The Coldest Case In Laramie - Episode 8
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F I C pro. Thank you people back on the shelf. Previously .

coldest case in army well.

I am no, I not lost work for that because if I, under the circumstances, it's quite a compliment .

and beautiful.

He can even father him doing anything like that, except if he he was in his 天猫， all that kind of should fail in his arms like he did, like he does. How good?

For the past thirty seven years, IT was afraid of this card. There was something britain inside. IT wasn't merry Christmas.

IT wasn't that this is not very difficult. It's not complicated.

Meet after more than a year of me asking and more than a year of him saying no, fred lam finally agreed to talk my producer elephant at me by the time we arrived at his lawyers office for the interview. Fred was already there, along with his wife, Linda. I recognized fred from the video of his interrogation with Robert Terry, but that was six years ago.

The man in the room with me now seemed significantly older than to seventy three years. Hearing aides, a cae. His limp was more pronounced than IT was in the video. Linda, who has seventy, look different as well, but he seemed Younger than SHE didn't her interview with Terry more is obviously so how do we do that good for.

You here on this site, I didn't really have questions .

for read about this version of what happened back in one thousand nine hundred eighty five. I'd read the case file and listen to his police. And I use a number of times the idea that fred would choose this tuesday afternoon in his lawyer's office to make some a startling admission that would up.

And everything IT seemed kind of unlikely. Fd story had remained fairly consistent over the years. Some of the details had changed, but the thrust of IT hasn't.

Did you kill Shelly wiley? No, no way, no shape, no form.

But to mayor, at least back in twenty sixteen, in their interviews with Robert Terry, both fred analysts seemed not so sure. Back then, they seem to be saying that fred could have done something that he was capable of IT, that maybe he did do IT, and then forgot about IT. That's what I really wanted to know from fred.

What was IT like to have your own reality, your own story, rearranged over the course of a seven hour interrogation. I have read what happened in that interview with Terry. How does that all go down?

I was working as the maintenance person for the correction center over the urban econic shares department, who was just before lunch. I came out the detective that was doing the interview, uh, another death litter was there. He came up and said, uh, which mind coming, talking to us again about you interview, ask you questions because you are only link in this whole thing.

I just true, not a problem. So I drove my truck out to the police department in south army and was met there, taking any room, my right to read to me, I waive my right, because had nothing to hide, and personal opinion only, but expressed from their and down, really bad. And so that's when we started the whole, the whole a all of an interrogation for life of a Better term. Everything I said time .

of he lied to me .

to the whole thing to get the answers that he required.

One question I think, I mean, I had in watching this interview is why didn't you get a lawyer?

Never been asking myself that same question because I didn't think they were out. To have me, I said, I honestly thought that I was going to help them and they got me just before lunch and i'm diabetic. And to be honest with you, I can answer that question.

I guess maybe because I was dumb founded, by the way, was going. And that's why at the end of the end of view, after I was seven in a half hours, I finally said, I can see, this is not gonna go anywhere. congratulations. You just, have you just solve the crime of the frequent century? Then I was cut and escorted to gian and eight peano butter's englishes.

I mean, what are you coming away from that interview thinking that the police have on you?

nothing. Despite, like.

because IT seems like the only .

way I was going to get out of that interview, and in the whole thing was, like I said, this is going nowhere. There was no way, no out for me. And I, honey, should have thought, with my experience in law enforcement saying I want an attorney, I won a quit talking. But by that time I would get out of bit because .

the congratulations to him feels really weird. Like, you know, i've watched the way.

if you listen to the tape of not a little cynical m in my voice, when I tell him that i'm being very sarcastic, you know what? congratulations. You solve the crime of the century. And I was the way I figured I was gonna get out of IT and IT worked unfortunate shift to shine in instead of home.

Earlier friday, chen Y. A. Booky brought with him, called how the police generate false confessions.

I figured that's what we were gonna talk about false confessions. But now I seem like that was saying. Actually, i'm not sure what fred was saying. Alvin jumpin trying to clarify.

can I bring you back? Just, I know how you feel. I know how you feel now about what terrier was telling you, but there seems to be in a moment where you go from. I didn't do IT too. I didn't do IT, but if I did, I don't remember IT and there is a little bit of a gap there and that eventually turns into you congratulated him and you so and I was.

you know, black, black out. If you go back to that time, you say, well, you know you had black out when you drink too much well, know that point I I had given up there. I knew that he was not gonna me get out of there without me telling him that I did IT.

There's no part of you in that moment that wonders well, maybe I did this and .

