INTRODUCTION
Media attention in a criminal case like Adnan Syed’s is seldom very notable. Now, normally, a conviction of this magnitude would not only be considered run of the mill. It would probably be deemed easily solvable. For example, there’s seventeen-year-old Hae Min Lee, a beautiful young Asian girl. A girl whom someone kidnaps and possibly holds against her will before finally murdering her in the prime of her promising life. Adnan Syed, her allegedly possessive, sadistic, jealous ex-boyfriend who stands convicted of her murder. Jay Wilds, the apprehensive and sketchy accomplice who not only testifies to assisting with the burial of Hae’s body, but also helps to corroborate the state prosecutor’s narrative in exchange for a plea deal. Slam dunk for the state’s upcoming, eager prosecutor Kevin Urick, right? Well…not quite.
See, in this cluster of a murder case, things have failed to be that simple. In this case Jay Wilds has pathologically changed his story multiple times, proving himself to be an extremely unreliable state’s witness. Adnan is the antithesis of the jealous ex-lover, and after sixteen years has maintained that he neither has knowledge, motive nor any involvement in the murder of his beloved friend and ex-girlfriend. Then there’s Hae Min Lee, a strong, athletic and smart girl strangled to death by one or many sick predators that day. Nonetheless there is not a single piece of evidence that undeniably points to how, when or where the crime took place and who did it. All the while, for more than a decade Adnan Syed has been remanded in prison while his accomplice Jay Wilds has gotten off scot free with nothing more than a slap on the wrist. Then there is the State of Maryland’s prosecutor Kevin Urick, a man who by all other accounts was able to ride off into the sunset, as the hero on the side of justice. A man who by all accounts used his silver-lined tongue to sweet talk his fallacious evidence to both the jury and key witnesses. Then there’s myself of course. Asia McClain, the wide-eyed teenage girl who over the course of sixteen years has become an avid community leader and stay-at-home mother of two. Known among few circles as Adnan’s key alibi witness for the time of the murder but was never contacted by the defense attorney. A person who by all intents and purposes slipped through the cracks of the criminal justice system.
Yep, that’s pretty much how the court and history itself had recorded things as of 2010. That was until four years later, when Sarah Koenig arrived on the scene. Sarah Koenig was introduced to Adnan’s case by a close family friend of Adnan’s, Rabia Chaudry. Rabia’s younger brother Saad was best friends with Adnan and Rabia had a strong familiarization with the evidence presented at the time of Adnan’s trial. Concerned about some of the ethics and procedures that took place within the police investigation and trial itself, Rabia reached out to Sarah Koenig. Sarah responded by breathing new life into Adnan’s story. Sarah began to investigate claims both disclosed and undisclosed at trial and as a result, she uncovered never before publicized testimonies from previously unknown and/or unreachable witnesses. Sarah conducted real time simulations of the state’s theorized time of murder, she combed through cell phone tower records, conducted interviews and she asked important questions that no one in the media had ever asked about Syed’s trial and post-conviction hearing. As a testament to her creativity and resourcefulness, she spoke to experts in both the fields of psychology and law, all of which commanded the attention of millions of listeners, one of which was myself, Asia McClain. Now if you don’t know already, this is the story of my involvement in the case of the State of Maryland vs. Adnan Syed. This is my perspective of a case and story that you probably have come to refer to as SERIAL.
Woodlawn High School was like one of those schools that you see in movies like The Substitute. Although there were many exceptional and well-behaved students that bloomed from the school, Woodlawn certainly had its fair share of thugs and delinquent students. The student body population was full of amateur drug dealers, users and all around troublemakers. Upon recently chatting with my best friends, I discovered that many of them could recall sentiments of parental displeasure when they expressed interest in attending the school after junior high. Woodlawn’s only saving grace for my generation was a zero tolerance principal who was set to take over our freshman year. Despite Dr. Wilson’s no nonsense zero tolerance policies, there were still fights at the school just about every day. A lot of the fights were pretty violent and involved people being seriously injured. I can remember instances of stabbings, people getting thrown through windows and display cases. Group beat downs and neighborhood gang fights were something that we were all very familiar with. I can remember attending sporting events in which Woodlawn students would fight rival Milford Mill and Randallstown High School students as if we lived within the pages of West Side Story. I remember one incident in particular, in which the Baltimore County Police ended up pepper spraying a varsity basketball game. I believe video from that incident is still available on YouTube to this day. There were students sneaking marijuana in every crevice of the school corridors. One time someone almost accidently set the school on fire while sneaking a smoke in the boy’s locker room. Teenage sex ran rapid in the downstairs band wing, on the catwalk and backstage and in other dark areas of the school’s auditorium. I myself wasn’t privy to any of those activities, but I did have my own share of other teenage shenanigans.
