The Most Bizarre Things About The Adnan Syed Case

Publish date: 2024-05-07

According to ABC News, Lee was allegedly strangled after school on Jan. 13, 2009 in a Best Buy parking lot and buried that evening in nearby Leakin Park. The investigation quickly focused on Syed as its primary suspect, but some suggest the rapid-fire certainty of police and prosecutors caused key alibis and witnesses to be overlooked.

According to Koenig's Serial podcast, fellow Woodlawn High School student Asia McClain said she saw and spoke with Syed in the library after school during the time that police and prosecutors claim the murder took place. McClain reportedly wrote a letter to Syed, reminding him about their discussion and offering to serve as a witness. McClain also said her boyfriend and his friend could corroborate her story, along with library security cameras.

McClain said she was never contacted by Syed's attorney at the time, Cristina Gutierrez. In fact, according to the appeal submitted by Syed's new lawyer, Syed told Gutierrez about his potential alibi multiple times but "for no explicable reason, Gutierrez failed to act on this information in any way. What is arguably worse, she later told Syed she had looked into McClain, but that nothing had come of it."

According to former prosecutor Sean Gordon, who worked as an investigator during Syed's original trial and who took the stand during Syed's 2016 appeal, McClain's testimony could have been "game changing" had Gutierrez contacted her. "If you have a credible alibi witness, that is the best defense you can have," he said, via People. Gordon testified that while working on the original case, he reached out to 83 potential alibi witnesses, but Guterrez's team reportedly used none of them. Footage from the library's surveillance cameras was also not obtained, and after 30 days, that footage was erased, reported People.

Guterrez died in 2004, a decade before the case generated renewed interest.

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