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One story told week by week. I'm Sarah Canig. For the last year, I've spent every working day trying to figure out where a high school kid was for an hour after school one day in 1999. Or if you want to get technical about it, apparently I do, where a high school kid was for 21 minutes after school one day in 1999.
The search sometimes feels undignified on my part. I've had to ask about teenagers' sex lives, where, how often, with whom? About notes they passed in class, about their drug habits, their relationships with their parents, and I'm not a detective or a private investigator. I'm not even a crime reporter.
But yes, every day this year, I've tried to figure out the alibi of a 17-year-old boy. Before I get into why I've been doing this, I just want to point out something I never really thought about before I started working on this story. And that is, it's really hard to account for your time in a detailed way. I mean, how'd you get to work last Wednesday, for instance?
Drive, walk, bike? Was it raining? Are you sure? Did you go on any stores that day?
If so, what did you buy? Who did you talk to? The entire day, named every person you talk to. It's hard.
Now imagine you have to account for a day that happened six weeks back, because that's a situation in the story I'm working on, in which a bunch of teenagers had to recall the day six weeks earlier. And it was 1999, so they had to do it without the benefit of tax-sir-Facebook or Instagram. Just for a lark, I asked some teenagers to try it. Do you remember what you did on that Friday?
Not at all. I can't remember anything. Wait, nothing? No.
I can't remember anything that far back. I'm pretty sure I was in school. I think. No?
That's Tyler. He's 18. No. Actually on second thought, I only went to school that day.
You don't think you went? Yeah, no, I didn't. I would definitely do. Here's Sam's friend Elliot.
He seemed to have better recall. Actually, I may have gotten to the movie that night later. Do you remember what you saw? I'm sorry.
Yeah, I think I saw 22 dumb speech. Okay. And did you go with friends? Yeah.
I went with Sam and kids Sean Carter, a bunch of people. Wait, Sam, my nephew Sam? Yeah. Oh, okay.
So Sam says he was at work. No, then it wasn't that night then. One kid did actually remember pretty well, because it was the last day of state testing at his school. He was up to go to a nightclub.
That's the main thing I learned from this exercise, which was no big shocker, I guess, is that if some significant event happened that day, you remember that, plus you remember the entire day much better. If nothing significant happened, then the answers get very general. I most likely did this or I most likely did that. These are words I've heard a lot lately.
Here's the case I've been working on. Almost 15 years ago, on January 13th, 1999, a girl named Heyman Lee disappeared. She was a senior at Woodlawn High School in Baltimore County, Maryland. She was Korean, she was smart, and beautiful, and cheerful, and a great athlete.
She played field hockey in the cross. And she was responsible. Right after school, she was supposed to pick up her little cousin from kindergarten and drop her home, but she didn't show. That's when Haley's family knew something was up when the cousin's school called.
About a month later, on February 9th, Hey's body was found in a big park in Baltimore, really a rambling forest. A maintenance guy who said he'd stopped to take a leak on his way to work discovered her there. He'd noticed a bit of her black hair poking out of a shallow grave. The cause of death was manual strangulation, meaning someone did it with their hands.
A couple weeks after that, so six weeks after she first went missing, Hey's ex-boyfriend, a guy named Anan Sayed, was arrested for her murder. He's been in prison ever since. I first heard about this story more than a year ago when I got an email from a woman named Rabia Choudry. Rabia knows I've known pretty well.
Her younger brother, Sad, is Anan's best friend. And they believe he's innocent. Rabia was writing to me because way back when I used to be a reporter for the Baltimore Sun, and she'd come across some stories I'd written about a well-known defense attorney in Baltimore who'd been disbarred for mishandling client money. That attorney was the same person who'd defended Anan, her last major trial, in fact.
Rabia told me she thought the attorney botched the case, not just botched it actually, but through the case on purpose so she could get more money for the appeal. The lawyer died a few years later, she'd been sick. Rabia asked if I would please just take a look at Anan's case. I don't get emails like this every day, so I thought, sure, why not?
I read a few newspaper clips about the case, looked at a few trial records, and on paper the case was like a Shakespearean mashup. Young lovers from different worlds, thwarting their families, secret destinations, jealousy, suspicion, and honor be smurched. The villain, none more exactly, but a Muslim all the same. And a final act of murderous revenge.
In the main stage, a regular old high school across the street from a 7-Eleven. Hi, are you Rabia? Am I saying your name correctly? Rabia, okay.
