'Serial' Witness Brings Forth a New Alibi for Syed

Hot damn. Looks like another person from the Serial case has come out with brand-new information that complicates the story told in Sarah Koenig's podcast about the murder of Maryland teenager Hae Min Lee. One of the most puzzling parts of the case against Adnan Syed was the issue of the Asia letters, which were almost as frustrating as the Nisha call and the alleged "payphone" at Best Buy. On Tuesday, Asia McClain supplied The Blaze with an affadavit in which she stands firm that she was with Adnan at the library after school and that — and here's the kicker — she never recanted her testimony that provided Adnan an alibi.

In her affadavit, McClain says that she is coming forward now because she realizes with hindsight her importance in the case. Though attorney Kevin Urick said that McClain recanted her original affadavit in 1999, as we heard on the podcast, McClain is now saying that never happened:

I never told Urick that I recanted my story or affidavit about January 13, 1999. In addition, I did not write the March 1999 letters or the affidavit because of pressure from Syed’s family. I did not write them to please Syed’s family or to get them off my back. What actually happened is that I wrote the affidavit because I wanted to provide the truth about what I remembered. My only goal has always been to provide the truth about what I remembered.

McClain's affadavit might have a huge impact on the ongoing appeals process for Adnan Syed; his lawyers are trying to appeal on the grounds that the original lawyers did not properly investigate the case. McClain is the third person involved in the trial that has come forward in the past few months; it began with Jay Wilds, the key witness in the trial against Syed, giving an interview to The Intercept saying that Sarah Koenig misrepresented and villainized him. Later, Kevin Urick gave an interview to the same site saying that the evidence against Syed was incontrovertible.

The ongoing developments and new first-person accounts that keep emerging are not only intriguing and troubling: what would Sarah Koenig do if she had this information at hand when she was producing the podcast? Will she respond with a follow-up, or is she officially extricating herself from investigating the case?

Image: Serialpodcast.org