Adnan's Story Page 5

  At this point Adnan had been twice contacted by the police, the night that Hae disappeared by Officer Adcock, and then on February 1st by Detective O’Shea. The sudden whispers about him at school were unsettling; he was already deeply concerned by Hae’s disappearance, and now a teacher was digging around about his sex life. The last thing he needed was word to get back to his parents, who had no idea that he and Hae had been sexually involved. Not even his Muslim friends knew that, at least no one other than his best friend, my brother, Saad. But now a teacher, of all people, was asking his friends, including those who went to the same mosque and whose mothers knew his mother, about where he’d been having sex with Hae.

  Community gossip moved at lightning speed. The prospect of his mother finding out that he’d been having sex was terrifying, as it would be to any level-headed seventeen-year-old Pakistani kid.

  According to Schab, Adnan approached her and asked her, rather politely, to stop prying into his sex life. He told her he “would appreciate it” if she stopped asking questions around the school because it could potentially cause problems with his parents. He had no idea that the police had asked her to ask those questions, but assumed that she was playing sleuth herself.

  It’s both interesting and telling that the official police report doesn’t mention the role Schab was asked to play. But both Schab and Debbie Warren will testify to this less than a year later.

  On February 2nd the police contact authorities in Hayward, California, and ask them to visit Hae’s mother’s ex-boyfriend or fiancé (reports are conflicting about the relationship) who Butler was presumably referring to as Hae’s father. They check in with him, and do a sweep of the area for her car, but find nothing.

  On February 3rd, the detective checks to see if Adnan is listed in MILES, the Maryland Interagency Law Enforcement System, an online database. His records are clear. O’Shea does not check on anyone else.

  On February 4th, the Baltimore Sun puts out a request for information on Hae:

  Hae Min Lee, who lived with family members was last seen about 3 p.m. January 13[th] at Woodlawn Senior High School, where she was a student. After school she was supposed to pick up her 6-year-old niece and go to work, police said, but she did not do either.

  It’s fair to assume the newspaper was given this information by the police, so at that point their theory was certainly that (1) Hae was at school until 3:00 p.m. and (2) she had plans to work that night, not attend a wrestling match.

  Once the police take the case public, they begin actively organizing searches for Hae and her car. On February 6th, police search the areas around Woodlawn High with dogs, and follow the banks of the western part of Dead Run Stream into Leakin Park.

  Two days later, on February 8th, Adnan calls Detective O’Shea, which we know from his cell phone records, but there are no notes of that conversation anywhere. It is possible the phone call was regarding their meeting scheduled for the 10th. Also on the 8th, nearly a month after Hae’s disappearance, O’Shea retrieves Hae’s computer from her family, and the Computer Crimes Unit issues a subpoena to America Online for records connected to Hae’s e-mail accounts.

  Clearly the police are now looking for communications from or to Hae leading up to January 13th. But this line of inquiry will come to a screeching halt, and frustratingly be completely forgotten, because on February 9, 1999, the body of a young woman is discovered in Leakin Park.

  Adnan:

  After January 13, the next two days were snow days, and then it was the weekend. We talked about it in school that first week, and there was a general assumption Hae was either staying with her boyfriend, or perhaps she went to California. She had spent her sophomore year in California, and we all knew that her father and other family members/friends lived there. As far as her missing school; well, that really was not an issue for most of us who were in the Magnet Program. We had accumulated enough credits to graduate by the beginning of our senior year. Some of us would take half-days, or even skip the whole day together. We may have had jobs or internships to attend, or we may have just gone somewhere and hung out.

  Going into the second week was when we all became more concerned because no one had heard from her. We all knew that Hae’s mother had called the police on the first day. And the officer had contacted several of us. Any notion that something was really wrong was belied by the knowledge that Hae was someone who always had it together, and surely she was all right. I remember thinking, “Man, Hae’s gonna be in so much trouble with her Mom when she gets home.”

  By the third week, that worry had turned to fear. No one knew what to think. Krista and Aisha would call Hae’s house every day and speak to her family, to see if there was any news. The rest of us would talk to Krista and Aisha to find out if there was anything they had learned. But there was never anything for them to pass on to us.

  CHAPTER 3

  A BODY

  Verily we belong to God and to Him we shall return.

  Holy Quran 2:156

  Alonzo Sellers is no stranger to the law. His list of charges is robust, including an occasional assault here and there, but mostly they reveal that he suffers from a rather colorful compulsion. Between 1994 and 2015, Sellers had been charged with indecent exposure eight times, once jangling his junk whilst completely in the buff right in front of a female police officer. Sellers is a habitual streaker.

  In 1999, Sellers was forty years old and worked as a groundskeeper at Coppin State University in Baltimore, less than five miles from his home in Gwynn Oak, Maryland. The total travel time, during non-rush hours, was approximately fifteen minutes.

  On February 9, 1999, Sellers was at work when he found himself in need of a plane to shave down a doorframe. He decided to go home and fetch one that afternoon.