I went to go see Rabia. She was surrounded by paper, files, loose stacks, binders, and crappy looking boxes. All court documents and attorney's files from Anan's case. Some of the papers were warped and discolored.
Why do they look wet? They look wet. These have been damaged because these… She explained that it was because the boxes had been in her car on and off for 15 years. Rabia's lawyer herself, she mostly does immigration stuff.
Her office takes up the corner of a much larger open space that I think is a Pakistani travel agency, though it's hard to tell. It's in this little strip mall. Across the parking lot, there's a new Pakistani restaurant, an African evangelical church, an Indian clothing shop, a convenience store. On the sidewalk outside, I found a teeny, meanie bag of marijuana.
Baltimore counties like this, at least on the west side. There were a lot of middle class and working class people go, many immigrants included, get their kids out of the Badass City. The Badass City is close by. Rabia's 40, she's short and she's got a beautiful round face framed by hijab.
She's adorable looking, but you definitely shouldn't mess with her. She's very smart and very tough and she could crush you. Her brother's side was at Rabia's office too the first time I went. He's 33, a mortgage broker, more laid back than Rabia.
They told me about Anan Sayyad, their friend. Not just a good kid, but an especially good kid. Smart, kind, goofy, handsome. So that when he's arrested for murder, so many people who knew him were stunned.
He was like the community's golden child. I don't really talk more about that. He was an honor roll student, volunteer EMT. He was like on the football team.
He was a star runner on the track team. He was the homecoming king. He led prayers at the mosque. So everybody knew what Anan to be.
Somebody who's going to do something really big. I later fact checked all these accolades, of course, and learned that Rabia was mostly right, though she sometimes gets a little loosey-goosey with the details. Anan was an EMT, but he didn't volunteer. He was paid for it.
He was on the track team, but he wasn't a star. He did play football, and he did lead prayers on occasion. He wasn't homecoming king, but he was Prince of his junior prom. And this at high school it was majority black.
They picked the Pakistani Muslim kid. So you get the picture. He was incredibly likable and well liked kid. This conversation with Rabia and Sad, this is what launched me on this year-long.
Obsession is maybe too strong a word. Let's say fascination with this case. By the end of this hour, you're going to hear different people tell different versions of what happened the day Hailey was killed. But let's start with the most important version of the story.
The one Rabia told me first. And that's the one that was presented at trial. The state's case against Anan went like this. He and Hailey had been going out since junior prom.
But Anan wasn't supposed to be dating at all. Anan was born in the US, but his parents were from Pakistan. They were conservative Muslims. No drinking, no smoking, no girls, all that.
Sadan Rabia's parents were the same way. Their families were friends. But even though Anan and Sad and their buddies were Muslims, they were also, shall we say, healthy American teenagers who were going to do what teenagers do so long as they didn't get caught. So Anan had to keep his relationship with Hailey's secret.
The state used this against him in two ways. First, they argued he put everything on the line, his family, his relationships with the mosque, to run around with this girl. So that when she broke up with him eight months later, he was left with nothing and he was outraged. He couldn't take it and killed her.
And the second way they used it is they said, look at what a liar he is. How duplicitous. He plays the good Muslim son at home and at the mosque. But look what he was up to.
Sad remembers the prosecutor's closing argument at trial. His family didn't know that he actually drank. He smoked. He was having sex.
This was proof of bad character. Someone who could be a murderer. But Sad says, if it's not going to give anything, it's being a normal kid with immigrant parents. So the prosecution had painted Anan as a totally bipolar or a maniacal dual personality.
We all grew up with that dual personality. I mean, I'm the same way. I was like, they could paint the same thing because I was actually Homecoming King, which I don't know if Vice-Sreeva knows. See you tonight now.
So I mean, I was dating a girl that was- And why is Homecoming King bad? Is that such a good thing? We don't go to Homecoming. We don't go to Homecoming.
We don't go to Homecoming. I was in the same boat. My parents, my sister, didn't know about this at all. Right now, one of the ten years later, she's finding out.
I admit, on one side my family thinks I'm a virgin, but on the other hand, I play with it. It's the thing. I came out. I came out.
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I came out. I came out. I came out. I came out.
I came out. I came out. I came out. I came out.
I came out. I came out. innocent. But what if he isn't?
What if he did do it? And he's got all these good people thinking he didn't. So either it's Jay or it's a non, but someone is lying. And I really wanted to figure out who.
