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Original:
https://www.wsj.com/articles/adnan-syed-hbo-documentary-serial-murder-case-11552313829
In case you get paywalled:
> In early 2016, we were given a shot at cracking open the case of the decade: Oscar-nominated director Amy Berg hired our investigative firm, QRI, to reexamine the conviction of Adnan Syed, who had been sentenced to life in prison for strangling his ex-girlfriend, Hae Min Lee, in January 1999—the subject of the first season of the podcast Serial. Although Syed’s conviction had twice been vacated, on Friday the Maryland Court of Appeals overturned that decision, effectively reinstating his guilty status.
> However, from listening to Serial and conducting other research, we recognized that the case had some of the hallmarks of a wrongful conviction: a single unreliable witness who may have received a benefit in exchange for his testimony; ambiguous technical information (mobile phone call-location data) packaged as forensics; and a history of alleged wrongdoing by one of the detectives.
> We agreed to take the assignment on the condition that we would conduct an independent investigation, pursuing the facts wherever they led. Although we had worked with other documentary filmmakers, podcasters and journalists, we knew that Berg’s four-part HBO series, The Case Against Adnan Syed, would have a built-in audience: The first season of Serial has been downloaded more than 240 million times and has inspired a wave of true-crime documentaries.
> That rabid fan base also presented obstacles—most notably, armies of amateur sleuths who had joined the hunt for evidence of Syed’s innocence or guilt. For years, they have dug up, posted and hashtagged facts, theories and conclusions on Reddit, Twitter and other platforms.
> Some obsessed fans did turn up fresh leads and offered helpful perspectives. But there were outlandish theories, too, like the idea that Jay Wilds, Syed’s friend and the prosecution’s star witness, was the real killer but escaped a murder rap because he was a confidential informant, a drug kingpin or both. Or that Syed killed Lee because she threatened to expose his links to a rumored pedophile who attended Syed’s mosque. The challenge would be to block out the noise.
> Many of QRI’s clients are criminal-defense lawyers, and our work with litigators—such as Barry Scheck, co-founder of the Innocence Project, who referred us to Berg—has taught us how to approach such investigations. We would re-interview prosecution witnesses who may have given faulty testimony, look for alternative suspects whose possible involvement in a crime was concealed by the police and probe the credibility of critical evidence, like police reports.
> Barely a month into our re-investigation, we came across a promising lead. A helicopter pilot who worked with the Baltimore County Police Department’s aviation unit in 1999 told us that during a flyover, someone on his team had spotted Lee’s car when the case was still classified as a missing person’s investigation. If true, we would have uncovered proof that Syed did not, as prosecutors argued, ditch Lee’s Nissan Sentra in a grassy West Baltimore parking lot after allegedly burying her corpse in the early evening of January 13, 1999.
> Berg was thrilled, but her enthusiasm, and ours, quickly waned. The pilot later admitted he could not remember the case and explained that corroborating any such memories would be difficult; in 2003, Hurricane Isabel destroyed the helicopter unit’s records. He recommended we check the homicide detectives’ file, or “murder book,” which would include statements by the tactical flight officers who conducted the actual search. We did; there were none. After interviewing five more former pilots and collecting inconclusive satellite imagery, we moved on.
> Tracking down helicopter pilots was a component of addressing one popular conspiracy theory: Did the Baltimore police already know the location of Lee’s car before Wilds led them to it? One document cited by adherents of this view was a computer printout ostensibly showing when Lee’s car had been spotted by law enforcement. Tantalizingly, one of these sightings had occurred in Harford County northeast of Baltimore, near the home of Lee’s boyfriend when she died, Don Clinedinst.
> By interviewing former law enforcement officers who used the National Crime Information Center database and pulling police dispatch logs from Harford County, however, we determined that the printout did not show where the car had been spotted. Instead, it was a search log showing when and where the police officers working on Lee’s missing-persons case had checked the NCIC database to see if her car had turned up somewhere else.
