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keeping the lights on onward and upward cheers mates all right everybody gather around grab a chair grab a beer let's
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talk some true crime [Music] [Applause] [Music] you [Music] [Applause] yeah and there's some there's some
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interaction and maybe I do need to go back and re-listen to cereal because there's there's the weird interaction
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when they're uh when they're in court together where Adnan says something to Jay he calls him pathetic yeah I thought
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that was to me that was a little telling right when I'm sitting there in in my my
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uh armchair sleuth action right in the armchair right and I'm trying to sleuth this thing out
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I've already come to the conclusion based off every everything I've reviewed to that point that that it's one of
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three scenarios Adnan J or Adnan and J and that that little interaction to me I thought was rather telling
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I thought it it tipped the scales a little bit for me to to believe that it was Adnan
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um and and you know look Jay is not he's certainly not trustworthy uh so you always have that in the back of your
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mind but in in some weird way Adnan doing it is Jay's alibi but that that little that little exchange
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right there one I thought was a little telling it tipped the scales toward Adnan for me
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and then there was something which I can't recall at the moment to do with gloves that you know that they some
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statement given about gloves that I I felt that it was a statement that Jay gave and that that
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it had stuck and it carried so much weight with me that I do need to I believe that I need to go back and
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review that for for me the timeline one spot that I thought was incredibly interesting was
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this Anonymous phone call that comes in shortly after Heyman Lee's body is discovered in
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Lincoln Park and so her body's discovered on February 9th and of course there's there's some
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period of time that goes by before before the body is identified but on February 12th the Baltimore City Police
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Homicide division received a an anonymous phone call suggesting that the investigators should
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focus on Adnan now one do I have that right and two could you guys expand on that a little bit for
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The Listener yeah um give me a moment I'm actually trying to pull up the actual timeline to make
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sure that's right but so we talked about a little bit earlier that you know they focused on adding on from
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the beginning and this was all about railroading him and this sort of idea about this case and that's what you hear
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from some people and it seems like it's actually pretty clear that they didn't really focus on
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addon until this phone call you're talking about and there was this and I and I got to tell you it is one of those
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it is one of those you gotta be careful with rabbit holes in this case because if you let yourself get sucked
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down into rabbit holes you'll be lost forever and this is one of those that I would love to know who called
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right it's February 12th is when that call comes in the same day by the way that Baltimore has 15 police officers
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who spend the entire day canvassing Baltimore looking for that car you know they're looking for that car trying to
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find what they think is going to be a vehicle that's going to have a lot of evidence in it
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so this phone call comes into them on February 12th it's a few days after Hayes body has been found and yeah it's
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an anonymous caller the officer describes them as an Asian male in his notes when they testify about it trial
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he actually says he he meant Indian which is interesting because I think when you most people want to hear Asian
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they're thinking more sort of Japanese Chinese something along those lines Indian is closer to Pakistani which is
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adnons racial background and it makes you wonder is this someone who knows Adnan is it someone from the mosque is
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it someone that he might have been friends with a lot of people have spent a lot of time trying to figure out
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exactly who that is one thing they absolutely knew was this Yasser Ali guy they say you need to talk to him because
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he's going to be able to tell you and the police actually I think they meet him at a at a Pizza Hut or something to
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talk through with it and yasser's like yeah you know it was we talked about that he said if he ever you know killed
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a girlfriend he would drive her car into a lake or something like that which is such a strange the whole the whole
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interaction is strange the fact of the anonymous call the fact the anonymous caller then calls back so he calls says
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that you know Adnan and hay had had sex in Lincoln Park in the past which I kind
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of doubt because but maybe it is I don't know I don't wanna I don't want to speak for what
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goes on in Lincoln Park um and he says the thing about driving the car into the lake and then he calls
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back and says you should talk to Yasser Ali and when they talk to Yasser yasha's
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like kind of had a conversation like that but not exactly so whoever it was kind of new enough to be dangerous but
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maybe didn't know a lot and like I said it's a rabbit hole you can go down but I
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don't think you're going to find any answers to it but new enough to send police in the right direction of talking
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to somebody that that does say yes we had some kind of bizarre conversation at one point in our
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friendship and it sounds like it's it's probably well before the fact that that she's eventually killed but that he says
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something to the effect if I ever killed someone or if I ever killed a girlfriend
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I would dispose of her of the vehicle in this manner and what's interesting about
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it is it really is that is what sets him off an ad on so that happens you know they get this weird phone call that it's