In the early morning of February 28th, 1999, a non was arrested by Baltimore City Detectives. He was asleep in his bed when they showed up at his house. They took him straight from his untidy bedroom to an interrogation room at homicide downtown. What a non didn't know is that just hours before they picked him up, the cops had interviewed his friend Jay.
This is a take-interview of Jay Blackmail, 19 years of age, where he else is at homicide, specifically the Colonel's Conference Room. The police recorded two taped interviews with Jay and I'm going to play you the second one from a couple weeks later, only because the sound quality is much better. Just a warning that the tape is a little upsetting to hear in parts. Why don't you go ahead and tell us what you know about the death of H.A.
Lady? If I went shopping with a friend of mine, an ex friend of mine, A9, we had had a conversation. We had a conversation stated that he was going to kill that bitch, referring to Haley. I didn't pick it with contacts, he didn't stand out my head.
Jay says he didn't take it too seriously. The cops have him start again from the top. On the morning of the 13th, Jay says, A9 had left school and driven to Jay's house. Jay graduated from school the year before and was working, but not on that day.
January 13th happens to be the birthday of Jay's girlfriend Stephanie, and Jay, who didn't have his own car, needed to go buy something for her. So A9 comes over. According to Jay, they go shopping at them all. What did you do that?
You left them all, took him to school, I dropped him off in the back of the school. I went up the bus, he left his cell phone in the car with me, told me he called me. I went back to my friend, Jay, and I was waiting for him to go. And he said, he's going to kill Haley.
And the reason you have the car and the cell phone was why? To pick him up from wherever he was going to do this. And you had talked about this while you were shopping? That day?
The details of the car and all? The events, how they were going to plan out. That day he told me, yes, he told me on. I'm going to leave him with my cell phone and my car and he's going to get me.
After he killed Haley. Later that afternoon the call comes. You received his phone call from Adam? Yes.
The phone is in your ear. The conversation was what? That picture is dead. Come and get me.
I'm at Best Buy. Jay drives to Best Buy. He's at Nahn in the parking lot. I noticed that Haley wasn't with him.
I parked next to him. He asked me to get out the car. I get out the car. He asked me to get out the car.
He asked me to get out the car. He asked me to get out the car. He asked me to get out the car. I'm ready for this.
I say ready for what? It takes the keys. He opens the trunk. All I can see is he's lips are all blue and she's like, cuts it up in the back of the trunk.
They leave the parking lot. A non-driving haze car with her body in the trunk. Jay is driving a non-scar. They ditch Hayes car at the I-70 parking ride and then to hear Jay tell it, they're just going to tool around Baltimore County together for a while if nothing had happened.
Buy some weed, cruise around, make some calls. After a while, Jay drives a non-back to Woodland High School. Why did you take him back to school? He told me that I had to take him back to school because he needed to be seen here.
So he was he going to a certain event? I was track track track track. So he wanted an hour long? He wanted to be seen by people at track.
And you guys had discussed that? He just told me that he needed to be seen. And track track. He took it back?
Yes. Are you having any conversation with that non- By this time Hayes family was worried and they'd call the police who in turn called a couple of Hayes friends including a non. Call comes in on his cell. The cops ask if he's seen hay or knows where she is.
Jay says after the call they drive to Jay's to get some shovels. Go retrieve Hayes car from the parking ride. They drive around some more and finally end up at Leacon Park where a non-percedes to bury hay. It's evening by now, maybe 7 or 8 p.m.
And he asked me if I was going to help. And I told him, fuck no, he started to shove him during on top of him. And I thought, we leave there. Please stop, Matt.
You helped him take the haul. Yes. How long did it take you both? Did they take the haul?
Twenty, twenty-five minutes. How big did you make the haul? Oh, maybe six inches out of the mousse. It wasn't very deep at all.
It was... Equal work. I want to say that. Okay.
So those are the key points. A non-told Jay in advance who's going to do it. He did it. They buried her.
Jay's story wasn't just the foundation of the state's case against Anon. It was the state's case against Anon. And the picture Jay drew. It's cold.
I mean, he's not describing a crime of passion here. This is something much darker. To methodically map out the death of your friend. To strangle her with your own hands.
So close up like that. That would mean Anon wasn't just a killer, but a master liar and manipulator. A psychopath probably. Anon's in a maximum security prison in Western Maryland.
