Fast forward to Sept. 7, when the lead prosecutor, Kevin Urick, allegedly set up a meeting between Wilds and attorney Anne Benaroya, who agreed to represent him pro bono, and hashed out a plea deal that same day that ultimately resulted in Wilds’ getting no prison time after testifying against Syed at trial.
Jay Wilds, the key witness in Adnan Syed's trial, gave his first interview in years, and now Rabia Chaudry, the woman who introduced Sarah Koenig to Syed, claims it proves Wilds has been lying the whole time.
Who Was Adnan Syed's First Lawyer, Cristina Gutierrez? In 2014, Adnan Syed 's controversial case became a national sensation when Serial was released—fourteen years after he was convicted of murdering his girlfriend, Hae Min Lee, and sentenced to life in prison.
What we do know about Wilds and Syed, which Syed’s testimony confirms, is that Wilds and Syed were together on the day of Lee’s murder, and Jay had Syed’s phone and car for an unspecified period of time. Their accounts depart when Wilds says Syed showed him the body in the trunk of the car, and then Syed enlisted Wilds to bury Lee.
Adnan Syed, whose murder case captivated the nation after it was featured on the true-crime podcast “Serial,” was freed from prison Monday after 23 years, his conviction vacated — at least for now — by a judge who found deficiencies in how prosecutors had turned over evidence to defense attorneys decades ago.
In 2000, Adnan Syed, a high school senior in Baltimore, Maryland, was convicted of strangling and killing his ex-girlfriend Hae Min Lee. The case - in which the prosecution painted Syed as a violent and jealous ex-lover who brutally killed a bright and talented young woman - made national headlines.
Material in the state investigation that was not properly turned over to Syed's defense attorneys, and the existence of two suspects who may have been improperly cleared as part of the investigation, were cited as the reasons for the conviction being vacated.
Jay WildsThe 12-part podcast “Serial” never formally interviewed Jay Wilds, the star witness who helped convict Adnan Syed of Hae Min Lee's murder. The Intercept interviews Jay at length for the first time.
Syed, now 42, has always said he was innocent and did not kill Hae Min Lee, who was 18 when she was strangled and buried in a Baltimore park in 1999.
Adnan Syed was 19 when he was sentenced to life in prison for the death of his ex-girlfriend, Hae Min Lee, whose body was found buried in the woods in 1999. Prosecutors last week asked the court to throw out his conviction, saying a year-long case review had turned up two "alternative suspects".
The case came down to the testimony of Jay, who claimed Adnan told him he was going to kill Hae, Adnan's former girlfriend. He claims Adnan strangled Hae, showed Jay the body and made Jay help bury Hae's body. Jay later led police to Hae's car.
Jay also worked at the Drug Emporium store a short walk from his home. There is a separate page with details of Jay's own court case for the murder of Hae Min Lee.
The New York TimesFor Serial press inquiries, please email [email protected]. Podcast sponsorship is sold by The New York Times. For information, contact Amanda McCartney.
Serial tells one story — a true story — over the course of a season. Serial has won every major award for broadcasting, including the duPont-Columbia, Scripps Howard, Edward R. Murrow, and the first-ever Peabody awarded to a podcast. Serial, like This American Life, is produced in collaboration with WBEZ Chicago.
Both of them, but especially Adnan Syed, were under special pressure at home, and the stress of that spilled over into their relationship. Eventually Hae broke up with Adnan.
Central ArabiaAdnan (Arabic: عدنان, romanized: 'adnān) is the traditional ancestor of the Adnanite Arabs of Northern, Western, Eastern and Central Arabia, as opposed to the Qahtanite Arabs of Southern Arabia who descend from Qahtan....AdnanSpouseMahdad bint Laham (of the Banu Yaqshan)ChildrenMa'ad ibn Adnan Akk ibn Adnan2 more rows
AmericanAdnan Syed / Nationality
In case you’ve missed it, Wilds testified against Syed in 2000, claiming that Syed murdered his ex-girlfriend Hae Min Lee in 1999. In the 12 episodes of Serial, Koenig set out to challenge Wilds ...
Jay Wilds and Adnan Syed were reportedly not close friends — but the Woodlawn High School seniors’ fates would eventually become inextricably linked through a brutal Jan. 1999 murder case, when Syed was arrested and ultimately convicted of killing his ex-girlfriend, Hae Min Lee. Even though he and Syed were allegedly just acquaintances, Wilds’ police interviews and witness testimony ...
Serial. Jay Wilds, Maryland's key (and only) witness at Adnan Syed's 2000 trial for murdering Hae Min Lee — which was chronicled on the hotly debated Serial podcast, which launched in October 2014 and completed its 12-episode run earlier this month — has consented to a single interview (with The Intercept) in an attempt to tell his side ...
Jarett Wieselman is a senior entertainment editor for BuzzFeed News and is based in Los Angeles. Wieselman writes about and reports on the television industry.
Jay From "Serial" Gave An Interview That Might Actually Help Adnan Syed. Jay Wilds, the key witness in Adnan Syed's trial, gave his first interview in years, and now Rabia Chaudry, the woman who introduced Sarah Koenig to Syed, claims it proves Wilds has been lying the whole time. Jay Wilds, Maryland's key (and only) witness at Adnan Syed's 2000 ...