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on the 12th on the 15th they're talking to this guy at the Pizza Hut right the next day they pull Adnan cell phone
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records and it's when they pull itself on records and they start looking at the phone calls and they see a call that
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comes up over and over again and it's Jin pusateri and then they go talk to Jen and Jen says I don't know anything I
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don't know anything and they're like they leave and in their notes if you read the notes they're like spoke to Jen
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pusateri she doesn't have anything to say and then the next day jyn shows up with her lawyer and her mother and tells
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them the story that is going to become the story that we hear over and over and over again
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yeah I've never had a conversation with a friend about killing a girlfriend I have had several conversations about
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killing a co-host the really bizarre part of that too that like that makes you believe
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that that conversation took place one yeah we have Yasser saying that yes that conversation
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happened but let's set that aside for a second it's the added detail of not just
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like oh we're having this bizarre conversation of killing somebody what if but oh by the way this is how I would
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dispose of their vehicle you know it's an added detail that that makes it just ring true
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and if if of course you've got to investigate this guy as soon as you learn this detail I mean it would be
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foreign Ty and it's very possible that you know he was just talking a big game it's very
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possible what I think is really important here is that they didn't know the police didn't know adnan's cell
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phone number or to pull his cell phone records before this interaction and so we're talking about what mid-February at
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this point it's you know this Cuts against the narrative that the police you know knew she was missing and
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immediately zeroed in on Adnan as the main suspect by all accounts they weren't looking at him really with any
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seriousness up until this point otherwise they would have probably found some way to subpoena his records much
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earlier on well and there's a lot of indicators too to suggest that there was not a whole lot of an investigating
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going on until our bodies found it is a concern they're aware that she is air quotes missing she may have gone
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to California or whatever but there does not appear from where I'm sitting to just a lot of evidence that suggests
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that there was any kind of Hardcore investigation going on to find her and then as you guys said earlier it's
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the it's it's the the discovery of her body of her remains that now 180 degrees flips this investigation
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and now the importance of finding her vehicle and I think Baltimore treated this like they treat a lot of stuff you
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know they've got way too many murders to investigate and way too many probably actual abductions to
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investigate to worry about some 18 year old girl who decided to go off you know to California or something I think they
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they really and I don't want to be you know we talk about this so much when police do this
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when the the initial call comes in and they don't take it seriously and then two weeks later three weeks later four
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weeks later you have a murder on your hands and it's really easy to be very critical of the police and say what in
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the world were you guys doing why didn't you look into this from the very beginning but it seems like that's the
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way the Baltimore Police kind of approached it and I think you're right until she until they found her body
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that's when it really starts to ramp up and you see that and you see that with all the searches for the cars sending
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out the police the Bolos requesting a helicopter you know all these efforts to find that car because I think they
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realized if we find the car we might be able to figure this out the car is going
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to be the key and when eventually they would find it when Jay LED them to it well and they're they're hoping to find
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clear evidence of who put that car there they they don't believe that their victim was abducted there they don't
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believe that their victim um was abducted elsewhere you know that they believed that that car is is
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disposed of after the body disposal and they're hoping that what they can find in that vehicle will lead them to
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the killer to the same person that put the body in the park and when they don't get that and then
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there's also the complication of you're going to find evidence inside of that vehicle that will suggest that ad on
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Syed was in that vehicle but of course we would have expected to find we should expect to find evidence that he's been
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in that vehicle at some point um because it's because he was um and on days when she wasn't killed
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um so yeah they're exactly but but what I see too one thing that I that I always
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thought um and one thing I try to point out and I don't know that it's always taken the way that it's supposed to or
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even digested properly is that there is a there is a strong psychology in trying to conceal a body and this is an
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investigation that really highlights that that psychology of of typically the more
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effort that is taken to conceal a body usually means the closer the per the closer connection between Victor victim
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and perpetrator and here in in the reason why is because until there is a body found in most
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cases there is not that level of investigation and here this clearly points all of that out that someone took
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the efforts to to partially bury or or conceal this body to the best of their ability on that day at that night
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and it took four weeks to find her and then what happens immediately once she's found the now we have an actual
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investigation now we have a hardcore investigation so the the closer the perp is to the
