537: The Alibi

Ira Glass

From WBEZ Chicago, it's This American Life. I'm Ira Glass. OK, so for months around here at our radio show, we have all been preparing for this day today. The date of this day has been written on our white board in big letters for months, because this is the day that we launch our first real spin-off. As of today, we're not making just one weekly show here, but two shows.

Our second show is called Serial. That's not like breakfast, but the kind of serial where one thing follows another. And I've mentioned this show on the air before. But just in case you missed that, here's the premise of the new show. Instead of each episode bringing you a different theme and different stories, every episode of Serial brings you back to the exact same story and tells you the next chapter in that story.

This is a long story told over a dozen episodes, a true story. One of our producers and regular contributors, Sarah Koenig, is going to be hosting the new series. And the first story Serial is taking on is about a murder.

It's a case where what really happened is actually much more complicated than the jury ever heard when this thing went to trial. And each week we will go with Sarah on her hunt to figure out what really happened. And we will learn the answers as she does.

Our new show, by the way, is not a radio show. It's a podcast. I'll explain more about that later in the hour. And what we're going to do today here on the radio is play you the first episode. OK, and so with that, here's Sarah. And I really hope you like this.

Sarah Koenig

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've 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 to any stores that day? If so, what did you buy? Who did you talk to? The entire day, name every person you talked to. It's hard.

Now imagine you have to account for a day that happened six weeks back. Because that's the situation in the story I'm working on in which a bunch of teenagers had to recall a 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 lark, I asked some teenagers to try it.

Sarah Koenig

That's Tyler. He's 18. I asked my nephew Sam. He's 18, too.

Sarah Koenig

Actually, on second thought?

Sarah Koenig

Here's Sam's friend Elliot. He seemed to have better recall.

Sarah Koenig

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 is no big shocker, I guess. 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 Hae Min Lee disappeared. She was a senior at Woodlawn High School in Baltimore County in Maryland. She was Korean. She was smart, and beautiful, and cheerful, and a great athlete. She played field hockey and lacrosse. 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 Hae Lee's family knew something was up, when the cousin's school called.

About a month later, on February 9, Hae's body was found in a big park in Baltimore, really a rambling forest. A maintenance guy who said he'd stopped 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, Hae's ex-boyfriend, a guy named Adnan Syed, was arrested for her murder. He'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 Chaudry. Rabia knows Adnan pretty well. Her younger brother Saad is Adnan's best friend. And they believe he's innocent.

Rabia was writing 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 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 threw the case on purpose so she could get more money for the appeal. The lawyer had 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 Moor exactly, but a Muslim all the same, and a final act of murderous revenge. And the main stage? A regular old high school across the street from a 7-Eleven.

I went to go see Rabia. She was surrounded by paper-- files, loose stacks, binders, some crappy looking boxes-- all court documents and attorney's files from Adnan's case. Some of the papers were warped and discolored.

Sarah Koenig

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 weeny bag of marijuana.

Baltimore County is like this, at least on the west side. It's where 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 Saad 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 Syed, their friend-- not just a good kid, but an especially good kid-- smart, kind, goofy, handsome. So that when he was arrested for murder, so many people who know him were stunned.

Sarah Koenig

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, and this at a high school that was majority black. They picked the Pakistani Muslim kid. So you get the picture. He was an incredibly likable and well-liked kid.

This conversation with Rabia and Saad, this is what launched me on this yearlong-- "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 Hae Lee 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 Hae 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 are from Pakistan. And they're conservative Muslims-- no drinking, no smoking, no girls, all that.

Saad and Rabia's parents are the same way. Their families are friends. But even though Adnan and Saad and their buddies were Muslims, they were also, shall we say, healthy American teenagers who were going to do what teenagers do, so long as they didn't get caught.

So Adnan had to keep his relationship with Hae secret. The state used this against him in two ways. First, they argued, he put everything on the line-- his family, his relationships at the mosque-- to run around with this 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, as 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. Saad remembers the prosecutor's closing argument at trial.

Sarah Koenig

This was proof of bad character, someone who could be a murderer. But Saad says, if Adnan is guilty of anything, it's of being a normal kid with immigrant parents.

Sarah Koenig

So just on motive alone, Saad and Rabia found the whole thing ridiculous. As for physical evidence, there was none-- nothing. Apart from some fingerprints in Hae's 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 Hae and 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. Jay sold weed, and he and 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 and Saad 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 28, 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.

Sarah Koenig

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.

Sarah Koenig

Jay said 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 had graduated from school the year before and was working, but not on that day.

January 13 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.

Sarah Koenig

Later that afternoon, the call comes.

Sarah Koenig

Jay drives to Best Buy and sees Adnan in the parking lot.

Sarah Koenig

They leave the parking lot. Adnan's driving Hae's car with her body in the trunk. Jay's driving Adnan's car. They ditch Hae'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 as if nothing had happened-- buy some weed, cruise around, make some calls. After a while, Jay drives Adnan back to Woodlawn High School.