I memory hold IT. No.

absolutely not. In that moment.

anytime at that moment, never.

I think it's important to say that having listen to this table a lot that when you congratulate rotary IT doesn't sounds sarcastic and you also say something along the lines of a lot of other people would put this back my shelf. And it's really hard to do these kinds of investigations because all of these people around you, would you do the right thing by being unbiased. You don't remember saying that that way.

You remember saying it's sarcastically was I know that was the only way I was going to walk out of that room was to telling basically what he wanted to hear. And what are you wanted to hear was I had done IT. And and I was just, I was tired. I was, do you know .

any of this london, the time do you know that he is going to talk or anything like .

no was after they arrested him, he calton said, I just got arrested for Shelly values murder. You know what we just say? Are you kidding me?

And what do you remember thinking when you get that call from fried? And then what are you thinking when you sit down with robitaille?

Do edit this language out. You gotto be fucking kidding me.

This is what you remember saying to him. Remember saying.

I said that time because he came to my house and he says, what we, you can come down and get friends truck in. We want to interview you after all, you've been living with a murdered for thirty years and I just lost i'd had a running with this particular officer who thought he was Better than that. And I said, you you obviously haven't looked at the case, read the case or something to that effect.

And he kept changing my words like he did for fred blackout. He didn't have blackouts, had flashbacks. They're different. And he only wanted to get what he wanted out of you. And I just was kind of like, you know, I was really.

this is an interview that happen at the house or at .

the station at the station.

but he came to the house to get me. So as we're walking out the door, he's telling me that they want to interview me because after all, i've lived with a murder for thirty years.

And so there's no again, same question as I asked for refered there's no power beauty that thinks that this is remotely possible even in two and sixty.

No, no, no. You you gotten know the man, you know.

Throughout this interview, friend Linda were disaggregation adamantly with my premise that robbert Terry had LED red down a path for seven hours that ended in a manufactured half admission of guilt that Linda didn't take too much convincing to imagine that her husband was a killer. Instead, they told me what they thought was really going on, which is that Robert Terry was out to get fred, to burn sh his own credentials, get a promotion.

They were bitter about IT, bitter at Terry, another police bitter at the local media outlets that ran headlines about frens arrest, bitter at the people in army who still believe I did IT one thing they weren't bitter about. And this surprise me, someone they weren't bitter about chelsey family and their belief that try as a killer. When fred talked about Shelley family, he visibly soften.

He said he understood why they believed he was the murder. Even if he wasn't gonna be prosecuted. Her family needed to believe the mystery was over, that the case was solved. Friends thought they needed that story.

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We've been talking for more than two hours in the law office, going in circles a little bit. When I brought up one last question I needed to run by friend Linda. One thing that I have to asked, it's gonna uncomfortable. It's not about Shelley wiley.

but is IT uncomfortable for you to ask.

for me to ask for you to answer? Yeah, no, i'm OK asking this because it's it's one of the reasons Robert tary was looking at you and IT is because he he believes you have said you were an nav seal and that you were not an evc. O.

my record reflect that I was a little talk. Her, I was associated with that because I was with commander nail forces, vietnam. But I really don't think I want to to steal well or no.

Thank you. So he never told anybody you were a sale.

People ask me, I do. I knew sales as well. Yeah, I so he hated with, but i'd never went through the complete train, never killed .

anybody.

I am not remember.

But you thought you thought he was a sale.

but that no, having never said that, I don't know. Did you did you ever talk .

to him about what happened in the like piano?

If he brought IT up, he would say that he wanted to. I never IT was not a good time for him, so I never feel wanted to talk about IT. He would .

do I need to hit any other big picture things? Okay, just a couple. I could have pushed more with the about how this story they were telling me didn't match what i'd heard and seen in red. I could have push them both more on the navy seal stuff.

I could have played them back to twenty sixteen tape that sounded so different to elephant and me, but I also knew there are plenty of reasons why they arranged themselves into a defensive crouch sitting down for an interview with me. He wasn't without risk. The case is still open.

When prosecutors dropped the charges against fred. They did so, quote, without prejudice they could, in theory, bring back the charges any time. This is an entirely over for red Linda. So one thousand percent, you think fred lamped at this?

absolutely. It's been more .

than a year since I first SAT in Robert terror's office asking about Shelly wiley. In all that time, he hasn't budged. I mean, do you worry IT all that you had tunnel vision on?

Fred thought about that for ten years. And I think being conscious of that and being that a possibility, I I don't think so. And i've also shown this case to mult the long enforcement entities to ensure that i'm not doing that.

