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- [00:02]
Rabia Chaudhry
You're listening to a Tenderfoot TV podcast.
- [00:08]
Payne Lindsey
Twas a cold winter's night and without any heat. I wore Bombas socks so they'd warm up my feet. Yay. My feet cried. These socks are the best. So cushy and warm I can finally rest. But don't rest, I said. There's more if you please. Bombas also makes underwear, slippers and tees, and for each thing you purchase they donate one new to someone who needs it. So they're cozy too. Everybody deserves to feel good all the time. So gift Bombas this season. That's the end of this rhyme. Go to bombas.comaudio and use code audio for 20% off your first purchase. Hey, it's Payne. We have some incredible news to share. Our latest podcast series, Wisecrack, was just named one of the best of 2025 by Apple Podcasts. It's an amazing honor. Not only was Wisecrack selected, but the first episode called Knock Knock was also chosen as one of the best episodes of the year. We're seriously beyond grateful and I want to thank you for supporting Tenderfoot tv and this is your sign, if you haven't already, to check out our podcast Wisecrack. I promise it's worth the listen. It's available now on Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. And thanks again to Apple for showing this show. Some love.
- [01:24]
Narrator/Announcer
Up and Vanish Weekly is released every Wednesday and brought to you absolutely free, but for one week early access and ad free listening. Subscribe to Tenderfoot Plus@Tenderfoot Plus.com or on Apple Podcasts if you're already a subscriber. Thank you for your support.
- [01:42]
Maggie Freeling
This podcast discusses mature and sensitive content, including descriptions of violence that may be triggering for some audiences. Listener discretion is advised.
- [02:09]
Interviewer
Hey y'.
- [02:09]
Rabia Chaudhry
All.
- [02:09]
Maggie Freeling
Welcome to another episode of up and Vanish Weekly. I'm Maggie Freeling. Today we're talking about a case many of you are familiar with. However, there are big updates, so we're going to cover the case a bit different today and focus on the suspect. Adnan Syed. The high school student was arrested in 1999 for the murder of his then ex girlfriend, Hae Min Lee. The case became internationally known after a podcast in 2014 and subsequently many more TV, book and documentary series on the case. The reason is Adnan has always claimed his innocence. He was released from prison in 2022 after his conviction was vacated. However, since then there's been a ton of legal snafus and Adnan is still fighting to prove his innocence. And the Lee family is still desperately trying to get answers. So I wanted to cover this case again because allies of Adnan have never stopped fighting for him. And one of those people is attorney Rabia Chaudhry, who recently discovered new information that could help find the real killer of Hae. So later I speak to Rabia about what she found and her continued work to free Adnan. But first, let's get you caught up with what we know about the murder of Hae Min Lee.
- [03:43]
Narrator/Announcer
It's Wednesday, January 13, 1999 in the western suburbs of Baltimore, Maryland. Students at Woodlawn High School are awaiting the final bell. Around 2:15, 18 year old HAE Min Lee makes her way out to the student parking lot. The honors student is tasked with picking up her cousin from school before heading to her job at LensCrafters. Shortly before 3 o', clock, Lee's classmates watch as she drives away in her 1998 Nissan Sentra. But later that afternoon, Lee's family learns that she never showed up to her Cousin's school. Around 5pm they call police and report Lee missing. Police conduct interviews with family and friends of Lee, but are left with few leads on the whereabouts of the missing high school senior. A few weeks later, on February 9, maintenance worker Alonzo Sellers pulls into Leakin park, located a few miles away from Woodlawn High School. He's making a quick stop to relieve himself and begins walking into the woodline. After making it about 100ft into the woods, Alonzo stops and looks down. He notices what appears to be hair protruding from the dirt. He scans the immediate area and notices something else. What appears to be a partially buried human foot. Alonzo calls 911 and authorities arrive on scene. The remains are identified as belonging to Hae Min Lee. With her body found and a community in shock, police shift to a murder investigation and begin their search for the killer of Hae Min Lee.
- [05:57]
Payne Lindsey
From Tenderfoot TV in Atlanta, I'm Payne Lindsey.
- [06:01]
Maggie Freeling
And I'm Maggie Freeling and you're listening.
- [06:03]
Payne Lindsey
To up and Vanished Weekly.
- [06:08]
Maggie Freeling
Hae Min Lee was born in South Korea and came to the United States with her mom and brother when she was 12. Hae was a scholar and athlete. She was an honor student and played lacrosse and field hockey. She was also the manager of the wrestling team and has been described as funny and full of life. Hae and Adnan dated in 1998. On and off they went to prom together and tried to make it work, but ultimately they broke up. Through Hae's diary, investigators were able to get a glimpse into the relationship. Hae talks about being deeply in love with Adnan, but she was struggling with familial and cultural differences which ultimately drove the two apart.
- [06:51]
Rabia Chaudhry
I'm really getting annoyed that this situation is going the way it is. Your life is not going to end. I never wanted to end this like this. So hostile and cold.