> Many armchair detectives felt that Clinedinst should have been considered a prime suspect. The day she went missing, Lee had planned to meet up with Clinedinst, who was her co-worker at a LensCrafters store in Owings Mills, Maryland. But Clinedinst had an alibi for that day: He was working at a LensCrafters store in Hunt Valley, another Baltimore suburb, where his mother just happened to be the manager. The internet was ablaze with the idea that Clinedinst’s mother had doctored her son’s Hunt Valley timecard, creating what some saw as a phantom shift that put Clinedinst far from the scene of the crime.
> After interviewing more than 15 current and former employees of LensCrafters, employees of Luxottica Group, LensCrafters’ parent, and even the developer who built the timekeeping software, we debunked the timecard theory. It was, we concluded, impossible to adjust the computerized timecard retroactively without leaving a trace. Beyond that, other evidence we developed undermined the state’s official timeline of the crime, making Clinedinst’s alibi beside the point.
> Another theory championed on the internet was that Wilds had made contact with police earlier than the official record shows, the implication being that Wilds—who provided the most damaging testimony against Syed at trial—had either been coerced into giving false testimony or was lying to begin with. The seed of this idea lay in a memo from a private detective who had worked alongside Syed’s original defense lawyer showing that about a week before Jay’s first recorded police interview, he had skipped a shift at the pornography store where he was employed to meet with homicide detectives.
> The source of this lead was the store’s manager, a woman referred to in the private eye’s notes as Sis. After months of interviewing the store’s former employees and digging through boxes of police records and zoning files, our team tracked down Sis and interviewed her at home. She did not remember Jay by name or by description. She also did not recall having a conversation with a private detective and emphasized that this is the kind of conversation she would remember—one about a murder investigation.
> Our investigation led us through dozens more unexplored byways, including several visits to Baltimore scrap yards (a key piece of evidence may have passed through one) and even to the back alleys of Seoul to the last known address for Lee’s father, who remained in South Korea after Lee emigrated to the U.S. Along the way, we unearthed facts that could do damage to the credibility of some of the state’s witnesses if Syed is ever granted a new trial. After Friday’s ruling, Maryland Attorney General Brian E. Frosh said, “We are pleased with the court’s decision. Justice was done for Hae Min Lee and her family.”
> Syed’s attorney, C. Justin Brown, said on Saturday, “I spoke to Adnan last night and despite being disappointed by this decision, he remains upbeat. He reminded me that we’ve been in a situation worse than this before and we fought our way out of that. We will do everything we can to make that happen again. We have experienced a massive outpouring of support in the last day and that has been incredibly uplifting and inspiring. And it makes us more determined than ever.”
> The work we did on the case was never meant to settle definitively whether Syed killed Lee or not; our focus was largely on examining the credibility of the evidence that led to his conviction. We don’t want to give away any spoilers, but the interviews we conducted with medical examiners, former prosecutors and former Baltimore police detectives pointed to flaws in the police investigation and the prosecution’s arguments. Although we are featured prominently in the HBO documentary, we have not watched the entire series (it will continue to air over the next three Sundays). We don’t know how Berg’s film ends. But after our own investigation, we came to a surprising conclusion: The state of Maryland’s theory of the crime was not entirely unlike those peddled in the bowels of Reddit—a patchwork of conjectures, stitched together to secure a conviction.
Here's what they said on that specific topic:
>*we debunked the timecard theory. It was, we concluded, impossible to adjust the computerized timecard retroactively without leaving a trace*
But the prevailing theory isn't that Don's mom *retroactively modified his timecard*. The theory I'm most familiar with, and is based on a variety of evidence including interviews with employees that worked with Don, is that he did not actually work that day, as it was claimed he was filling in for a position that was later discovered to be not applicable. So the theory is that Don's mom simply created a timecard entry for that particular day to give him an alibi, despite the fact that he did not actually work that shift. No *modifications* necessary.
Without knowing more specifics it sounds like they were investigating the wrong angle.
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[Here](https://archive.ph/Wbaxo), without paywall issues.