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victim the more vested invested they are in the idea of if they never find this person I
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probably don't have anything to worry about yeah that's exactly right we see that unfortunately if the victim has a
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relationship with the perpetrator there is some attempt to cover the body because you know if this is a random
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attack some random passerby let's say her car broke down and you know some near do well happens upon her and they
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decide to kill her why not why stick around and risk getting caught with a dead body it's gonna take time to drag
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her body into the woods even though it's not very far into the woods to you know
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stay there dig a hole to put her body in there probably leaving evidence of you behind
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um if if you didn't know this person because a random attacker is really difficult to find but if you're going to
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take the risk of covering someone up it's likely that you know there could be ties to you especially if you're an
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ex-boyfriend or have any sort of relationship with her there are going to be people who are populated on the
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suspect list by mere by mere relation to her right usually family members or anyone close to the per the two close to
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the victim will be on an initial suspect list who has to be cleared by the police
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and so it makes sense psychology wise to cover up that body and also there's this
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strange psychology even if you are the person who is the perpetrator that it's difficult to look at someone you know
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that you've had a relationship with Miss in this instance a very close relationship a love relationship in fact
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um of seeing that person even if you have very you know hatred feelings toward them to leave them exposed and
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open to the elements when they are dead and so that's a that's a great point to raise here that if it were a random
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attacker it is it's it it would not fit the typical stereotype of the attacker taking their chances and just running as
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opposed to sticking around and maybe getting caught with the body or caught with more evidence what was some of the
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evidence that was found at the body recovery site you know we basically skipped over it because there's so
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little there's either so little or so much depending on how you look at it so they found you know they found things
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like like bullet casings they found which you know sometimes the number of times I've been talking to an officer
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about a shooting and they're like yeah the first thing we have to do is sort out the bullet casings from this
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shooting from the bullet casings that were left over from the last shooting and figure out which ones go with this
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one and which ones go with some other shooting that we didn't investigate so there are things like that there were
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things like discarded whiskey bottles I mean one advantage to taking someone to a place like Lincoln Park is the the
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potential evidence of of who it was isn't necessarily going to stand out from the evidence that's just there
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because it's the kind of place that all kinds of people hang out and do various things and I think you see that when you
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go through sort of the evidence list not a lot of it ended up being all that significant you also have to remember
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that she was she was there for about a month so when you look when you read Jay's statement he talks about for
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instance Adnan throwing up that he's he's throwing up you know around sort of the barrel of the body
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and we had some people ask well did they you know did they find that did they test that it's like it was a month later
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you know there's it's not going to be left so the thing about the case that I think trips a lot of people up
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there's not a lot of physical evidence as you pointed out the fingerprints they're interesting there's some
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interesting fingerprints in this case but it's easy to say Adnan was in her car a lot I'll give you a couple
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examples there is a map book the map book according to people who knew hey stayed
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in her driver's side pocket that's not where the police found it they found in the back seat they found it open it had
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end on fingerprints on it and there was a page torn out of it which was a page included the map of Lincoln Park
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sitting on that MacBook was a rose wrapped in floral paper on that floral paper were adnan's fingerprints
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so those are some fingerprints that are interesting but and and they were they were striking to me and it really stood
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out to me and it painted a picture for me of what I think happened on that day but it's also not unusual that his
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fingerprints would be in the car since he had been in the car many times before well I'm trying to behave myself as as
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much as I can here in the garage today uh Nick should give me an actual cookie for that but
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okay so there's all this evidence that you say points to adnan's guilt then why would the prosecution the prosecution
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the state not the defense team the prosecutors why would they release this killer quote-unquote why would they
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release this killer and give him back his freedom yeah well it's a it's a tangled web
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it it's okay so if you go all the way back to the original trial according to Adnan he wanted to plead guilty in the
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first trial and his attorney according to him went to the prosecution and the prosecution wasn't interested in giving
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him a deal First drawings in a mistrial Adnan wants to plead guilty again once again the prosecution's not interested
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in giving him a deal he goes to trial he's convicted all of his sort of appeals are exhausted Ciro comes along
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brings a ton of attention to this case and he makes it maybe the most famous True Crime case in the world you start
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getting a lot of new money comes in a lot of new lawyers are looking at new things a couple things that come up
