Did Adnan Sayed Murder His Girlfriend? (Part II)

From the previous thread:

[quote]Yeah i've gotta be honest I find that to be one of the strangest elements here (along with Jay and Steph's lying, or even Don lying about his alibi and not getting home til after the body was buried).

[quote]Even the strictest and MOST overprotective parents would wait at least... 2 hours? I would think even more? Before actually calling the police. I say this as someone who has strict immigrant parents and grew up around the same age as Hae. To call after 15 minutes is just too weird. Sometimes a traffic jam or accident along the road could take 15 minutes alone. Or even the young girl she was picking up forgetting something back at school.

The only thing I can think of is if the school called saying the cousin hadn't been picked up. But again, They wouldn't do that any sooner than say 345 p.m. That would mean they immediately called the police, rather than bothered to call any of Hae's friends. Now, I can maybe understand if they're immigrant parents who are extremely strict and overprotective, but Hae also seemed to go out and do whatever she wanted (hence the arguing with her mom) so it's not like she was ALWAYS on time or did everything they told her to.

Also, who made the call to the police? Her mother doesn't speak English, right?

It's very normal for a parent to be about 15-20 minutes late due to traffic or weather . Some schools and daycares have charging systems where a parent pays 5 dollars for every 10 minutes a teacher has to wait with a kid. It's usually not until 20 minutes after that a phone call is made.

How did Hae's family report her missing after just 15 minutes? The teachers don't even call until after 20 minutes has passed

I'm a music teacher and honestly when i'm on gate duty and a parent has forgotten to pick their kid up, we don't call until at least 5-10 minutes after every other child has left. Which usually takes 15-20 minutes anyway, with all the mothers meeting and gaggling and organising playdates and piano lessons and soccer practice. etc. etc. etc. etc. etc.

Normally we ask the child (sometimes there are two or three) to send a text message if they have a phone, and if not we go into the office with them and will call their guardians.

So this would only happen about 25 minutes after the bell has rung (at a minimum). Now I don't know what schools were like in Maryland back then, but for them to already have called THE POLICE 15 minutes after school pickup seems ludicrous.

R4 I was going to say that back in 1999 I can actually imagine the school not calling until much later than they would now.

Again, it would be interesting to find out if the cousin was indeed left there with no pickup or if someone actually picked the kid up on time.

Hae's pager tells all. Did the family page her to find out where she was?

R6 on the previous thread it was discussed that her family claims they didn't know she had a pager.

It's surprising (not surprising considering the facts we know about this case) that the police didn't subpoena the pager records.

Page 147 in this trial transcript says Hae's family reported her missing within minutes of failing to pick up cousin.

Doing some research on the pager bit, there seems to be some debate on whether or not pagers even had records. Apparently it's hard to find any information supporting the idea that pagers worked like cell phones and documented any of the incoming numbers.

Unlike cellphones, it doesn't seem like pagers were charged per call or that there was a cap on how many you could receive so records weren't kept.

[quote]Unlike cellphones, it doesn't seem like pagers were charged per call or that there was a cap on how many you could receive so records weren't kept.

My brother and father had pagers in the 90s for their jobs. Their employers paid a monthly bill. I don't think there was ever a cap on pages. Also around that time my cousin was going through a custody battle with his ex-wife. He despised her then live in boyfriend. He bought his kids pagers so they could be in contact through pages with him whenever they went on trips with the mom and the boyfriend. When they weren't traveling he would deactivate the service the pagers and then reactivate again later on if the kids were going away somewhere.

The police notes for the Feb 12 tip say male had an Asian accent and sounded around 18-21 years.

Americans typically say Asian to refer to Koreans, Chinese, or Vietnamese (East Asian)

A Pakistani accent would probably be mistaken for an Indian accent. All of Adnan's mosque friends seem to have American accents so I doubt they were the tip despite prosecutor and Jay's implications that the tip came from a mosque "elder" Adnan confessed to. How does an elder sound 20-21 years old like the police say? A Pakistani accent would be considered an Indian accent or Middle Eastern accent before an Asian accent by most Americans.

Jay also said he witnessed Adnan speaking to shady characters on the phone in Arabic. Adnan only speaks English. Pakistanis don't even speak Arabic anyway

[quote]Jay also said he witnessed Adnan speaking to shady characters on the phone in Arabic.

Are you saying Jay lied????

R12, yes. He's lied about practically everything else but it is mostly due to cops coaching him on what to say and not say.

Adnan having an intense phone conversation in Arabic or any foreign language makes no sense. He He only spoke English.

I'm guessing the cops fed that story to Jay to further add to the shady premeditated Islamic honor killing angle.

R12 was sarcasm.

Another Hae's mom did it theory:

When someone is murdered, often times the death is simply the tragic conclusion to a previously existing conflict between two people. Serial killers are exceptions, men who kill after raping a stranger, they are also exceptions, but many times, a murder is simply the tragic conclusion of a conflict in the life of the deceased. That is why Adnan makes a reasonable suspect, because he was conflicted about getting dumped. And yet the discerning observer will note the true conflict in the life of the deceased was not with Adnan, but with the subject’s very own mother. During the initial investigation, the notion that Hae was “having problems at home” was corroborated repeatedly by everyone from Adnan, Don, and Hae’s friends, to the school teachers and snack ladies. The fact that Hae was considered a flight risk, and therefore rumored to have run off to California, should be alarming to all of us. People who seem like they might run away from home are having a terrible problem with someone—in the home. That someone was Hae’s mother.

So how does the “Mommy Strangled Me Theory” fit the timeline? Initially, I assumed it wouldn’t fit at all. Hae disappeared right after school, her mother was at work, so we can rule her out…. Right? Right? Guys?

Not so fast, Chester.

I did some research, see, and though I couldn’t officially verify it, I did find one redditor from like 10 months ago who, in an unrelated post, seemed confident that Hae’s mother worked from home.

Okay, okay, okay, but so what? Hae was driving to a daycare. Was her house anywhere near the daycare?