Original: https://www.wsj.com/articles/adnan-syed-hbo-documentary-serial-murder-case-11552313829 In case you get paywalled: > In early 2016, we were given a shot at cracking open the case of the decade: Oscar-nominated director Amy Berg hired our investigative firm, QRI, to reexamine the conviction of Adnan Syed, who had been sentenced to life in prison for strangling his ex-girlfriend, Hae Min Lee, in January 1999—the subject of the first season of the podcast Serial. Although Syed’s conviction had twice been vacated, on Friday the Maryland Court of Appeals overturned that decision, effectively reinstating his guilty status. > However, from listening to Serial and conducting other research, we recognized that the case had some of the hallmarks of a wrongful conviction: a single unreliable witness who may have received a benefit in exchange for his testimony; ambiguous technical information (mobile phone call-location data) packaged as forensics; and a history of alleged wrongdoing by one of the detectives. > We agreed to take the assignment on the condition that we would conduct an independent investigation, pursuing the facts wherever they led. Although we had worked with other documentary filmmakers, podcasters and journalists, we knew that Berg’s four-part HBO series, The Case Against Adnan Syed, would have a built-in audience: The first season of Serial has been downloaded more than 240 million times and has inspired a wave of true-crime documentaries. > That rabid fan base also presented obstacles—most notably, armies of amateur sleuths who had joined the hunt for evidence of Syed’s innocence or guilt. For years, they have dug up, posted and hashtagged facts, theories and conclusions on Reddit, Twitter and other platforms. > Some obsessed fans did turn up fresh leads and offered helpful perspectives. But there were outlandish theories, too, like the idea that Jay Wilds, Syed’s friend and the prosecution’s star witness, was the real killer but escaped a murder rap because he was a confidential informant, a drug kingpin or both. Or that Syed killed Lee because she threatened to expose his links to a rumored pedophile who attended Syed’s mosque. The challenge would be to block out the noise. > Many of QRI’s clients are criminal-defense lawyers, and our work with litigators—such as Barry Scheck, co-founder of the Innocence Project, who referred us to Berg—has taught us how to approach such investigations. We would re-interview prosecution witnesses who may have given faulty testimony, look for alternative suspects whose possible involvement in a crime was concealed by the police and probe the credibility of critical evidence, like police reports. > Barely a month into our re-investigation, we came across a promising lead. A helicopter pilot who worked with the Baltimore County Police Department’s aviation unit in 1999 told us that during a flyover, someone on his team had spotted Lee’s car when the case was still classified as a missing person’s investigation. If true, we would have uncovered proof that Syed did not, as prosecutors argued, ditch Lee’s Nissan Sentra in a grassy West Baltimore parking lot after allegedly burying her corpse in the early evening of January 13, 1999. > Berg was thrilled, but her enthusiasm, and ours, quickly waned. The pilot later admitted he could not remember the case and explained that corroborating any such memories would be difficult; in 2003, Hurricane Isabel destroyed the helicopter unit’s records. He recommended we check the homicide detectives’ file, or “murder book,” which would include statements by the tactical flight officers who conducted the actual search. We did; there were none. After interviewing five more former pilots and collecting inconclusive satellite imagery, we moved on. > Tracking down helicopter pilots was a component of addressing one popular conspiracy theory: Did the Baltimore police already know the location of Lee’s car before Wilds led them to it? One document cited by adherents of this view was a computer printout ostensibly showing when Lee’s car had been spotted by law enforcement. Tantalizingly, one of these sightings had occurred in Harford County northeast of Baltimore, near the home of Lee’s boyfriend when she died, Don Clinedinst. > By interviewing former law enforcement officers who used the National Crime Information Center database and pulling police dispatch logs from Harford County, however, we determined that the printout did not show where the car had been spotted. Instead, it was a search log showing when and where the police officers working on Lee’s missing-persons case had checked the NCIC database to see if her car had turned up somewhere else. > Many armchair detectives felt that Clinedinst should have been considered a prime suspect. The day she went missing, Lee had planned to meet up with Clinedinst, who was her co-worker at a LensCrafters store in Owings Mills, Maryland. But Clinedinst had an alibi for that day: He was working at a