- [07:03]
Maggie Freeling
Adnan grew up in a devout Muslim household and was not allowed to date. Around the same time Hae and Adnan broke up, she met her new boyfriend, Dawn Kleindienst. Hae had dreams of becoming an ophthalmologist and worked at Lenscrafters where she met 2022 year old Don and she was smitten with the older boy. The two had plans to see each other the night Hay went missing and her friends reported to police Hay may have ran off with Don, though at the beginning Don was not taken seriously as a suspect. Police did not collect DNA or fingerprints from the missing girl's boyfriend and they were able to come up with an alibi for Don. He was allegedly working at LensCrafters the time Hay went missing. Once her body is found, an autopsy report concluded that Hae died of manual strangulation and then police received a tip that would point them in the direction of their main suspect.
- [08:03]
Narrator/Announcer
On February 12th, Baltimore detectives received two anonymous phone calls suggesting that they look into Hae Min Lee's ex boyfriend Adnan Syed regarding her disappearance and murder. On February 28, shortly after Lee's missing car is located, Syed is taken into custody at his house and is charged with first degree murder. His first trial takes place in December of 1999 but ends in a mistrial. The second trial begins in January. The majority of the prosecution's case centered around testimony from J. Wilds, a former classmate who admitted to helping Adnan dispose of Lee's body in nearby Leakin Park. According to Jay, Adnan had told him of the plan to kill Lee, then met him at a local Best Buy. On the afternoon of January 13, Adnan was driving Lee's car and inside was her lifeless body. The two then drove to Leakin Park. Later that night, after a six week trial and two hour deliberation, Adnan Syed is found guilty of murdering Hae Min Lee. He remains calm as he is placed in handcuffs and walked out of the courtroom. In June of 2000, Syed is sentenced to life plus 30 years. Haman Lee's mother was in attendance and gave emotional testimony prior to the sentence being handed down. The state was convinced they had brought justice to the family of Hae Min Lee, but unbeknownst to them, a decades long legal battle was brewing to confirm whether or not the true killer had been convicted and sent to prison.
- [09:56]
Maggie Freeling
Adnan Syed spent 23 years in prison for a crime he continually maintained he he did not do. Over the years, multiple witnesses have come forward saying they saw Adnan at the time. The state claims he was abducting and killing Hay. Jay Wilds, the state's key witness, has even said he lied because he's a black man and was a drug dealer and was afraid of what the police would do to him at the time. In 2003, Adnan appealed his conviction but was denied. After the serial podcast debut in October 2014, Adnan Adnan appealed again and in June of 2016 his conviction is vacated, but he's held in custody until a new trial can begin. The new jury would this time hear testimony from a witness who says she was at the library with Adnan at the time he was allegedly killing Hae. But Adnan is denied a new trial in 2019. Then finally in September 2022, a Maryland judge vacates Adnan's conviction After speaking with Prosecut. DNA on Hay's shoe were finally tested and the profile came back to a mixture of four different people, none matching Adnan. Prosecutors said they lost faith in the conviction and Adnan finally went home. Though the conviction was reinstated and after a few more battles, Adnan finally had his sentence reduced two times. Served 23 years. Hae Min Lee's case is still closed. Adnan is still the killer on record. He's a convicted felon for the rest of his life, which means doing anything is nearly impossible. And if you believe he's innocent, then that means a killer has been free for over two decades. Recently I sat down with attorney, author and advocate Rabia Chaudhry. If you know this case at all, you know Rabia is a family friend of Adnan's. Long before this case was internationally known. She's the one who brought the case to Serial. Rabia, penned the New York Times bestseller Adnan's Story and served as executive producer for the HBO series the Case Against Adnan. Syed Rabia has been front and center throughout Adnan's legal battle. She joins me to discuss updates and new details in the case. We'll bring you our conversation after the break. This episode is brought to you by cars.com on cars.com you can shop over 2 million cars. That means over 2 million new car possibilities.
- [12:39]
Rabia Chaudhry
Like making space for your growing family.
- [12:41]
Maggie Freeling
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- [13:05]
Rabia Chaudhry
Got writer's block?
- [13:06]
Maggie Freeling
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- [13:10]
Rabia Chaudhry
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- [13:12]
Maggie Freeling
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- [13:20]
Rabia Chaudhry
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- [13:23]
Maggie Freeling
Try now@windows.com copilot and we're back.
- [13:30]
Interviewer
Ravya, thank you for sitting down with me to discuss Adnan's case. I want to back up before we get to Adnan though, and talk about you. You and I have known each other for years just through this kind of work. I really, you know, was enamored by you and your work in Undisclose, particularly because you guys really focus on wrongful convictions, which is what I do. So how did you get involved in.