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whether or not Christiana Gutierrez who was his attorney was ineffective for not
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following up on Asia McLean who we haven't even talked about but Asia McLean wrote a couple letters that said
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I saw adnan's I had at the library around the time that the prosecution had said hey had already been murdered and
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so the argument was if he's at the library he couldn't kill her the prosecution's theory must be wrong
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therefore he's innocent there's a slight problem with that even the prosecution's
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theory is wrong Asia left the library shortly thereafter so he still could have done it it just
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means not when the prosecution initially said so but anyways you know good argument and there was also an arguing
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about the cell phone data so as we've talked about there are outgoing calls and incoming
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calls everybody agrees the outgoing calls are are good for location there's a huge debate over incoming calls
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Gutierrez never brought that up at trial and so there was an argument that she was ineffective for that she should have
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brought that up and those two issues there's there's much later something called post-conviction review
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which can happen if there's new evidence that comes to light things that you didn't know about before initially the
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the judge who heard the case says yeah you know I think she was ineffective she should have talked to Asia she should
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have questioned this cell phone data more new trial he gets appealed and eventually that ruling gets overturned
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no new trial goes away so at that point Maryland passes a couple laws one of them says that if someone is under 18 at
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the time they commit a murder and they get a life sentence that sentence can be re reconsidered this is a this follows
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along with a lot of Supreme Court precedent that's really questioning whether or not people under the age of
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18 should get life without parole or the death penalty it's the same sort of thing so Maryland passes a law and they
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create like a unit to look at that at the same time the Baltimore Police and like their drug testing unit gets in a
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bunch of trouble I think it's them forgive me if I'm wrong it gets in a lot of trouble and it turns out they were
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doing a really poor job of their drug testing so Maryland passes a law that says hey
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if it's patently clear that somebody you know was innocent or or there was a major corruption in their case you can
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vacate their conviction so they start looking at adnan's case is an example of this under 18 thing like
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are we gonna are we gonna give him sort of an opportunity to be led out of prison because he was under 18. at the
00:23:14
time a woman named Marilyn Mosby is the state attorney for Baltimore she is also at the time under indictment
00:23:20
for some accused obviously innocent until proven guilty accused of some sort of fraud involving covid relief funds I
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don't even really understand it all she loses her reelection and she is getting ready to go to trial and around that
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same time the person who's looking at the case for whether or not he should be released because he was under 18. starts
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advocating for vacating the conviction altogether at some point they decide to do that
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they put together a motion to vacate it and and the whole thing goes Haywire they do they they file the thing they
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call Hayes family and basically tell them hey look we know for 20 years we've been
00:24:00
telling you it was Adnan Syed but now we're going to change our mind and say he's not guilty his case will be vacated
00:24:06
on Monday essentially they ask for a week they say hey can you give us a week so we can get out there
00:24:14
and appear in person and speak to the court about this and about her sister and her daughter right they say no go
00:24:22
ahead well I was just going to say I mean don't they have to say here's the evidence against him but this is why we
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they have to explain away that evidence they have to explain to the to the victims and explain to the public why
00:24:36
we're releasing this quote unquote killer and the victim has a right to speak the victim has a right to appear in
00:24:44
court and speak on behalf of their their relative it's a victims rights act and a
00:24:49
lot of states have them and they're very important but they basically say no we're not
00:24:53
going to let you do that her brother lives in California and instead they send him a zoom link 30 minutes before
00:24:58
the thing starts he reads A prepared statement which if you haven't heard it is just heartbreaking his prepared
00:25:05
statement is heartbreaking he reads it they thank him they release Adnan yeah it's absolutely heartbreaking and it's
00:25:11
very confusing because they also don't explain anything to the victims or to the public correct there's no
00:25:20
evidentiary hearing there's no opportunity to present testimony there's no opportunity for the people who are
00:25:26
accused of misconduct including the prosecutor in the case and one of the detectives to address that they use some
00:25:32
notes the prosecutor wrote which they interpret to mean one thing which he has since said they don't mean that there
00:25:38
are so many irregularities in this that you just don't see happen even in cases that end in exoneration think back to
00:25:44
the Michael Peterson case so the Michael Peterson case he gets convicted Dwayne Devers turns out is just completely
00:25:52
incompetent well they didn't just release Michael Peterson they had an evidentiary hearing
00:25:56
where they had testimony they you know presented their arguments and then the judge said based on the arguments in the
00:26:04
testimony I'm vacating the conviction and I'm releasing Mr Peterson and then later on they entered into a plea you
00:26:10
know in this case none of that happened you're 100 right and they just in really I mean in a
00:26:15
whirlwind they vacate the conviction Marilyn Mosby goes out and declares that Adnan said is
00:26:20
innocent a couple weeks later they get back the DNA results from Hayes shoes that are inconclusive I mean it's the
00:26:26
best thing you can describe them there's an unknown touch DNA honors use it on add-ons and for some
00:26:31
reason that means it wasn't him so they dropped the charges well at that point the brother Young Lee challenges this
00:26:41
goes up to the Maryland court of appeals Maryland court of appeals reverses all of that and says the whole thing was was
00:26:49
improper he didn't give he has an absolute right to appear he didn't give him that right to appear we're reversing
00:26:54
the dismissal of the indictment we're reversing the vacation of the conviction but we're staying that for 60 days if
00:27:02
you want to appeal to the Supreme Court they ask the court of appeals to reconsider they deny it they've appealed