He calls me at my request about twice a week. He talks to me from a bank of eight payphones in the rec hall. A pretty large room where other guys are sitting at tables with metal seats attached to them. Playing chess or cards or using a microwave or watching TV.
And get a little loud sometimes. Once I asked if all eight phones were always occupied and he said, usually not because guys who've been in for a long time, often they have no one to call. When I first met Anon in person, I was struck by two things. He was way bigger than I expected.
Barrel chusted and tall. And the photos I'd seen, he was still a lanky teenager with struggling facial hair and sagging jeans. By now he was 32. He'd spent nearly half his life in prison, becoming larger and properly bearded.
And the second thing, which you can't miss about Anon, is that he has giant brown eyes, like a dairy cow. That's a prompt to my most idiotic lines of inquiry. Could someone who looks like that really strangle his girlfriend? Idiotic.
I know. When he first heard Jay's story of the crime, Anon didn't say it well, it didn't happen like that, or it didn't mean for it to happen like that. He said, it didn't happen. None of this is true at all.
He says he had nothing to do with Hayes' murder, and he doesn't know who did. He was Anon's first serious relationship with a girl. He says he loved her in the way of high school love, but then also in the way of high school got over her. So that when they broke up for good, sometime before Christmas break of senior year, he says he was sad for sure, but not obsessed or anything.
The only thing I can really hold on to, all we firm handholds is this whole thing, is that no one ever approved it. No one ever was able to provide it. He's ready to evidence. It had anything but friendship towards it, like love and respect for her.
I can never say it, and then I had no reason to kill it. He's adamant about this. You can hear it, right? He's staunch.
The problem is, when you ask Anon to go back and tell his version of what happened that day, to refute Jay's story, everything becomes a lot mushier. Yes, he hung out with Jay on the 13th, both during and after school, but he doesn't remember exactly where they went, or what they did, or what time it was. Here's what he's got. January 13th unfolded like any other day, a normal, mostly uneventful day.
He says there are a couple of things that do stand out though. That day was Stephanie's birthday. Stephanie was one of Anon's best friends, and also Jay's girlfriend. Anon had gotten Stephanie a birthday present, Steph Reindeer, which he'd given to her in second period, Miss Effron's English class.
And time during the day. Wait, Anon, just hold up for a second. Why did you care whether Jay got Stephanie a present? Like what did to you?
Stephanie was a very close friend of mine as I mentioned, and it was just, I just kind of wanted to make sure that she also got a gift from him. You know, she had an invention to me that she was looking forward to getting a gift from him. As I was with any friend, I just kind of went to check on that. I had a feeling that maybe he didn't get her a gift, and I had three periods during school, so it wasn't like, you know, it was not abnormal for me, at least.
So I went to his house. I asked him, you know, did you say if you want to, you can... So then what happened? Well, then when school was over, I would have went to the library.
I know that I usually check, well, I didn't usually check, but if I was going to check my email, I would be using the library. You know, sometimes I would go there because maybe three o'clock would be three-thirty-ish. So I didn't start right after school. This hour in change after school, this is the crucial window.
This is the time when the state says, hey, was killed. School got out at 2.15. People remember seeing her after her last class, heading to her car. According to Jay's story and the cell phone records, she was dead by 2.36 pm.
So sometime in those 21 minutes, between 2.15 and 2.36, she was strangled. So that's obviously the same window a non-needed to account for. So, quote a non. My case lived and died in those 21 minutes.
So where does a non-say you was? Well, maybe the library, but nobody testified to that at trial. Then to track practice, he does remember being at track one day when it was snowing, which might have been that day. The coach testified that a non-probably was there, but he can't be 100% sure because as a rule he didn't take attendance.
After school is when his memories become non-specific. Usually we did this, or we probably would have done that. Jay did come to pick up a non-after-track. That part of non-seems to more or less remember.
It was Ramadan, so it would have been fasting all day and hungry. It would break fast. I would pay to pick me up and we would pay to it most of a week after, right? And then I would head up on a thin home by the ground seven eight.
Or usually like the last 10 nights in Ramadan, my father would spend a night at the mosque. So a lot of times I would take a food. I would take it before eight o'clock, right? That's the last evening prayer.
Did you ever leave the campus before the end of track practice? Did you ever... No. Okay.
You're sure? I want to say that I'm 90. Okay. The reason why I can't say 100 is because I do kind of miss name.
I do kind of miss name, but you know beyond the fact that a lot of the day, I do remember it, it's in pieces that comes from what other people have said. You know, that they remember, right? And they kind of... our jobs are memorized.