- [13:53]
Rabia Chaudhry
Wrongful convictions when Serial came on the scene? I actually had been working in national security policy for about six years. I was an international security fellow working with think tanks and the, and the State Department and stuff. I was in a whole different genre. And then, and then Serial happened and I, at that point, I had never done wrongful conviction work or innocence work professionally. Adnan was just like a little brother to me. And so I had just been helping him and his family for all these years. But it was just one of those moments where I either had to lean into the momentum that Cyril brought or walk away. And Cyril would have been the end of Adnan's story. Cyril was not going to exonerate Adnan or bring him home. And so I kind of did a complete pivot and just said, okay, I'm doing wrongful conviction work. And Adnan was the first case that, you know, me, Susan Simpson and Colin Miller, two other attorneys and colleagues of mine covered on undisclosed. And then ever since then, it's been case after case.
- [14:51]
Interviewer
You are really the reason Serial was able to happen. You reached out and you were like, hey, I have this case. You knew Sarah was a producer at this American Life. So Serial wouldn't have happened if you hadn't shared Adnan's story.
- [15:03]
Rabia Chaudhry
Yeah. You know, at that point, we were already, I think, about 15 years into the appellate process and we had just been dealt a really severe blow in that process. And that blow was that we could not get Asia McClain to come to the appeal and testify. And Asia McClain was a non Salibi witness. We had waited years to present her. And that's when I kind of lost all hope in the courts. And I said, I need the media involved. I need a journalist to look at this. I couldn't go and investigate the case because I shouldn't be talking to witnesses. I'm too close. Right. Our lawyers also reach out to witnesses. They don't want to talk to lawyers. But journalists can get people to talk in ways that other people can't. And so, yeah, I found Sarah Koenig. She had written many years earlier a little bit about Adnan's attorney, about Christina Gutierrez, and she had a connection to Baltimore, and I thought, let's see if she's interested in the story. And she clearly very much was.
- [15:59]
Interviewer
So serial comes out, and then you guys felt the need to do your own thing. You found Susan. She was, you know, sleuthing online. You were really impressed with the work she was doing. Um, how did you know Colin?
- [16:11]
Rabia Chaudhry
All three of us had blogs. We were blogging, like, nerdy lawyers and, you know, people on Reddit who are really obsessed with the case were reading our blogs. But the general. It wasn't like, getting out to, like, a bigger audience. And so I reached out to both of them and I said, I'm really impressed with your work. If I share the case files, would you, like, take a deeper look at this? And then I had a friend of mine who said, listen, y' all are great, but ain't nobody reading your blogs. And people are used to the story as a podcast. Think about making a podcast. And so we did. We were terrible, but we did it. Once we started undisclosed, we just started getting requests, not just from defendants, their families, but from actual innocence projects to take a look at the cases where they had kind of installed. And so many of our defendants are home now. It's. It's really gratifying.
- [16:54]
Interviewer
That's amazing. Yeah. Do you. Do you know, off the top of your head, some of the. The stats, how you guys have helped. How undisclosed.
- [17:00]
Rabia Chaudhry
Helped these people? The stats are this, that we have had 13 exonerations, two stays of execution, one commutation from death row, two commutations of sentences, a grant of parole, a vacated conviction, Alford plea, and then Adnan's case, where he got the JRA relief as the latest.
- [17:17]
Interviewer
Wow.
- [17:18]
Rabia Chaudhry
It's a good track record. I think we have been able to kind of figure out how to tackle these cases in a very efficient way.
- [17:25]
Interviewer
So with Adnan, where did you pick up? Did you pick up with Asia and the Alibi witness? Like, when Serial ended, where did you guys start?
- [17:35]
Rabia Chaudhry
I mean, when Serial ended, for any of us who knew the case well enough and who understood kind of how a criminal investigation needs to be undertaken, there was so much that we had to correct from Serial, frankly, that was our first goal. There was so much that we had to correct, number one. And number two, there was so much that Serial didn't cover. And we're like, oh, there, there is so much. And you know, look, they, they, they're incredible storytellers, but they're not like professional investigators, not criminal investigators, they're not lawyers. This is not something they do full time. They're not even true crime investig, like reporters. Right? This is just kind of an off the beaten path thing for them. But they told an incredible story. They just got a lot of it wrong. So we had to set the record straight. And, and what was important was for us to establish, I think, I think episode one was Adnan's day, establishing that Adnan's day was actually pretty well, not just documented, but he knew he had. He reported to his lawyers over and over what he believed to have been doing the day that Hae Minley disappeared. Whereas Serial was like, Adnan had no idea what happened to him, what. What he was doing on 13-1-99. And that wasn't true. So we kind of had to set the record straight vis a vis Serial. And then we had so much additional evidence we wanted to talk about, including something as fundamental as the autopsy report, which it's remarkable that in 12 episodes, Serial did not once examine the autopsy report. And there's so much evidence in that autopsy report.
- [18:55]
Interviewer
Right, so that's something you guys looked at. So I have some things that in undisclosed season one that you guys covered, you covered Asia, you covered untested DNA. You know, Jay, basically, this was in the HBO doc. Jay says he lied. You know, he was caught with a ton of weed. And then the facts cover sheet is a huge one. That was something Susan discovered. Um, so do you want to dive into some of these things that you guys needed to correct some things that Serial didn't put in? I mean, you guys found a lot of information.