Again, I only have unofficial reddit info, but rumor has Hae’s house only five blocks from the daycare.

Woah Woah Woah! Hold the phones, hold the horses, hold the mayo on my fish fillet sandwich—are you telling me the person who bore the most documented anger and frustration toward Hae Min Lee during the months leading up to her death was just five blocks from where Hae Lee was headed right before she vanished?

Yes, that is what we are saying. Curiously compelling, is it not? I’m telling you, it was the mother. Think about it: after leaving school and heading to the daycare, if Hae made a stop, what is the most likely place she could have stopped? Her own house.

Are people here really suggesting her mother had something to do with her death?

I think Adnan may well be guilty. But, I don't think it's provable, and it never was without detectives leading Jay to give the answers they needed. I'm very sad for Hae's family, but the police evidence is bullshit. He needs to be released.

The night before, Hae was breaking curfew to hang out with Don. Then she stayed up till 3am talking to him on the phone. The mother has been stewing about it all day, and decides to forbid her daughter from seeing old Donny ever again. So she pages Hae, tells her to come home immediately after school. As instructed, Hae stops at the house. She enters brandishing a bag of hot fries, snarkily munches the last one and throws the wrapper in the trash as her mother approaches. Here, Hae confronts her mother about Don, and says she is going to spend another night with him, and won’t be back till later than the acceptable time. A violent argument about curfew ensues. With the mother yelling furiously, Hae coldly turns away and heads back to her vehicle. The mother follows, still yelling. In the driveway or garage, Hae threatens to leave forever. She either threatens to go live with Don, or much worse, she threatens to go and live with Miss Lee’s ex-boyfriend in California. Miss Lee, standing outside the parked vehicle, reaches in for the throat and secures a death grip about her first born daughter. Previously, we all assumed the perp was seated next to Hae in the car, but when you think about it, that is a very difficult angle for performing a good strangulation. In reality, it’s much easier to get your hands on a throat from outside a car with its window rolled down, so that you have a full base of support from your legs and feet, while the victim is sitting in an enclosed space, trapped further by a seatbelt, and can’t do much but try and get the arms off the throat, which would be WAY more difficult with the perp outside the car.

I didn't know the daycare was 5 blocks away from Hae's house.

That changes everything.

Susan Simpson (!) once said the killer could not have taken the body straight to Leakin Park, but must have stored the carbody in a secluded area, most likely a garage, which is problematic for any teenage suspects: they are not home owners and could not easily explain the foreign car to a parent. I agree with Susan and hereby submit: Hae Lee was in her own garage before her burial. Either that, or the car was moved to the family-owned body shop.

The reason we missed the mother as the obvious perpetrator is that, from our biased cultural point of view, we create a veil of innocence around a middle-aged Korean woman who can’t speak our language very well. Remove the veil. Take a naked peek at the Lee family. What do you find? You find a destructive family unit. You find the absence of a stable, two parent structure. You find a Korean immigrant struggling with her daughter’s blooming Americanization. You find a daughter living a lifestyle which the mother cannot comprehend, mostly pertaining to her sex life and drug use. You find a number of conflicts. You also find the ghost of Sue Wang.

R15 Try the decaf. And your Reddit link -- um, he's a little schizo.

Not looking at Mom,but i will consider whoever molested Hae...was it the Uncle?(An family knew and covered it up)

Jay ran to California...isn't that where Hae was going to run away.Ha,was Jay involved with Hae romantically.

Poor Rabia,social media has suggested some really foul things.I do not think she is in love with Adnan.

R20, he's tedious and trying to make his post seem like satire but many a truth is told in jest.

The mother killing Hae is not as ludicrous as it may seem

I guess I wonder how one can "accidentally" strangle someone to death. Like if it were her mother, how does that happen? Unless you are intending to kill the person you'd stop before they died, wouldn't you?

And I think Hae, being an athlete, would have been able to fight her mother off, but who knows?

I guess my question would be, if someone in her family did kill Hae, why would they then call the police immediately after it happened?

And if the mother killed Hae, who transported and buried the body? Was nobody watching her family's movements? How does her car figure in?

Hae was physically stronger but what decent person would pummel and hit their own mother?

The mother wanted to punish her for breaking curfew again. An argument erupts. Hae's mom hits Hae in the head with an object. Hae continues to talk shit (rather than hit her mom). Mother chokes her to get her to stop talking. Hae finally hits her mom. Mother gets furious and strangles her to death.

The diamond impression on Hae's collarbone and the female DNA found indicates her killer may have been a woman

The mother moved back to Korea after the trial

[quote]Hae was physically stronger but what decent person would pummel and hit their own mother?

Any number of teenage girls, especially those being strangled by their mother.

[quote]The night before, Hae was breaking curfew to hang out with Don.

This is what I find interesting. She broke curfew the night before, I assume she probably broke curfew before. Did Hae's family ever call the police and say she was missing any of those times?

If not, why would they call this time, when she'd only been missing about 15 minutes?

And again, if they were involved, why would they call so close to the crime being committed?

R27, well, I hate to bring race or culture into it, but I'm sure insubordination is tolerated less by Asian parents than American parents.

Hae was getting too big for her own britches I suppose- breaking curfew, dating an older man, and threatening to run away to her dad in California. Ms. Lee had enough and snapped because her daughter was insisting on spending another school night with Don and throwing a fit over being grounded or fordidden from seeing Don.

Sure, R29. I can see that as all happening, however, what doesn't make sense to me is why they would call the police so quickly. It would seem to me they'd want to wait to do that.

Also, was it her dad in California or was it one of her mom's former boyfriends in CA?

R3O On this reddit thread, a poster that Hae's brother said the man in California wasn't Hae's father. The man had been engaged to Hae's mother years before.

Somewhere in the thread, a poster said that Hae did live in California at one point. I don't know if that's true.

Did Hae's family know she wanted to go to California?

If Hae was telling her friends, I would think she probably also told her family, by threatening, etc.

