told vs. said

I told a lie and I said a lie are synonymous and both are said.

Told is a little bit more specific than said.

Said merely means that the words came out of your mouth....whereas told implies that you not only said them, but that you were speaking them to another person. It often means that you were informing them of some information which you did not think they previously knew.

A lie is a fiction, a sort of story, and "stories" are "told".

Isn't it so that you use "tell/told" in conjunction with a pronoun and "say/said" is never followed by a pronoun (me, us, him, her, them).

John told her that he was tired but
John said he was tired

Yeah, say/said doesn't take an indirect object, it's sort of general speech. I would never say that I "said a lie" - I guess the idea is that it isn't really a "lie" unless you're purposefully deceiving someone, and in order to decieve something, you have to "tell" them, not just "say" in their vicinity. You might say that you "said something that wasn't true" or "said an untruth" or something like that, but it's not a "lie" unless it's directed and malicious.