- [19:26]
Rabia Chaudhry
The autopsy report was really important because they never looked at it. The lividity, what the lividity said about the timeline of the murder and the Crime is incredibly important information. The forensics, meaning none of the forensics match Adnan or Jay Wiles, who was the state's only witness. There was just so much and yeah, of course the facts cover sheet which the state presented as, you know, Adnan cell phone was almost like this traveling map. And Susan, who is maybe the only person in the world who will read a cover sheet for a fact, reads the COVID sheet that AT&T had sent to the state and it says that, you know, cell phone tower pings are not reliable for location. They actually don't tell you where they are, where that person is. Now I, I, I'll make the argument that even if they were reliable, Jay's testimony and Jay's many, many changing statements actually never match up to the cell tower pings. So, so it almost doesn't matter. But yeah, there's a lot, there's a lot there.
- [20:20]
Interviewer
So the facts cover sheet basically is that what got everything kind of moving forward and the case was, it overturned? His case was overturned. Is that how it all started?
- [20:29]
Rabia Chaudhry
There was a PCR, a post conviction hearing that took place in 2016 and that had been a petition we had filed before Serial even began, but we just hadn't gotten court yet. So yeah, it was the fax cover sheet that ended up getting his conviction overturned. That was upheld by the intermediate appellate court. And then the Supreme Court overturned that and they reinstated his conviction and said he does not get a new trial. And then we started from the ground up again.
- [20:54]
Interviewer
Basically the facts cover sheet said that incoming calls cannot be reliable for location. And so the court ruled that if this information was known at the first trial, it could have made a difference in the outcome. So that is what they ruled. They overturned his case and he was deserving of a new trial after that.
- [21:14]
Rabia Chaudhry
But then the Supreme Court said, well here's the thing because what they, what the state uses cell phone tower, obviously they're trying to match it to the state's, the witnesses testimony. But also as kind of a timeline like, because there's a call on that record that shows at 2:36 there's a phone call made. It went to Adnan's cell phone. But the State says that 2:36 call was the Adnan has killed Haman Lee and he calls Jay Wilds. It's the come and get me call. It became the infamous come and get me call. What the Supreme Court said was, well, here's the thing, like honestly that call, it doesn't, it's not dispositive because even if they had presented this at trial, if the defense knew about this facts cover sheet and had bought it, well, the state could have just changed their timeline. They could have said a 3:15pm call was a come and get me call. Heyman Lee could have been killed after, and it wouldn't be enough for Adnan to have won at trial. And so they reinstated the conviction.
- [22:06]
Interviewer
And so where we're at now is he is out and they're still kind of deliberating a whole bunch of things. But as it stands right now, he has time served.
- [22:14]
Rabia Chaudhry
Yep, it's time served. And, you know, that's it. It's like, you know, the case is closed. It's not considered an open case anymore, which is unfortunate because I really do believe that the person who killed Haman Lee has not been held accountable. Adnan does have a shot if he wants to file a writ of actual innocence. He can still pursue a full exoneration if he wants.
- [22:34]
Interviewer
So that's a great segue into season two of undisclosed. Some of the things that you guys are finding. There's a lot of talk about evidence of actual innocence in some of the things you guys have presented. Where do we even start?
- [22:49]
Rabia Chaudhry
Over all these years, there's been a lot. Obviously we reported. We reported on season one. There's a lot I reported on in my book, then the HBO documentary. There's been so much media made. But there was always the possibility that he was going to go back to trial. And so there was information, some information that we kind of like, didn't really find a place to plug in. But we thought if he goes back to trial, we gotta. We wanna kind of sit on this. Well, he's not going back to trial for this. And so we wanted to. We went on hiatus for a few years with undisclosed, and we, we relaunched undisclosed just last month in June. And we decided that we want to re. We wanna start off with all the stuff we kind of never talked about with Adnan's case and stuff that's emerged since our first season of it. There are. There have always been two prime suspects, in my opinion. One is the man. He's called Mr. S in serial. His name is Alonzo Sellers. That's public information. There's no reason to hide it. And he's the one who found the. Or reported the body. And the circumstances of him reporting the body have always been very suspect. He failed a polygraph. He was eliminated improperly as a suspect very quickly. And then there's the victim's actual boyfriend at the time. Of her disappearance, who was also eliminated improperly. And both of these men have escaped any kind of forensic testing. You know, there's all this forensic evidence in In Hae Min Lee's murder that's just unsourced. There's hair they haven't matched to anybody, there's fingerprints they haven't matched to anybody. There's DNA they haven't matched anybody. But these two men have never had their DNA taken, their hair taken, a cheek swab, fingerprints like we have. Nothing of theirs has been compared to to any of the outstanding forensic evidence in this case. They've only tried to compare it to Adnan or J. Wilds, and it didn't match. None of it matched. So, you know, we really dig down into more evidence that suggests that both of these suspects were eliminated improperly and they should still be tested. Not only that, we also talk about the fact that I had my investigator go and pull their DNA from their trash and give it to the state so that they can make a comparison, but the state's doing nothing, which is not unusual, as you probably know, Maggie. They just fight this shit every step of the way.
