The Maryland Court of Special Appeals, the state’s highest court, denied Syed’s request for a new trial on March 8, 2019, ruling that Syed’s first lawyer had been “deficient” but that this has not affected to outcome of his initial trial. That ruling has been subsequently appealed and upheld, and appealed again. Syed has seen his conviction vacated due to ineffective counsel (more on that below). She also found, in Syed, a charismatic subject who seemed like an unlikely murderer.Ī lot has happened since Serial ended its first season in December 2014. She found troubling inconsistencies, unanswered questions, and rich milieu in which teens from different backgrounds lived secret lives unimagined by their immigrant parents.

Intrigued, Koenig began to poke around the case and found the story compelling enough to pursue in podcast form. A former Baltimore Sun reporter who’d since moved onto to NPR, she became interested in the case after receiving an email from Baltimore lawyer Rabia Chaudry.Ĭhaudry’s younger brother Saad Chaudry has been Syed’s best friend, and both believed in his innocence.

Koenig found the story almost by chance, years after Lee’s ex-boyfriend Adnan Syed has been tried and convicted of the crime and sentenced to life in prison. Who killed Hae Min Lee? That we’re asking this question 20 years after the 18-year-old high school senior’s body was found in a shallow grave in Baltimore’s Leakin Park has everything to do with Serial, the popular podcast hosted by Sarah Koenig that investigated the case in its first season.

Louisiana serial killer ron robert