In the moments when her family thought she was missing, and before calling the Police, did they call whoever it was Hae wanted to move with in California to see if they knew anything?

And if the family was involved in her murder and they knew she wanted to run away, why call the police? Wouldn't they just pretend that she must have run away?

Hae's uncle apparently hired a private detective firm called the Enehey Group right after Hae disappeared.

This group interviewed Don and some of Hae's friends before closing in on Adnan calling him a domineering Muslim male. The group had frequent correspondence and shared notes with Baltimore PD detective O'Shea. The group wrote a report called "Islamic Thought and Culture" for the Baltimore PD.

Is that normal for a family to hire a private investigator firm?

Why would the police believe the findings from a private firm hired by Hae's uncle?

Is he the family member that was molesting Hae as a kid?

The Enehey Group missing persons report indicated that they pulled Haes AOL profile on January 15. That indicates that they were at work on the case as early as 2 days after Haes disappearance.

R34 Families hiring private investigators/firms isn't unheard of. It's happened in other cases of missing or murdered people., In many of those cases the family hires the PIs later on if they don't trust the police or if the police investigation has stalled. There have been shows on Oxygen, ID, and stuff like Dateline and 20/20, where private investigators talk about being hired months or years after murders or disappearances.

However, I do think it's a bit suspicious that Hae's family hired a PI firm so quickly after reporting her missing.

The Enehy Group's report on Islamic thought and culture.

Mandy Johnson, director of Enehy Group, is friends with Hae's uncle.

Who hires a private investigation firm just 2 days after a disappearance?

The director Mandy Johnson says she knew Hae Min because she's friends with the family.

Hiring the Private Investigator doesn't really ring that many alarms for me. I can see a family doing that, especially if the PI is already a friend of the family.

The most suspicious thing about the family is calling the cops at 4 p.m. saying Hae was missing. That just makes no sense whatsoever.

The brother denying Hae had a pager is also weird. He testified Hae used to have a pager but didn't have one at the time of her death.

However, in Hae's note to Don found in her car, she referenced her pager. Her teacher Mrs. Butler and several friends said Hae got a page from home that day and seemed very upset about it.

Hae's friends also said they called her pager constantly after she disappeared.

[quote] Hae got a page from home that day and seemed very upset about it.

What could the page possibly have been that would have gotten her upset? I don't know how pages worked but I thought I read that all you could do was type in your telephone number? It wasn't like text message service, right? I think some paging services allowed you to leave a voicemail?

R42, There isn't any detail. We just know she was upset about a page she got from home. She told Ms. Butler she couldn't make the wrestling match that afternoon due to family stuff.

How could the family call her pager and order her to come home? Her brother said she didn't have a pager at that time.

This is what Inez Butler told police on 2/1/99:

Ms. Butler said she spoke to Hae Lee on 01/13/99. Hae was upset and told Ms. Butler that she was having trouble at home. Hae also said she wanted to contact her father in California.

Ms. Butler said Hae was the manager for the wrestling team. Hae told Ms. Butler that she would not be at the match on 01/13/99.

R43, I know, but what I'm saying is that just a page, shouldn't have upset her. It would have had to be some sort of follow up she had, a phone call home, and subsequent argument?

Also, can Ms. Butler's accounts be trusted? Did she have the right day? Everyone seems to have all their days mixed up.

Originally, it wasn't that Hae couldn't make the wrestling match, it was that she was going to drive herself to the match.

And as was already previously mentioned, there was no Wrestling match that day. Ms. Butler, and the co-Team Manager, both got the day mixed up.

R45, other friends have corroborated Ms. Butler's account. They said Hae got a page around lunch time and was pretty upset about it.

Her friend Krista said she witnessed Adnan asking Hae for a ride that morning. (He didn't have his car. It was with Jay). She initially told him yes then told him later on that something came up after school and she could no longer give him a ride.

It's likely her killer is the person that paged her between 11:10-12:30 that day that led to Hae's upset mood.

Rabia also said in Undisclosed that she believes the killer is someone who paged Hae.

It's like she wanted to say it but is holding back. She knows blaming Hae's family looks really bad

[R46]

So Adnan flipped out because Hae wouldn't give him her car....okay i am dismissing Hae's family as suspect.They would not hire private detectives if they murdered Hae.Sorry Adnan,Don or Jay still prime suspects.An the Rabia love triangle deal....i no longer buy that either.Sleuths do better. Poor Hae,all these evil people were supposed to love and protect her.

I don't think that Adnan flipped out about not being able to get a ride. For one, that doesn't match Jay's testimony that the murder was pre-meditated (not that I believe a word Jay says). And also, from the accounts of Hae's friends, Adnan didn't seem to care that Hae couldn't give him a ride.

I doubt Adnan cared about the ride. He knows Hae had to pick up her little cousin after school.

He was going to get his car back and get picked up by Jay anyway which apparently was their routine.

"Buying a birthday present for Stephanie" my ass.

Jay admitted the Best Buy/mall story was all fake.

Didn't Adnan just want a ride to practice which was on the other side of campus?

Adnan's demeanor when asked about Hae's whereabout say it all for me

"Ask her boyfriend..."...yup,Adnan had issues and how he attempted to make the teacher at the school back off about questioning his relationship. Those are not moves of somebody who is innocent or "over"...a relationship.

Where did Adnan kill Hae? School parking lot? The Best Buy story is now debunked.

Wouldn't Hae just open the car door and run out if Adnan was strangling her?

Hae's car was a small sedan. Adnan had to reach over past the center console, driver level, cup holders, to strangle her. How can one do this in broad daylight without creating a scene?

It still doesn't make sense that if this was pre-meditated he would do it prior to when he knows she had to be some place else. You would think he would wait until after she got off work, etc. When she wouldn't be missed so quickly because apparently her family was the type to call the police immediately if she was missing for more than 10 minutes.

None of Adnan's DNA found on Hae's corpse.

