S.E.R.I.A.L : Sex, Love, MURDER

Qool Cuestion: Can you kill someone you love?

No way, right? 

Frankly, you’ve no fucking idea what you’re capable of till the betch is dead.

———

There’s so much ‘out there’ in this age of intrusive tech that ‘quality’ has become a whorish (elastic) term like ‘friend’ since the advent of Zuckerberg’s Fakebook.

That’s why the podcast ‘Serial’ stands out like a superbabe in a red bikini in the middle of a (with all due respect) mosque.

Serial was recommended to me by my former BFF. She & me stopped being friends since the installation of a primitive species: the boyfriend, who arrived with a list, a.k.a patriarchal conditions of relationship where you deny the girlfriend to go out with male friends late or have alcohol, fearing it may lead to her doing it with a boy, instead of trusting her not to do it anyway.

Of course, she & me are still BFFs on Fakebook. That’s where she shoved Serial down my throat.

Serial is a podcast spread over 12 episodes, averaging 45 minutes each. It takes us back to January 13^th 1999. That’s the day Hae Min Lee disappeared with her car from Woodlawn High School in Baltimore, Maryland, USA.

Her body was discovered on February 9^th 1999 in Leakin Park, Baltimore.
Cause of Death: Manual strangulation.

Adnan Syed was born in the US to migrant parents from Pakistan. Hae was born to parents of South Korean descent. They went to the same school & shared a similar set of friends & classes. Adnan & Hae dated ‘on & off’ for about a year before breaking up for good.

Both had moved on & were dating different people when Hae went missing.

Adnan was 17 — Hae was 18. But she was dead.

Adnan was convicted of her murder; sentenced to Life on February 25^th 2000. He’s been in jail ever since.

Adnan was convicted without any physical evidence, eye-witness, or forensic report linking him to the crime scene.

Prosecutor, Kevin Urick, told the jury, “He (Adnan) became enraged. He felt betrayed that his honor had been besmirched.” That’s why he killed her.

Prosecution’s case against Adnan was based primarily on the testimony of Jay Wilds, a self-proclaimed accessory to the crime & sort of friend of Adnan. Adnan apparently told Jay about his plans to murder Hae & later, Jay helped Adnan get rid of the body.

Jay worked in a porn video store, bootlegged drugs & got no jail time as he struck a sweet plea bargain deal with the prosecution. He was also allocated a lawyer by the prosecution — free of cost. Love Love Love.

Not only Jay flip-flopped on his testimony several times, his reason for assisting Adnan in getting rid of the body seemed shady as hell.

Why the fuck were you helping him? You boys weren’t even real friends. Why didn’t you go to the police when Adnan told you he was going to kill Hae? Why didn’t you run for your life when Adnan showed you Hae’s dead body in the trunk of her car? Why did you get rid of your fingerprints from the shovel & destroyed the clothes you wore on the day Hae was murdered?

Jay said he was scared that Adnan would tell on him about his drug dealings to the cops. Fair enough. But is it fair enough to assist a cold-blooded murderer in burying a body & expose yourself to jail time that can run into 10s of years?

If not going to the police, you could’ve cut ties with Adnan, but instead, you were driving his car, using his cellphone & burying his dead ex-girlfriend. Why Jay? Oh, yes, you were scared of Adnan, and I thought you were a fucking (self-proclaimed) badass.

Another big thing that goes against Adnan is the call made to Nisha (Adnan’s love interest) from Adnan’s cellphone when Adnan says his phone & car were with Jay, and he wasn’t with Jay.

Call was made at 3:32pm on the day of Hae’s murder. It lasted 2.22 minutes.

Jay testified Adnan passed over the phone to him to speak to Nisha. Nisha didn’t know Jay. Nisha can’t confirm if she spoke to Adnan & Jay on that day. Nisha does confirm Adnan did make her speak to Jay once, but that was likely to be on a later date, not January 13^th 1999.

Note: No recordings of these calls exist with the service provider AT&T.

The problem here is if Adnan did call from his cellphone as Jay testifies, then it puts Adnan bang with Jay at the crucial time when Jay says they had gone to bury Hae’s body. It proves Adnan was lying that he was at school at track practice.

Prosecution’s case states Hae was killed between 2:15pm & 2:36pm on January 13^th 1999. In those 21 minutes —and— exactly in those 21 minutes, a girl named Asia McClain was talking to Adnan at the school library. Her boyfriend Derrick & another lad also saw her talking to Adnan. Ms. McClain signed an affidavit stating the above.

Lip-smacking fact: Adnan’s attorney, Christina Gutierrez, never calls Asia to court to testify. And guess what, she never ever as much talks to Asia McClain, like ever. Mindfuckinblasting.

Did Christina deliberately throw away the case? Before you answer, there’s something I must tell you about Christina.

A brilliant lawyer, passionate, resolute, confrontational & detailed. She had a strategy & she stuck to it. It didn’t work for Adnan, but it was the same strategy that worked for her in the past.

Back to our question: Did Christina throw away the case?
My view: Christina didn’t — she simply fucked up.

Can we knock on Christina’s door & ask her why she never spoke to Asia? 

We can’t. 

Why?

Christina died of a heart attack in 2004.

Now the Big Question: Did Adnan do it?

I would be a total (all due respect to Rahul Gandhi) mama’s boy if I said I know Adnan is not guilty. I don’t know.

Sarah Koenig (I love her voice, dedication, impartiality), the narrator of the podcast, also doesn’t know.

As Adnan said to Sarah on the phone from the prison: “Only I know for certain that I didn’t kill her, and I don’t expect anyone to believe me. But I don’t want to hear someone tell me one more time that they don’t think I did it because I’m such a nice person. It kills me to hear that.”

Every time I hear Adnan speak to Sarah from the prison phone, my heart sinks. He speaks with such optimism & grace after being in prison for 15 years & no real prospects of getting out. It bloody kills me.

We have talked about what we don’t know. Let’s talk about what we do know.

Call log is sketchy; Jay’s testimony is topsy-turvy, new evidence shows Nisha may never have picked the call & the phone simply rang for 2.22 minutes; Asia McClain maintains she was speaking to Adnan during those crucial 21 minutes when Hae was murdered.

We know the Criminal Justice System isn’t infallible; good attorneys can make blunders, Prosecutors sometimes step over the line, and great attorneys can win cases without any physical evidence because they know how to.

Barring circumstantial evidence, and Jay knowing where Hae’s car was, nothing points to Adnan’s guilt.  

There’s reasonable doubt that Adnan didn’t do it.

Here’s a stunning new revelation. A man named Ronald ‘Lee’ Moore, released on January 1^st 1999, is linked by DNA evidence of murdering, raping & burgling 2 girls. One of the girls’ name was Annelise Hyang Suk ‘Lee’.

Our dead girl’s name is Hae Min ‘Lee’.

Is it a co-incidence that all of them have Lee in their name?

P.S. There’s more good news.

Maryland Court of Special Appeals has agreed to hear arguments about why Adnan should get a new trial based on the contention he had ineffective counsel. A hearing is set for June 9^th 2015.

I’ll be dispassionate here & say I don’t care if Adnan gets out or not. I only care for the truth.

15 goddamn years have passed, so I hope I ain’t offending any pricks by saying it's about time.