As far as the SERIAL story is concerned, the problems with Hae and Adnan’s relationship started at Woodlawn High School, in the year 1999. However, if you ask some of our fellow classmates and I, we’d all tell you that this story started long before around the time shortly after our eleventh grade junior prom. For most, this event signaled the beginning of Hae and Adnan’s relationship, because they attended the dance together and thereafter began dating. On the outside they were a truly adorable couple—a prime example of our country’s ever-growing interracial couple population. They were both excellent students, well-liked and accomplished school athletes. Although I didn’t know either intimately, we all shared the same friends and crossed paths many a time, so I can speak to the caliber of students that they were. To anyone outside of our friendship circle, there probably wasn’t much (if any) indication of trouble within their relationship. The only time that I can remember things getting truly out of hand was when Adnan’s parents found out that he had taken a girl (Hae) to our senior homecoming dance. As a result, Adnan’s parents decided it was best to show up at the event and make a huge scene, leaving both parties mortified.
That in itself was the catalyst of their doomed relationship, ironically very similar to Romeo and Juliet. Their parents were the problem in their relationship. In my opinion, had their parents’ disapproval not been a factor, things may have ended up much differently for those two. I certainly don’t say that to blame their parents, rather just to say that the discourse was a negative factor in the teens’ relationship. I acknowledge that had things been different, it remains to be seen whether Hae might still be alive. We don’t 100 percent know who killed her, but I do think Adnan would have been less likely to have been her ex-boyfriend at the time of her murder and as a result, may have been painted in a different light (if painted at all). The reason that I make such a bold statement is because in an attempt to pander to their parents, Hae and Adnan were ultimately forced to repress their relationship from their families. For fear of what I like to call “parental repercussions” they had to hide one another’s existence. When my fellow classmates and I were flourishing in the art of introducing our significant others to our families, Hae and Adnan lived that part of their lives in secrecy. Having a relationship littered with secret hookups and strategically planned phone calls placed a heavy burden on their otherwise jovial relationship. Although they cared deeply and loved one another, they weren’t entirely free to express it and as a result it made things more complicated, stressful and ultimately less ideal for Hae in particular.
So there we were, us three, all seniors at Woodlawn High School, preparing ourselves for graduation into “the real world.” All completely unaware of how much our brief encounters with one another would actually matter in the years to come. Back then, we were all so happy and full of promise and options. I don’t think any of us could have truly conceived how our lives would have turned out. I don’t think anyone can, at that age. I often laugh when I think about the many ideas that I used to have about my future. One in particular was the idea that I wanted to be a criminal psychologist for the FBI. I don’t even think that was ever true. I do recall having an interest in psychology when I first graduated from high school. All my life I’ve been a natural empath, able to strongly sense the feelings of others. At the time I thought psychology would be a good fit for me, giving me the chance to help society and make a difference. I did take a few psychology classes in college, however I had no real idea of what I wanted my career to be, at that point in my life. I thought psychology seemed like a good field of study in order to achieve my lifestyle desires, but then I found out about all the necessary requirements needed in order to have a private practice. Since I had been raised in a household of mostly government employees, for a brief time I bargained that using psychology in conjunction with a government agency (FBI) might be the better way to go. After all, entry-level positions require less school and tend to pay better initially. Eventually I lost interest in pursuing psychology all together because I found the stress of other people’s psychological struggles to be too much for me to healthily process. In a different yet somewhat comical light, I also recall wanting to become a veterinarian at one point. At least until I found out about expressing anal glands, animal cancers and euthanasia.