Yeah. I don't know. I mean, knowing that I can say it was just a normal day, nothing happens to have normals on their day. A non-no's better than anyone, how unhelpful this all is, how problematic.
Because it plays both ways. If he's innocent, right, it's any other day, of course he doesn't remember. But you can also read it as, how convenient, he doesn't remember the day. So no one can fact check him or poke holes in his story, because he has no story.
I definitely understand that someone can look at this and say, oh man, he must be lying. He's so coincidental that he doesn't remember what he did, this particular sign. I mean, I completely understand that. And I get that.
That's, you know, like I said, that's the biggest, the hardest thing I've dealt with for these past 15 years is that... There's nothing tangible I can do to remember that day. It's true, because there's nothing I can do to make me remember. I pour through the transcripts, I look through the telephone records, you know, it's just, what else can I do?
There's nothing I can do, so it's just, you know, that's what I've been able to explain it. And it is what it is, if someone leaves me or not, you know, I have no control over it. A non-trial was a long ordeal. Jay was on the stand for something like five days.
A cell phone expert testified for two days, a lifetime when you're discussing cell tower technology. There were absences and some bad weather close the courts, so it was six weeks before both sides rested. But the jury, they moved like lightning. After just a few hours, including a lunch break, they convicted a nun, a first-degree murder.
Rabiha Choudhary was there in the courtroom when it happened. She said his mother was crying, she was crying. Rabiha hadn't sat through the whole trial, so the first time she fully understood that the case came down to those 21 minutes was during closing arguments when the prosecutor brought out a dummy's head and strangled it in front of the jury. That evening, after the verdict, Rabiha went to see a nun in lockup.
And so I went to go see him, so this is the same day he's been convicted. And this is the first time I actually had a conversation with him about, you know, what's going on. And I was like, you know, the whole thing was turning on these twenty, twenty-five minutes. Like, you know, where were you?
And he's like, she disappeared in January. You know, in March you're asking me, like, where were you after school for twenty minutes on a specific day? Like, no, all the days are the same to me, you know? But then he mentions that there was this one girl, an alibi girl.
He's like the only thing I could offer is he's like, I remember, he's like, there's a girl I go to school with, who her name's Asia McLean. He's like, right after I got arrested, she wrote me a couple of letters, and she said she always wanted to see my family, and she said she specifically remembers me being at the library, at the public library, right after school. The Woodland Public Library is just across the parking lot from Woodland High School. It's not technically part of the campus, but it might as well be.
He said, I gave those letters to Christina Gutierrez to my attorney. He's like, but you know, apparently it didn't really check out, so he's like, I don't know. So they're not helpful to us. So this was the first time I heard of this girl, Asia McLean.
I had never heard of her before. Nobody had mentioned her before. Were you like, Florida? Like, what?
I mean, what, like, I wasn't Florida at that time because I thought, I thought if he, if this girl wrote, and the attorney, what criminal defense attorney is not going to check out a potential alibi? So I asked him, I said, do you have a copy of this letter? He said, you have a copy? I said, send me a copy.
A nonsense letter to Robby, and here's what she reads. The first letter, the first of two, is dated March 1, 1999. That is one day after Adnan was arrested. At the top of the letter, she notes, I just came from your house an hour ago.
Dear Adnan, I hope I spelled it right. I'm not sure if you remember talking to me in the library on January 13th, but I remember chatting with you. She says, quote, we aren't really close friends, but I want you to look into my eyes and tell me of your innocence. If I ever find otherwise, I'll hunt you down and whip your ass, okay, friend?
At the bottom, she had a little note. My boyfriend and his best friend remember seeing you there, too. That's letter number one. Then the next day, on March 2nd, she writes Adnan another letter.
This one's typed, it's chatier. She talks about the gossip in school, the bits and pieces of evidence about the crime that are circulating, what the students are saying, what the teachers are saying, about her visit to his house. Quote, your brothers are nice. I don't think I met your mother.
I think I met your dad. Does he have a big grey beard? They gave me a justin soda and cake. There's a whole bunch of people at your house.
I didn't know who they were. I also didn't know that Muslims take their shoes off in the house. Thank God they didn't make me take mine off. My stinky feet probably would have knocked everyone out cold.
Why haven't you told anyone about talking to me in the library? She asks them. Did you think it was unimportant? You didn't think that I would remember?
