Season One: Episode 01

---- Rp5-rn-101 May 2026

It's Baltimore, 1999. Hae Min Lee, a popular high-school senior, disappears after school one day. Six weeks later detectives arrest her classmate and ex-boyfriend, Adnan Syed, for her murder. He says he's innocent - though he can't exactly remember what he was doing on that January afternoon. But someone can. A classmate at Woodlawn High School says she knows where Adnan was. The trouble is, she’s nowhere to be found.

 

2014

2015-2019

In the years since season one concluded, Sarah Koenig wrote updates about important developments in the case. In 2015, the cell phone expert who testified at Adnan Syed’s trial said he no longer stood behind his testimony. In 2016, Adnan's attorney introduced new evidence and presented a case for why his conviction should be overturned. Serial covered what happened, day by day, in the three audio updates below. In 2019, Maryland’s highest court reversed a decision to give Adnan a new trial.

2022

On September 19, 2022, the Baltimore City State's Attorney's office vacated Adnan's conviction. Sarah was at the courthouse when Adnan was released, hear details in Episode 13.

On October 11, 2022, prosecutors dropped the charges, and Adnan is now free. Police are continuing to investigate. We are done reporting this story, but are sure others will continue to follow it. As they do, here's what we'll be looking for.

---- Rp5-rn-101 May 2026

And the answer will be the last thing you ever hear—not because it kills you, but because once heard, nothing else will ever sound like music again. "It stopped repeating for 0.3 seconds today. In the gap, I heard something else. Not silence. A door opening. I'm going to look. Mark this file: Rp5-rn-101 – not hostile. Just very, very tired."

Recovered from the beneath a 400-meter layer of Permian anhydrite, the unit bore no markings of any known manufacturer—human or otherwise. Initial dating placed its structural alloys at 47,000 years old , yet internal quantum coherence patterns suggested an operational lifespan of less than 47 hours. ---- Rp5-rn-101

We are not listening to a machine.

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