I guess now is as good as any time to start setting the record straight. I sometimes have a problem with the word “friends.” Sometimes, I refer to people as friends who are mere acquaintances. Never really thought about it as a problem until this case. I suppose one does not truly consider many things about oneself until being examined by millions of people all over the world. Simply put, I wasn’t an especially close friend of Hae and Adnan’s. We weren’t truly friends at all. The three of us were friendly towards one another and we did speak on occasion, but that was it. Adnan was friends with many of my high school buddies at the time of our senior year. One of my closest friends to this day was Adnan’s football captain back in our senior year of high school. My good friend and tenth grade ex-boyfriend Justin was a close friend of Adnan’s before all this happened. To put things into perspective, Justin and Adnan lived in the same neighborhood and had many of the same friends. Justin’s family was very close to Stephanie’s (Jay’s girlfriend) family, and Stephanie was very close to Adnan. Similar to Adnan, Hae was friends with a number of my high school friends. Both Hae and I were fairly popular in high school, as were most athletes, therefore many of our various teammates were often the same people. In addition, over the four years that I had spent at Woodlawn, I had several brief encounters with Hae and Adnan alike. Now let me just say this: from what I knew about Hae Min Lee, she was no wimp. She was headstrong but gracious when she needed to be. By many accounts, Woodlawn High School was pretty rough and Hae’s ability to flourish within the student body population was not by happenstance. Although she was from an immigrant family, Hae was very Americanized. She had plenty of people she called friends and a healthy teenage social life. From what I recall Hae was also a pretty resilient athlete, playing both girls’ field hockey and lacrosse. By no means was she weak, easily manipulated, bullied or unconfident about herself.
Now I know female lacrosse and field hockey players (in particular) don’t always get a tremendous amount of accolades in the realm of being total badasses, but let me tell you, they are! I tried out once for both sports and although I was an established athlete in my own right I couldn’t cut it. For one, I had childhood asthma and try as I did, I just didn’t have the stamina for all the non-stop running during practices. I can recall many a practice where players were required to run the circumference of the school property. During those practices I thought my heart was going to literally leap right out of my chest. My leg muscles felt like they were going to burst and my lunch “came up” (for a lack of better words). The other reason that I decided that lacrosse wasn’t for me was because I found myself not able to shake the fear of being seriously hurt or accidentally hurting other players. I remember one lacrosse game in particular where I had attempted to “check” an opponent and accidentally “checked” her in the nose. For all you people that don’t follow lacrosse that means my lacrosse stick ended up cracking the poor girl right in her face. Although it was an accident, I was immediately red flagged by the referee and pulled out of the game by the coach. In that moment, I found myself both benched and subsequently somewhat traumatized by the fact that I had harmed someone so intensely. Meanwhile the poor girl that I had hit was dealing with a bloody and most likely broken nose. The rest of the game is a blur to me and soon after I quit the team. To this day, I just can’t imagine a scenario in which an athlete like Hae (with that kind of endurance and fearlessness) didn’t fight for her life. In my opinion there had to have been two assailants or some circumstances that impaired her greatly in order for her to have been strangled to death. Perhaps someone held her down while another person choked her. Or perhaps there was only one assailant and that person simply choked her while she was already unconscious. Lord knows, that’s the only way I would have gone out. Even us Baltimore County kids are still Baltimore kids. We know how to protect ourselves. We’re pretty scrappy, if I say so myself.
On a brighter note, I was the girl who was cool with everybody in high school. Didn’t matter if you were a self-proclaimed beauty queen, a jock or of the slightly nerdier variety, I knew and was friends with just about everyone at Woodlawn. As my friends back then and now could tell you, I was a “social butterfly.” I even vaguely remember being nominated for one of our school dance positions, I believe it was prom queen (I made reference to it in my senior book). Winning such things wasn’t especially important to me so I told my supporters to send their votes to my friends. Needless to say, the fact that Adnan and I held a conversation in the library on January of 1999 is not odd in the slightest. It doesn’t strike anyone who knew either one of us as out of place either. The fact that I asked him about his breakup with Hae wasn’t awkward at all. We had a lot of the same friends and it was common knowledge within our social circle. Now let this be said: me asking Adnan about his breakup wasn’t an attempt at flirting with him nor was it information that Adnan randomly volunteered to me. In fact, I was the one who brought it up to him. In my defense, I literally could not think of anything else to ask him at that particular moment. Looking back, perhaps I should have led with a different topic, but I digress. I had been at the Woodlawn Public library for so long that day that I was dying to talk to someone.