Let's say he used gloves to strangle her. Why would there be a diamond shaped impression on Hae's collarbone/shoulder? Doesn't that imply the killer used their bare hands?

Did they fingerprint her body? Were there no fingerprints around her neck?

R57, No Adnan fingerprints on her body or around her neck. No Adnan DNA underneath her fingernails or fingerprints on Hae's steering wheel, rearview mirror, or trunk of car.

The only Adnan fingerprint was on the front of a map book in the backseat that had floral paper on top. Adnan says he gave Hae flowers a few weeks back. Prosecution said Adnan ripped out the page on the map book page showing Leakin Park. Adnan denies this. This ripped up page was never recovered and never tested for Adnan DNA.

DNA from an unknown female also was found

Did they test the mother's DNA? I'm not very smart about these things, but would it have been possible to get a match?

I know the mother ran away to Korea soon afterward, but you'd think they'd test all the major females not only in the case but in Hae's life too (friends, parents, teachers).

They never tested the mother. Everyone's assuming a man killed Hae but a diamond shaped impression, a strike in the head with an object, and manual strangulation sounds very female to me.

[quote]None of Adnan's DNA found on Hae's corpse.

Yes, but the question was did they find any fingerprints on Hae's body at all?

If they found fingerprints on Hae's neck and they weren't Adnan's then they had a responsibility to find out who those fingerprints belonged to.

R62, They only tested for Adnan Syed and Jay Wilds' DNA or fingerprints. Adnan didn't even want to do it (he says because he often had sex in Hae's car and knew he might have DNA in there). The prosecution requested this forensic investigation, and the results actually help Adnan's case.

DNA results show Jay and Adnan’s DNA were not found in the car or on Hae's body but an unidentified woman’s DNA was found on a rope next to Hae’s body

That seems ridiculous that they would have only checked Hae's body for the fingerprints of Adnan or Jay. She was strangled. You find ANY fingerprints on the body, especially around the neck, you test them.

Maryland has stringent laws regarding genetic privacy so it would be hard to do a true forensic investigation.

They already had Jay and Adnan's fingerprints because they were arrested.

Again though, so say they found fingerprints around Hae's neck.... we only have Jay's and Adnan's prints and they don't match... but, too bad! Guess these other prints around her neck where she died of strangulation don't matter!

R67, it will be difficult to test anyone else because of Maryland law.

So interesting that three people connected to Hae ran off after the trial ended : Don, Hae's mom, and Jay.

The man in California also isn't Hae's biological dad. Her dad lived in Korea and never came to the US

The man in Cali was a former stepdad figure/man her mom was engaged to. Hae and her brother lived in California briefly with this man in 1997 before moving back to Baltimore.

The family seemed to move alot

Her uncle hiring a private detective firm run by a close friend still seems strange to me. The private detective firm was running a parallel investigation to the ones the cops were running and BPD relied on Enehey Group's findings for intel.

I understand why they'd be concerned with Hae's chat room contacts because adductions due to online chat rooms was a big thing in the AOL days but why did the family withhold Hae's pager information? Hae's brother was lying. She did have a pager the day she went missing. She even says it in the note she planned to give Don: "I promise to page you as soon as I get home, ok. Till then, take care and drive safely"

What we can deduce from this is she was planning to see Don briefly "promise I couldn't stay".

She likely didn't make it to see Don because this note was still with her.

That means either Adnan or someone else killed her. I wish she referenced where she would meet Don. It doesn't seem like he really was at work that day. I wish she gave a specific. This fucking case

Is it possible Don was going to drive with her to California that day? A 'running away from home' situation?

I don't think this supports or disproves any of the other theories by the way (Adnan, Jay, Hae's mother, Don), just considering that it might have been a possibility considering how much she repeatedly said she wanted to go out there.

She was definitely going to meet with Don that day, and it seemed more than just a 'regular' meeting for whatever reason. She'd had the huge fight with mom the night before after being with Don all night. He was 100% not at work that day, despite his moms lying for him.

All the school gossip about her being pregnant and wanting to go get an abortion or whatever just feeds into that as well.

[quote]She even says it in the note she planned to give Don: "I promise to page you as soon as I get home, ok. Till then, take care and drive safely"

That doesn't prov that Hae had a pager, it only says that Don had one.

*prove

R71, school gossip she was pregnant? The "Hae's pregnant and needs an abortion" note wasn't factual , it was an inside joke with Adnan and Hae's friend based on Hae's overdramatic writing style.

MD to California is a long way to go. Don was only dating her for two weeks-doubt he'd care to offer to drive her to California. He never even picked her up from school or wrestling matches. Hae was always driving out to see him. If Don had any motive at all, it's probably that she was too close with Adnan. Don was cheated on by two of his former girlfriends and was bummed about that.

Also, the note at R70 was not written the day of Hae's murder. It was written on a different day and Hae ended up seeing Don that day and not needing to give him the note.

It was determined that it was a different day because Woodlawn did not play that school on the day of Hae's murder. It turns out that there was no Wrestling match on the day Hae went missing.

R75, no. The wrestling match was at Randallstown High and that was on 1/13. She also referenced a taped interview she was featured in and that was also 1/13.

R76, no, they talked about that extensively. The team had played Randallstown the week or so prior. It would not make sense for them to play the same team again on 1/13. Further, newspapers showed that Randallstown had a Basketball game that day and it was unlikely that they could host both a Basketball Game and a Wrestling match on the same day (most schools do not have two gyms).

Further, the idea that there was a Wrestling Match that day never made any sense. Hae was schedule to work at Lens Crafters the day she died, at 6 p.m.

Re: The taped interview, no one has been able to verify that the she filmed that interview on 1/13. It aired on 1/13, but those segments were often filmed days in advance. They were not able to determine if Hae's interview was filmed on 1/13 or if they filmed it some other day.

