Serial is a murder-mystery type podcast that re-opens a murder case that happened fifteen years ago in Baltimore, Maryland. This podcast is made by Sarah Koenig, who is the host along with the production staff: Julie Snyder, Dana Chivvis, and Emily Condon. This podcast made its debut on Ocotober third in 2014 and quickly gained a lot of popularity. Serial even won Peabody award, ‘the first of its kind’ in April 2015.
The fallowing are brief summaries about what I think is most important in each episode:
Serial episode one: ‘The Alibi’
The first episode of the twelve episode series is introduced in Baltimore, 1995. This episode introduces a group of teenagers, mainly focusing on a boy named Adnan Syed, a girl named Hae Min Lee, and another boy named Jay. Adnan may have or may not have been wrongly convicted of killing his ex-girlfriend Hae Min Lee, and Adnan is currently serving a life sentence in prison for this crime.
Serial episode two: ‘The Breakup’
According to a lot of Adnan and Hae’s friends their relationship was like a fairytale story, they had to keep their relationship secret because both their parents disappoved. Sarah also got Hae’s diary , so that let her know even more about her and Adnan’s relationship. Hae writes about how Adnan is the ‘sweetest guy’ and how much she is in love with him. Aisha Pittman (Who was Hae’s best friend at the time) said that during their relationship Adnan would always be checking up on Hae. Always asking what she was up to or where she was at the time, but Hae was never weirded out by this.
Over time, Hae and Adnan break up and Hae starts an relationship with one of her co-workers Don. In her dairy she would write how she was conflicted with her feelings. If she still loved Adnan or if it was best for her to move on, that kind of stuff. Adnan said that when he and Hae broke up he wasn’t extremely upset, or at least not to the point of killing her. Adan did risk a lot for Hae, and their relationship conflicted with his religion. Which was very important to him and his family. The crort tried to make the breakup look like something that was destroying and tormenting Adnan, and that Adnan was hurt because his parents found out he was living a ‘double life’.
Serial episode three: ‘Leakin Park’
This episode of serial is focused on the location of Hae’s dumped body, which is Leakin Park. Leakin Park is a 1000+ acre of land which many bodies are normally found in, creepy. Adnan said that he had never been in Leakin Park, and he also didn’t know how to get there.
The person who found Hae’s body was called Mr.S, he found Hae when he got out of his car to pee. Detectives thought that how Mr.S randomly found Hae’s body was weird, she was camouflaged and buried behind a log and he just went into the forest because he had to pee.
Serial episode four: ‘Inconsistencies’
The fourth episode of Serial discusses Jay as the main topic and how very inconsistent (Hence the title) he is when telling the story of Hae’s murder. His story changes and gets pretty messy, but what’s really odd is Jay wasn’t even one of Adnan’s close friends. Why would Adnan ask Jay of all people to help him bury his ex-girlfriend? In this episode, we are also introduced to Jay’s girlfriend at the time: Stephanie. We find out that Stephanie and Adnan where supposedly really good friends, they talked and hung out all the time. Could Jay be jealous of how the way Adnan and Stephanie acted around each other? Maybe the reason why Jay’s stories are so inconsistent is because he knows more about Hae’s murder than he lets on. Could it be that Jay helped kill Hae because of his jealousy? I don’t know, it really is just speculation.
Serial episode five: ‘Route Talk’
In this episode Sarah tested the states timeline of the murder by drawing from Woodlawn Highschool to the Best Buy in 21 minutes, Adnan says it’s impossible to do so. Sarah says that it is really hard to get out of the schools parking lot. Sarah says after the bell rings the parking lot is so cramped and all the kids are leaving, but in the end she does make it to best buy in time. Just squeezeing by the time limit mind you, and that’s knowing exactly where your going and having a mission to get there as fast as you can. Dana Chivvis, who accompanied Sarah on this ‘journey’ said this when they completed the task: “I mean, it seems like, yah it could be done. But it seems far fetched.” Sarah says that when doing this there is no room for any errors, any pauses, anything.
Serial episode six: ‘The Case Against Adnan Syed’
In this episode of Serial Sarah looks at the evidence against Adnan. One of the biggest being Adnan’s Palm print on a map of Leakin Park in Hae’s car, and did Adnan ask Hae for a ride because he was planning to kill her? Also Adnan doesn’t remember anything about the day Hae went missing, and when she was missing Adnan did nothing to try to contact her. (Page her, call her cell ect.,) Hae had also written Adnan a letter telling him how she was frustrated that he had dent moved on yet.
Also, according to a girl named Laura a boy in her area had said that a guy had shown him a dead body. However none of them knew who the supposed ‘guy’ was.
