The Coldest Case In Laramie - Episode 1
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These first two episodes of the coldest case in lyam y are free. But here the whole series, you'll need to subscribe to the new york times, where you'll get access to all the serial productions and new york times shows and is super easy you can sign up through apple podcast or spotify. And if you're already a time subscriber, just link your account and you're done.

Years ago, when I was a teenager, I lived in, learn me, yummy. I've always remember red IT as a mean town, uncommonly mean, a place of jacket ages and cold people, where the wind blue so hard IT actually wiped pebbles at you, actually pushed trucks off the highway.

let me stood an elevation .

of more than seven thousand feet and got so socked in by winter storms. IT felt like we were trapped, like there was no way out. My family moved away before my senior year in high school.

I never wanted to go back. The town's only high school, leery high, was grim even by Normal high school standards. One of my classroom mates killed someone.

Other students killed themselves. Some boys were held down and branded with letters like they were. Livestock coaches who cut guys fighting in the hallways made them fight for real in a makeshift ring.

Let me wanted to raise its men as much of cowboys weakness wasn't tolerated, and the girls had to look a certain way, act a certain way, where a certain kind of have a certain kind of bay level haircut. I was bullied for the way I spoke, the way I dressed. I can still hear some boys mock barking my name, kim barker.

down the hallway.

Whenever I talk about the rougher place i'd ever lived, i'd always say there me, not coastal, even though I reported there from the middle of a war, not as labored, even though suicide bombs exploded there regularly.

There's a good chance.

if you've heard of learning before, it's because of Matthew shipped a gay university student who was tortured there and later died. When I first heard about his death, I thought, of course, that happened in law. my.

But the main reason that learning is always stuck with me. The defining cruel tine eyne of them was a Young woman had never met in Shelly wiley in the fall of one thousand nine hundred eighty five, when I was a high school sofamor. Shelley was murdered in her apartment.

SHE was a few years older than me in uganda. Leamy high. SHE went to college, the nearby university of voyaging, and earn money waiting tables at the truck stop.

SHE was twenty two. why? Pretty bunnet living a version of the live, me and my friends imagine for ourselves.

One day the details of her death were less cleared to me. At fourteen, in in the brutality was there were whispers about stabbings in blood. I'd heard that whoever had killed Shelly had burned her apartment to the ground.

I remember red, the shock of a murder arriving at my high school. Some students became suspects, others play the guessing game. In one particularly terrifying round of V G.

With friends, we asked for a sign of the spirit, knew who killed Shelly wiley at that very moment. A knock came on the basement window. Even the boy screamed.

Shelleys murder was never solved. Every few years after I moved away, after I became a reporter, i'd search her name for news, almost as an idol reference. There is never anything.

Then came january twenty twenty one. I was cooped up in my apartment, just me, my dog, Lucy, and a global pandemic. Like almost everyone else, I was going a little bit stir crazy.

I also owe my newspaper some story ideas. And truthfully, I was tapped out. So with a special kind of desperation, I google shall his name again. This time there .

was news in twenty.

sixteen, thirty one years after Shelley's murder, the police had actually made an arrest in the case, a guy named fred lam. He was a one time cop, a former sheriff deputy in learning police officer. According to news reports on the night, Shelley was killed in one thousand and eighty five fdl m had been staying in the apartment two doors down from her.

His blood had been found at the scene, and after being confronted with DNA evidence in twenty sixteen, he had even told police that, quote, i'm not denying that I did IT and fridley did IT. But then a few months after charging him, prosecutors unexpectedly dropped the case in article, the local paper headlined possible delay in cold case, quoted the prosecutor who said her office needed more time to get test results back. He said they were dropping the charges against fred, put only temporarily.

They planned to refile soon. That was an early twenty seventeen. To this day, protectors haven't refiled, which means a former cop had been arrested, his DNA had been found at the scene. He'd even apparently given something like a confession, and then nothing. The whole thing seems so leamy.

I doubt that this was a story my editor would be into a end of thirty six year old cold case for my time in high school that might have a perfectly reasonable explanation for where it's did. But I decided to make some calls anyway, some string. I figured, what's the harm in a little side project? From serial productions in the new york times.

I'm kimball ker.

This is the coldest case in larrey.

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I read through the handful of articles about fred liam I could find on the internet, and then I started looking for Shelley's family. I didn't find much in orbit for Shelley's father in a pleading facebook post from a Young woman named bRandy, saying he was Shelly wild's knights. SHE didn't name lam, but he said a former sheriff deputy, a quote monster, had never had to answer for his crime.

Pretty said that china or family needed help. I message her. We set up a time to zoom along with her mom, Lorry, Shelly wiles Younger sister.

Hi, hear me.

Yes, I can you hear me?

