"This is not a podcast for me. This is real life," a betrayed Young Lee told the court as another twist into the case of his 18-year-old sister's murder unfolds after more than 20 years. He is the brother of Hae Min Lee, who was strangled and found buried in a Baltimore park in February 1999.
Her ex-boyfriend Adnan Syed, who was 17 when he was charged, was blamed for the killing and was sentenced to life. But after more than two decades behind bars and a hit podcast series - Serial - listened to by millions across the globe later, the 41-year-old was freed on Monday by Circuit Court Judge Melissa Phinn, who ordered his conviction to be vacated.
Judge Phinn ruled that the state violated its legal obligation to share exculpatory evidence with Mr Syed's defence.
She ordered him released from custody and placed on home detention with an electronic tag. She also ordered the state to decide whether to seek a new trial date or dismiss the case within 30 days.
"All right Mr Syed, you're free to join your family," Judge Phinn said as the hearing ended.
Mr Syed turned to his lawyer and whispered: "I can't believe it's real."
Following the hearing, Marilyn Mosby, the state's attorney for Baltimore, said that investigators were waiting for the results of "DNA analysis" before determining whether to seek a new trial date or to finish the case against Mr Syed.
Mr Syed, who was convicted of first-degree murder, robbery, kidnapping and false imprisonment in 2000, has always maintained his innocence.
Prosecutors alleged that he killed Ms Lee after she started seeing someone else in December of 1998.
They secured a conviction with the help of mobile phone records and the evidence of a witness - Jay Wilds, who testified that he helped Mr Syed bury MsLee's body, while mobile phone tower data appeared to prove that the accused had been in the area where the victim was found.
His story received widespread attention in 2014 when the debut season of Serial focused on Ms Lee's killing and raised doubts about some of the evidence prosecutors used, inspiring countless debates about whether Mr Syed was innocent or guilty.
Last week, prosecutors filed a motion saying that a lengthy investigation conducted with the defence had uncovered new evidence that could undermine the 2000 conviction.
"I understand how difficult this is, but we need to make sure we hold the correct person accountable," assistant state's attorney Becky Feldman told the judge as she described details from the case, including flawed mobile phone data, unreliable witness evidence and a potentially biased detective.
The investigation "revealed undisclosed and newly developed information regarding two alternative suspects, as well as unreliable cell phone tower data", state's attorney Marilyn Mosby's office said in a news release last week.
The suspects were known persons at the time of the original investigation but were not properly ruled out or disclosed to the defence, said prosecutors, who declined to release information about the suspects due to the ongoing investigation.
Prosecutors said they were not asserting that Mr Syed is innocent, but they lacked confidence "in the integrity of the conviction" and recommended he be released on his own recognisance or bail.
The state's attorney's office had said if the motion were granted it would effectively put Mr Syed in a new trial status, vacating his convictions, while the case remained active.
Meanwhile, back in 2016, a lower court ordered a retrial for Mr Syed on grounds that his lawyer, Cristina Gutierrez, who died in 2004, did not contact an alibi witness and provided ineffective counsel.
After a series of appeals, Maryland's highest court in 2019 denied a new trial in a 4-3 opinion.
The award-winning true-crime podcast was created by Baltimore Sun reporter Sarah Koenig - who was in court with Syed and released a new episode this week named 'Adnan is out'.
She spent more than a year digging into the murder case with her findings developing hour-long episodes, which hooked obsessed listeners.
Yesterday she told The New York Times, which bought Serial in 2020, that Syed's case proved "how grindingly difficult it is to get the system to take another look at your case once you've been convicted".
She added that "prosecutors and cops don't police themselves and then double down when they're accused of doing something wrong".
Koenig said the two suspects, who she didn't name, were both named by witnesses who called the police and both have criminal convictions.
The caller told cops they heard him saying that he was upset with Lee and would "make her disappear".
While the two names were found in handwritten notes in the original case file by prosecutors, earlier this year.
The original prosecutors did not hand them over to the defence, as they should have been, before Adnan's trial.
In the series' new episode, Keonig describes how Becky Feldman was searching through 17 boxes of case material when she stumbled across the handwritten notes.
Feldman told the court that the information was credible and that the man had the "motive, opportunity and means" to commit the crime.
But if it wasn't for the podcast, the journalistic efforts of Koenig, and the huge interest from the public following all the twists and turns, Syed's case may have been forgotten.
Serial is the most popular podcast of all time and has been downloaded more than 340million times worldwide and is still available today