Serial episode seven: ‘The Opposite of the Prosecution’
In this episode Sarah brings in Deirdre Enright, and Enright know times how little actual evidence there is against Adnan. Also we find out that some evidence from the case was destroyed, also the liquor bottle, two fiber samples and the rope found near Hae’s body where never tested for DNA.
Serial episode eight: ‘The Deal with Jay’
In the seventh episode of Serial Sarah hires a detective to find out if the case of Adnan Syed was thorough enough, and to Sarah’s surprise he said yes. The detectives that worked on Adnan’s case took ‘the same route’ than any other detective would take. To find out more about the case, and in order to get some answers Sarah and one of the other producers went to talk to Jay. Sarah said Jay was polite, which is surprising because they did just randomly show up at his door after a long work day. They never recorded the talk with Jay, but Sarah did ask a lot of questions, and Sarah asked if Jay was sure Adnan killed Hae he responded: “Then who did.” After this Sarah asked Jay if he will do a recorded interview with them on a later date, he said he would think about it but later he declined.
We also find out more about how Jay acted back before Hae went missing and after. People who know Jay said that they weren’t surprised that Jay was involved in a murder, but Adnan? They wouldn’t believe it. One of Jay’s best friends at the time of the murder was interviewed: His name was Chris, Chris shared stories about Jay but the one that was really weird was that Chris told Jay he had never been stabbed before so Jay took out a knife. They where just playing around, but it is a little weird that he would do something like that.
Serial episode nine: ‘To Be Suspected’
In episode nine Sarah talks about if the timeline of events from the case really makes sense. We learn in this episode that a girl named Laurn in the podcast says that she is absolutely certain that there was no public phone around bestbuy. This is very important because the case says that Adnan called Jay to pick him up after he killed Hae using a public phone outside of best buy. Also an old friend of Hae contacted Sarah saying that it was impossible for Hae to be at the best buy by the time the case says she is. The caller says that she remembers talking to Hae between 2:30 and 2:45, so Hae being killed at 2:36 is impossible. Other witnesses even claim that they say her around school as late as about 3:15. Cathy had also said she had seen Adnan after school testified that he had gotten a cell that seemed to rattle him. It is suspected that someone who was involved with the crime was the caller. However later Sarah suspected that it may have been Aisha who had called Adnan.
Serial episode ten: ‘The Best Defense is a Good Defense’
This episode takes a look at the city of Baltimore, and the jury selection process. Sarah estimates that at least half the jury was either convicted, served time or had time because of criminal activity. Adnan’s mom, named Shamim Rahman thinks that Adnan was discriminated against because of his religion. She thinks that he was ‘easy to target’ because he was Muslim. The Muslum culture was portrayed as harsh upbringing, men controlling woman this was used to make the case look like Adnan killed Hae because his ‘honor was bismerched’
In court, Adnan’s lawyer refered to Gutierrez tried to place all of the crime on Mr.S, but the first trial ended when the judge said she was lying about not seeing the cell phone records. In the second trial, she had the same strategy but something was off. It didn’t seem like she was really proving anything in favour of Adnan, plus her performance in court had been slipping through the years. This seemed to be her breaking point.
Serial episode eleven: ‘Rumors’
In the second last episode of Serial Sarah talked about rumors, mostly rumors regarding Adnan. Apparently Adnan stole money from the church he would attend some people said that he would steal a lot of money, but Adnan admitted that he did take some but not a lot. Maybe enought to go see a movie with some of his friends, stuff like that. Adnan also has a tense conversation with Sarah where he finally gets upset with her when she asks him about the theft.
Serial episode twelve: ‘What We Know’
This is the last episode of Serial, and in this episode Sarah reviews old information and brings up new stuff. Unfortunately the last episode doesn’t really have a conclusion, it really just sums up what we do know about the murder of Hae Min Lee. Back to the new stuff: In this episode we find out that Hae actually didn’t want to go to on the day of her disappearance. She left a note for Don in her car about this. Also Jay was scared after Hae’s death, when Jay was working a late night sift at the adult video store we worked at he called in one of his co-workers Josh because he was ‘scared out of his mind’. He thought that the van parked across the street was full of people ‘waiting to get him’ Jay told Josh that he helped Adnan bury Hae’s body and that Adnan ‘knew people’ and they would come after him if he didn’t stay quiet. Lastly, even Sarah (who I thought was on Adnan’s side of the case) admitted that after all this time she doesn’t know if he is innocent. This is all so confusing, in my opinion the last episode brought up more questions than solving questions.
Jillian Richardson 