00:27:07
it to the Maryland Supreme Court where the case currently stands as the Maryland Supreme Court has continued
00:27:13
that stay of the action of the of the court of appeals while it gets the briefing and here's the arguments and at
00:27:19
some point the Maryland court of appeals will decide whether or not to agree with
00:27:24
what or excuse me the Maryland Supreme Court will decide whether or not to agree with what the court of appeals
00:27:29
said or to reverse them if they reverse them Adnan will go free and will be free
00:27:35
if they uphold what they did then we'll be back and we'll be back where he's a convicted murderer and they'll have to
00:27:42
decide what to do going forward from that and I'll just say to people out there if you're interested in this case
00:27:47
read the Maryland court of appeals opinion and in particular read the footnotes because the footnotes just
00:27:53
destroy the motion of AK the actual opinion is all about victims rights and how that was violated but then in the
00:28:01
footnotes that's where the action is so read the footnotes and you'll see the all the problems some of which you've
00:28:05
you've laid out with why this was was improper [Music] [Applause] this show is sponsored by betterhelp do
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00:29:35
well it's also I think really irresponsible because if I'm Heyman Lee's brother and I believe that adnan's I had killed
00:29:45
my sister strangled her and they did not give me the evidence to to understand why they're letting a
00:29:58
murderer out you better get security for that guy because I'm coming after him I just think it's very irresponsible not
00:30:10
just believe that this guy killed your sister but being told by the state for 20 years that this
00:30:18
guy killed your sister and then offered no no other explanation as to oh well we've we've changed our minds now
00:30:27
Alice maybe you can help me out with this here what is a Brady violation and was there one in this case sure so Brady
00:30:36
violation comes from the Supreme Court um stating in the case Maryland versus Brady that if the prosecution the
00:30:44
prosecution has to turn over has very stringent Discovery obligations as it should because it's the investigative
00:30:51
body and the the evidence is in its hands it has to turn over all evidence but not just evidence
00:30:58
um that the person they've arrested is um guilty of the crime they also have to turn over any evidence that could
00:31:06
potentially be used by the defense to argue their side of the story so in other words the prosecution doesn't get
00:31:13
to pick and choose what type of evidence gets turned over to the defense they have to turn over everything including
00:31:19
evidence that could be helpful to the defense um and it you know that is a very very
00:31:25
serious obligation in fact most most prosecutors will go above and beyond their Discovery obligations just
00:31:34
so that they don't even come close to any sort of a Brady violation they you know it's not quite open files but they
00:31:41
will go above and beyond their Discovery obligations because what you want to happen in the court of laws you want
00:31:47
Justice to be done you want the proper cross-examination to be done because you want ultimately the truth to come out in
00:31:54
the day you know a lot of people can say that the prosecution all they want to do
00:31:58
is to get another W on the board just win whoever they've arrested they want to make sure that they get them
00:32:04
convicted I mean having having practiced in this field that is the worst I would say most
00:32:12
prosecutors worst nightmare is to be on the side of having um uh be in violation of any sort of
00:32:21
Discovery obligation but even worse putting someone who is innocent of the crime in prison that is truly I mean
00:32:29
wakes me up at night and makes makes me make sure that I go above and beyond all
00:32:34
of my obligations to make sure that I am not a player in that sort of a situation
00:32:40
and so with respect to whether a Brady violation has happened in this case no no a Brady violation has not happened in
00:32:47
this case because remember just because evidence is turned over to the other side there are ultimately strategy calls
00:32:53
for any sort of attorney defense or prosecution as to what your story is going to be out there we've already
00:32:59
talked about the problems with Witnesses who may have credibility issues or even
00:33:04
stories that may not be backed up by the evidence and so when evidence is turned
00:33:09
over to the defense the defense doesn't just wholesale throw everything at the board they have to take into account
00:33:14
what story is going to be believable in general believable to a jury and also what can feed into their their Narrative
00:33:21
of what's going to happen and so if a defense attorney gets information about a case and they ultimately choose as
00:33:29
part of their strategy not to present it as part of the defense that in itself is
00:33:34
not necessarily ineffective assistance of counsel that in and of itself is not necessarily the defense attorney falling
00:33:41
down on the job and shifting to information that could or could not be Brady violation just because a piece of
00:33:50
evidence could look good for the defense doesn't necessarily mean it rises to the
00:33:56
level of a Brady uh of being Brady material you know the the courts have said often times it has to be materially
00:34:05
um uh uh has to materially affect the case because there is always going to be this incredible amount of information
00:34:12
that you can argue should have been in or not but a lot of that information as we've talked about in adnan's case is
00:34:19
going to be ancillary to the actual charges brought here you know an investigative file is you have to draw a
00:34:25
boundaries somewhere otherwise you know the the amount of information that could
00:34:29
come up that could come in is not helpful is duplicative and could also just merely be confusing
00:34:38
um if they have nothing to do with the case here yeah and I think when you think about this not every Discovery
00:34:44
violation is a Brady violation and I think that's what confuses people I think there's this notion that the
00:34:50
prosecution has to give the defense everything well that's not true you don't actually have to give the defense
00:34:54
everything but even if you didn't give them something you should have that doesn't mean it's a Brady violation
00:35:00
you also have to prove that had you given it to them it would have had an effect and usually a pretty big one on
00:35:06
the case and a lot of times if the evidence is overwhelming anyway it won't even matter and I think people miss all
00:35:11
those little nuances and and to me it was wild that the prosecution or the state in this case included possible
00:35:19
Brady violations is is a reason to vacate this conviction and the the Attorney General of Maryland even came
00:35:25
out and said none of this is a Brady violation and it wasn't and honestly and this goes back we
00:35:31
talked about this on we have another podcast called Legal Breeze where we talked about this
00:35:35
this should have been argued in a court of law there should have been argument about this with two
00:35:42
sides debating it and putting on evidence and and putting people on the stand and making them answer for the
00:35:47
things they'd done and that should have been done not only for hay and not only for Adnan but because the justice system
00:35:54
is about the public too and it's about ensuring that the public has faith that whatever you're doing is the right thing
00:35:59
and they did this essentially in the dead of the night behind closed doors without any presentation of evidence and
00:36:05
it bothered us then and when we looked into the case and we realized how strong the case was it bothered us even more
00:36:11
but this is not this is not a case where he might be guilty but his constitutional rights are violated so
00:36:17
egregiously he should be out that did not happen in this case well one thing that I learned is that there's the the
00:36:23
two trials the first trial and the second trial on that at both trials that Adon wanted to plead guilty to me that
00:36:29