Sarah Koenig

After track practice, Jay picks Adnan up again. They drive around some more. By this time, Hae's family was worried, and they'd called the police, who in turn called a couple of Hae's friends, including Adnan.

The call comes in on his cell. The cops ask if he's seen Hae or knows where she is. Jay says after the call, they drive to Jay's to get some shovels, go retrieve Hae's car from the park and ride. They drive around some more and finally end up at Lincoln Park, where Adnan proceeds to bury Hae. It's evening by now, maybe 7:00 or 8:00 PM.

Sarah Koenig

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.

In 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 pay phones in the rec hall, 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.

It can get a little loud sometimes. Once I asked if all eight phones were always occupied. And he said, usually not, because guys who have 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 and 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 Hae's murder, and he doesn't know who did.

Hae 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.

Sarah Koenig

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 13 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, a stuffed reindeer, which he'd given to her in second period, Miss Ephron's English class.

Sarah Koenig

This hour and change after school, this is the crucial window. This is the time when the state says Hae 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 cellphone 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 Adnan needed to account for. To quote Adnan, "My case lived and died in those 21 minutes."

So where does Adnan 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 Adnan probably was there, but he can't be 100% sure because, as a rule, he didn't take attendance. After school is when his memories become nonspecific. Usually we did this, or we probably would have done that.

Sarah Koenig

Jay did come to pick up Adnan after track. That part Adnan seems to more or less remember. It was Ramadan, so Adnan would have been fasting all day and hungry.

Sarah Koenig

Adnan knows 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.

Sarah Koenig

Adnan's trial was a long ordeal. Jay was on the stand for something like five days. A cellphone 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 Adnan of first-degree murder. Rabia Chaudry was there in the courtroom when it happened. She says his mother was crying. She was crying.

Rabia 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, Rabia went to see Adnan in lockup.

Sarah Koenig

But then he mentions that there was this one girl, an alibi girl.

Sarah Koenig

The Woodlawn public library is just across the parking lot from Woodlawn High School. It's not technically part of the campus, but it might as well be.

Sarah Koenig

Adnan sends the letters to Rabia, and here's what she reads. The first letter, the first of two, is dated March 1, 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 13, but I remember chatting with you." She says, quote, "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. OK, 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 2, she writes Adnan another letter. This one's typed. It's chattier. She talks about the gossip at 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.

Quote, "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 and Justin soda and cake. There was 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?"

Adnan says now that he does in fact remember seeing Asia in the library. The thing he remembers about it is so high school. Asia used to go out with Adnan's friend Justin. And Justin had confided that Asia was a proper young lady." In other words, Justin wasn't getting any.

So Adnan 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.

Sarah Koenig

Asia wrote out an affidavit on the spot. In it, she says she and Adnan spoke for about 15 to 20 minutes while she was waiting for her boyfriend to give her a ride. Quote, "We left around 2:40," unquote. Remember, Hae is supposed to be dead by 2:36. And then, the kicker-- "No attorney has ever contacted me about January 13, 1999 and the above information."

So benefit of the doubt for a second-- maybe Adnan never actually showed the letters to Christina Gutierrez, 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 2:15 to 3:15."

Then there's another note, dated July 13. It's more than four months after Adnan's arrest. This is written by one of Gutierrez's law clerks, who visited Adnan in jail. Quote, "Asia McLean saw him in the library at 3:00. Asia boyfriend saw him too. Library may have cameras."

Why, oh, why was this person never heard from at trial-- a solid, non-crazy, detail-oriented alibi witness in a case that 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 screw-up.

When I first heard about the long-lost Asia letters and the lawyer's mistake, I thought, well, their fight is over, right? They've got an alibi witness who was never heard from. It's such a slam dunk. They're done.

Adnan's family hired a new attorney, who filed a petition in court based on the Asia affidavit. His argument was that Adnan's trial could have turned out differently if Gutierrez had checked out Asia's story. And so Adnan 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, 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 what he knows of Adnan's case, Adnan is guilty and deserved 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 Adnan'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 Adnan'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 Adnan's case, a guy named Kevin Urick, and undermined her own statement. This is from a recording of the hearing. Mr. Urick is testifying on the witness stand.

Sarah Koenig

Here's Rabia again. She says it's not true that Asia was bullied into writing that statement 15 years ago. And she can't fathom why Asia would discredit her own statement like that.

Sarah Koenig

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've mattered. But it didn't look good.

It would 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 had 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 first sat down with Rabia, I had 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 2:36 PM.

Because if he was, library equals innocent. It's so maddeningly simple. And maybe I can crack it if I could 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, MyLife, LinkedIn sites over and over, 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 Hamiel.

Sarah Koenig

So even if, on the very day that Asia had written her first letter, Adnan's lawyer had run out to find the security tape, it probably would have been nonexistent by then. But what about the computer Adnan was supposedly using to check his email?