- [25:00]
Interviewer
It's so wild that the two of them never had their samples compared to the evidence that was found. There was a fingerprint found on her.
- [25:11]
Rabia Chaudhry
Rear view mirror, a thumbprint on her car rear view mirror. And nobody knows who belongs to, but clearly it probably belongs to the last person who drove the car and left it where it was eventually found. It's super frustrating to somebody like me because I can't get access to that. I have to run for state's Attorney and become State's Attorney of Baltimore in order to get access to the goddamn file. Yeah, it's really frustrating that they won't do their job.
- [25:31]
Interviewer
I think this was Sarah Kalin, your friend, who's an investigator, went to the crime scene and immediately was like, oh, I know what happened. There was two people involved in this. The person that dumped her body was likely not the same person that brought her where her body was found.
- [25:46]
Rabia Chaudhry
Yeah, it's always been very confusing because the position that Hae Min Lee's body was found in does not match the lividity in her body. Which means because the lividity is like, you know, where all the blood settles after you die. And after eight or 10 hours, it's fixed so you can turn a body over and but that it doesn't change. It's like this blue bruising. So we knew already. We've known for ever. Every forensic pathologist who's looked at this, has said, well, she was killed somewhere. Then she was left upside down in her face for at least, like flat on her face for at least eight to 10 hours. And then moved to Lincoln park or where she was found, rather. And you know, we couldn't figure out, like, where she might have been. And I couldn't figure out, cause I've been the crime scene so many times, like how anybody could actually pull over there. This is incredibly densely wooded. It's two narrow lanes. It's heavily policed. There's homes all around. Who would have the audacity to pull over, pop open a trunk or wherever, take the body, like, struggle to get the body in as far as it was, it was very, quite far into the woods right next to this creek then and leave a car there. Like it's. It's like screaming that you are up to no good. Right? Like it's very, very risky. And we just couldn't. And we were like, did somebody bring her from the other side of the creek? Like, there's no access to that point. And I took Sarah Kalin out there and this is literally like last year, I think. And she looked at it and she's like, oh, no, no, no. This was a dump and run. Nobody is parking their car here. And there were these concrete barriers that existed in 99. You can see them in video footage. She's like. And she has worked on other cases in which female victims particularly have been dumped by the side of the road and just take off. She's like, that's the safest thing. She had. Somebody dumped her back here behind the concrete barriers. That could have been where she was for eight to 10 hours. And then she was probably moved further back later.
- [27:26]
Interviewer
Do you think Alonzo might have been.
- [27:27]
Maggie Freeling
The one that killed her?
- [27:29]
Rabia Chaudhry
I, I honestly, I don't know. I just don't know. We, you know, I, I have gone back and forth, you know, but I would put him number two on my suspect list. My, my, my primary suspect, honestly, has always been the boyf whose, you know, day was not accounted for. We have no idea what her boyfriend was doing on the day she disappeared.
- [27:46]
Maggie Freeling
We'll be back after the break.
- [27:52]
Narrator/Announcer
Hello, friends.
- [27:53]
Rabia Chaudhry
Guess who? That's right.
- [27:55]
Narrator/Announcer
It is I, the replacer. Once again, I've been called on.
- [28:00]
Rabia Chaudhry
So you can play the new Call of Duty Black Ops 7.
- [28:03]
Narrator/Announcer
With three expansive modes, 18 multiplayer maps.
- [28:08]
Rabia Chaudhry
And the tastiest zombie gameplay you've ever freaking seen.
- [28:13]
Narrator/Announcer
Call of Duty Black Ops 7 available now. Rated M for mature.
- [28:21]
Maggie Freeling
This episode is Brought to you by Netflix from the creator of Homeland. Claire Danes and Matthew Rhys star in the new Netflix series the Beast and Me as ruthless rivals whose shared darkness will set them on a collision course with fatal consequences. The Beast in Me is a riveting psychological cat and mouse story about guilt, justice and doubt. You will not want to miss this. The Beast in Me is now playing only on Netflix. And now, here's this week's critical missing case.
- [28:55]
Narrator/Announcer
Today's case comes from the Massillon Police Department who are seeking the public's help in locating a missing Ohio man. 40 year old Nathan Yoder was last seen about a month ago leaving a cabin located at 52455 Iowa Road in Gursey County. He is believed to be driving a red Dodge truck. Yoder is described as 5 foot 11 and weighing approximately 140 pounds. He has blue eyes and brown hair. So, listeners, if you have seen Nathan or know of his whereabouts, please contact the Massillon Police Department Detective Bureau at 330-830-1735. You can also check out the up and Vanish weekly Instagram pageavweekly to see a picture of Nathan and repost for visibility. Thanks.