Rabia Chaudry, the Syed family friend and attorney who originally brought Syed's case to the attention of Serial host Sarah Koenig, today took to Twitter to point out what she sees as inconsistencies in the story Wilds is now telling compared to the account of events he offered at Syed's trial.
His original murder conviction was overturned in June 2016 after a court found that Syed’s trial attorney, Cristina Gutierrez, failed to cross-examine the prosecution’s cell tower expert about the reliability of location data for incoming calls. According to Rolling Stone, the prosecution used two incoming calls to corroborate their witness’s testimony about helping Syed bury Lee’s body hours after the murder.
On Friday, March 8 , Syed's murder conviction was reinstated by the Maryland Court of Appeals. The court reinstated Syed’s conviction Friday, agreeing that while his defense was deficient, it “did not prejudice” the case. He will not get a new trial.
HBO. In 2014, Adnan Syed 's controversial case became a national sensation when Serial was released—fourteen years after he was convicted of murdering his girlfriend, Hae Min Lee, and sentenced to life in prison. His story is now being re-examined in HBO's The Case Against Adnan Syed, which picks up where the immensely popular 2014 podcast left off.
After her son Roberto Gutierrez first listened to Serial —which implies that his mother did not focus on evidence many believe could have kept Syed from being sentenced to life in prison—he defended her in an interview with The Baltimore Sun, noting that she was suffering from health problems like multiple sclerosis and diabetes during the case, which affected her decision-making.
Many armchair detectives have come to agree that the late Gutierrez—once considered a top Baltimore criminal defense lawyer—did not focus on the appropriate evidence, and theorize that the case could have gone differently if she had. Here's everything you need to know about Syed's controversial first attorney.
In November, state prosecutor Thiru Vignarajah acknowledged Gutierrez did not contact an alibi witness in Syed's case, but believes the attorney understood what that witness, Asia McClain, told her at the time.
It’s hard to ignore the bias that comes with the bi-weekly podcast: it’s financed by the Adnan Syed Trust, a legal fund created to fight to overturn the conviction of the Woodlawn High School student accused of killing his ex-girlfriend, Hae Min Lee, on Jan. 13, 1999. But despite that vantage point, what Undisclosed has discovered since the days Serial signed off the air has been fascinating. For what they lack in Koenig’s knack for storytelling, the trio of hosts’ extensive knowledge of, and sources within, the courts system has delivered a number of discoveries that could potentially help the case. Case in point: Syed’s attorney filed a new court motion Monday morning arguing that cell phone evidence used in the trial was unreliable and should have been tossed.
On the premise that attorney Christina Gutierrez gave him ineffective counsel – failure to interview McClain as a potential witness and not looking into the possibility of a plea bargain – Maryland’s Court of Special Appeals recently gave Syed permission to reopen his appeal.
To recap: Syed was convicted of murder in 2000 and is currently serving a life sentence in Maryland. Though the prosecution offered no physical evidence or eyewitnesses that connected Syed to the crime, the State largely relied on the testimony of acquaintance Jay Wilds to corroborate with cell phone tower records.
They were granted Syed’s cell phone call records and then looked at two recipients of calls from Syed’s phone: Jennifer Pusateri and Wilds.
Hoo-boy, and then there’s the motorcycle story that Undisclosed says confirms Wilds was the tipster. Apparently, Wilds had been inquiring about the sale price of a teacher’s motorcycle, which Kelly Blue Book puts at $3,000. The teacher, Mr. Brown, didn’t know either Syed or Lee, raising eyebrows at his participation in the investigation. And detective notes capped Brown’s interview with the word “REWARD,” written in all caps. Undisclosed proffers that Wilds was going to use the reward money to purchase the motorcycle, but Brown says he sold it to someone else.
Though Wilds didn’t participate in Serial, he did conduct a three-part interview with The Intercept ’s Natasha Vargas-Cooper, and attorney Rabia Chaudry (also Syed’s childhood friend) launched the Undisclosed podcast, both of which add layers to the mystery enshrouding Wilds’ testimony. Here’s everything we know about Jay Wilds before the premiere of HBO’s documentary series, The Case Against Adnan Syed.
Because Pusateri’s testimony corroborated Wilds’ (and also changed over time), many listeners came to believe that Pusateri also knew more (or less?) than she was letting on. But because of the specifics Wilds included in his testimony — the Best Buy location that supposedly matches with call logs, strangling, the whereabouts of Lee’s car — there wasn’t much doubt Wilds was somehow involved, even if just peripherally. That’s led to some wild and totally unproven ideas on reddit, notably that Adnan hired Jay as a kind of hitman.
Another very important open lead is the crimestoppers reward. The state lied. They did not tell the defense that someone got an actual cash reward that was handed to them by a detective on the case. Jay all but admitted to @BobRuffTruth that he got the reward. pic.twitter.com/RHnkXYzRXJ
Then there is of the glaring lie that the state's witness Jay told the police everything they needed to know the 1st time they met. In fact he had a meeting with them for weeks. Yes the serial team had these documents and did not report this. pic.twitter.com/46kbjMwgPX
Consequently, Wilds is a looming figure in Sarah Koenig and Julie Snyder’s reporting about the trial. Though Wilds’ testimony seemed to have been trusted implicitly by Syed’s jury, the Serial podcast shining a light on the key details of Wilds’ claims led many listeners to believe Wilds was not exactly truthful and that even the slightest bit ...