Back in January of 1999, I was enrolled in my school’s cooperative education program for students that had fulfilled all of their required graduation credit hours. I was permitted to leave the school grounds every day at 10:40 AM, in order to get more hours at my part-time job. Every day, I would attend a couple of morning classes and then usually report to the “co-op teacher” (Mrs. Graham?) at the start of third period. Once there, I’d check out of school and wait to be dismissed for the day. When I began the program, I had held a job as a cashier at Dunkin’ Donuts on Liberty Road. However, by this time in the school year I was no longer working at the donut shop. Fortunately for me, Woodlawn High School was not very good about verifying our employment after enrollment into the co-op program. Plus, I had conveniently failed to report this change to the school. So instead of going to my employer’s location, I would take the yellow co-op school bus to another student’s work location closest to my house. I would then walk whatever remaining distance back to my house. This was not always favorable because sometimes the nearest work location was a great distance from my home. So after some thought I began having my then-boyfriend Derrick come pick me up at the Woodlawn campus and he would take me wherever I wanted to go (usually his house or my home). Coincidentally, a short time after Hae was found dead, Derrick conceded to loaning me his car in the early mornings. That arrangement made it unnecessary for me to have to wait on him anymore. Usually, my best friend Marie drove her mother’s cargo van to school, so I’d have her drop me off at Derrick’s house in the mornings. I would then snag Derrick’s vehicle, go to school at Woodlawn and then have it back to Derrick by the time school was out at Milford Mill High School. Derrick lived across the street from Milford Mill back in 1999. Technically Derrick didn’t need a car to get to school; he merely drove it there and parked it in the student parking lot for “coolness points.” Now I can’t recall 100 percent if our final car arrangement was related to the fight we had on the day of Hae’s disappearance (him being late and me being tired of having to wait on him for a ride) or if it was related specifically to Hae’s disappearance or death (fearing for my safety). I do know that its general purpose was to make things less complicated and safe for me. By any account, at the time Hae went missing I was not using Derrick’s car on my own yet and Derrick didn’t usually pick me up from the public library. That particular day, I walked across the campus to the Woodlawn Public Library in order to await Derrick’s arrival. When Derrick didn’t show up during his scheduled lunch hour, I became concerned. When he hadn’t showed up several hours later, my concern changed into annoyance, then anger and ultimately boredom. Being that I had been stranded alone in the public library for over four hours, I was extremely bored and probably would have talked to anyone that I knew about anything. Regrettably, because of the nature of high school gossip, Hae and Adnan’s breakup was fresh on my mind. As such, that’s what came out first when my conversation with Adnan transpired. Had Derrick not shown up when he did, my conversation with Adnan probably would have segued into other topics outside of the breakup. It’s just that it never got the chance, because Derrick and Jerrod arrived when they did. As I think about my first description of that conversation with Adnan, I smirk because the first time that I told Justin about it and described Adnan’s sentiments about the break up I believed I used a phrase similar to “there’s other fish in the sea kind of attitude.” Consequently, that’s now a little ironic that I made such a statement. I now know (from the podcast) that Adnan was already dating other girls by that point in high school. So long story short, I wasn’t some random nobody asking highly personal questions to Adnan, I was a familiar face within his already existing social circle. The only disconnect if any, can be contributed to what Jay Wilds said about the magnet program in part one of his Intercept interview:
“When Woodlawn put in the magnet thing, they took out all the vocational classes. Before you would just go down there for drafting, shop, and everyone would co-mingle, and all the students interacted. But when they put the magnet wing in, it was kind of like these people were different from us. And they didn’t have to interact with us anymore. They didn’t have to go by except to come to lunch, and that was it. But their gym, lockers, parking, was down in the magnet wing.”
