The Coldest Case In Laramie - Episode 4
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IT just goes back to to that dynamic of the relationships. Okay, for thank you. Get a later.

Let me know. Get back a beer. Previously, on the .

coldest case in army, I remember .

IT so well. I remember IT like like IT .

was yesterday.

A detective was like, you don't worry about him. He's a police officer. You don't need to worry about him. When they told me that I just came good. I like what they help you talking about.

Well, there are asked because they wouldn't really answer any .

other questions. No, he did IT. I mean, he was previous health.

He knows, he knows what they are going to ask, and he just, he told them what he wanted them to know.

The case file friends lawyer gave me with sprawling almost eight thousand pages of investigative reports, hundreds of photos, more than seventy hours of audio and video interviews, bad zia's is and stapled on attendance and hand written notes. I started at a poorly render drawing of Shelley sweet dreams night shirt for a while. In the earliest pages I could see the police contending with a little.

They had to go on. The fire destroyed a lot of potentially helpful evidence. So did the attempt to contain IT. Shelley's body was burned badly enough that IT couldn't be a helpful source of leads. Although was clear, he was naked.

Police took that and the bloodstains under water bed as science of the attack might have started as a sexual assault in the bedroom. Other evidence was found outside behind the complex. Someone had cut the phone lines to all five apartments in about three hundred and fifty feedback, a distant, slightly longer than a football field.

There was a bloody matchbook with some kind of hander fingerprint visible through the blood. The matchbook was decorated with a train in the word's tink town. On the cover, police found IT near several footprints, entire tracks left in the dirt, and then there was the blood.

There were two large puddles on the sidewalk in front of the apartments. In the middle of one, a broken created blade from mistake knife nearby, bloody pieces of a broken vase, the police figured that Shelly must have tried to escape at some point, making her away from her apartment down the sidewalk. Before her attacker, cotter, he pulled her back toward her apartment, dragged her forty four feet down the sidewalk and stabbed her, leaving the puddles.

The drag Marks went over the top of a bloody boot print. This was a clue too IT suggest the killer had left IT when he was dragging Shelly back to her apartment. The blood trail in the sidewalk appeared to stop entirely, at least ten feet from the door to the apartment number three. Notably, the police did find a little more blood there, separated from the rest of the blood at the crime scene, a few tiny flicks on the door of apartment number three for his friends place where he was staying in the night, police thought him intense our questions about eleven hours after Shelley's murder. The first recorded interview in the case file.

the .

date one of october, october ninety five. Police, that grams are, was present, red lam and a rim. Just find out, what do you know of what occurred out that the mood of the interview .

was chemmy detective rob gram and fred actually knew each other. Gram seemed more interested in thread as a witness than as a suspect.

You start with last night, yet a real last night, very, very through this weekend.

Fred said he spent the evening at the american legion with a few of his buddies, including dave palmer, his national guard friend, who rented apartment number .

three we set around and was breaking. They were breaking beer and pop. And I was rain, mostly cold, and about, eat a clock.

They say, you say, to switch to jack animals of code. And I had five of those. That was about ten point I love in the region that I love.

Well, because I had seen an adverse ment on T. V. That instead of saturday night night, they were having, like, can ship, dave stuck around .

and eventually headed home with a woman. So fred was alone for the night. Either the advertisement was wrong or friendless, understood IT. But when he got to dave's apartment, there was no championship restful. Instead, friends said he watched the second half of mass and headed to bed.

The next thing that .

halen was I.

I walked. And I remember, and this this is awful hazy because .

I I didn't wake .

up quickly, but I distinctly remember somebody pounding or nothing when the and I can't tell you where I was that I can't tell you what was a dave done of the three, or somewhere else I can come. And then I heard a female voice after the .

loud knocking. Fred said he heard what sounded like a woman's not screaming exactly, but loud. At first, he didn't think much of IT. There was always some kind of noise around daves apartment on the weekend, but he figured he should give IT a look.

So I got up and poked his head out everything. And so Steve wasn't there. I went over to his stereo and turned on the alarm club.

I talked about going back to sleep, and I thought that I never half hours sleep when I just get up and when took my morning league and came in and sit down, putting my uniform back on, when I heard a vehicle drive off, the horn start up and somebody screamed, fire, fire, fire. So I ran to the door and opened IT up, and there were three male subjects there, run and up and down the complex screen. Fire, fire.

Do I have a telephone? And I looked out, and I saw the flames coming out. Apartment number one, I didn't know this apartment number one of that time, but I saw our land inside graviton phone and got absolutely the home was just slight the he came on back to store and he said, you never told in anything.