Um I took the simple approach of, you know, what's the simplest answer, what makes sense you have to let the evidence guide you to what's going on. And the evidence shows fred was there. Thread was bleeding there. That's who I looked at.

Do you think they actually will try fred lam? 哪 有 呢？

I'm not convinced. I mean, I I press IT and I push IT and I ask them, but I ve just give me a time and I tell me when when we're going to do IT or no like tell me no because I had I don't do well without if you're going to give me hope, I want to keep present if you tell me know that I don't know what to do except her way for a new prosecutor if that's the case because the new prosecutor could come in at any time on an election and decided this case is worthy, you know, and sometimes that's the best thing, but it's not going to get any Better. The case is not going to get Better with time, you know, just this is not case .

is what IT is right now is .

as good as it's onna get .

so what's the other stuff that points to fred? We know there is the DNA but he does admit in eighty five he's like, oh yeah if you find something on that door .

it's me you know yeah yeah um. There's there's a lot of things I can tally go into a two and depth right now just because of where we're at and trying to keep what we have. No secrets, not the best way. But the kind of is I mean, things that can get out because there's going to be things that only the person there knows about that we're we're going to bring for.

I'm still just seen the blood on the door.

right? No, but I can't I can't divulge now I can't tell you.

Like so don't you kind of want to because you know they're not at a Price.

they're not get a prosecute and I can at though and IT would be very detrimental .

to the case that you admit .

is not gonna. En, no, i'm just at the point now maybe accepting IT is that, but I told you I still have hope not. I want to jeopardize that by divulging details that you I can't divulge.

I have learned a few things about what Terry is been up to. For one, I know he worked with experts to reconstruct the fire that burned in chelates apartment. IT doesn't seem like there's any new definitive evidence, though at least no more D, N.

A. As far as I know, six years after arresting fred liam, the most damming evidence tory has is still the match of fred's DNA on the door of apartment number three. It's remarkable really, for a thirty seven year old case, but Chelsea is still everywhere in Robert terrorism office.

Her case files in the two plastic bins techniques to the wall. Her photo is on the yellow ribon hanging behind his desk. Terris devotion in this case means everything to share his family as far as they are concerned. He's the only police officer is actually tried to solve IT, who returns their phone calls, who is committed to seeing justice done, even the police officer, twenty years now, almost. I mean, how does this case rank in like your career, like you have this thing that you obviously worked so hard, hard and .

and yeah, that's IT is hard because I want to retire someday. No, I don't want to leave this case. I mean, at some point I got to move on.

I have to personally, I can't, I can't sit with boxes of files in my office. I can't taken with me when I retire. It's hard because I know, I know what happened.

I know who did IT. I know who's responsible. I can do anything about IT.

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So that IT that's where this case stands right now in a holding pattern. Robert Terry has talked about retiring. He's got his twenty years in.

And when he does retire, here's what will probably happen. The plastic bins will be handed on again to whoever is annoyed. Leary's new is detective. That person will read through all of the evidence and come to his or her own conclusions about who did IT create yet another story out of all the interviews and lab tests. I know this because i've done IT.

And here's what I got from reading through all the evidence in the case, more accurately, what I got after I stabbed, focusing so much unfed. There is another suspect that popped out at me. And I know now i'm doing the same thing that every detective in this casted picking out a name from almost eight thousand pages of documents from hundreds of potentials, insinuating that yet someone else murdered chelly in a case where others have been falsely and publicly accused.

But I wanna take a moment to tell you what I found, because IT shows just hamet. You can take all of the same information and construct an entirely different story. Larry montez, the car stealing party goer who's alive for the murder, was that he was stocking in next girlfriend, one of the town's usual suspects, who died in prison in two and ninety.

When friends defense a turney von first mention Larry montez, I didn't give IT much thought, but as I reached out to more people, I kept hearing about Larry, like when I was talking to Angel o. Garcia, the guy who was falsely accused by jaye White men, Angela knows the pain in destruction of wild accusations. He didn't know much about what the police had on fred lam, why they thought fred was the killer, but he told me he knew Larry montez.

He saw Larry the night Shelley was killed. And the next morning he'd always thought that IT was possible, that Larry had something to do with that. He was just like that with Larry. I'd be interviewing someone about something else, and there is me would just come up.

I always, I was thought I was lymon tus because .

he was just penny. Monson grew up Kitty corner from the man teza shoes at the same party as Larry than I. Shelley was killed. Penny was interviewed by the police back in one thousand and eighty five, and even then he told police that he thought I was possible Larry could have murdered chelly.

