The thing about a cold case that always gets me is the suggestion of someone's innocence, the idea that perhaps all those years ago a mistake was made, someone was wrongly accused, unjustly convicted, and maybe that's the hook ... or at least its the reason Serial: The Podcast is the number one podcast in the world right now.
From the creators of the ever successful This American Life, hosted and reported by Sarah Koenig, Serial presents a story - a true story - told over the course of 12 episodes, it begins: "It's Baltimore, 1999. Hae Min Lee, a popular high school senior, disappears after school one day. Six weeks later detectives arrest her classmate and ex boyfriend, Adnan Syed, for her murder. He says he is innocent - though he can't exactly remember what he was doing on that January afternoon."
Syed was eventually convicted of Lee's murder and has been in Maryland Correctional Facility for the past 15 years, all the while maintaining his innocence.
As I listened to the podcast I was at war with myself the entire time: is Adnan really innocent? or is he a pathological liar, and murderer? Nothing is clear, and this ambiguity haunts the entire story.
There is a constant shadow of doubt that clouds this case. There is no confirmed timeline of events, no clear motive is established, witnesses were ignored, evidence was discarded, no one seems capable of murder and yet nothing seems like the truth. But Hae Lee did die and someone committed that murder.
As Koenig states at the start "someone is lying"... or maybe they all are.
As I listened to the podcast I was at war with myself the entire time: is Adnan really innocent? or is he a pathological liar, and murderer? Nothing is clear, and this ambiguity haunts the entire story.
There is a constant shadow of doubt that clouds this case. There is no confirmed timeline of events, no clear motive is established, witnesses were ignored, evidence was discarded, no one seems capable of murder and yet nothing seems like the truth. But Hae Lee did die and someone committed that murder.
As Koenig states at the start "someone is lying"... or maybe they all are.
Even after you finish all twelve episodes you still find yourself helplessly searching for the truth. I scrolled through the subreddit that was created for people to discuss the podcast, everyone online was arguing over evidence, timelines, theories and facts. I don't think there has ever been a meme more accurate than the one ft. Matthew McConaughey (see below). I could not stop talking about it. Every night for a week I presented a new theory to my family over the dinner table or messaged B with another series of questions about the case.
But I think no matter how much we discuss it, or fight over it, in the end these were just high school kids, doing high school things, and then somewhere among it all there was the intent to kill.
A girl leaves school and she is strangled.
Buried in a shallow grave.
Buried in a shallow grave.
A 17 year old boy is arrested.
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*Mosaik does not take credit for any of the images used in this article*
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