That's why is people out of the apartment? He said, I don't know, I think so. So I told him, him with the bath in the end of the hall to get toys, and what we needed out of the fruit bedroom on the right, which were IT.

And I started towsy apartment as I was going. Towsy apartment, I know this somewhere in the viny of number two. There look like to be a little blood about the, about a unit worth of blood and size. And so I stepped to my right so that .

I wouldn't walk .

over and walk down the grave right in front of the door. The number of one was another puddle of blood, I would say, one to wanted to have units, and some, if not. Why is at that time I noticed that there was drag march from the pool of blood, and then I was a drag mark that didn't go up.

The share is one kind of kid corner and into the door. And at that time I heard the first of time, and so I just walk back to my todays is apart the to make sure that want to learn, and then option every showed up and ask me what I know about. And then I showing showing the blood. One of the thing I did there was, I believe, the a requestion that I, except the power, find the world of those.

While we were gone over that crime season was most dragged. Ks got pretty close to, you know, you want a day's place and .

was a little bit .

of this real tony is flatter like on the door. That's mine as your blood. That's just little 不 吃饭。 And my dog was giving a bunch of crap. It's like reason about the tropics, man, and cut this on his. And I would have been twelve, thirteen in the four when I was still come and I went over.

I usually read down, hit the door and I read the door once was to cut that down scared, because I would like that before I spare on the door, I look like OK. So on the door I can say it's all my blood. There's some of my life.

他们 都 i could even say how many new jobs OK。 What blood type people? What's your blood type? I am sure .

picked that up.

Yeah, I don't want type of life. Test wood soon show .

two types of blood at the crime scene typo, which match Shelly and taibi, which was founded several spots, including a trace amount on the matchbook three hundred and fifty feet from Shelley apartment frenzy interview didn't go on much longer than this. The whole thing lasted about thirty five minutes. He mentioned that he had guard duty the next day and would be heading to ark software training. He begun a couple of weeks, but just before the interview ended, detective gram and thread had a small exchange. Looking at the case file, IT seemed to indicate .

where the investigation was headed, people earning the check.

Fred says, you know, i'm now hearing people talk in the amar. Apparently this chick ran with a pretty heavy crowd.

They weren't .

the salt of .

the earth types.

Well, IT might caught up with her detective .

gram response moment hill is typical red four thirteen thousand .

seven twenty.

Hey, it's john chase and marry. Have a from wire t the product recommendation service from the new york times. Muri IT is gift giving time. What's an easy get for someone like under fifty box in our gifts.

under fifty list? I really love this water color SAT from japan. These beautiful, beautiful colors is something that kids can do, adults can do. I ve.

for all of White cuts, give ideas and recommendations. Head to N Y times dot com slash holiday guide.

After that, first in interview with fred, the learning police department spoke with the people in Shelley's life, family, friends, former roommate s coworkers, x boyfriends. And in these interviews, they started focusing on certain aspects of shell's life and what sometimes felt like a pretty ham handed way.

This was Shelly promiscuous. Do you like sex? I guess we're looking for a motive that the worst thing yeah question what a reputation was just around the next .

what kind of person you think I was?

Priority relationship.

This is something I and .

these conversations and in tips that came, the police collected many facts about Shelly. There are a lot of rumors are mixed in there too, that Shelley was part of a drug deal gone wrong, that a satanic cold could be involved, that he was at a party that night, he was killed where someone had threatened a killer. I followed the pinball of their inquiry, spoke to as many of their targets as I could.

Yeah, I know he was parked a girl. I know that about that, but he seemed to concentrate on the black athletes. Was SHE friends with all them.

Detectives initially seem to focus on shell's relationships at the university of biomes. They'd heard, for example, that he was friendly with members of the football team. One name in particular kept coming up.

Allen police couldn't find out on the sunday Shelley was killed. So that day all officers in the learning area were told to be on the look out for him and his vehicle for security reasons. This was passed from officer to officer, not over the radio, but by word of mouth.

They eventually found him. Three days after Shelley's murder, police brought him in for questioning. At the time, Allen was a star wide receiver for the university of booming cabo ys. He told police that he and Shelly met at a baseball game in one thousand nine hundred eighty one.

How much did you actually date to in one thousand and eighty one was a relationship that kind of grew as long verdict knew each other, or always? Just, do you have an occasional type thing?

IT was more than occasion. Are playing definitely an occasion.

How about during the one nine hundred eighty two school year, do you still continue be in friends?

Yeah, we were. We were friends. That's about IT.

