True Crime Outcasts, By Sarah Koenig

1450 Words3 Pages

True crime podcasts have evolved into one of the most popular genres of podcasts, ranking second only to comedy podcasts. From fearing crime to unwinding while listening to a podcast about a serial killer, true crime podcasts have ultimately informed, influenced, and entertained the general public. Serial, the podcast by Sarah Koenig that started it all, takes place in 1999, Woodlawn High School, in Baltimore County, Maryland. The case itself is about the death of Hae Min Lee, a high school senior, and the 17-year-old boy, Adnan Syed, who was allegedly responsible for the gruesome crime of strangulation. Hae Min Lee disappeared on January 13th, 1999 and was found dead on February 9th in Leakin Park by Mr. S, whose identity is kept confidential. …show more content…

In the third episode of the podcast Serial, “Leakin Park”, Sarah Koenig utilizes tone, diction, and a red herring to sway the opinions of the listeners into believing the possibility of another individual being responsible for Hae Lee’s murder. Throughout the episode, Sarah Koenig carefully employs diction and conveys a tone of skepticism that in the end, sets the stage for the rest of the season of the podcast. Koenig initially begins the episode by going through the aftermath of Hae Lee’s disappearance and introducing a new suspect into the podcast very early on. But before introducing information about Mr. S, Koenig described the park. She states that it has “a reputation not for the beauty of its woods or its trails or its nature center. What it’s known for, sadly, is its dead bodies” (Koenig). Sarah Koenig’s choice of words is critical for her purpose, to state the commonality of discovering dead bodies in the park. Moreover, she takes this fact a step further to ask Adnan’s friends, law-abiding citizens, about the location of the park, to which they do not realize that it is “About a seven minute

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