Or did you just totally forget yourself? Anan says now that he does in fact remember seeing Asia in the library. The thing you remember about it is so high school. Asia used to go out with a non-friend Justin and Justin had confided that Asia was a proper young lady, in other words Justin wasn't getting any.
So in non-remember-thinking he would not get to tease Justin about seeing Asia with her new boyfriend. Maybe the new guy was getting lucky. Anyway, Robia calls Asia up. It's been a year since she wrote the letters, but she agrees to me.
And she told me that day after school I went to the library and I was sitting at a computer checking email or something and I sat down next to him. We heard a chatting and that was a very popular boy in school. It's handsome and popular with the ladies. So she was speaking to him and her boyfriend shows up a little bit later with a friend.
And she said her boyfriend was really angry at her because he's like, why are you talking to him? High school kids, why are you talking to him? Is he hitting on you? And she remembered very specifically that day she went home with her.
She went to her boyfriend's house with him and they got snowed in and they snowed really heavily that night. And she remembered that for the following two days school was closed. So she had very specific details about why she remembered that day. Asia wrote out an affidavit on the spot.
In it she says she and a non-spoke for about 15 to 20 minutes while she was waiting for her boyfriend to give her a ride. Quote, we left around 240, unquote. Remember, hey, it's supposed to be dead by 236. And then the kicker, no attorney has ever contacted me about January 13th, 1999 and the above information.
So benefit of the doubt for a second. Maybe a non-never actually showed the letters to Christina Gutierrez as attorney. Sure, he said he did, but who knows? Well, I know.
Even side Gutierrez's notes on the case, boxes and boxes of such stuff. There's this in her handwriting. Asia plus boyfriend saw him in library 215 to 315. Then there's another note.
Data July 13th. It's more than four months after a non-serrest. This is written by one of Gutierrez's law clerks who visited a non-in-jail. Quote, Asia McLean saw him in the library at three.
Asia boyfriend saw him, too. Library may have cameras. Why, oh, why was this person never heard from a trial? A solid, non-crazy, detail-oriented alibi witness in a case that so sorely needed alibi witnesses?
I can't ask Christina Gutierrez because she died in 2004. So I put that question to a few defense attorneys and they said, well, alibi witnesses can be tricky, especially if it's just one person, because then it becomes one person's word over another. A single witness like that can backfire under cross-examination, or they might take the jury's focus away from the weaknesses in the state's case. So there are conceivable strategic reasons why Christina Gutierrez might not have wanted to put Asian McLean on the stand.
But what is inconceivable, they all said, is to not ever contact Asia McLean, to never make a call, never check it out, never find out if her story helps or hurts your case. That makes no sense whatsoever. That is not a strategy. That is a fuck up.
When I first heard about the long-lost Asia letters and the lawyers mistake, I thought, well, their fight is over, right? They've got an alibi witness who was never heard from. It's such a slam dunk. They're done.
It's such a slam dunk. They're done. A non-family hired a new attorney who filed a petition in court based on the Asia affidavit. His argument was that a non-trial could have turned out differently if Gutierrez had checked out Asia's story, and so a non-should get some form of what's called post-conviction relief.
The new lawyer figures he'll get Asia to come to the hearing. She'll vouch for her story. By this time, Asia had finished school and moved away. He finds an address on the west coast, tries calling, sending messages, nothing.
Finally, he writes a letter to her and gives it to a private investigator who goes out to Asia's house and hopes of delivering it. Asia's fiance comes to the door, opens it part way, tells the investigator that she cannot speak to Asia, but that from what he knows about Nance Case, Nance guilty and deserved the punishment he got. Later, the investigator gets a call from the fiance. We don't have to talk to you.
He was alone. So, a non-slower calls off the search for Asia. Figuring once a witness turns on you like that, it's too risky to keep pushing. And then, at a non-hearing on the new petition, it comes out that Asia had done the very thing they dreaded.
Asia had called one of the prosecutors in a non-case, a guy named Kevin Urich, and undermined her own statement. This is from a recording of the hearing. Mr. Urich is testifying on the witness stand.
How did you learn that the defendant's conversation? A young lady named Asia called me. And what did she say? She was concerned because she was being asked questions about an affidavit she'd written back at the time of the trial.
She told me that she'd only written it because she was getting pressure from the family, and she basically wrote it to please them and get them off her back. It was, I don't know what happened to her and why she would do this. Here's Rabi again. She says it's not true that Asia was bullied into writing that statement 15 years ago.