What happened when you came back school and you think particlar did you ever late ninety two later?

Yeah, no. We I think. We need to ify they get on saying .

page .

about the word day。

Yeah, I can understand that you may. I figured you, I consider data just going on having a good time with be going.

No, we never.

What you, what do you design as a day?

I guess, I guess, well, a day you go and out and I don't think we ever went out on a on a set date. You know, I picked up at seven and will do this and do this and do that. IT wasn't like that. IT was more there's more of a spontaneous thing with I either just like color and say you want to come over, you want to get together or or be like i'd see you somewhere .

and then we like IT together. So yeah, I have no calls with that. I think around the same and really know what is you know next.

Now you do can you give me a list in your mind of other acquaints that you might you don't be friends with? Yeah, I realize that you can of republic, yg. Lady said. But you could probably help me if you can compile a list to who is queen with.

well.

I I really don't. I mean, only people I knew that SHE hung around was a role made Michelle and my, she's boyfriend. And I guess maybe some people as he worked with, I could say now if we talked about IT, all I think he had told me was a year, you know, he would stay after working, have a couple of teams at the .

bar how bad at the black athletes .

sell as far as no one knowing you're .

going out with you.

I don't know any that went out, went out with all I know seem i'm pretty sure there's a couple of .

guys and nowhere what.

Was some of interests. What do you guys like to do when you're together?

We told one thing we have did together was to have sex. I was about, I mean, that was, that was when we were together. I mean, I was about the extended thing that was. Only like the just a casual by side.

one of the things anticipate getting into. Of course, it's interesting in this, in the regards that we don't know what a Molly was killing, that you mention these sex, I was gonna get into that, but you feeling comfortable talking about that subject. I think you'd been in a Better position.

And any of the family would. What's wherever? Because you into private life? right? SHE only quick. So that .

came to sex.

How about any homosexual tendencies? I'm not saying that there are any. I'm just i'm just asking, in regards to sexual habits as well, unit have any knowledge of for having any homosexual tendencies? I have no idea.

I have seriously doubt, but I don't .

know for sure OK. Well, i'm not making those allegations look get coming. What kind of reputation you have you look at, you look at a rather attractive White grow and it's kind of accurate and not trying to be registered in.

But I was realized I want of things look at is it's unusual for i'm not saying it's unusual. I think it's it's a ratio thing, but know when you have a White fairly attract student data or know just a quint with black, some people seem to frown on and and seems stickin their mind for some reason. Did you ever even difficulties with the parents relationship with the police? Took fingerprints .

and blood from Allen come to pubic hair too. From the beginning, when the police approached him at his apartment, Allen said that he had nabby. He had spent the nightingale with another woman that eventually checked out.

Alan griff in lives in washington state. Now he is a basketball coach in a high school teacher. I tracked him down because I wanted to know his reaction to being a suspect. Back in thousand .

nine hundred eighty five, I had absolutely nothing to hide. IT wasn't like I was concerned, is just like I I would have had back in much higher regard for long enforcement than I do now. And I would have definitely, back then, I just did whatever they ask me to do.

I learned that Allen didn't really know much about the investigation, definitely didn't know that he was a suspect. Considering how large Allan loomed in the early parts of the case file, he was surprising to me how much of a mystery Shelley was to him.

I just remember how I mean, he was. He was like, it's the best way to described her. He was, I mean, is he was called hang out with this low key didn't talk a whole lot, but he had he had just SHE was he was a pretty Young lady.

And when SHE smiled and he was real, IT was just awesome, an awesome and awesome smile. And but he didn't, you know, like that he didn't talk much. Wasn't, I mean, he could be in a room and nobody even notice, right? Mean, he wasn't like, wasn't SHE would he would intentionally?

I think, as I got to know, as he would intentionally probably want to just fade into the background, right, not being noticed. But but he was, he was friendly, genuine. Yeah, he's cool.

In the police interviews.

Shelley's family and friends talked about how much he liked Allen. They seem to think he had been a serious relationship, or at least that chelly wanted IT to be one one x boyfriend mentioned that chelly ad quote quite a newspaper collection of his outstanding fees .

and what not that .

Allen was in the dark about all that too.

I I mean is it's surprising. I want. IT just was this is gonna sound really weird but I was IT wasn't IT was just safe friends with benefits. How would it's kind of surprising that that he had more feelings than that than than what i'm aware of talking to .

Allen IT felt like .

he was looking back at this period of his life through the eyes of an adult, maybe for the first time that he was considering how Young they both were, how immature I was back then, that he was realizing how much growing up he got to do the chelly.

didn't you know?