seems like somebody wanting to either just make a deal to save themselves or possibly wanting to confess uh because
00:36:37
some people do feel guilty and if he did love her and he did kill her he he might
00:36:42
feel bad about that and want to show remorse for it do you think do you have a thought process on
00:36:48
on if he is guilty on why he never has confessed to the crimes well at this point I I
00:36:55
don't think he can I mean like I said I don't live in adnan's head but at this point
00:37:02
yeah I mean just imagine imagine you were in his circumstances where the entire world is divided over whether
00:37:10
or not you're innocent or guilty you have people who've invested everything improving your innocence
00:37:16
and I and I don't think this is the only case you see this in you know we talk about we talked about the Jeffrey
00:37:22
McDonald case way back when I don't know how you guys I don't remember what you guys said about that
00:37:27
case but I feel like you're on the same page as we are you know Jeffrey McDonald yeah
00:37:30
definitely is guilty Denver McDonald you know he killed his family he's so obviously guilty and yet to this day he
00:37:38
won't admit it and you have people who will make that argument if he just admitted it he could get parole but he
00:37:43
won't admit it that must mean he's innocent and and and like I said I'm not in his mind and I'm not a psychologist
00:37:49
but I think that ignores some pretty strong psychology when you think that's true I think it was much easier for
00:37:55
Adnan when he's you know 18 and being charged with murder and the trial is about to happen to plead guilty at that
00:38:03
point get a you know whatever sentence he would get and move on with his life now
00:38:08
his entire being is wrapped up in being wrongfully convicted well and that's what he wanted that's what he would have
00:38:14
wanted 20 years ago right for a room divided which he didn't get and I mean that's what a defense attorney wants to
00:38:23
get to a room divided because then then they're not convicting your guy and now he has a room divided
00:38:30
and I'm the one that brought up psychology so I kind of circle back around to that too I think there's some
00:38:37
weird psychology about the whole serial presentation as well and I don't think it's intentional on
00:38:45
their behalf I think it's just human nature so you know they're they're journalists they're telling a story but
00:38:52
right out the gate just like they would in a sit-down meeting with with their editor with their boss right out the
00:39:00
gate in cereal they're saying you know why are we doing this story why are we covering this story well we're covering
00:39:06
it because there's someone who tells us that their loved one has been wrongfully
00:39:11
convicted or didn't get a fair trial and he's been in prison all these years for
00:39:16
a murder that he didn't commit that's why we are doing the story and so I think it's human nature when
00:39:24
you're tuning in right out the gate that seed has been planted in your brain and you as you continue to listen and as
00:39:35
you continue to invest your time in listening to this story that seed has already been planted that
00:39:44
well they're doing the story because he's innocent wrongfully convicted and um I'm I'm now continuing to listen and
00:39:53
giving that more weight and credibility on some weird psychology human nature level because that PL that
00:40:00
seed has been planted a long time ago look I think group dynamics happen all the time they happen in courtrooms two
00:40:07
they happen with juries you have 12 people you get into a Jury Room I've never served on a jury I wish I could
00:40:14
but you can imagine if you take that first vote and 11 people say guilty and you're the only one saying innocent you
00:40:20
know maybe you spend the whole time trying to prove everybody else wrong or maybe you start to reconsider you know
00:40:25
why these people that you've spent some time with and gotten to know and all seem like normal rational people think
00:40:31
the person's guilty and there's nothing wrong with that that's actually one of the ways it's supposed to work supposed
00:40:35
to make you question your own sort of preconceived notions but I think when it comes to podcasts
00:40:41
and I think it's important to remember this we try to remember it it's hard to do
00:40:46
there is there is always going to be a strong group dynamic if we all want to be in this together you know we all want
00:40:54
to be cheering for the right side and I think you saw that with cereal it very effectively made you want to cheer
00:41:01
for Adnan and maybe by the end you weren't cheering for him anymore and you'd sort of go on your own way but
00:41:07
very much there weren't that many people who listen to cereal and were like I have no
00:41:11
idea there weren't that many people it was either you've strongly felt like he was guilty or you strongly felt like he
00:41:19
was innocent and Cyril very effectively did that and it's really hard to get out of of that kind of group
00:41:26
mentality and and that psychology I think is absolutely there well and for me I I know a lot of people were
00:41:33
really infatuated with this case and and really have stuck with it and followed it since the first time they listened to
00:41:41
serial I did not I I very much enjoyed the podcast but I kind of moved on this there's other cases that piqued my
00:41:50
interest and oh by the way we're kind of doing a show about a new case every week
00:41:54
too so I had other things to to focus in on but your your guys's podcast for me brought
00:42:02
to light some things and brought up some new things for me that I was unaware of
00:42:07
that that are Central to this case and one was the Anonymous phone call that was something I don't recall ever having
00:42:13
any knowledge of uh the other thing and I can't I can't let you go until we talk
00:42:19
about this a little bit and and bring everybody up to speed as as much as you know right because it sounds like this
00:42:27
is a bit of a shadowy figure here but who is below Ahmed I think I'm trying to say that as
00:42:35
best I can I'll let Alice take this one that's a that's a good question you know I didn't know this is where you
00:42:43
were going Nick of all the things in this case that you could have uh asked about I'm not gonna say I knew what you
00:42:50
were going to ask here so Bilal is this interesting like you said shadowy figure
00:42:54
that kind of is part of this case but not much is really discussed about him and not really that much is known about
00:42:59
him basically we know that we know more about him now than we did at the time um that all of this was happening with
00:43:07
um Heyman Lee's investigation but Bilal is someone that was like an older figure
00:43:12
within the mosque who knew Adnan um and interestingly enough we know that adnan's parents uh didn't have a cell
00:43:21
phone for him whether he was not allowed to or what have you he didn't have a cell phone that was paid for by his
00:43:26
parents but we know that Bilal basically opened up a cell phone account under his
00:43:31
own name for Adnan and that's the cell phone we've been talking about here the one that he left with Jay all the cell
00:43:37
phone things we're talking about that cell phone bill is actually open under bilal's name and apparently he had
00:43:44
opened this phone account up for Adnan the day before Brett I think the day before
00:43:51
the day before that um hay goes missing and so of course he's going to be an interesting figure here because the cell
00:43:58
phone is you know activated essentially right before hay is uh he disappears and
00:44:05
is murdered and also like who is he why is he getting a cell phone for Adnan who
00:44:11
is a teenager at this time uh balal is an older man and then you know fast forward many years Bilal has since been
00:44:19
um in trouble with the law himself with um kind of sexual improprieties with um with uh
00:44:26
with minors as well yeah it was minor boys and he was uh I mean he was a dentist
00:44:32
so he was taking advantage of of boys basically who he would give them nitrous oxide and then sexually abuse them so
00:44:40
he's obviously uh you know he hasn't kept his nose clean and those are some very serious allegations that have been