And she can't find them why Asia would discredit her own statement like that. I don't know why. The affidavit was written voluntarily. I mean, I'm an attorney.
I'm a licensed attorney. I work on Homeland Security. I have no reason to make something like this up. I didn't even know she existed until after the conviction.
So what did you think happened? Why would they have this sort of violent reaction to helping out a non-no? I don't know. It was just really odd.
So who knows what would have happened if Asia had shown up? Maybe it wouldn't have made a difference. After all, they had the original letters and the affidavit. That's all that should have mattered.
But it didn't look good. It'd be natural for the judge to wonder, why can't the defense produce this Asia pre-polarity? Why did she make this call to a prosecutor? I mean, anyone would wonder.
I wondered. I wondered if maybe she was pressured into writing that affidavit. And I wondered if she was hiding something. Like maybe she'd lied in those 1999 letters.
Maybe she didn't really see a non-at-the-library that day. And I just wanted to insert herself into something exciting. And maybe now that she was grown up, she wanted nothing to do with any of it. So three or four months after I'd first sat down with Rabi, I'd become fixated on finding Asia.
I'm like a bloodhound on this thing. Because the whole case seemed to me to be teetering on her memories of that afternoon. I have to know if I'd known really was in the library at 2.36pm. Because if it was, well, library equals innocent.
It's so manly simple. And maybe I can crack it if I can just talk to Asia. I write her a long, gentle, pleading letter and send it off to an address I find online. I'm calling people who know her, or who I think might know her.
I'm checking the same loop of Facebook my life linked insights over and over, trawling for clues about where she might be or how she might think. If you're wondering why I went so nuts on this story versus some other murder case, the best I can explain is, this is the one that came to me. It wasn't halfway across the world or even next door. It came right to my lap.
And if I could help get to the bottom of it, shouldn't I try. I start running down all the other information in Asia's 1999 letters. She mentioned there were security cameras inside the library. So my producer and I went to see the very nice manager there, Michelle Hineel, was there a security system back in 1999 that could have been checked at the time?
Probably. Yes, I'm going to say yes. And what system was it? I have no idea.
It was an old system. You think probably video? It was video. And that was part of setup every morning you put a video tape in.
And were you guys recycling the video tapes? Yes. I think it ran for, you know, week. So you had a Monday tape, a Tuesday tape, a Wednesday tape and stuff like so.
Even if on the very day that Asia had written her first letter, a non-slur had run out to find a security tape, it probably would have been non-existent by that. But what about the computer I was supposedly using to check his email? To use a computer did people have to sign in, like write their name down? They did.
And what was the system then? A piece of paper and pencil. That was by any chance we're logged meticulously and kept for 15 years, were they? No.
Bummer. We got nothing. Then there was the mystery of Asia's boyfriend Derek and his friend Gerard. All winter and spring, every time I went to Baltimore, I went to Derek's mom's house looking for him.
And to Gerard's window-tinting business. And then finally. Alright, so you're Gerard Johnson. Yes, I am.
You don't know how excited we are to be talking to. I've been looking for you for like four months. You didn't do anything, but we were hoping maybe you remembered this moment. On January 13, 1999, do you have any memory by any miracle that you went to Woodlawn Public Library branch near Woodlawn High School to pick up Asia McLean with your friend Derek?
I have no idea. Asia McLean. Is that a personal book? It's a person.
No, no recollection of it. Scratch Gerard. Derek was my last hope. Eventually I caught him at home, considering I woke him up, he was exceedingly courteous.
He showed me a photo of Asia and him all dressed up. They dated most of senior year. What's up here? I've seen your prom.
You guys both look really beautiful. Mm-hmm. Yeah, that's Asia. But Derek couldn't remember that day either.
Shocking, I know. He used to pick Asia up from school almost every day back then, either from the library or from the front of the school. And he says he spoke to a lot of her friends, just to be polite. And it's very possible that we could have spoken to the gentleman and her on that day.
But it's very hard to remember 15 years later. But it sounds like this definitely could have happened. I don't think Asia is not the type of person that would lie. That's what I'm wondering.
She's definitely not the type of person to get involved with a lie. She's not the type of person. So it seemed pretty credible to me. One day I got a call on my cell phone from a blocked number.
You guessed it. Asia. I wish I could say that my charming persuasive letter is what prompted Asia to call. But the truth is she never got my letter.