  According to Sellers, he arrived home, grabbed a twenty-two-ounce beer and the plane he needed, and headed back. He was in his truck, traveling west on Franklintown Road. A few miles from the college he felt the call of nature—the beer having run its course—so he pulled over.

  Police reports don’t indicate where he pulled over. There was no space on his side of the road. There was a small place to pull over on the opposite side, where he ended up making his discovery.

  But he didn’t stay by the side of the road. Ostensibly searching for a place to urinate, he wandered more than a hundred feet into the woods north of the road, the ground covered in places by spots of snow and ice, and he came to a stop at a large fallen tree close to the water. A video taken by Adnan’s attorney Cristina Gutierrez months later in September 1999, found easily on YouTube, shows the trek Sellers would have taken on this particularly cold day—the temperature hovered between 30 and 40°F—an unlikely slog for a simple leak.

  Then, according to Sellers, he stepped over the tree, unzipped his pants, and froze. He had nearly stepped on something.

  Peeking through the dirt, a few yards from the stream and close to the log, was a patch of black hair. A bit of white fabric poked up through the dark earth next to the hair. A few feet farther, a small mound rose up slightly, the outline of a hip, dipping back into the dirt.

  Sellers zipped his pants up, forgetting to urinate, and made his panicked way back to the road and his truck.

  On that bitingly cold February day, far from the road, between a stream and a dead tree in Leakin Park, Sellers had found a body.

  * * *

  Chief of Security Ronald Collins from Coppin State College called Baltimore City’s Police Homicide Unit at approximately 1:20 p.m. on February 9, 1999, to report Sellers’ discovery. According to Sellers, he had raced back to work, upset and unnerved. Shortly afterward Detectives Greg MacGillivary and William Ritz arrived at Coppin to meet Sellers, and he directed them to the 4400 block of Franklintown Road. The detectives, accompanied by Sellers, made their way to Leakin Park, where he led them to his horrid find.

  The city surveyor, Phillip Buddemeyer, would later testify that he nearly stepped on the body, it was so difficult to
see. The sun had begun to set, which may have added to his trouble in seeing what pictures of the burial site, taken with floodlights set around the perimeter, clearly show—a partially buried female body. In the light of day, when Sellers had been there hours earlier, it may have been much more apparent.

  The body lay nearly parallel to the far side of a forty-foot tree, also referred to as a log in the records, hidden from the road. The head pointed southeast, feet pointed northwest, and both log and body were at a roughly 45-degree angle from the road, the farthest end reaching toward Dead Run Creek.

  The victim was announced DOA at 1400 hours.

  As dusk fell, the crime scene unit began excavating the body, brushing away the few inches of gathered earth to uncover, bit by bit, the slender frame of a young Asian woman.

  She lay on her right side, her left leg on top of her right leg, her torso slightly twisted so that her head was turned facing downward at a 45-degree angle from the ground. Her head almost rested on her outstretched right arm, as if asleep. Her right arm didn’t lie flat, instead it angled upward, bent at the elbow, and her right hand poked through the dirt, slender, small fingers frozen in the air. A single large rock had been placed on that arm, maybe to force it down, an indication that perhaps the body (or at least that arm and hand) were in rigor when she was left there.

  Her left arm was twisted behind her, bent at 90 degrees, her left hand resting against her back.

  She was clothed, but her clothing was disheveled. She wore a white jacket over a gray-blue blouse and, from photographs though not mentioned in reports, a white knit shirt inside of that, both of which were bunched up in the front. Under the blouse her bra was pulled above her breasts, exposing them. Her long black skirt was gathered above her waist, she wore underwear, and her pantyhose were mostly intact, with a few small but distinct tears. She had no shoes on, but wore a white metal school ring, a second white metal interlocking ring, and two necklaces—a gold one with a charm and a silver one with a heart pendant.

  Crime scene sketch

  If anything, it was abundantly clear that she was not carefully placed into this spot. The body was in an unnatural position. She had been dumped and hastily covered over.

  The body was taken to the Chief Medical Examiner’s office where it was properly identified, though the police must have immediately suspected who it was. It took some effort for the medical examiner to get partial prints from the body, which were compared to latent prints from the Lee home. The victim had sustained blunt force trauma to two parts of her head, the rear right portion and right side, causing “focal and poorly delineated right occipital subgaleal and right temporalis muscle hemorrhage.”

  The hyoid bone, which supports the tongue, was dislocated. The cause of death was strangulation.

  The young victim was conclusively identified as Hae Min Lee. The missing person’s case was now a homicide.

  * * *

  The crime scene report, dated June 10, 1999 (reports in this case often being written months after an event) reads:

  The crime scene is found in the 4400 blk. N. Franklintown Road within Leakin Park. A body is located partially buried approximately 127 feet from the road, next to a fallen tree, within a wooded area in a shallow grave.

  A empty half pint bottle is located several feet from the remains along with a section of clothes line.

  Feathers are located on a section of the fallen tree, same are photographed and recovered.

