone was tracked on how it was used that day. By checking which cell tower it hard pinged, the police were able to get an idea of where Adnan was during that time.
Adnan's cell phone pings do match more or less with Jay's story, though in some cases it does not. Still, the biggest one of them all was that in the evening Adnan's cell phone pinged the cell tower near the Leekin Park area. And Adnan denied any knowledge of Leekin Park, saying that he had never gone there. He also claims that during the day he had given his car to Jay to buy a gift for his girlfriend and that his phone was in the car......
Two definite conclusions can be made-
One Adnan should not have been arrested based on such weak evidence.
Two Jay Wilds definitely knows more about the crime than he is letting on. Maybe he was much more involved than just helping Adnan bury Hae's body.
SOME POPULAR THEORIES:
1) Adnan hired Jay to kill Hae and when the matter escalated, Jay decided to come in clean, but at the same time limiting his involvement.2)Jay and Jen killed Hae. Hae must have known that Jay and Jen were having an affair and she may have threatened to tell it to Jay's girlfriend. He silenced her.
This seems a tad bit far fetched, but who knows? This is largely popular on Reddit.
3)Adnan and Jay together killed Hae, and then Adnan plans to blame it all on Jay.
This does explain why Jay initially denied any knowledge of the crime, he thought they were in it together. But when he finds out Adnan is gonna blame him, he confesses.
4)Somebody else killed Hae. And Jay knew that somebody and was willing to protect him at all costs.
5)Adnan is a psychopath: Pure and simple.
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It is to be noted here that Hae Min Lee's family still firmly believes that it was Adnan who killed her.
Jay Wilds walked free, with some community service and probation.
Adnan is still serving jail time. His very recent plea for a re-trial was denied.
Do you think that Adnan killed Hae Min Lee?
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References:
Serial podcast
Undiscloses podcast
HBO Documentary: The Case against Adnan Seyed.
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P.S. If you wanna check the in-depth analysis of all the points, and an in-depth fo the call logs(which is very interesting) please check out Serial Podcast or comment in the section and I'll do a writeup exclusively on these topics.