This is really creepy guy. Just not right. We always got that early buy from him.

pennies. Friend gallery, who is also at the party, told the cop sh'd remembred seeing learn in the early morning hours right after the fire was set. SHE described him as being out of a dirty and rummell specifically, he noticed to grame his hands were he was missing his glasses, head scratch Marks on his face.

He had noticed hours earlier. And the thing is, you could make Larry fit the evidence. Even if Larry had gone to stock his x girlfriend that night, he still had time to kill Shelly inside her apartment on fire at one gas station worker, said a quote, scraggy looking man who is possibly mexican had thought two dollars in gas.

In the middle of the night, people, even Larry friends, called police repeatedly, saying that they had heard Larry done IT and that Larry was acting strange. Before Shelley was killed, Lorry had been known to breaking into different women's homes and after he was convicted for assaulting women, both physically and sexually, in one nine hundred and ninety seven, Larry ended up pleading guilty to a felony of second degree sexual assault of a nineteen year old woman. He spent more than six years in prison, and then in two thousand and seven, Larry was caught in bed naked from the waste down next to his friends kids. The kid's mother at a steady boyfriend at the time named erp sona, who remembers walking in on the scene.

I I don't think twice I grab them just now that that be the, and he, I pressed charges on me for for a soul and all the service stuff in the D. H. Is lap at.

Before this incident, eric said he and Larry were acquaintance, not especially close ones. Larry was tighter with a kid's mom, but theyd have beers together, sometimes smoke weed occasionally air remembers that these hanging outs would often consist of Larry getting pretty drunk, and at some point the night sort of crying and mumblings to himself. Air cott asked him, what was wrong? bill? Aria always waived IT away. It's nothing, man. Eric usually didn't push too hard on IT.

but I know there's that I really just issue and he did kind of he kind of indicated that he was a suspect in a murder rate. And I think that in five and I looked well, we have an import of will give you about you, but you're always kind of I think about db to without what you remember.

Is that something that that this your heart that's killing me, that means let off your chest, but you got to talk somebody about what's and he just look at me like you just tell me, stand my eyes. I didn't speak for at least the minute, minute, half straight, just straights and dead, called my eyes like a dear and head license right now and up a long years. I like, like now, whatever.

Larry became the initial suspect in the week after Shelleys murder. He would have been twenty at the time. It's not clear why he was rolled out, possibly because he passed a polygraph h test, which again are unreliable, or possibly because he had a pretty big deal in the army defense attorney.

In any case, IT seems like the police have barely looked at Larry in the past two decades. After going to the case file and seeing how detectives tried to connect the dots, I recognize that what this case has an abundance is sherie confidence. What IT lacks is a measure of humility.

Because, truthfully, I could also make Larry montez unfit the crime. He was extremely drunk that night. Hard to imagine him having the wear, what's all to cut the phone lines in the back of the apartment building.

The memories that people have of Larry that point towards guilt. They're hard to disentangle from the fact that he was, by many accounts, creep y and violent handy's dead. It's convenient to point the finger at a dead guy.

The bottom line is this, I know of nothing that dies Larry mont s to the crime scene. Over the last two years, I have poured over the thousands of pages of police and labor reports, repeatedly watched and listen to a dozens of police interviews, and talk to more than seventy five people. I've made six trips to lear me. In that time, i've learned two main things.

The first thing I realized is that despite having more than thirty years worth of evidence, despite interviewing all these people, despite knowing that there is an answer to the question of who killed Shelly wiley, I can't figure IT out the mess that was made of the case is too built in, too foundational, to undue the failure of the police to collect crucial evidence and to pursue obvious leads, the years they spent on wild goose chases or letting the case go dormant altogether. Now the case is just missing too many pieces. I could talk to every trucker who had a out through interstate eighty and former classmates and the entire town of larrey homing, and i'm not sure that would make much of a difference.

The truth is, far as I can see, IT, is that unless someone confesses, unless someone comes forward, whoever killed chill while they got away with IT. The second thing i've realized is that we're all unreliable naratu, especially of our own stories. Time twist memories as this new information causing us to fill in blanks and create stories to fit new facts.

But I was certain that someone had sent a menacing card telling you to go home. That was certain he had told police about fred's suspicious behavior. Former police tip me off to evidence that i'm pretty sure doesn't exist. I talked to witnesses who remember red whole exchanges, complete with dialogue and colorful details that never happened. I think we create these stories to make sense of things that fundamental don't.