00:44:46
brought against him um but you don't see him discuss that much we talk about him a bit but he's an
00:44:52
interesting figure just because of um his relationship with Adnan in that he provided the cell phone that is
00:44:59
Central to a lot of the evidence that we've been doing the problem with him is he's like a black hole if you if you get
00:45:04
near him he will you get it's not a rabbit hole it's a black hole and you get sucked into it and you can never get
00:45:10
out because he's obviously he is such a shady individual he is a criminal he is a sexual predator of
00:45:20
young boys yet he's also friends with Adnan he's opening up this cell phone for him there
00:45:26
are a lot of people who go a lot of different ways with him but the problem is you can you can speculate
00:45:34
well maybe he did it maybe you know and we mentioned this one of our episodes you know maybe he abused Adnan and Haye
00:45:41
found out about it and so he had to kill her to silence her okay I mean that's a
00:45:45
great screenplay but there's literally no evidence of that whatsoever you know we have Hayes diary and she wasn't shy
00:45:50
about riding in it doesn't say anything like that you know you've got maybe the law did it for other reasons
00:45:58
maybe he was doing it for for Adnan and so you know but once again other than the law sort of being a bad guy
00:46:05
there's just no real evidence of it and we we talked about him but we tried to just talk about him in
00:46:13
general because we didn't want to get sucked into that to that to that black hole man this case is one of those cases
00:46:19
and you guys see him too and y'all do an amazing job I don't know how you do it I
00:46:22
don't know how y'all keep your Series so short because you know we talked about this one for 14 episodes and get a ton
00:46:28
more but if you were doing an entire show on the Adnan side case you probably could talk a lot about the law we tried
00:46:36
to avoid that which I think was smart because like you said it's it's a black hole it's not I don't even
00:46:43
think it's I brought him up because I wanted to point out once again that that you are bringing something new to the
00:46:50
table for for some of the people with their understanding of this case and so I I
00:46:57
really only brought him up for that reason but like you said he's a black hole because then then the problem if
00:47:03
you if you want to go and make the giant leap that the Adnan didn't do this or that Jay didn't do it or the two didn't
00:47:10
do it together for it to be anybody else then you have to also believe that Jay for whatever
00:47:18
weird inconceivable reason would lie to police saying he helped bury a body when he didn't
00:47:29
and and face severe criminal charges off of that statement it when you talk about Rhyme or Reason we
00:47:39
don't have either with with that idea that somebody else could have done it and then oh by the way this guy also
00:47:45
admitted to burying a body that he had nothing to do and I think that's such an important point and it goes back to what
00:47:49
she said about their three real possibilities here you can never forget the giant conspiracy theory that you
00:47:57
have to buy into hanging over here where the Baltimore Police are somehow a bunch of bumbling
00:48:03
idiots frankly you know because we all know the Baltimore Police do a lot of really stupid things but also have
00:48:09
managed to build this amazing conspiracy that involved Jay and Jen for no reason Jay and Jen they're not
00:48:18
covering for themselves they're just framing Adnan because they were forced to do so and that's why whenever you you
00:48:26
know below you might be like man I don't know below seems good or Alonso sellers
00:48:29
that guy you know he's he he could have done something like this or you know Don's the current boyfriend maybe it was
00:48:34
him but that that hangs there just over you the whole time and for me it's the reason that
00:48:42
you know we talk about the difference between Reasonable Doubt and any doubt that's something that's important in the
00:48:47
court system and when I look at this case it it is just I feel it so much because there are times where I'm
00:48:53
sitting around and I'm like well you know I mean I guess something could have happened maybe something happened so
00:48:58
that Adnan didn't do this it's hard for me to figure out what it is but maybe maybe you know and then I'm like but no
00:49:04
that that actually is completely unreasonable because of all the things that would have to be true for that to
00:49:08
to to be a fact and I think you're 100 right you just keep coming back to that it can't it just it can't be the case
00:49:16
that Jay is not involved in this at all it just can't be the case and for it to be any of those other people that's what
00:49:24
you'd have to believe well I think people put so much weight on whether Jay Wilds is lying or not and we know he's a
00:49:29
liar but does that mean he's lying about everything but the wrench in this becomes gen
00:49:36
because she doesn't seem like she's a liar and somehow she knows this story before Jay even tells us to the cops
00:49:45
before there's a deal made she does and people forget about her and they forget about her a lot or they ignore her and I
00:49:52
think there's a reason for that if you go back and you read her statement that she gave
00:49:58
before before Jay gets picked up it is to me one of the most believable statements
00:50:06
that you can read it just reads like it's true and people point out well yeah but it's all hearsay she didn't see
00:50:12
anything she just heard it from Jay that's true but that means Jay told her the story first before the police got to
00:50:19
him before the police could have fed him in for any information she's walking into a police station with her lawyer
00:50:24
and her mother sitting down and telling the basic story in fact telling them some details that Jay doesn't even offer
00:50:31
in his first statement like it the fact that it happened at the Best Buy Jay told Jen that Jay in his first story
00:50:37
doesn't tell the police that which I've always thought was interesting you know if the police were feeding this story to
00:50:42
them why isn't that consistent that's a pretty important detail but it's not and
00:50:47
yeah you just Jin Jin is just a glaring red flag if you want to try and get around Jay this case is a pretty
00:50:56
emotional for me I was in school at the same time as these characters in this you know it's almost
00:51:04
like a tragic Opera but I feel like we always forget about Heyman Lee and how special of an individual she was and and
00:51:15
how she's the real victim in this and she's always going to be the real victim in this
00:51:24
tragic play and maybe the prosecution will come out and tell us why they let him free and how that makes
00:51:33
sense and all of this and what evidence they found and what suspects and maybe they can actually make an arrest
00:51:42
and bring some justice to Haman Lee but what do you guys think is next in this Saga so I think
00:51:52
as we often talk about on the show the farther you get from the trial court the last of facts of the case matter
00:51:59
when you're moving up the appeals court the more and more the court is concerned
00:52:04
about the precedent that it's setting and I think and this is my opinion I think the
00:52:11
vacation of adnan's conviction was a fraud on the court I think it is an absolute Injustice
00:52:17
I think it was done improperly whether he's innocent or not and I think it was a violation of everything we hold dear
00:52:22
in the justice system and it should be overturned even if they go back to court and they do it right this time
00:52:29
and they do it in the open and they have the evidence presented and they reach the exact same conclusion I think that's
00:52:34
what should happen the court of appeals what's weird about this case is because the state did what it did
00:52:40
there the person to attack the conviction is kind of missing or the the vacation is kind of missing ordinarily
00:52:47
would be the state they'd file an appeal everything would be very normal in an ordinary course but in this case you had
00:52:53
the victim the victim's brother who has to stand in for hay and has to speak for
00:52:58