Some other reasons that it's not likely Hae was filming that interview the day she died and that there wasn't a wrestling match that day either:

1) Don told Police that the night before Hae kept talking about wanting to ditch school the next day. She supposedly wanted him to write her a note so that it would be an excused absence or something. I don't think she would have ditched on the day she was going to be interviewed or on a day that she would have needed to score the wrestling match. (And yes, I realize that Don could have been lying).

2) Woodlawn had a wrestling match the day before Hae died. It's not likely that they would have another match the following day.

All this brain power - thousands of people have been working on one case - and nothing can overturn the verdict. Jeeze.

Don's statement about Hae wanting to ditch school the next day is something else that doesn't make sense to me.

Why did she need him to excuse her from school? She was 18, wasn't she? She could excuse herself.

Many schools still need parental consent, regardless of being 18.

Part of the high school rules in certain states and countries legally require them to have parental permission, ESPECIALLY regarding situations where the student will be leaving school grounds (to absolve themselves of responsibility in many cases, and to follow their education board safety codes).

Another reason this doesn't change in many cases for 18 year old students is simply because there is one set of regulations that applies to every school student. So even as legal adults in and out of school, whilst they're under the custodianship of the school they still have to abide by the same rules.

R80, I don't think school works like that. Especially if you're a generally good student, you can't just ditch anytime when you turn 18 without your parents hearing.

I agree R79. I can't think of another case with this many civilians doing all the ground work for the prosecution, for the Maryland police department, for the defence.

The incompetence of everyone involved has been on full display, from Adnan to Hae's mother, from Don to Jay, from the police to the school and even the court system.

I know this is not how the law works (for good reason), but at this point it almost seems less embarrassing to just admit fault and start all over again with the investigation.

Not true R82. I graduated in the 90s and the minute I turned 18, I was allowed to excise my own absences. You're 18 and considered an adult. Works the same way today.

Adnan did it.

OJ didn't kill Nicole.

Yeah, the jury that was given false testimony fed to the witness by the Detectives investigating.

Let's just keep forgetting that bit.

The Baltimore School system does allow students 18 and over to excuse their own absences.

Randallstown High was only 5 minutes away from Owings Mill LensCrafters where Hae worked.

A wrestling match is only 1-1.5 hours. The bus for the wrestling matches left around 3:30. A match could've started at 4 and ended at 5:15 or 5:30 giving Hae time to go to work at 6 at LensCrafters.

R85, jurors who heard the entire case were misled by a lying witness (who made a snarky reference to lightning striking while he was on the stand ), a corrupt police department caught coercing witnesses and evidence planting before, and a 2:36 death outside Best Buy that all witnesses say are impossible because both Hae and Adnan were seen around 3pm at school. Lividity evidence also show it was impossible for Hae to be buried at 7pm like the state claims. She likely was buried around 10pm-midnight after 8 hours of rigor mortis and laying face down somewhere

And again, there was no match with Randallstown that day, nor was there a wrestling match at all scheduled for the day that Hae was killed.

Woodlawn had a match against Randallstown the week prior.

Woodlawn had a wrestling match with another school the day before Hae's death. They would not have had a match the following day.

Another reason that Woodlawn could not have had a match against Randallstown on the day of Hae's death:

[quote]Randallstown’s wrestling team had played a match against Carver A&T that day instead:

R92, so the letter was addressed to Don and she just never handed it to him on the 5th.

I stand corrected. However, I'm still not over Hae's brother denying Hae had a pager at time of death yet Hae's friends saying they paged her like crazy in the days after she disappeared. Did her family just not know she had a pager?

It is believed that she wrote that note to Don on 1/5 but then ended up seeing him and didn't have to give him the note.

I'm not sure if the Pager thing sounds sketchy to me. It could very well be that Hae didn't want her family to know she had (or still had) the pager.

I am curious though about what upsetting page she could have gotten that day.

[R94]

Probaly the pregnancy rumor spread by Adnan as a joke

He was still fucking with her...angry she had moved on

It turns out that Hae was supposed to pick up her cousin at 3:15 p.m. not 3:30 p.m. I'm not sure if that makes it any more reasonable for her family to have called the police at 4:00 p.m.

I binged listened to Serial back in 2015 and that stopped following the case later on. It got back into following it when the HBO doc series came out. After reading new theories here and other places, I think Hae's family is very suspicious.

Detective Massey says in the HBO doc that the Asian male that left him an anonymous call was "probably Korean".

Hae kept her personal life and her home life very separate; her school friends, for example, do not recall being invited to socialise at her house.

Viewers also learned that she had confided in both Adnan and close friend Debbie about being sexually abused at some point in her past.

Adnan explained that "sometimes she would get upset" when recalling her time back in Korea, and that there was one instance where she started "weeping" as she told him about this experience.

"She was young girl" when it happened, Adnan said.

While this is not presented as having any baring on what happened to her in 1999, it does help build a picture of who Hae was.

The official line has long been that the Baltimore police department narrowed their attention to Adnan Syed because they received an anonymous tip-off.

It was at this point, it is claimed, that Hae's former boyfriend was treated as a main suspect.

In The Case Against Adnan Syed we hear from Detective Darryl Massey, who is the one who received the phone call. It was documented in the police report that this call came from an "Asian male" which, it goes without saying, is a broad description.

In the docu-series, however, Massey elaborates on this by stating that the caller was "probably Korean."

The lividity Jay Wilds was the main witness for the prosecution. He alleged that Syed had told him he had murdered his former girlfriend Hae Min Lee. Jay also claimed that he had assisted Syed with burying the body in Leakin Park, after showing him the corpse in the back of Hae's car.

In The Case Against Adnan Syed, Rabia Chaudry argued that the description Jay gave of the body wouldn't have been consistent with the lividity evidence.

"Lividity is when blood pools to the lowest portion of a body after somebody dies. So if somebody dies and they're on their side for long enough, all of the blood will pool to that place. It will leave a dark purple blue-ish tint," she explained.

"Hae's lividity was symmetrical and fully frontal" which suggests that she was "lying flat on her face somewhere before she was moved to Linkin Park", Rabia added.