- [29:55]
Maggie Freeling
All right, we're back.
- [29:56]
Interviewer
So let's talk about her boyfriend, Don. He was in serial, but I don't believe he was ever really looked at in serial. He was kind of just mentioned as her boyfriend from most accounts we know hey was going to meet this person Don, who was about 4ish years older than her. They worked at LensCrafters together and that's really all we kind of knew. And then you guys found out some information that I didn't know.
- [30:20]
Rabia Chaudhry
Yeah. So Sarah found out that, you know, we knew that by the time Adnan went to trial the following year, the boyfriend Don did come to testify at the trial and he was accompanied by a woman named Robin who he later married. We assumed that they did not know each other until after obviously Hae Min Lee had been killed and then maybe he later met her. It turns out that Sarah Kalin, same investigator, she's amazing. Found evidence. And you know, nobody really looked at Robyn before. Nobody looked at the wife. They've been together ever since. They're still together. But Sarah found out that they in fact had a shared address back as early as like 99. And there has been some female DNA that's unsourced that was found connected to the crime scene. And we're like, who could that belong to? And so, you know, the, the frustration again is that, well, guess what? We have Robin's DNA. We gave it to the state's attorney. Compare it. Compare it to that unsourced female DNA from Hayes from under her fingernail. And he had only been seeing Hay for a couple of weeks when she disappeared and was killed. But it could be that he already had a girlfriend.
- [31:19]
Interviewer
So in your latest episode, you have a new witness. Someone who worked at LensCrafter is an assistant manager who is now saying, you know, she remembers the police coming and had no idea what's going on, but she felt like she was involved in helping Don's mother cover up for him.
- [31:37]
Rabia Chaudhry
Yeah. So, you know, Don was eliminated by police very quickly on early on because the Police went to LensCrafters. The manager's like, yep, he was working that day, except the manager at one store was his mom. The manager at another store was his mom's girlfriend. And so it was like this closed loop. And the police never realized this. So they. But they're like, he's working. That was it. And it wasn't until, like, Adnan's trial that Adnan's lawyer asked for the timesheets, like, his time card. And the time cards were produced, and nobody really looked very closely at them until Susan Simpson did for our first season. And she's like, these times, the cards are not adding up. Something is off about these. And then, you know, a lot of people have investigated the time cards and there's definitely something off about it, but we just have no way of, really, all these years later, proving for sure that they're falsified, but it seems for many different reasons, that they are likely falsified. And then in 2016, this woman reaches out to me. Her name's Deborah Renner. And like, I remember, like, these. We had switched to these computerized systems, and Dawn's mom couldn't figure something out one day. And I. She's like, I have a very clear recollection of helping her. Don wasn't working at the store anymore, but they had to kind of show that he had been back on that day. She's like, I remember entering Don into the system, even though he had no longer worked at that location. And I was like, I wonder why they're. They want to put him back in the system. Um, and so what? She had no idea Heman Lee disappeared. She didn't know about any of this until the producers of the documentary went to her and she started connecting the dots. And, you know, it's now 2025. Deborah Renner came to us, like, a decade ago almost, Right. So she's been consistent with her story. Many people have spoken to her and her, her details have never wavered.
- [33:10]
Interviewer
So I feel like listeners are probably wondering, like, why won't new investigators on this case reopen it? Why won't they look at this evidence? Why won't they test the DNA? What is stopping them?
- [33:23]
Rabia Chaudhry
I mean, look, we are all familiar with, for example, the west of Memphis case or, or the cases from, you know, making a murder. This is just how in most cases the state operates. I have yet to see. Maybe I've seen in very rare circumstances where the state prosecutor, da, state's attorneys, like, oh, we got it wrong. We are on our own volition, going to correct course. So most of the time, states always dig in. This is what we expect. We see this over and over. Greg Lance was like one of our, one of the cases I investigated. Greg Lance, man, you know, when that series aired, the Sundance Channel picked it up and they made an episode about it for one of their shows. And this, this man calls into his lawyers and said, my dad killed those victims. He told me they killed those victims. And all we wanted was the, the weapon tested in the case. The state fought DNA testing on that weapon every inch of the way. That man's the, the, the son of the killer testified in court and said, my dad told me he killed those people. You have the wrong man in prison. And guess what? The judge didn't buy it. That guy doesn't even know Greg Lance. He didn't even know he existed. And so this, it is a huge uphill battle. It is very, very hard. What's the. Why, why do they do it? I don't know. I think prosecutors, I think prosecutors think a certain way and they are just have this tunnel vision. You know, there are certain kinds of personalities that become prosecutors and certain kind of personalities that become public defenders and defenders. And that's just who they are. And they become, they're the ones who become the judges then. So why, I don't know why. Ivan Bates, who all these years said he supports Adan, believes he deserves a new trial and would throw the conviction out, is suddenly like, well, it's done right now. They have no incentive to. Adnan was re sentenced under the Juvenile Restoration Act. The case is closed. Ivan Bates has said he would reopen it if we took him a smoking gun. I feel like on every undisclosed episode is a smoking gun. But what do you do? I just think these systems protect themselves, as simple as that.
