Sarah Koenig

Once the DNA results came back in mid-August, with nothing really conclusive or useful, they took stock of everything they'd learned.

The result was a disturbing bouquet of problems, whose cumulative effect gave the state, quote, overwhelming cause for concern.

Under the circumstances, they couldn't justify holding a nun in prison anymore.

So Becky Feldman wrote a motion to the court, a motion to vacate.

The motion to vacate does not tell us a new story of the crime.

It doesn't lay out an alternate theory of who killed Hayman Lee.

Instead, the motion lays out how the system malfunctioned back then and how little we know now.

The headline of the state's motion is that they've developed more evidence about two people who might have been involved in the crime, but whom they say weren't properly ruled out as suspects.

They don't name these people.

They just call them the suspect or the suspects because they say the investigation is ongoing.

They might have been involved together or separately.

They don't know.

But both were known to detectives at the time.

The first thing and worst thing they list about these possible suspects, those handwritten notes Becky Feldman found in the state's trial boxes.

They appear to be written by a prosecutor memorializing two different phone calls from different people who called the state's attorney's office to give information about the same person.

The notes aren't dated, but as best as Becky can tell, the calls came in several months apart and before Adnan was tried.

The gist of the information from both calls is that a guy the state had more or less overlooked had a motive to kill Heyman Lee, that this person was heard saying that he was upset with her and that he would, quote, make her disappear.

He would kill her, unquote.

In court yesterday, Becky said the state had looked into this individual and found the information in those handwritten notes to be credible, that the suspect had the, quote, motive, opportunity, and means to commit the crime.

Whether he did or he didn't, though, legally speaking, this would be a major breach.