Then there was the mystery of Asia's boyfriend, Derek, and his friend Jerrod. All winter and spring, every time I went to Baltimore, I went to Derek's mom's house looking for him, and to Jerrod's window tinting business. And then finally--

Sarah Koenig

Scratch Jerrod. 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 Asia and him all dressed up. They dated most of senior year.

Sarah Koenig

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.

Sarah Koenig

One day I get a call on my cellphone from a blocked number.

Sarah Koenig

You guessed it-- Asia.

Ira Glass

Coming up, what Asia remembers, which is a lot. That's in a minute from Chicago Public Radio when our program continues. It's This American Life. I'm Ira Glass. Today on our program, Sarah Koenig looks into the murder of a Baltimore teenager back in 1999. Our story continues. You remember where we left off. Sarah had been looking for Asia McLean. Here's Sarah.

Sarah Koenig

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.

Sarah Koenig

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 Adnan and whether he's guilty.

Sarah Koenig

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 Adnan 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 13, 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 Jerrod, but they were very late. She remembers seeing Adnan come in after Woodlawn let out for the day.

Sarah Koenig

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.

Sarah Koenig

The snow is important. Hae 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.

Asia 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 Adnan was guilty. She said things I've now heard from so many people since. He seemed like he cared about Hae. He didn't seem angry or upset. I thought there was more proof.

Sarah Koenig

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 Adnan regularly, and he just doesn't seem like a murderer. A few minutes after I hung up with Asia, Adnan called on schedule.

Sarah Koenig

This was not the reaction I expected. I felt like I'd just interviewed an ivory-billed woodpecker. But when I told Adnan what Asia remembered, instead of being excited, Adnan said it was heartbreaking.

When I told Rabia I talked to Asia, she immediately burst into tears. Because they were all correct. It was too late. The judge ruled on Adnan's petition 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've reasonably concluded that Asia was offering to lie in order to help Adnan.

And finally, he wrote, Asia's letter contradicted Adnan's own alibi. Asia says she saw him at the public library, but Adnan said he was on the school campus the whole afternoon. Maybe the judge didn't understand that Woodlawn 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 Adnan," she wrote. "All this time I thought the courts proved it was Adnan that killed her. I thought he was where he deserved to be. Now I'm not so sure.

Hae was our friend, too. And it sucks feeling like you don't know who really killed your friend. Hae was the sweetest person ever. If he didn't kill Hae, 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 Adnan 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."

Ira Glass

Sarah Koenig-- she's the host of our new podcast Serial. You just heard the first episode of that podcast. Every episode after this is going to bring you the next chapter in her search for the truth about the murder of Hae Min Lee.

And you don't have to wait to hear the next installment. You can listen to Episode 2 right now. Go to serialpodcast.org. That's serial not spelled like the breakfast food. And you can listen right there by clicking Play. Or you can download the episode to listen later on your phone or tablet or whatever.

One of the great things about this story is that I can tell you, as Sarah has been reporting this, she and Julie Snyder and Dana Chivvis, who are working with her on this, have all flipped back and forth, over and over, in their thinking about whether Adnan committed the murder. And when you listen to the series, you experience those flips with them. You go back and forth with them. You hear the evidence that Sarah uncovers as she uncovers it. And you can join her in trying to figure out exactly what happened and who to believe. And as the series continues, a lot of things are going to happen.

Ira Glass

I should say we're doing this new show as a podcast. And in fact, we've made an instructional video that stars me and an 80-something-year-old friend of mine from the dog park, Mary Ahern. If you are an older person who is scared of this technology, my friend Mary, who is herself an older person and who listens on her iPad every week, can get you up and running in like a minute and a half. That instructional video and the place where we deliver Serial Episode 2 to you is serialpodcast.org. Again, one last time, that's serialpodcast.org.

Our program was produced today by Julie Snyder, Dana Chivvis, and Sarah Koenig. Emily Condon did like 1 million practical and operational things to get their new series up and running. Fact checking from Karen Fragala Smith. The music in today's program was composed and performed by Nick Thorburn.

The rest of our radio staff-- Ben Calhoun, Sean Cole, Stephanie Foo, Chana Joffe-Walt, Miki Meek, Jonathan Menjivar, Brian Reed, Robyn Semien, Alissa Shipp, and Nancy Updike. Production help from JP Dukes. Seth Lind is our operations director. Elise Bergerson's our office manager. Adrianne Mathiowetz runs our website.

That website, where you'll find links today to Serial's website and to our instructional video on how to get a podcast-- thisamericanlife.org. Thanks today to Brendan Dunning and to our web developer Rich Orris. This American Life is delivered to public radio stations by PRX, the Public Radio Exchange.

Thanks as always to our program's co-founder, Mr. Torey Malatia. He's been happily married for decades, but his parents, they're so puritanical.

Ira Glass

I'm Ira Glass. Back next week with more stories of this American life.