I spent a lot of my childhood afraid. I was scared of the dark and the monsters that took the form of my laundry basket in the corner of my room. I was terrified that Whitey Bulger would unleash the Irish mob on me and my innocent family or that Doctor Death would wield his scalpel while I, sedated, would be powerless against my inevitable, mutilated fate.
You might be wondering how these latter fears took shape, and I can assure you, my imagination wasn’t vivid enough to invent these villains. These arguably irrational fears were facilitated by my mom’s idea of car ride entertainment.
My parents were strong advocates for phone-free car rides. A friend recently told me she still remembers driving to the Cape with us, listening to the story of a high school senior charged with kidnapping and strangling his ex-girlfriend. We couldn’t have been older
than 10. That young man was Adnan Syed, and our family spent hours listening to Sarah Koenig unpack every detail of the brutal murder of Hae Min Lee on the first season of her “Serial” podcast.
Our time with Sarah’s stories far exceeded her 13 produced episodes. Someone in the car would periodically blurt out a question or opinion and prompt a lengthy discussion of the evidence. Our young brains struggled to keep up. We had yet to learn what a deposition was or how long it takes to die of strangulation; our mom made sure to iron out every detail. We’d rewind to clarify the significance of a cell phone tower ping or a friend’s testimony.
As the story goes, in December of 1998, 17-year-old Adnan Syed strangled his ex-girlfriend, Hae Min Lee, a year after she broke up with him. Syed and his friend allegedly buried her body in a nearby park. Ultimately, Syed was sentenced to life in prison with key evidence coming from his palm print on a map and cell phone tower data.
Enter Sarah Koenig, our investigative journalist. Her podcast wasn’t like the oversaturated, under-researched ‘murder’ podcasts I often see on TikTok. Those podcasts left a sour taste in my mouth and boiled down a victim’s legacy into content for two women with a hobby and a microphone. Sarah wasn’t just telling a story: She was investigating a crime. I was captivated by each twist. What felt like certainty one minute could be overturned in the next by new evidence.
Three years ago, Syed’s conviction was overruled, largely due to the publicity brought by Koenig’s podcast. Past evidence had become unreliable with advances in genetic profiling, resulting in the original trial lacking key evidence.
“My parents were strong advocates for phone-free car rides. A friend recently told me she still remembers driving to the Cape with us, listening to the story of a high school senior charged with kidnapping and strangling his ex-girlfriend.”
Lee’s story helped shape my understanding of our justice system. Learning her story shattered the rose-colored glasses of my upbringing. When I was barely double digits, I lay awake imagining what Hae Min Lee felt, gasping for air in her final moments.
Similarly, I vividly remember disappointment coursing through me when we learned that art theft investigators had unearthed a septic tank, not “The Storm on the Sea of Galilee” by Rembrandt stolen from the Isabella Stewart Gardner museum in the 1990s. Even now, I cautiously fill my car with gas, afraid that the D.C. Snipers may be driving past at any moment, and when I stop at the station on Memorial Drive, I imagine how Danny Men felt as the Boston Bombers told him to shut up, get in the car and drive. Though they often cost me sleep, these stories provided me with a sharp sense of the world beyond the private school bubble that I’ve lived in all my life and made me love true crime.