I had even been telling myself my own story about, learn about its mean this i'd never really looked hard at my time there, just kept my memory is rapped up in a vae cruel bow anecdotes I would tell about bullies and murder and no wonder Matthew shepherd was killed there. By going back, I ve been spoiled my own experience into a more complicated one. Most high schools back then were probably their own little cultural of mean.

The girls at my school were actually pretty nice. My junior year wasn't that bad. I advance journalism that year, stopped wearing till older and traded my biolab l for a short boyers cut with no repercussions.

Looking back, I remember that I had actually wanted to stay my senior year. And if there is one constant i've had in reporting the story is that almost everyone i've talked to and learn me has been extremely open and kind. Once saturday evening, I got on zoom with Lorry and bRandy, Shelley, sister and knees for nearly two hours.

I told them about all the evidence had seen in the case. I told them how many ways to learn police massed ed up, how they dismiss Shelly is a woman who ran with the wrong crowd, how they smarter. I answered all the questions I could.

I laid out my doubts about fred's guilt and why I had them. And I explained that despite Robert Terry certainty, I didn't think new charges would ever be filed against fed, let alone anyone else. I think Terry really did want to solve this and really does want to solve this and really does believe it's fred and really does want to hold him accountable. And I think he does want to give you answers.

I do too.

It's just a very it's a very hard thing to get answers out of at this point and where .

they close the case.

I don't know. I, I, I, I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. They will, right?

Feels like I feel like it's a really weird position to be in, you know to have like looked at all the stuff that i've looked at and you don't have that same opportunity, which you would have. You would have that and more. You would know everything that been done on this since two thousand and sixteen, right? If you are to get the case closed and just get the information, you know yourselves.

I don't know that my grammar and my mom wanted close. I wanted IT close. So I can have other people look into IT because nobody else look into IT because they keep IT as an open case.

I don't know how my grammar my mom feels about that. I don't care either way. Yes, it's closed. I guess they can look into that.

Be nice to expose the army police department for everything they did that they screwed up and lied about. And yeah, and I think that's why they don't want close the case. They don't want everybody to see.

How about they look at up because they are definitely blame them too. They had a big part in not doing things correctly. And so IT does pissed me off because my grand party passed away.

He'll never see justice. My grandma is not getting any Younger. And SHE deserves something at least to know she's not gonna. You did IT and sit in core and get to look the person in the eyes. You deserves to know everything that happened and what they did or what they didn't do and what they should have done. And I think SHE deserves .

that at least.

After I talked to Lorry in bryony, I looked into why they haven't just closed this case, and I found out something weird. The new county prosecutor, krita, is told me he's not even really in charge of the case anymore. He said a special prosecutor had been appointed in assistant U.

S. Attorney while owing, according to british SHE, had the ultimate say so on the future of the case against fred. I followed up with that special prosecutor.

Her office said, nobody there are knew a thing about the appointment. So I went back to the years several times. He never responded. At this point, it's not clear to me who would close shell's case.

It's not even clear who's responsible for IT that feels like an awful limbo with no intaking ownership of the case, with no official admit that it's irretrievable broken. Was Shelley's family waiting for promise, charges that will likely never come, with fred always having a cloud of suspicion hanging over him? I don't know that closing this case and releasing the files will do much in the way of solving shell's murder, but I understand bRandy loris impulse. I'm the last person to stand in the way if someone wanted to see what's there, to lay the whole thing out and try to make some sense of IT, even if the only thing waiting on the other end is knowing you may never have an answer.

The coldest case in learning was written, reported by me, km archer, and produce by alvin mellis. Additional production in photography by jasmin shah. Truly, snyder is executive editor of serial productions.

Additional editing by Sarah ig, IO glass, janua, Kitty mingle, neil drumming, alembic curson denis, Rebecca a orbit and bethel hobday. Our standards editor is Susan westling. Legal review from dana Green and alaman summer research, in fact checking by ben fAiling and Jessica syriana.

Additional research by Julie tate and Michael keller. Original score by comi Brant peers sound design a music supervision by Michael comittee art by roti c mills serial supervising producer is N A tuba. Our digital manager is Julie whittaker. Sam dlink is an assistant managing editor of the new york times. At the new york times, thanks to a onery joran coin, Kelly do, Jason fuji, kuoni oki ji o.

John ni, anish muni, Crystal platos, malasia, Jeffery maranda, kimmy sii and july assistance on special thanks to anti Peterson, lin Andrews, trahit, Barbara burn nett, ramsey doctor or mario qur, Sandy's able, dave thomson, lisa rebec and john Butler. And thank you to the Willy family for opening up to us about Shelley and what thirty seven years of waiting has been like. The coldest case in army is from serial productions and the new york times.