Adnan Syed in front of a tree that has grown significantly in the decades he spent imprisoned.
Hae Min Lee and Adnan Syed pose at their junior prom.
Adnan Syed, whose case was chronicled in the hit podcast "Serial," departs after a judge overturned Syed's 2000 murder conviction and ordered a new trial during a hearing at the Baltimore City Circuit Courthouse in Baltimore, Maryland, U.S., September 19, 2022. REUTERS/Jonathan Ernst TPX IMAGES OF THE DAY

In 2019, HBO's "The Case Against Adnan Syed" thoroughly covered the murder of high school student Hae Min Lee and the conviction of her ex-boyfriend, Adnan Syed. At the time, Syed and his loved ones, who strongly believed in his innocence, had little hope that his conviction would be overturned.

Syed received a life sentence for the death of Lee in 2000. Both attended Woodlawn High School, outside of Baltimore. They split after experiencing that deep, young love, exciting, that knows no bounds. “He’s the cutest, sweetest, and coolest guy,” Lee had written in her journal, “and he loves me.”

The month following their breakup Lee, then 18, went missing on Jan. 13, 1999. Her body was discovered nearly four weeks later on Feb. 9, 1999 in Baltimore’s Leakin Park. Syed, the subject of the debut season of the Serial podcast, has long maintained his innocence. HBO's “The Case Against Adnan Syed” concluded in 2019, with the Maryland Court of Appeals denying a new trial for Syed.

But in the years that followed, Syed's judicial game of table tennis continued until he was finally freed from prison in 2022. A special fifth episode for the series (Sept. 18, 9 ET/PT on HBO and HBO Max) tells that story, wrapping up his 26-year ordeal. Rabia Chaudry, an attorney and friend of the Syed family, who brought the story to Serial host Sarah Koenig and is an executive producer on the docuseries, considers the murder of Lee unsolved.

“I think people need to still keep asking the questions and understanding that for every innocent person who's in prison, there is a person who is a killer who's out there,” Chaudry says. “And that's what I believe is happening in this case, that whoever killed Hae Min Lee is out there.”

Here are updates in the case, from “The Case Against Adnan Syed” and an interview with Chaudry.

Adnan Syed is free, but has not been declared innocent

Marilyn Mosby, former Baltimore City State's Attorney (2015-2023), questioned the integrity of Syed’s conviction and investigated the case. Mosby filed a motion to vacate Syed’s conviction in September of 2022, which a judge approved.

Syed left the courthouse and returned to his parents’ house, and found how much had changed in the decades he’d spent behind bars. A tree, only the size of a stick in his memory, now towers over him. Syed’s dad kissed him on the forehead and repeatedly told his son, “I’m so glad to see you.”

But months later, in March of 2023, the Maryland Court of Appeals reinstated the murder conviction, agreeing with Lee’s family that they did not receive timely notice. In December 2024, Syed’s legal team filed a motion to reduce his life sentence under Maryland's Juvenile Restoration Act, as Syed was not yet 18 at the time of the crime. On March 6, 2025, Syed’s sentence was reduced to time served. His murder conviction still stands.

Who killed Hae Min Lee?

Chaudry has ideas about who might’ve murdered Lee, and provides a strategy for how the killer could finally be brought to justice.

“If I had the power to reinvestigate the case with the state's resources, I would begin with the man she was dating,” Chaudry says, alluding to Lee’s boyfriend at the time, Don Clinedinst. “I would begin with the man that she told her friend, 'I'm going to see that day,' because he's never been eliminated. Compare his DNA against the DNA found on her. Start there. Compare his hair to it. Eliminate him, and then we can move on.”

Some also have suspicions of Alonzo Sellers, who said he found Lee’s body in Leakin Park. Episode 5 opens with a postal worker’s 2020 account of seeing Sellers naked in the woods, with his face covered, carrying a child’s jacket. After the postal worker took a photo of Sellers, she claims he approached her vehicle and tried to pull her from it. According to the documentary, Sellers pleaded guilty to second-degree assault for this incident.

Chaudry hopes the new episode emphasizes Sellers "was never properly eliminated, that the police never even took his hair samples or DNA to compare in this crime, and that he failed the first polygraph.”

According to the docuseries, “as of May 2025, the Baltimore City Police Department has yet to test the new DNA results against alternative suspects.” The police department did not immediately respond to USA TODAY’s request for comment or to provide an update on the status of their investigation.

Adnan Syed's life now: He's the same 'positive person he's always been'

In December 2022, Syed began working at Georgetown University as a program associate for the school’s Prisons and Justice Initiative.

Chaudry says Syed is doing well and lives in Virginia with his wife.

“I saw him at my mom's funeral last week,” Chaudry says during a Sept. 15 interview. He’s still “the same kind, considerate, nonconfrontational, positive person he's always been,” she adds. After March’s ruling, Syed is more comfortable planning his future.

“Now that it's over, I do believe he wants to go to college and finish his degree,” Chaudry says, “and hopefully have a family one day, have some kids.”

How Adnan Syed met his 'lovely' wife while in prison, and what she did to help free him

Chaudry says that numerous women wrote to Syed during the release of the Serial podcast in 2014.

“He just kept passing them on to his mom,” Chaudry says, “and he really wouldn't respond, because he didn't find it appropriate. He just didn't want to get into anything crazy like that.”

The HBO docuseries, which first aired in 2019, caught the attention of a Pakistani American woman living in Virginia, according to Chaudry.

“She watched it,” Chaudry says, “and she just felt really depressed because at the end of the documentary, they say that the conviction was reinstated, he's not getting out.” So the woman wrote to Syed and he responded, uncharacteristically.

“She was probably the first one he wrote back, in all these years,” Chaudry says. “They started communicating through letter and then over phone. And then she came to visit him in prison.”

Chaudry says the two exchanged vows while Syed was still in prison.

At first, “I was very skeptical,” Chaudry says about his wife. There are “all kinds of crazy people out there. I don't know if I can trust somebody. Maybe they want to meet him because of all the fame, and this and that. But after I met her, I was like, ‘You're a lucky guy. She's lovely.’ And she worked very hard. The (reduced sentence under the Juvenile Restoration Act) could not have been passed if it wasn't for all the work she did behind the scenes.”

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: 'The Case Against Adnan Syed' shows his life now as a free man

Reporting by Erin Jensen, USA TODAY / USA TODAY

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