- [35:20]
Interviewer
Why do you think from the beginning the police were so interested In Adnan.
- [35:25]
Rabia Chaudhry
I think from the beginning, the police were like, well, who are our suspects? Right? They're like, well, dawn was working. We know, because the manager told us that leaves us with her ex boyfriend. And at the time. And this was even before they found Hae Min Lee's body, because she had. She had disappeared January 13. She wasn't found till February 9. So they had all these weeks in between where they're looking for her. And so even before they found her body, they had already opened a file. They had started investigating Adnan in her disappearance. I think it was really connected to the fact that the family had hired a private investigator, and that woman had written a report all about Adnan being a Muslim and that young Muslim men, there's like an epidemic of them killing women and fleeing the country, which the prosecutor said in court, but it was a lie. She had to later apologize for that. And it all became about his religion, ethnicity, and they called an honor killing, and that was it. And they went with it. So they. They derived a motive. They had to, like, pull it out of their rear ends, you know, especially when you have a guy like Adnan who has never had a violent incident take place in his life, who has a clean record, who is academically, you know, doing well, and there's just nothing there. So they have to grasp at straws. And. And it was. It was bad. This was before 9 11. So it's not like it was a post 911 thing, but a lot of it was all. And, you know, look, his religion and ethnicity came up during the trial, like, over 300 times. That speaks for itself.
- [36:50]
Interviewer
It was pointed out in the HBO documentary as well that usually, like, community ties and having a strong family is good to get bail or bonds, but actually, for Adnan, all the support worked against him. Can you kind of explain what they were talking about with that?
- [37:07]
Rabia Chaudhry
Yeah. There were hundreds of community members in that courtroom. Eleven people put up their houses for his bail. And, you know, it was just overwhelmed because people had known him. So he was born and raised right there in that community in Baltimore. And so the prosecutor turned around and pointed everybody in that courtroom and said, these are the people who will help him escape. Because in their culture and belief system, honor killings are okay. And the ripple of shock that went through the community was like, what the f are they talking about? They couldn't believe. We couldn't believe it. We couldn't believe it. And so, yeah, it worked against him.
- [37:41]
Interviewer
Now, how is Adnan doing?
- [37:43]
Rabia Chaudhry
Yeah, Adnan has been a free man Living, well, free. Maybe not psychologically, but physically, for since September 2019. And he's been working at Georgetown University's Prison Justice Initiative. It's all been incredible watching him rediscover the world. And he's married. And his wife is amazing. She was. She's been an incredible advocate this entire time and helped very closely. So he's doing good. His father passed away not too long ago. Adnan was here for that. My father passed away a few months after Adnan was released. And he was there by his side when my dad died. And so it's. It's been amazing having him back.
- [38:24]
Maggie Freeling
Back after a short break with new.
- [38:28]
Payne Lindsey
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- [38:42]
Rabia Chaudhry
Oh, ouch.
- [38:43]
Narrator/Announcer
Clorox Disinfecting Wipes now available in.
- [38:48]
Payne Lindsey
Ooh.
- [38:48]
Rabia Chaudhry
Crisp Lemon.
- [38:50]
Payne Lindsey
Find it on Amazon.
- [38:52]
Narrator/Announcer
Clorox Clean feels good.
- [38:57]
Maggie Freeling
Hi. I'm here to pick up my son, Milo. There's no Milo here.
- [39:01]
Rabia Chaudhry
Who picked up my son from school?
- [39:03]
Payne Lindsey
Streaming only on Peacock.
- [39:07]
Rabia Chaudhry
I'm gonna need the name of everyone.
- [39:08]
Payne Lindsey
That could have a connection.
- [39:10]
Rabia Chaudhry
You don't understand.
- [39:11]
Maggie Freeling
It was just the five of us.
- [39:13]
Rabia Chaudhry
So this was all planned. What are you gonna do?
- [39:15]
Maggie Freeling
I will do whatever it takes to.
- [39:17]
Rabia Chaudhry
Get my son back.
- [39:18]
Narrator/Announcer
I honestly didn't see this coming. These nice people killing each other. All her fault.
- [39:23]
Payne Lindsey
A new series streaming now only on Peacock.
- [39:29]
Narrator/Announcer
Hey, listeners, if you have a tip or theories about a case you want to share or a case of interest you'd like to recommend to us, then we want to hear from you. Email us casesenderfoot tv, DM us on Instagram avweekly, or give us a call at 770-545-6411. You can also join the conversation on our discord at Discord. GG upandvanished. Now back to the show.
- [40:03]
Interviewer
What is it like for you as someone who, you know, has worked on this case and very much believes that Adnan is innocent? You've seen evidence pointing to that. You know, he's like a little brother to you. What is it like to see people talk about his case and him being guilty?
