SWAYING in her prom prince’s arms, teenager Hae Min Lee was besotted with popular and confident Adnan Syed.
But within months, the high school sweethearts’ love story had become a tale of horror as Hae, 18, was found strangled to death in a shallow grave in a park in Maryland, US, and Adnan was convicted of her murder.
Before Hae’s death in 1999, the couple had broken up and she had started dating a 22-year-old. Prosecutors believed Adnan had been jealous over his ex’s new relationship.
The 17-year-old, who has always maintained his innocence, was jailed for life and his story was made famous around the world thanks to smash hit podcast, Serial.
But a bombshell new HBO documentary, The Case Against Adnan Syed, could prove his innocence as it reveals new forensic tests found no traces of Adnan’s DNA on samples taken from Hae’s body.
There were also no traces on samples obtained from the girl’s car during the investigation into the murder, according to the documentary, which will air on Sky Atlantic tonight.
But in the four-part docu-series, questions are raised over two other men who were also investigated by police after Hae’s body was found on February 9, 1999.
One of these is Alonzo Sellers, the maintenance worker who told officers he discovered the student’s corpse after pulling over for a wee in Baltimore’s Leakin Park.
The other is Don Clinedinst, who was Hae’s boyfriend at the time of her death and who failed to call police back for hours on the night she went missing.
Referred to only as ‘Mr S’ in the Serial podcast, Sellers reportedly had a criminal past, having been charged with indecent exposure more than once.
In a new audio recording featured in the programme, he describes the grisly moment he came across Hae’s body weeks after she vanished on January 13 that year.
He tells the authorities he was driving and drinking a Budweiser that he had grabbed from his fridge when he felt the need to urinate and pulled over.
He says he went further into the woods so no-one could see him and was about to pee when he glanced down to see “something that looked like hair”.
He looked down again. “And that’s when I seen what looked like a foot,” he says in the recording.
Sellers briefly became a suspect in the case, as questions were raised over why he had walked nearly 130 feet to the area where he discovered Hae’s body.
‘That’s when I saw what looked like a foot’
In the documentary, Detective Darryl Massey, who was secondary detective on the Syed case, is asked whether he believes Sellers found the body the way he did.
Det Massey replies: “I’m not going to support that he didn’t – don’t think he wasn’t looked at.
“I certainly understood some prior documented issues.”
He adds that that in itself doesn’t make him a killer – it makes him an “unusual person”.
The detective also comments on questions surrounding Clinedinst.
“Don’t think he didn’t go uninvestigated,” Det Massey says in the new series.
Clinedinst, who was dating Hae at the time, claimed to have been at work at a LensCrafters branch at the time of her murder – something which the manager confirmed.
However, the documentary reveals the manager was also his mother.
Rabia Chaudry, attorney and family friend of Syed, says: “His alibi was really his mom.”
Speaking to Oxygen.com, Chaudry claimed that police quickly honed in on Adnan as a suspect, but “didn’t think, ‘Maybe we should check the boyfriend’.”
She alleged that officers didn’t take any fingerprints or hair samples from Clinedinst, even though the hair found on Hae’s body didn’t match Adnan’s DNA.
‘They didn’t take Don’s fingerprints’
She also notes in the documentary that on the night Hae vanished, Clinedinst couldn’t be contacted via phone by police until 1.30am – despite claiming he had got home at about 7pm.
“That’s like a big gap. Where was he?” she questions.
Clinedinst told filmmakers he won’t spend time worrying about whether anybody believes his alibi.
Meanwhile, Det Massey says of the alibi: “Would a mother lie for him? Sure. He could have caught equal attention that the defendant did but he didn’t have any phone calls come in about him.”
Mystery phone call accusing Syed
On February 12, several days after Hae was found dead, police received an anonymous call.
They were told they should concentrate on the victim’s ex-boyfriend, Adnan.
A sporty and well-liked young man, Adnan’s family hadn’t let him hang out with or date girls, with female friends knowing that they couldn’t call his home phone.
Because of this, he would visit Hae at nighttime and speak to her through the window.
Former schoolmate Debbie Warren describes their relationship as “sweet” and “young love”.
However, despite once writing that she loved Adnan “to death”, Hae became desperate to have a normal relationship where she could spend time with her boyfriend’s family.
She had been lying to her own family and felt like she had “lost” herself.
She broke up with Adnan, now 38, in December 1998 and later began dating Clinedinst.
However, within a matter of weeks, she had vanished after leaving high school.
The docu-series reveals the devastating impact of her disappearance on her mother.
Family friend Sun Hee Lee says “[Hae’s mum] was just lying in her room like a dead person” when she heard her daughter was missing.
The lasting impact on Adnan’s family is also explored in the programme who continue to support him.
Speaking in the new documentary, his younger brother, Yusuf Syed, says: “When Adnan went to prison it was like a big piece of all of us had died.”
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Earlier this month, Adnan was denied a new trial by Maryland’s highest court – reversing a court decision from last year.
And even as the latest evidence sheds new light on the high-profile case, police and prosecutors are standing by their conclusions.
A spokeswoman for the Maryland Attorney General’s Office said the DNA results “in no way exonerate” Adnan.
All four episodes of Sky Atlantic’s The Case Against Adnan Syed are now available to watch on NOW TV
https://textbacklinkexchanges.com/new-evidence-suggests-serials-adnan-syed-could-be-innocent-and-real-suspects-are-naked-man-and-victims-boyfriend-with-questionable-alibi/
News Photo New evidence suggests Serial’s Adnan Syed could be innocent and real suspects are ‘naked’ man and victim’s boyfriend with questionable alibi
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