The post mortem examination report was featured in the documentary detailing this.

In the crime scene photograph of Hae's body, she was not laid out flat. Her position from the photo mirrored the description given by Jay.

The lividity evidence also undermines the state's timeline when it comes to when the Linkin Park burial occurred.

"I believe that she had to be in a place between eight to 12 hours," a forensic pathologist told the documentary's private investigators, citing a mark on Hae's collar bone that could have been caused by something of that shape pushing on her.

I was reading a comment on another site and someone brought this up:

Is it possible that Hae didn't even die on 1/13? We know she was missing at 3:15 p.m. but how do we know she wasn't killed a day or so later?

R102, it's likely but doubtful she was kidnapped or held hostage. No robbery, no rape, no carjacking.

Did her family ever report her car stolen or did they just report that she was missing?

Another reason the prosecution's case was so ridiculous: Adnan kills Hae in her car in broad daylight (at Best Buy was the original claim) and hides her body in the trunk.

Don't you have to get out of the car to open and put something in the trunk? So Adnan walked outside in a public parking lot full of people carrying a dead body and struggling to stuff Hae's 5'8 body into the car trunk.

After leaving her body in the trunk, he goes to smoke weed at a friend's house because that's exactly what you do before you need to drive carefully, dig a grave, and bury a dead body in the woods at 7pm.

R104 I personally find it strange that Adnan supposedly pre-meditated the murder and would do it at a time where he knew people would immediately notice and look for her. If he was going to plan it, I figure he would do it at some point in the evening, when nobody would question her being gone (like after work).

To the point about the Best Buy parking lot, supposedly he did it in a parking lot off to the side, where nobody ever parked. It was apparently remote enough that he and Hae used to have sex there in broad daylight. However, we also now know that this was just another one of the lies that Jay told, as coerced by the police.

So where was Hae killed and at what time?

Also wouldn't Hae just try and exit the car or scream for help during this struggle? The hit/blow to the head came before the strangulation. There are 4 doors she could've scurried out from if a batshit person just hit her in the head . Hae was an athlete. She played tennis and lacrosse. She had the instincts to be able to make a reasonable escape if her attacker had no weapon. The logistics just don't add up to a car death.

Her injuries and lividity records show Hae likely died and laid in an open space not inside the confined space of a car.

I really want to know whether the 6 year old cousin went straight home that afternoon or was she taken to her dad's shop.

Are there any reports on what force the blow was to Hae's head? That is, is there any way to indicate if it was strong enough to completely knock Hae out first, before she was strangled?

So the man in Cali was not her father....?Wow makes me wonder what kind of parental figures were in that home Hae lived in?Did her mom know about the molestation and sweep it under a rug? If so was molestor close to Mom.?In what capacity? Why wouldn't Baltimore police examine that angle?

Is it possible Hae found out her little cousin was being molested and the uncle or brother killed Hae to silence her?

The family is hiding alot of secrets. Why did Hae's family move around a lot? How many boyfriends/fiancees did her mom even have?

How did her uncle have the money and connections to afford a private detective firm 2 days after Hae's disappearance. Why did they report an Islamic honor killing report for the police investigation? This sounds suspicious considering the alleged anonymous phone call to the cops came from an Asian male that Detective Massey says probably was Korean.

Did the family just close up shop, sell their business and house, and just high tail it back to South Korea after the trial?

[R110]

Oh Really....thats crazy

R110 pretty much.

Which is why it's ridiculous they haven't been looked into more. Even if not as suspects, just to paint a better picture of Hae.

It's insane to me that the police didn't even think for a second to investigate the anonymous Korean phone caller who tipped them off to Adnan. That it didn't ring any alarm bells. Instead following the advice of this random, anonymous caller and trying to pin fake evidence on Adnan.

[quote]So the man in Cali was not her father....?Wow makes me wonder what kind of parental figures were in that home Hae lived in?Did her mom know about the molestation and sweep it under a rug? If so was molestor close to Mom.?In what capacity? Why wouldn't Baltimore police examine that angle?

I wonder more about the man in California. My theory was that he might be a good father figure to Hae and she may really appreciated that and maybe she wished he was her real father. She could have developed some belief in her head that he was her father and would tell friends and teachers that.

I wouldn't be surprised at all if Hae's mother knew about the molestation and swept it under the rug. Sadly, there have been cases of mothers knowing about boyfriends, husbands, uncles or others in the family molesting their children. They instead chose to sweep things under the rug and protect the abusers instead of the abused children. If Hae's mother was indeed a woman to do something like that, then I wouldn't put it past her or other family members to have been involved in Hae's death and they worked together in the family and with others to cover up what they did and Adnan got framed for it.

Hae referred to the man in California as her dad.

Her brother testified he was not their dad but a man their mother was engaged to that they briefly lived with in California.

At one point, Hae's brother apparently participated in Reddit discussions (with a verified account), re: Serial and his sister's murder. ISomething about that seems really odd to me.

R115, was that really her brother or a troll?

R116 supposedly he was "verified," by the Moderators, I think by supposedly posting correspondence he received from Koenig?

But reading his post on Reddit confuses me. It sounds like someone trying to write in some fashion that would be convincing as Broken English.

But Hae and her brother grew up in the US school system, and Hae didn't speak or write in broken English so I don't know why her brother would.

This was a reddit thread the brother started.

I highly doubt that the police weren't already looking at Adnan as a suspect before they received that anonymous phone call......

R119, No. It was the Enehey Group, and the anonymous caller that was "probably Korean" that gave the BPD the lead on Adnan.

Originally the BPD thought Hae was likely abducted and raped/killed by rogue killer. An Asian girl and an black girl from Woodlawn High Jada Lambert were abducted and raped/killed the year prior. Baltimore in the late 90s was very crime ridden.

There are many red flags that make Hae's family suspicious.

-the young Asian anonymous caller being "probably Korean" according to Detective Massey.