- [40:20]
Rabia Chaudhry
You know, at some point, like, you can't keep punching back. Like, you know, the. The record stands as it is. There are podcasters who keep going on. All they're doing is rehashing the State's case from 2000, and we have debunked every single thing they said. But what about Jay but what about Jay? Which version of events should we believe? Jay said in the most recent interview he gave, I didn't know nothing about Best Buy. The cops told me he killed her at Best Buy. Which version of events? Like you're telling me the forensics don't match. He had alibi after alibi, which, by the way, the season finale of what we're covering for Adnan's case. That'll be episode six. We're presenting a new alibi witness that nobody's heard from before. And so, like, every. Almost every minute of Adnan's day was actually accounted for that day. And so it's frustrating, but also, you know, it's all there. We put it out. There's no more I can say or do. It's not even just vindication for Adnan. It's a vindication for Hae Min Lee. I don't believe she's gotten justice yet. And it's not that hard to get it for her. It's a matter of just testing, like, you know, matching the forensic evidence we have. That's all it is. And it's very frustrating. So, you know, I. I feel like this is going to be one of those things that until and unless I. I am convinced that we. That the person who killed her has been arrested, I don't know if I'll ever give this up.
- [41:40]
Interviewer
What do you think that's going to take? I mean, obviously, we know testing the DNA, but is that going to take a new administration?
- [41:45]
Rabia Chaudhry
It seems like. And, you know, that's the thing. You know, when. When Marilyn Mosby reopened the case and she dropped the charges. When she dropped the charges, what happened was it became an open case again, and two Baltimore homicide detectives were assigned to the case again. But in 2022, it all could have happened, except she lost her election and a new administration came in. And when the new administration came in, a lot of the. And by the way, episode five is called the Prosecutors. It's about this. It's coming out, you know, very soon. And it's about what has happened, the dynamic between these two administrations, and how Adnan has been caught in the middle.
- [42:20]
Interviewer
Rabia, where can people find you? And undisclosed. I am obsessed. I'm telling you. I've listened to all four episodes three times. Just because I'm like, there's things I'm missing. I need to re. Listen. It is so fascinating, y'. All. So where can everyone find you?
- [42:33]
Rabia Chaudhry
Well, undisclosed. If you wanna listen to the podcast, we're on every podcast app, of course, please do go find us and follow us and we have other great seasons coming up on other cases. This is not the only case we talk about. And you can also find undisclosed on Facebook and Instagram at undisclosed pod. I'm on Instagram @rabyesquared. That's written out with the number two. Or if you wanna contact me directly, like let's say you have a case you want me to look at or you want me to consider something in this or other cases we've covered, you can just go to my website, which is rabiadhary.com and go to the contact page.
- [43:05]
Interviewer
You guys are amazing. Thank you so much, Rabia, for joining me.
- [43:08]
Rabia Chaudhry
Thank you, Maggie. Thanks for having me.
- [43:14]
Maggie Freeling
Many people believe the state railroaded J. Wilds into confessing and implicating Adnan. You can listen or watch any of the documentaries to get details on what, why. But if that's the case, then not only did the state put innocent people in prison and allow a killer to go free, but they've opened the door for Hae's family, the Lees, to consistently have to relive the worst thing that's ever happened to them. Losing their daughter, sister, cousin, niece, loved one. They are forced to sit through appeals and news media hounding their phones and doors. That's the real cost of wrongful convictions. Not only the life of the person in prison, but the lack of justice and concern for the victim's family. Every time Adnan files an appeal and goes to court, media follows and the Li's lives are upended. I cannot imagine having to live that way. I don't blame them for being angry and doubling down on Adnan. By all accounts, Adnan has been a productive member of society since his release from prison. And I hope law enforcement does look into this case and find the real killer of Hae Min Lee. Y', all, thank you so much for listening to this week's episode of up and Vanish Weekly.
- [44:49]
Interviewer
Be sure to tune in next week.
- [44:50]
Maggie Freeling
As we dig into another new case. Until next time.
- [45:01]
Payne Lindsey
Up and Vanish Weekly is a production of Tenderfoot TV in association with Odyssey. Your hosts are Maggie Fox and myself, Payne Lindsay. The show is written by Maggie Freeling, myself and John Street. Executive producers are Donald Albright and myself. Lead producer is John Street. Additional production by Meredith Steadman and Mike Rooney. Research for the series by Jamie Albright, Celicia Stanton and Carolyn Tallmadge. Edit and mix by Dylan Harrington and Sean Nurney. Supervising producer is Tracy Kaplan. Artwork by Byron McCoy. Original music by makeup and vanity set Special thanks to Oren Rosenbaum and the team at uta, Beck Media and Marketing and the Nord Group. For more podcasts like up and Vanish weekly, search Tenderfoot TV on your favorite podcast app or visit us@Tenderfoot TV. Thanks for listening.