I had the wrong address. But she was calling because I'd followed up weeks later with a one-line email. And she was responding to that. A little confused.
I recorded our conversation on the cell, which is why the sound quality is so bad. Sorry about that. Asia is now a 33-year-old stay-at-home mother. And she has not spent the last 15 years worrying about it none and whether he's guilty.
I don't know if she did anything. Asia said she was spooked when the private investigator came to her house. I don't know if that's why she didn't testify at the hearing or why she made the call to the prosecutor. But she told me that when she got the knock at the door, quote, that was not cool.
Because to her, if I none did do it, quote, the last thing you want is a murderer being pissed off at you knowing where you live. But she had a remarkably clear memory of what happened on January 13th, 1999. She had an internship at the time, and so she got out of school much earlier than everyone else. Derek was supposed to come get her at the library, along with Gerard, but they were very late.
She remembers seeing a non-come-in after Woodlun let out for the day. I'm not sure why Asia's memory of this interaction is so clear all these years later. My best guess is that because she wrote it down at the time in those letters and then the affidavit that the details somehow stuck. Do you remember what time you were talking this would have happened in the library?
Do you remember what time that conversation would have happened? I don't because you had said you got out of school earlier than other people. So were you at the library before 215? Oh yeah, I had been at the library for a few hours.
Oh wow. Yeah, I was putting that when Derek showed up and he had to go work. Were there snow days after that? Do you remember?
I want to say they were because that was the first snow of the year. Mm-hmm. I wouldn't have even remembered if they had an event that the snow. The snow is important.
Hey, disappeared on Wednesday. That night there was a huge ice storm, which is unusual in Maryland. It ended up being a state emergency and school was closed for the rest of the week. Asia started asking me questions about the case.
Wasn't there DNA evidence? And what exactly was Jay's part in the whole thing? She wasn't sure that none was guilty. She said things have now heard from so many people since.
He seemed like he cared about hay. He didn't seem angry or upset. I thought there was more proof. Even that day, it didn't want the way that he was like, oh.
Yeah. If you want to make this innocent officer, I would say he's innocent, but two years old, that can keep a calm demeanor. Yeah. And I know there are people who without a moment known as something, then even now, it would be nice if there were some technicalities, that would prove innocent.
Great. But I think Asia, like you might be that technicality. Do you see what I mean? Like, if you're saying you saw him on this day at that time, that means the state's timeline for their whole theory of the case doesn't make any sense.
It's a possibility. Because they're saying he was in the car with her at the very time that you're saying, no, I saw him at the library and we were talking. Do you know what I mean? Like, that's exactly the window where they're saying she was murdered.
In case you couldn't hear that, it was a sigh. And I completely understand that sigh. That's how I feel a lot of the time. Because I talked to a non-regular lady, and he just doesn't seem like a murderer.
A few minutes after I hung up with Asia, a non-called, on schedule. Hey, sir, I'm good. I'm good. So I was just talking to Asia McLean.
Okay. You don't sound very excited. I don't know. This was not the reaction I expected.
I felt like I just interviewed an ivory-build woodpecker. But when I told a non-what Asia remembered, instead of being excited, a non-set it was heartbreaking. I mean, I see what you're saying, I hadn't thought about it in that way. When I told Robbie I'd talk to Asia, she immediately burst into tears.
Because they were all correct. It was too late. The judge ruled on a non-sputition a few weeks before I spoke to Asia, denied. The judge wrote in his opinion that Christina Gutierrez's decision not to use Asia McLean as an alibi witness was strategic.
After all, Asia's original letters didn't specify an exact time, and Gutierrez could have reasonably concluded that Asia was offering to lie in order to help Anan. And finally, he wrote, Asia's letter contradicted Anan's own alibi. Asia said she saw him at the public library, but Anan said he was on the school campus the whole afternoon. Maybe the judge didn't understand that Woodland Library is basically part of the campus.
But anyway. Asia's story then is legally worthless. A witness who says she saw you at the exact moment when the state contends you were strangling a young woman in a car is worthless. A few days after I spoke to Asia, she wrote me an email.
I've been thinking a lot about Anan, she wrote. All this time I thought the courts proved it was Anan that killed her. I thought he was where he deserved to be. Now I'm not so sure.
Hey, it was our friend too, and it sucks feeling like you don't know who really killed your friend. Hey, it was the sweetest person ever. If he didn't kill Hay, we owe it to him to try to make that clear. And if he did kill her, then we need to put this to rest.