her and if there is one hero in the story it's Young Lee who to this day has not stopped fighting for his sister
00:53:03
despite immense pressure to do so he steps in and challenges this on the basis of
00:53:10
victims rights and unfortunately in this country and and you know it's this way for a lot
00:53:16
of really good important reasons people who are accused of crimes have all kinds of Rights
00:53:21
people who are victims of crimes often don't and the states have tried to remedy that by passing laws but a lot of
00:53:27
times they don't have teeth and youngly using one of those laws has challenged this the court of appeals I
00:53:34
think they looked at this case and like I said if you read those footnotes you see it they saw a massive Injustice
00:53:39
and they undid everything that had been done up to this point the Supreme Court of Maryland when I
00:53:45
think about this though they have to consider all the other cases you know they have to consider
00:53:50
things like standing which nobody wants us to get into because it's so boring they have to consider how broad the
00:53:55
victim's rights statute should be and I kind of wonder if they wash their hands of the case is not
00:54:02
quite right but basically say the standing Doctrine and the victims right Doctrine is not broad enough to do this
00:54:09
to overturn this vacation this this just not the way you can do it and I kind of feel like that's the way
00:54:16
they're going to go because I think they're going to be thinking about the law sort of writ large and not the
00:54:19
individual case so at the end of the day I think it's likely that his conviction
00:54:25
which has been reinstated but that reinstatement has been put on hold that the court of appeals opinion ends
00:54:31
up not going into effect and he'll be a free man yeah it's uh again it's all sad
00:54:35
because we tend to forget about him and Lee and and if Adnan is truly innocent then
00:54:42
you're you are out now and you have power to bring pressure onto the prosecution to find the real killer if
00:54:52
you are not the Killer and we see this in other cases where people say once I get out free I'm going
00:54:57
to work to get Justice for the victims and they seem to never do that it's it's very depressing all
00:55:06
all of this I'm just so depressed about what Brett said I don't know if I can add more to that
00:55:12
um I think what's important that Brett said right there is we this should have gone about the proper
00:55:17
way and it absolutely was not done the proper way even if they went back to the district court and move for vacation
00:55:25
through in evidentiary hearing and it came out the exact same way I would be okay with that because the proper
00:55:31
procedures were followed and we care about procedures because they're this is not the only criminal case right this is
00:55:36
if this is a wrongful conviction this hopefully you know there are not many wrongful convictions but we want to make
00:55:43
avenues for the overturning of wrongful convictions and procedure matters because that is the route in which we
00:55:49
can seek Justice in the core systems no matter your facts and no matter who you are and what has happened in adnan's
00:55:55
case I think threatens that because it makes it it makes the Judiciary System uh a laughable uh completely laughable
00:56:03
to others who are looking at the Judiciary especially if they aren't not on the inside and don't know how the
00:56:08
Judiciary System works I am afraid that Brett's premonition of what's going to happen at the Maryland Supreme Court
00:56:15
will come to fruition but I hope it is not true so you know we will we will keep our eyes open for what
00:56:22
happens next but we absolutely do know that what happened in the first instance in terms of his
00:56:29
vacation at The District Court did not follow the proper procedures I want to applaud you guys for having an
00:56:36
intelligent conversation about this case we might not agree on every little detail but it's important that we hear
00:56:45
all sides and it's important for Heyman Lee again the the true victim and all this and so what one of the things I
00:56:55
I really loved about your guys's coverage is you said hey don't take our word for all this there's other sources
00:57:01
that you should check out can you just tell the audience uh some of those sources that you believe they they
00:57:08
should go check out if they're interested in diving more into the case of Heyman Lee well I I just want to say
00:57:15
you know I listen to cereal again and Nick you're 100 right when you listen to it it takes you back to a place in time
00:57:21
when you hear that that music the serial theme song you know you're just you're right back in 2013 2014 whenever exactly
00:57:28
that was that it came out I think it's worth it to listen to cereal look a lot has changed in cereal
00:57:34
a lot has come out since cereal but cereal it was it was good I mean it was really good and it was really
00:57:41
entertaining and in some ways a lot of you out there who who Listen to True Crime a lot now if you listen to serial
00:57:47
you'll also see a lot of the flaws and you'll see the little tricks and you'll see the places where things are sort of
00:57:52
obfuscated to keep the mystery going but I do think you should listen to serial and then two of the big programs that I
00:57:59
think have done the most for laying out the case for adnan's innocence the one that's indispensable is undisclosed
00:58:07
undisclosed which is three lawyers including Rabia chaudry that that is sort of the I think the gold standard
00:58:14
for if you want to hear the arguments for how Adnan said is innocent should listen to that the other one Bob Ruff
00:58:21
who always puts on a good show truth and Justice his very first season was called
00:58:25
the cereal Dynasty and it was happening basically parallel with undisclosed so you hear a lot of sort of a lot of he's
00:58:33
talking about undisclosed a lot he's talking to some of the people in undisclosed so it's interesting to hear
00:58:36
sort of both their perspectives on the episodes as they come out those are great to listen to but I think if you
00:58:43
are really fascinated about this and you spent a lot of time with this case the case File is big but it's not as big
00:58:49
as some and it's out there and you can read it we've put a lot of it on our website there are a lot of websites that
00:58:55
have the information on there read the trial transcript read the interview transcripts with gin
00:59:01
and and with Jay you know read through it for yourself you guys you're all you know you're all qualified to be jurors
00:59:09
you're all smart enough to decide whether or not somebody's guilty or innocent based on the evidence the
00:59:13
evidence is there go look at it for yourself don't let anybody tell you what to think
00:59:23
[Music] [Applause] want to thank everybody for joining us here in the garage Colonel do we have
00:59:39
any recommended reading for the beautiful listeners now Captain I know that we have recommended this one before
00:59:45
but it's a great read and the story shares some unfortunate similarities with the Heyman Lee case so
00:59:52
this week we are recommending little crazy children by a long time friend of the show James Renner in this True Crime
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Story a young High School couple the girl in this case is Lisa Pruitt she's just 16 when she is stabbed to death in
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the affluent neighborhood of Shaker Heights Lisa had snuck out to go over to her
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boyfriend's house she is found outside by police after calls alerting the police to screams heard in the
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neighborhood now did her boyfriend kill her or did someone intercept her late that night you'll want to check out
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little crazy children a true crime Tragedy by James Renner you can find that great title and many more
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recommendations on our recommended page True Crime garage.com and until next week be good be kind and don't litter
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thank you [Music]