Season 1 of the podcast Serial is about the murder of Hae Min Lee. It’s narrated by investigative journalist Sarah Koenig, who has reopened the case fourteen years later, determined to discover the truth of the matter.
On the 13th of January 1999, 18-year-old Hae Min Lee was declared missing from Baltimore. In February, she was found dead in Leakin Park. Her cause of death was ruled as manual strangulation.
Her ex-boyfriend and best friend Adnan Syed was arrested for her murder six weeks later, and Adnan’s friends Jay and Jen were also called in for questioning. Adnan claims that he has no memory of the day on which Hae went missing; for him, he says, it was just a normal school day. Jay, however, claims to remember exactly what happened on the 13th. He rattles off a long and complicated story about how Adnan had killed Hae and got him (Jay) to pick up Adnan and help bury the corpse in Leakin Park. Jay piles all the blame on Adnan, however, saying he refused to help bury Hae. Jay cites phone calls and gives very time specific events to help corroborate his story.
This would all be fine and Adnan would most likely be convicted based on Jay’s timeline, except that this timeline changes all the time. Jay adapts his story constantly to try and pile all the blame elsewhere. At one point, he even admits in court that he lied and promises it won’t happen again, and yet it does, over and over.
Was it Adnan? Was it Jay? Was it Hae’s new boyfriend at the time of her death, Don? Or was it none of these people – did Hae even know the killer? Koenig briefly investigates a man who was arrested for murdering by strangulation in Baltimore but was released just days before Hae went missing. But if he were involved, why were Jay and Jen making up these long stories framing Adnan?
Adnan is still in prison for Hae’s murder. Jay and Jen didn’t serve any time in prison at all, even though they should have been arrested for lying to the court under oath. Koenig is still looking into the case, and regularly contacts Adnan. You can hear recordings of her conversations with him on Serial.
I really enjoyed this podcast. It was engaging and suspenseful, and Koenig made for a great narrator; she got to the point without rambling, talked fast and clearly so the various timelines involved didn’t get too jumbled in your head.