Yeah, just move ever the zam, yeah and thanks so much. You must be Lorry. I am good to be too. I obviously and i'm obviously can a hy bRandy good to see you. hi. So um like I figure we should start out with you guys asking me questions about what i'm doing and like, ah you know I would imagine that you would have questions.

Yes, absolutely. What what are you writing about exactly?

So what I would be interested in doing is basically trying to find out what happened with um the case uh, against a fdd lam right um like just get records, do all the sort of uh things that you do. And I just I feel like that there could be something there, especially given like the bread lam was a cop.

There is something there. I'm sure i'd .

hesitated before reaching out to lord directly for one thing I could see from linton that he was the director of nursing at a nursing home in california in the middle of a pandemic. I figured he was busy. I didn't want to do this story without talking door, and I knew my all could open a bold loons, but Lorry was blunt and matter of fact and willing to talk.

So what do we start with what your understanding is with what happened with fred lam?

So what happened with fred lamb is, well, like when they arrested in a few years ago, I know it's very political, and I know they had to keep things a secret from a lot of people in the police department at the time. But I did sit down with them about going to say three, four years ago and looked at most of the case with them. While not most of the case book, I was therefore like three hours and look at .

a lot of IT and what what did you see?

Like what did they show you?

Oh, good lord, is a long story. But when we win in so I went to hear me, and actually I will. A good friends with my sisters were made at the time. Michelle.

oh, I would love to talk to her. Yeah, i'd seen mentioned of Shelley's roommate, Michelle l. In an old new story in the cases per paper, in the few articles I could find online, msha was the only person quoted to actually new Shelly. The only friend mentioned i'm sure .

miche would probably talk .

to you too OK.

Um so i've actually Michelle with I hadn't seen her in a long time that I had flown from my daddy's and Michelle l pick me up but we drove to lare me and he already talked to him but I went there and I talk to the detectives. We were in the room, and I know somebody was on the camera watching or guiding, I could tell, but they just went over the story and they basically said so. So his apartment with two apartments .

down the basic, as I understood them from talking to law in reading about fred lamb's arrest back in one thousand nine hundred and eighty five, he had just left the sheriff department, enjoying the national guard full time, married with a kid living just outside of leamy. But on gara weekends, he said, IT is friend's place in town, which happened to be in the same apartment building, a Shelly and Michelle just two doors down the weekend of Shelley's murder with a dry weekend.

So fred was staying over as usual, Lorry told me in the last time SHE star assist her, Shelly was just a few hours before he was killed shelling a girlfriend has spent the evening taking and drink and teen or living room Lorry stopped by after getting off of work. But soon Shelly sent Lorry in her friend home. Shelly had to get up early for waiters sing shift.

The shell was gone for the night, so Shelley was alone at some point. In the early morning hours of sunday, october twenty years, someone got inside of Shelley's apartment and attacked her in her bedroom that looked like she's tried to escape. SHE made IT out the front door, but on the sidewalk just outside of rebuilding, her attacker cotton stabbed her repeatedly, drag chelly back inside before setting the apartment on fire.

At about five twenty in the morning, witnesses soft flame shooting out of Shelley's apartment in golfing the living room in the front door. Fred was there, one of the few people of the scene police interviewed fed late that afternoon. He told them me at guard duty the next day would be heading to arkansas for a couple weeks of training.

And then as far as Lori knew, the cops never looked at fred again, not until three decades later, in twenty sixteen, when learning investigators key in on freed for the murder, they gathered evidence and called fred in for an interview. This one lasted more than seven hours near the end, according to news reports, is when fdd refer to himself in the third person and said things such as fred lam, ed IT and bottom is, I killed a girl after fred was charged, Lorry said. The lead detective brought in her in Michelle and walked them through the early mistakes in the case.

because I asked the detective, i'm like, what? Why did the crime scene tape only go to the first department? And when he looked at picture shown, if they didn't even go to the second or third department, even though there was more evidence further down? So anyhow, yet they look red doll.

But there was, he did have some blood spatter on his door, and we had to cut on his hand. And he said, cut his hand. I can't remember what he told them knocking on the door do. I can't remember how he got that, but I know he went behind the building at one point. Cut the whole online.

I mean, what's IT like to find out the they investigate two doors down.

I think Michelle l was like, I knew he may have had something .

to do with IT. The beginning.

I don't know, he knew with him, but he questioned Lorry.

says they are new fred land. He used to get a Fosters, a huge truck's stop off of state eighty, where lory shell and Shelly, our work, they'd see redit Fosters meeting with other cops to drink coffee and shoot the shit was just across the dirt road from Shelley apartment building. The building itself wasn't much.

Five low sung units range in the new shape. IT was a kind of building that looks like a strip of creamy motel rooms but is in fact a trip of krem mi rental in its along a sidewalk in parking line. That's the other place. Lorry. Remember seeing fred sometimes when he was over at Chelsea apartment building the outside .

sometimes would somebody out there because that's what you did in the eighties.