Sad part about .

IT is a social of .

mind in self center.

The only thing I was really thinking about that, I mean, I had, we had, he was game day, so bought a friend's car to go to the funeral and I was just thinking about IT just got IT, you know, hope this doesn't last more. Said in the back, or there was five member correctly, was pretty crowded in a little church. I D like A A frame.

I didn't. I didn't realize how how our dad must have been feeling, how our brothers are feeling. I didn't really like, didn't really like, no, I wouldn't be.

I didn't think like that then because I was thinking about not being late for the game because I knew how much coal as if I was late. He wouldn't wouldn't place or thinking more like that. kind. Disappointed that that's what I was thinking, but that's just the truth. And that's about all .

that I remember .

who is just like only thinking about me.

When fred's defence attorney handed me the case file, he had mentioned that the police response to share his murder was sexist and racist. I heard that the interviews and I saw in the path the detectives went down in their investigation. They didn't stop without engraved in someone they knew Shelly had a relationship with.

Instead, they went after a lot of the black players on the university of warming football team. So, so explain me, did you know Shelly at all? Had you ever even .

met her or so? But I I .

didn't .

know from the kind thing .

eric porter was also on. The team played both ways, line backer in running back, some safety thrown in there. Two, he came to yummy from Sandy ago and remembers the culture shock of arriving the fights with a largely White, restful team.

The bar. He remembers locals banning the football team from eric, says he held out on giving his blood fingerprints to the police for a while. He still remembers how they sprung into action shortly after .

shell is murder right after said he was a current scene you saw, have to let me police of the doors they had put wall programmed in their hand looking for guys and you'll be walking the class they come with me they were just missing of ever we were, you know, never hanging out where everyday would leave your cord just snatching you a little IT felt like sit out the variations and forties, when they just round, the black people hang you. Guess what you felt like .

so what do you do? What do you remember about being called in and about like them actually get getting you into the police station?

When I finally came back while, and is that meet to IT the cocker's attitude and .

they were finally .

got me to do IT IT was like, only got isn't IT. That was your .

attitude.

That was your attitude. And I hated that I had to submit to a peace. This is, we leave .

me alone in my mom.

every city. Hey, they're not gonna stop internet. And so just give, just give them something here and then maybe then in, they need to deal my mom, and i'm like, mom, if they don't stop, I need you to give me a turn and my saves to work for the phone company. He promised that they didn't stop.

SHE would hire her.

This is to give .

me emotional irani.

During the first week of the investigation, the university of vamping football team there, he didn't go much of anywhere, but is clear from the case file that the police were simultaneously pursuing another lead.

What kind of party would we have in there? We are this dancing around, if that I do believe that what they were playing quarters when I first got there arter.

No, do you get accord and one and table trying to make IT in the glass? The party with all this dancing and quartern was happening at a ramshackle house about three blocks from Shelley's apartment on the night he was killed. The crowd of about fifteen was mostly current former lerma high and junior high students.

Shelly wasn't there. SHE was at home drinking tea with a friend, but the party seemed to pick the cups interest. Police hardly knew some of the party goers, Young, his panic men who went lots of runners with the cops already, some of the usual suspects in town.

Both the party in chelates apartment were on the west side of leery, which was less a census designated place than IT was literally the wrong side of the tracks. The railroad divided IT from the army proper. The west side had a few fancy homes before.

The most part that was poor. It's where you'd find auto repair ards tire shops in mobile homes. A lot of the hasani population of learn you live there too, including one attended of the party found new bouterse favourite alternate suspect, Larry montez. Evan told me Larry had stolen a car during the party, and then he got missing for a few hours, right? The window of time when Shelly was killed.

Sign that right there. You are represented corea and we already discuss effect that we are not interested .

in .

to you as you should .

have be able. Okay, we're concerned about this is from the site.

Fn had told me that Larry had gone to rock river because of some girly at a crush on that wasn't quite right. I was actually visiting his x girlfriend, summer Stevenson, who lived just outside of learning about a half hour away from rock river. He was right about where is alabi though, and how bizarre I was. Larry said that after he stole the car, he grabbed a hot dog in a slur py from a convenient store. From there, he drove a summer's house where he slipped into her room and found her asleep.

But this, said .

the .

swatches. Okay, then I start back about four, four, three, two, eight.

By the time they brought him in, the police had heard a bunch of suspicious things about Larry from that night that he had cut on his face. His glasses were missing, but he was wearing a different coat that he'd warned at the party that he was acting .

strange was important. I want to think .

about .

for your .

answer when you went .

back to the house the point.