All my best friends back in high school were all “magnet kids” along with Hae and Adnan. I usually only saw my best friends at lunch, after school for sports, at special events or afterwards around town. My husband likes to tease me about it, but in all truth I was a sort of honorary “magnet kid.” For this reason, it was quite common for one of my “magnet friends” to tie me to another person (whether magnet or not) in some way. Adnan and Hae were just two of those “friend’s friends” that I hadn’t gotten to know on a personal level yet.
Ask anyone who has listened to SERIAL and they will tell you that the subject of memory reliability is one of the underlying repetitive themes within the podcast. In the beginning of the twelve-episode series, Sarah Koenig addresses the slippery nature of memory as it applies to everyone involved in the Syed case. Sarah then continues by giving examples of questionable memories through her discovery of the various testimonies given both inside and outside of the Syed trial. Adnan, Jay and myself are of particular interest; however, there are other players such as Inez, Summer, Krista and Jenn. Many people have asked how is it that I can remember January 13th, 1999 so well. I have often asked myself the same question. There are several reasons that the events of January 13th stand out in my memory. The most personal is that I was in love with Derrick at the time and when love disappoints you, it’s remembered. Being left stranded at the public library that day was the first of many embarrassing disappointments from Derrick. I don’t say that to be mean or scornful, but to simply be honest. Derrick was my first love and he ultimately was the first to break my heart. As they say, “Hindsight is twenty-twenty,” so at the time, I could not see all that he was doing behind my back. Nor could I see that he was not a very good boyfriend. During the relationship we had constant ups and downs. There would be times when things would be wonderful and times when things were on the verge of ending between us. Our relationship lasted three years and it was plagued with drama and high emotions, as it goes in most teenage relationships, I suppose.
So what is memory? Webster’s online dictionary defines memory as “the faculty of the mind by which it retains the knowledge of previous thoughts, impressions, or events. Memory is the purveyor of reason.”
If that is true, then that should also bring into question the nature of false memories and lack of memory as well. We already know that people are often capable of misremembering previously conceptualized thoughts, impressions and events. We know this because of conditions like amnesia and false memory syndrome. For myself, I know that seeing Adnan in the library on January 13th happened on that specific day because I know what living with false and implanted memories feels like. Memory itself is a sore subject with me and has been a constant source of distress and sorrow within my personal life. Although I don’t talk about it often, I am quite troubled by the absence of many early important memories. This stands to explain (to me) why I hold such certainty about other memories like my conversation with Adnan.
I was born in June of 1981 in Inglewood, California. A few years before I was born my mother traveled to the city to stay with her favorite aunt and cousin. Soon after she ended up meeting and falling in love with my father, a California native. Within no time, they were married at a courthouse and within months, I was conceived. At first things were wonderful between my parents; they were young and full of tenacity. Never mind that they were both often working ten- and twelve-hour shifts at work. They had me and each other and that was what made them happy. Unfortunately, like most young and under-established relationships, they grew apart and as a result, they separated when I was about five years old. Now I couldn’t tell you to what degree of marital discourse they experienced, because unfortunately I have no memory of my toddler years at all. In fact, I don’t have any genuine memories of my life prior to my ninth birthday party. I use the term genuine because there are a few things that I do recall about my early years. Sadly, I’m not even sure whether many of them are false or implanted memories because they are heavily associated with family stories and home videos that I’ve seen a hundred times. I’ve recently started some spiritual counseling with the hopes of recovering real memories. It’s a slow process but I hope that in time I will recover something. I’ve even more recently opened myself to the idea of hypnotherapy. Nonetheless the reason my ninth birthday party sticks out as my first real memory is because that is the first time I can recall details of my own accord. At the time I was in love with New Kids on the Block, so much so that they were the central theme of my party. I had New Kids decorations, New Kids posters and even a New Kids themed birthday cake design. In addition to all the fanfare my ninth birthday party was also my first sleepover. All my closest friends crowded together in sleeping bags in my grandparents’ basement, watched cable television, goofed off and had hours of girl talk and mischief. Speaking of which, my younger cousin India was encouraged to “surf” the arm of my grandparents’ rocking chair (like the rest of us had already done) and as a result, she slipped and split her temple open. She ended up having to leave to get stitches and she still has a small scar to this day (sorry, cuz). That’s how most of my memories are preserved—they are tied to significant events or emotions. I don’t know what led me to start blocking out my memories as a child. Whatever it was, it was traumatic enough to make me develop a form of protective amnesia. A few years back, I read an article on psychogenic amnesia and found it very interesting. For those of you who aren’t familiar with the term, human-memory.net defines psychogenic amnesia as follows:
“Psychogenic amnesia, also known as functional amnesia or dissociative amnesia, is a disorder characterized by abnormal memory functioning in the absence of structural brain damage or a known neurobiological cause. It results from the effects of severe stress or psychological trauma on the brain, rather than from any physical or physiological cause. It is often considered to be equivalent to the clinical condition known as repressed memory syndrome.”