-Hae's brother went to Woodlawn High as well so he knew Adnan was her ex.

-Hae's uncle hiring a private firm ran by a friend 24-48 hours after Hae disappeared. The private firm running a parallel investigation with the cops and writing reports on Islamic honor killings for the prosecution.

-Hae's brother testifying that Hae didn't have pager at the time which runs contrary to witnesses at school who say Hae got an upsetting page during lunch and was anxious.

-Hae's diary entries and pager hidden from the investigation

-Hae's frequent complaints of home life and desire to move to California expressed to many Woodlawn teachers and friends.

-Hae staying past curfew (past midnight) with an older bf Don the night before.

-Hae's family also didn't approve of her dating. She got in trouble for being with Adnan.

It isn't suspicious that neither Don or Adnan called her house phone after she went missing. Hae apparently had a system going so she could talk to her boyfriends at night where she'd call an 1-800 number and wait for her boyfriend to call in so the house phone wouldn't ring. Why would Adnan or Don call her house phone after she disappeared if she would get in trouble for talking to boys on the phone?

Hae's grandmother would often listen in to Hae's phone calls and her brother would read her diary. It was to the point that Hae started keeping a floppy disk/recorded diary so nobody could intrude or pry into her business.

Her family was just as strict and overbearing as Adnan. Maybe they honor killed her for disobedience!

It's pretty clear what happened after reading these threads.

Adnan still loved Hae. He was jealous of Don, who Hae had fallen for big time. Hae's mother also didn't like Don, because Hae had lost her head over her new boyfriend. Adnan and Hae's mother were going to arrange for Hae to disappear, and set up Don as the guilty party. They spent hours together planning the set up, and were keeping Hae tied up in a secure location. Things took a crazy turn when the cops decided to pull Jay in as a witness and focus on Adnan (instead of Don) as the reason for Hae's disappearance.. Adnan and Hae's mother decided it would be best to release Hae, but before they could she turned up dead. Jealous of Adnan's infatuation with the girl, Rabia killed her and dumped the body in the park.

Did anyone mention Bilal, the acquaintance of Adnan from the mosque, that was a state's witness in the trial?

He was charged with child molestation. He was caught with a 14 year old boy in his van with no pants on and recently charged with sexually assaulting patients. He was a dentist or anesthesiologist or something. Apparently he was the one who paid for Adnan's cell phone!

Was Adnan molested by this older man?

Why was he close enough to teenage Adnan to buy him a phone?

[quote]It isn't suspicious that neither Don or Adnan called her house phone after she went missing.

This is the part that I actually don't find suspicious at all. I was under the assumption that when people spoke about not calling Hae, they meant her pager, not her home phone number.

If they both knew Hae was missing, I don't see why anyone would bother trying to reach Hae at home. You would figure if she turned up, she'd end up calling you or you'd hear about it.

If they found female DNA on Hae and it was her mother's, they'd see a match between that DNA and Hae's.

I haven’t seen anything in the record that confirmed whether there was any sexual relationship between Adnan and Bilal. I’ve wondered if this was the case and that Hae might have known. Make no mistake, there is more than enough in the scorned ex motive, but if there was something between Adnan and Bilal and Hae knew and threatened to tell others if Adnan didn’t leave her alone...fuhgeddaboudit.

Sarah didn't talk about Bilal all that much ... just a mention here and there. Rabia and Undisclosed have talked about him a lot more. There has been even more written about him in posts and comments here on Reddit among the two major subreddits covering the case.

Bilal was Adnan's youth leader at the mosque; but the friendship seems to have gone beyond that. I'm not going to speculate about things we don't know ... but the facts are that Bilal did favors for Adnan. Bilal purchased the cell phone that plays a major role in this case. By purchase, I mean that the AT&T account was in Bilal's name. Adnan (using the name Adrian Syedd) was listed as the user ... but the bill and responsibility for the account was in Bilal's name.

Bilal was the first person Adnan called from jail after his arrest. Bilal scurried to procure the services of Flohr and Colbert as the first attorneys to represent Adnan. Bilal visited Adnan a number of times in jail ... sometimes accompanied by his fourteen-year-old refugee boy toy. Bilal carried a picture of Adnan in his wallet.

Bilal (and Rabia's brother, Saad) were subpoenaed to testify before the grand jury. Both of them secured the services of a highly paid defense attorney to represent them during the grand jury proceedings. This was Cristina Gutierrez, who later represented Adnan at his two trials. During the grand jury proceeding, Ms Gutierrez was not allowed in the courtroom ... but sat in the hallway. After each question, Bilal went out into the hallway to consult with Cristina. For many questions, she advised him to invoke the Fifth Amendment.

Neither Bilal nor Saad testified at the trials. It is alleged by Rabia and Co. that this was because the police arrested Bilal in relation to the formerly mentioned fourteen-year-old boy toy ... but agreed not to prosecute if Bilal would leave the country ... which IIRC, he did. But there is no evidence that this had anything to do with not testifying at Adnan's trials. Bilal was married (with children) at the time. Leaving the country likely had way more to do with Bilal's wife seeking a divorce from him and other embarrassment at the mosque. It may be worth noting that Bilal also left the country after his most recent troubles began to allow time for things to blow over, I guess. Unfortunately for Bilal, the winds were not blowing his way this time.

Neither Bilal nor Saad testified at the trials. It is alleged by Rabia and Co. that this was because the police arrested Bilal in relation to the formerly mentioned fourteen-year-old boy toy ... but agreed not to prosecute if Bilal would leave the country ... which IIRC, he did. But there is no evidence that this had anything to do with not testifying at Adnan's trials. Bilal was married (with children) at the time. Leaving the country likely had way more to do with Bilal's wife seeking a divorce from him and other embarrassment at the mosque. It may be worth noting that Bilal also left the country after his most recent troubles began to allow time for things to blow over, I guess. Unfortunately for Bilal, the winds were not blowing his way this time.

Lots of sex abuse happens in fundamentalist religious groups so I am not surprised.