But what time was that had had been? But fine by fifteen. Okay, took me. Wow, yes, alright.

you know um you know that was killed.

Not really.

I have you ever been over to that part there?

I know. No where .

is so I was if, but I would have check fingerprint. I should .

find your fingerprint and then ask, yeah, okay, did you hear .

anyone say that you did? IT?

no. Did you know .

people have been saying that did. Is there any reason why people .

would think .

that you do? IT? Yeah.

because out record.

you have a record. yeah. Any other .

reason on my candidate?

You tell me why i'm talking to you, your police, also one of my talking.

learn on this all you, because he was around .

the city crime. He is missing for two to three, four hours. We don't know where is that, which is about the time to go. That killed when I was talking all these people .

here in the .

last few days and concerned that you've learned stuff .

like you've been getting .

in other people's didn't know about donate fried that because good being pretty open here.

I mean.

the people that have talked with him identified you as being a personal. There's no doubt in mind that they know what was they even talk to confront to you about. I'm just trying to tell you like IT is at all and and I know that you and your friends on the other side of very tight, you a very select group of people, you don't think so well, then us White folks think that you are okay. okay. Well, we just think that you know you just your own little group when you get the cowboys are that the mexicans or whatever as the metal has whatever they call that for me, all the groups that we get but all that your pressure is there um as a Better effect on kids. You get kids of drinking, doing drugs, have a sex with girls, stuff like that when they're really, really Young and all source of problem rating in home, steal, shit, the child lift and all that that because this honos de that took place got a lot of people with community scared, a lot of people who didn't even know this scale, a lot of people living, a lot of people who live, marry, or saying, yeah, I know, I came to library because anyone would have over dinner with this happens already. They're here because I figured this is a nice client town and I I think got something .

and be in a here was killing Better people.

stand with them and doing all this for a shit. So it's just it's no fun for me or anybody else. I get off the surplus. We need to get the Better step down.

Police looked at Larry months for a few more days. They confirmed that Larry been in a fight a week before possibly explaining his bruises. I talked to summer Stevenson, his ex, who asked whether SHE new.

Lary said simply, unfortunately, sumer didn't really remember Larry stopping by to watch or sleep, but Larry d. Engaged in such stark before, and summer sister did find a big gulp cup on the dresser with ice still inside. The police seemed to rule area out after giving him a polygraph.

He was one of four men who took a light detector test in the first month of the investigation, police said. Layers results couldn't be scored as conclusively truthful, but quote, there is no strong indication that would tend to show deception given the fact that polygraphs generally aren't a loud as evidence in court. I didn't make much of those results.

Other results seem work their cut to me. It's not just that this investigation seemed to coral the relatively few people of color in town into its dragnet is that IT seemed to linger there, growing and deeper than even the most charitable reading of the evidence called for. I did a tally of the thirty nine men who initially gave fingerprints or blood samples.

Twenty five of them were black or is spanning more than half in a town where nine, nine out of ten people were White. Contrary to the description of Shelley's family and friends and even detective Robert Terry, the police did give fred a second look. Ten days after the murder, someone from the state lab told police the read story of how was blood got on the door of apartment number three that he knocked on the door a few days before the murder and broke up in a didn't match the spatter pattern.

Detectives called fred barky, and after he got back from a trip to arkansas w but without much urgency, they took a blood sample in fingerprints, but never looked in his actual home for evidence. IT took them almost two months till inside apartment number three, where he was stained the night of Shelley's murder. Fred did degree to take a polygraph, showing that the police seemed to be treating him as a suspect, but that was pretty much .

the end of IT.

And what I can only interpret as a sign of how little they regarded him seriously. The results from that polygraph never even made IT into the case file with their initial leads fizzling. The police started going abroad over the next year and a half.

They surveyed all the barber and beauty shops in town, checking if anyone had come in with burns or since ed hair. They followed up on tips from the crime stopper s phone line and pursued leads. Police interview a guy who talked to Shelly once in a robots class.

Another man who Shelly additive in high school who had started a few fires look, two hours away. They called him the man who had come on to their radar because of a recent arrest for practicing as a ninja in public. They looked for men with nicknames the spoke described as a shady guy with a pale completion in Sandy hair who haunted the library and the guardian, a regular customer, Chelsea restaurant, who supposedly looked out for her. All that effort didn't produce anything resembling a bona fide lead. Police were more less spinning in circles until almost two years after the murder, when they finally got a break, a call from a detective in flagstaff, aizen a, who related a message someone had confessed to killing Shelly wiley.