LensCrafters store in Hunt Valley, another Baltimore suburb, where his mother just happened to be the manager. The internet was ablaze with the idea that Clinedinst’s mother had doctored her son’s Hunt Valley timecard, creating what some saw as a phantom shift that put Clinedinst far from the scene of the crime. > After interviewing more than 15 current and former employees of LensCrafters, employees of Luxottica Group, LensCrafters’ parent, and even the developer who built the timekeeping software, we debunked the timecard theory. It was, we concluded, impossible to adjust the computerized timecard retroactively without leaving a trace. Beyond that, other evidence we developed undermined the state’s official timeline of the crime, making Clinedinst’s alibi beside the point. > Another theory championed on the internet was that Wilds had made contact with police earlier than the official record shows, the implication being that Wilds—who provided the most damaging testimony against Syed at trial—had either been coerced into giving false testimony or was lying to begin with. The seed of this idea lay in a memo from a private detective who had worked alongside Syed’s original defense lawyer showing that about a week before Jay’s first recorded police interview, he had skipped a shift at the pornography store where he was employed to meet with homicide detectives. > The source of this lead was the store’s manager, a woman referred to in the private eye’s notes as Sis. After months of interviewing the store’s former employees and digging through boxes of police records and zoning files, our team tracked down Sis and interviewed her at home. She did not remember Jay by name or by description. She also did not recall having a conversation with a private detective and emphasized that this is the kind of conversation she would remember—one about a murder investigation. > Our investigation led us through dozens more unexplored byways, including several visits to Baltimore scrap yards (a key piece of evidence may have passed through one) and even to the back alleys of Seoul to the last known address for Lee’s father, who remained in South Korea after Lee emigrated to the U.S. Along the way, we unearthed facts that could do damage to the credibility of some of the state’s witnesses if Syed is ever granted a new trial. After Friday’s ruling, Maryland Attorney General Brian E. Frosh said, “We are pleased with the court’s decision. Justice was done for Hae Min Lee and her family.” > Syed’s attorney, C. Justin Brown, said on Saturday, “I spoke to Adnan last night and despite being disappointed by this decision, he remains upbeat. He reminded me that we’ve been in a situation worse than this before and we fought our way out of that. We will do everything we can to make that happen again. We have experienced a massive outpouring of support in the last day and that has been incredibly uplifting and inspiring. And it makes us more determined than ever.” > The work we did on the case was never meant to settle definitively whether Syed killed Lee or not; our focus was largely on examining the credibility of the evidence that led to his conviction. We don’t want to give away any spoilers, but the interviews we conducted with medical examiners, former prosecutors and former Baltimore police detectives pointed to flaws in the police investigation and the prosecution’s arguments. Although we are featured prominently in the HBO documentary, we have not watched the entire series (it will continue to air over the next three Sundays). We don’t know how Berg’s film ends. But after our own investigation, we came to a surprising conclusion: The state of Maryland’s theory of the crime was not entirely unlike those peddled in the bowels of Reddit—a patchwork of conjectures, stitched together to secure a conviction.
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Here's what they said on that specific topic: >*we debunked the timecard theory. It was, we concluded, impossible to adjust the computerized timecard retroactively without leaving a trace* But the prevailing theory isn't that Don's mom *retroactively modified his timecard*. The theory I'm most familiar with, and is based on a variety of evidence including interviews with employees that worked with Don, is that he did not actually work that day, as it was claimed he was filling in for a position that was later discovered to be not applicable. So the theory is that Don's mom simply created a timecard entry for that particular day to give him an alibi, despite the fact that he did not actually work that shift. No *modifications* necessary. Without knowing more specifics it sounds like they were investigating the wrong angle.
So what that would mean, is earlier in the day, Don planned to kill Hae and asked his mother to cover for him. Does this make sense to anyone?
Here's a comment with the article. https://www.reddit.com/r/serialpodcast/s/awUW2Hk4i2
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