So the police let child molester Bilal off the hook if he agreed to refuse to testify for Adnan.

R127, Face just spitting out purses

Even if they wanted to (and I would), can they actually bring Hae's mother back from Korea for questioning etc? Like if the case is re-opened? She's been there for two decades.

And just how are they going to get Hae's mom to come back?

Amazing, re: Bilal... there is literally not a single person involved or even involved remotely who isn't shady as fuck. You literally can't write this stuff.

Just some things to think about.

When you paged someone you did it from a phone not a pager so saying you are going to page someone is not proof of having a pager.

You could leave brief voice messages on pagers as well as there were pager codes. Quick ways to leave a message such as 911 meant call home now.I

Just a few things that seem to be lost with time I noticed while reading.

R133 I think someone upthread already mentioned the thing about paging someone and not needing a pager.

Also, leaving a VM on pagers was only if you subscribed to that service.

People were also adept at leaving numeric alpha codes for each other such as:

07734 for hello

1134 2 09 for Go 2 Hell

According to classmates and friends, Hae did have a pager at the time.

It's hard to believe a teenage girl who worked and had her own car didn't have a pager.

Either the family just didn't know or they are denying she had one because theyre hiding something

Hae had a bank account and Rabbia posted the bank records on her podcast site and there is a reddit thread about the records. The bank records didn't show charges for a pager service. The serial reddit has a thread about it and it's mentioend that Hae didn't deposit her last two paychecks before her death. I kind of wonder if she had some bank account that people didn't know about and was paying for the pager service out of that account.

Why was Bilal paying for Adnan's cell phone?

Yusef, Adnan's younger brother, said Bilal was obsessed with Adnan. He even carried a tiny picture of Adnan in his wallet. Wtf?

Bilal was likely in love with Adnan and the paying for the cell phone may have been part of a grooming process. If you read up on cases of men sexually abusing boys, there's often stories of the men buying things for the boys to keep them around. Bilal probably knew how strict Adnan's parents were and he probably presented himself as a cool older friend willing to pay for a cell phone for Adnan and he probably gave him other things as well.

R138, well we can't put nothing past a guy that sexually abused Kosovo refugee kids using the mosque as a cover, and performed oral sex on sedated male patients.

"In Chapter 8 of the Book Adnan's Story by Rabia Chaudry there is a letter in the book written by Adnan to Sarah Koenig. In that letter Adnan says ""She went to basketball camps, me and my buddies had got some fake I.D.'s. So we started going to some clubs, where I was meeting other girls."

Now jump to chapter 12 and Rabia Is kind of breaking down who Ahmed Bilal is. In that chapter Rabia is retelling stories from a young man from the community named Rashad, he says "Ahmed would help underage kids get fake I.D.'s, take them to bars and strip clubs, and then threaten to tell their parents if they didn't do as he said"

Why was he so involved with Adnan? He was the first person Adnan called after he was arrested and released and why was he paying for his cell phone .

He apparently would book hotel rooms in his name so Adnan and Hae could go there and have sex.

Yusuf, Adnan's younger brother, said on Reddit that Bilal was a creep and child molester and Adnan told him to stay away from Bilal.

It seems Jay may have been talking about Bilal when he referenced the anonymous caller being "Mr B"

Baltimore PD report saying Hae's uncle obtained the services of his friend Mandy Johnson's Enehey Group.

The notes from Stephanie's police interview confirm that she went with Jay and Adnan to a party in Randallstown on the night of Friday 1/15/1999. She said Adnan wasn't acting strange or different from any other day.

It's well-known that this was Krista's 18th birthday party. Krista is in a "Serial" Facebook group, someone asked her about it, and she confirmed: The "party in Randallstown" was her 18th birthday party, and that Jay, Adnan and Stephanie showed up together.

Hae's home address was 7300 Rockridge Road.

Only a 3 minute drive from Campfield Early Learning Center, her cousin's school

10 minute drive from Woodlawn HS to Campfield.

This makes the state's theory that Hae left the school at 2:17 right after 2:15 dismissal and died by 2:36pm in the mall parking lot even sketchier. Campfield's dismissal time was 3:15. There was no reason for her to leave school at 2:17. She had almost a whole hour to herself.

The prosecution got the Best Buy story because they got intel that Adnan and Hae would often go the Best Buy parking lot after school to have sex.

Baltimore Sun article from Feb 1999 said Hae was last seen at school around 3pm.

State says she left school at 2:15 and died by 2:36 at mall

Hae's brother testified his sister had to pick up the cousin by 3pm.

The state intentionally bumped up the Campfield dismissal time from 3:15 to 3 to make their timeline make sense

That Bilal guy probably molested Adnan

Something doesn't add up.

According to the timeline the cops spoke to Jen Pustari first and then spoke to Jay.

Jen's testimony to Police was that he told her it happened at Best Buy.

Jay later admits that he didn't come up with the Best Buy location until the Police told him to say that.

So how did Jen come up with Best Buy in her statement to police if they didn't talk to Jay until AFTER they spoke to her?

All the lawyers I know think Adnan did it. All the non-lawyers think he didn't. Is this a case where lawyers have been trained not to think?

R148 But do they think there was enough evidence that he deserved to be prosecuted? And if they think he did it, what evidence do they have to say that he did it?

I only have two lawyer friends, but both think it's ridiculous he was convicted based on (a) the lack of evidence, and (b) the shoddy other circumstances such as the [proven] corrupt police, the two people who lied for Don to have an alibi, the changing story of Jay/Jen, and the unconvincing response from the Min Lee family.

I don't think they have enough to say any one person did it, but they certainly don't have enough to say he DID do it.

Agree, with you R149. R148 must not know a lot of lawyers. I know plenty of Attorney's who think he didn't do it, and I know plenty who think he did, however they all agree that there was not enough evidence, or that after all that has come out, there is enough to grant him a new trial.

He gonna die in the clink.

So many sheisty characters everywhere in this case