  Six 9mm. cartridge casings along with thirteen .40 caliber cartridge casings are observed in the street and along the roadside. These casings are photographed and recovered.

  A rolled condom and wrapper are also observed along side of the road. These items are photographed and recovered.

  Several Block Buster cases are observed on the opposite side of the street, these items are photographed and recovered.

  Several tire tracks are discovered in the soil just off the roadside which is described as a parking area. These tracks are photographed and casts are made to preserve the indentations.

  After the body is disinterred, a fiber is observed under U.V. light, on the victim’s outer garments [sic]. A second fiber is found after the remains are removed. This fiber is observed on top of the soil, and is illuminated under U.V. light. These fibers are recovered and are submitted into evidence at the Evidence Control Section with the proper Laboratory requests.

  On 10 February 1999 at approximately 0900 hours, an [sic] Post Mortem Examination is conducted on the victim that is disinterred from Leakin Park. The remains are that of an Asian Female approximately seventeen to twenty years of age. The examination is conducted by Doctor Aquino, Associate Medical Examiner and supervised by Doctor Marguerite Korrell Deputy Chief Medical Examiner.

  At the conclusion of the examination, it was determined that the victim met her demise as a result of Manual Strangulation. Doctor Korrell ruled the manner of death a Homicide.

  According to the crime scene narrative, written the same day by Detectives MacGillivary and Carew, the area was cordoned off, and photographs and video of the body were taken. As the medical examiner and crime lab technicians got to work, the detectives turned their attention to Sellers.

  His story of how he discovered Hae’s body would raise eyebrows in any event, but particularly so because of his criminal record. A history of streaking certainly makes it less likely that a man would take such pains to be discreet.

  Having been to the burial site numerous times, to me the story seems unlikely. There is no path back to the site. Some have suggested that Sellers may have been back there streaking, but streaking technically requires an audience.

  According to Sellers, he had downed a 22-ounce beer in a matter of minutes, and taken a longer, more winding route back to work. The natural route would have been Windsor Mill Avenue, a main thoroughfare that is not only shorter, but has more lanes and would have been nearly clear around lunchtime. Equally problematic: his home in Gwynn Oak is virtually across the street from Woodlawn High.

  All of these things should have bothered the police, and initially it seems they were suspicious, because they subjected Sellers to two different polygraph tests.

  It’s not unheard of for the perpetrator of a murder to alert the authorities or call in a tip themselves related to the crime or the victim. But in this case it seems unlikely, given Sellers’ panicked reaction and fairly innocuous criminal record, that he had anything to do with the crime. Reporting the body was, if anything, the act of a good Samaritan.

  The question was not so much whether Sellers had committed the crime, but whether he had heard something that led him to look for the body. And that’s precisely what the first polygraph test sought to determine.

  On February 18, nine days after discovering the body, Sellers was first brought in to take a lie detector test. He was told his rights, which he waived entirely. The first time he was tested, he was asked only four questions specific to the murder.

  The result was not good for Sellers. The examiner wrote that “Mr. Sellers seemed to be preoccupied with outside issues. He appeared to be nervous and time-conscious.” The conclusion: “Final Call: Significant responses that would normally indicate deception. (Deception Indicated).”

  February 18, 1999 polygraph questions.

  February 24, 1999, polygraph questions.

  Here is where the police conduct gets weird. They brought Sellers back on February 24 to take another test, but with totally different questions.

  This time Sellers passed with flying colors.

  Most jurisdictions in the United States stopped allowing polygraphs as evidence of truthfulness long ago, and in this instance it also seems the police had little faith in a polygraph. If they did indeed believe that these examinations would yield reliable answers to the questions on the first polygraph, common sense would dictate they would repeat the same questions on the second.

  But they didn’t. So then what was the point of this exercise?

  The
most reasonable explanation to me for the two distinctly different tests is this: the police wanted to eliminate Sellers as a suspect and dispense with him altogether. When he failed the first polygraph, they decided to give him a second one designed to make sure he passed, instead of further exploring why he failed on questions in the first one

  After the second polygraph, Sellers was never contacted by the police again. This would be the last time he appeared in the case until he testified in the murder trial of the person the police had been eyeing even before Hae’s body was found: Adnan.

  * * *

  In her 1969 book On Death and Dying, Elisabeth Kübler-Ross developed a model for understanding how people commonly cope with loss, widely known as the five stages of grief. She later clarified that the stages are not necessarily linear, but instead are the most universally expressed human responses to loss.

  In tragic situations the most frequent immediate reaction is denial.

  According to nearly everyone who was questioned, Adnan initially refused to believe that the body found in Leakin Park could be Hae’s. He argued, between tears, that it must be another Asian girl. There was a significant Korean community in the area, after all.

  On the night of February 10, 1999, news of the discovery of Hae’s body spread quietly but quickly among her friends. Aisha was the first to hear when Hae’s brother called her. Aisha then alerted Krista, who contacted Adnan. Adnan was home and didn’t have his car that night (it was shared by his family), but when he heard the news, he ran all the way to Aisha’s house.