Although that’s very similar to what I feel happened to me as a child, I have yet to determine the source of said mental trauma. By all accounts I was never physically harmed, abused or molested, so there should be no problem, right? If you were to ask my husband, he would tell you that my memories are all or nothing. Either it’s that I have a detailed memory that is tied to an event or emotion (that I remember forever), or chances are there is a limited or no memory at all. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t have Alzheimer’s-type memory losses. I’m just like most people in the sense that I am quicker to forget details of certain events if I don’t find them to be personally significant. For instance, I can tell you many details surrounding my first kiss but I have no idea what I ate for lunch last Tuesday. Now I don’t know if the divorce of my parents and relocation across the United States (to Maryland) was enough to traumatize me that significantly. I don’t know, perhaps it was and I was just sensitive? From what I have been told, my mother’s and my return to Baltimore was not something that happened over night. It took a bit of financial planning and as a result I spent quite a bit of time with my grandparents and babysitters.
One thing that I do recall was the antics of a particular babysitter. I remember a few details as if it were yesterday. My babysitter was responsible for the daily care of an extremely elderly woman. I don’t remember who the woman was in relation to my babysitter (maybe her mother?), I just remember that the woman was feeble-minded (probably had dementia) and bedridden. As I recall the woman did not speak at all and simply stared at a television screen all day. I know it’s mean to say this, but I remember that the elderly woman scared me so much that my memories compare closely to that of Crypt Keeper. She had long thinning white hair, always wore a nightgown and usually sat upright in a hospital bed inside a small tight little room. I recall that I was given the duty of brushing this elderly woman’s hair every day and that as a young kid, I hated it.
Another detail that I recall about my California babysitter is that she had a weird obsession with southern food, particularly black-eyed peas. I remember that she would serve them to me all the time, what seemed like every day. As you can imagine, I grew to hate the taste and smell of them, and after a while I began refusing to eat them. This of course only caused more of a problem, as my babysitter was not fond of me not eating her robust recipes. Consequently, to this day I still refuse to eat black-eyed peas or even be in the vicinity of either black-eyed peas or hospice facilities. I hate retirement homes and avoid them like the plague. So far I have been lucky enough to only visit a couple of elderly family members in hospice, so my exposure time has been limited.
So where does that leave me in terms of my memory of seeing Adnan where I did, when I did on January 13th, 1999? Absolutely clear. Ask anyone I know, when it comes to my memories, I am very clear on things that I can recall, things that I barely recall and things that I do not recall at all. When I say I remember something, I remember it and it indeed happened. Ironically during these types of discussions I am most often the only one who remembers a particular event and its details the best. I often am the one to jog my friends’ memories about times long forgotten. That’s why my friends often say I have the best memory in our group. In the same light, when I don’t recall a particular event or its details, I am usually very clear about expressing that as well. If I’m unsure, I’ll often use words such as “like,” kind of,” “sort of,” and “maybe”—words that don’t express certainty. Sometimes I can reconstruct unclear memories by talking myself through them in my mind. When I do this, I say I am “memory fishing,” as I call it. I don’t speak in absolutes and I will often communicate when I’m not certain about details. A prime example of this would be when I spoke to Sarah Koenig fourteen years after Adnan’s conviction. During that interview, I attempted to recall the full extent of the type of the winter weather that transpired on January 13th, 1999. Needless to say, I tried on the fly and failed.