I know when they said in the report i'm like, oh my god, you're trying to make a little black words, aren't you? I'd pretty much told him that i'm like, that's not how I was then that's not really we but they came home but I remember I was I don't didn't think we were some beeing this time, but we were standing outside and I must have been leaving but I remember red micelles macy and tell me, look at those weirdo, serve my neighs. He's a weirdos.

But I remember a couple weeks before their spring kept coming off their window, different screens, and somebody, they had somebody put that back on, or he offered to put a back on a micelle turned him down one time. But I remember their screens in the front we come off, and then in the back we come off. But they never knew who I was. They weren't too worried about IT at the time.

right? What did do you think about the fact that he was a former police officer used to be in the ship?

Well, first I had to real. I was like, I didn't have a lot of I feeling, by the way and then i'm like, well, there are assets because they wouldn't really answer any of our questions. But yeah, I was pretty nave then.

I'm not nearly as naive now at these days now I would have pounded and we're called them more bit. Yeah no, they didn't tell us they had any suspects or that they really talk to them or that I remember. And the detective who was in charge of now is not somebody who is originally a police officer at the time. He's not from where me.

Okay, so so he's like he's not familiar with the case. I am now sitting inside my bed, my bathroom, because my dark being super loud.

So okay.

He's familiar .

with the case. He he ended up with the case and he investigated and he's the one who got the one to reread the first time OK.

And then I .

don't know, he's now like the assistant he for police, but he kept the case.

So he sounds like he's very invested in that.

Then he's very invested and he's the only one that has helped me with anything. Nobody also go further. He's the only one that tries to get them to press charges are to move forward to to do any of that. Nobody also really help the a, the detective, everything he maybe are not even sure this title. Now the assistant chief is name is Robert Terry.

Robert Terry, okay. And how did you find out that they were going to a drop the charges, at least for now against slam?

I read IT in the paper too.

They didn't call you. Tell you.

oh, no, no. Any time I call near the attorneys, they have only had victims witness call me like twice.

I called a lot though. I hounded the police station when he was arrested. And the first police officer that answered at the jail house, and he was really rude and he was like, I don't know what case you're talking about.

So he transferred me to another police officer, and he told me that he wasn't allowed to discuss the case. Then I got really quiet, and I was like, he was whispers ing in the phone, and he said, you need to pursue this. Don't stop.

And then he hung out the film. But at one point, Peggy trant was the cross the cuter for IT. And I called her a few times, and SHE wouldn't answer the phone.

Then I kind of got on a kit of, you know, calling. I thought in my head and like, I feel like there are me is really a bad place to try IT. So I wonder if there's something that I could do.

You know where to get IT transferred out of learning to make you shine so I remember calling shine and asking them, you know they knew about the case that I was her nie and how they get a transfer, whatever and the lady that I spoke to SHE said I can't just um take the case SHE said IT has to be given to us by Peggy trend but he was like, can I call you write back in fifteen minutes and i'm like, ah and I didn't think SHE was gonna all me back. Well, SHE called me back really quickly and he was like, I just spoke to a judge and where we want IT, but we can just take IT. So I called Peggy trend back, and I told her, you know, like shine once IT in the case.

And I feel like I would be Better to be, you know, tried outside of learning. And he was so angry with me, he told me, um, how who do you think you are just trying to take my case away so I was really frustrated with her. I would call her office everyday, you know, just to ask questions and eventually I was sharing on my facebook and the article, you know when saying, this is my art, everybody please share so um it's started to get you know around a little bit. And then Peggy tran called my grandmother on me and told my grandma that I was jeopardizing the case. And to make me stop, SHE called my grandma on me.

I talked to .

Peggy trend about the story. SHE told me SHE didn't remember bRandy calling her office, nor did he remember calling bRandy's grandma Peggy a sense left the prosecutors office. SHE told me he wouldn't talk about an open investigation.

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Graduated high .

school a few months before Shelley was killed, SHE told me SHE spent much of her time at Shelleys even spent the night there. Sometimes there were four years apart. But Lorry told me they were really close.

They drink beer, twenty university football games in a Garfield no book. They kept on Shelley dresser. They wrote about their lives from the perspective of a cat. When Lorry spoke to me about Shelly, SHE did IT without a lot of sentimentality. SHE seemed like SHE put her memories of her sister. And what happened into a box that he never opened kept a charm berry set of shells us with a dangling ballerina in a bag in a drawer or SHE .

rarely saw IT luri .

told me that chill y's death devastated her family for Vicky Shelleys mom, the murder where oldest child became the divider of life into before and after life before vickie gave birth to Shelly just after high school. And the two pretty much grew up together.

They looked like like sisters, even talked all the time, even after Shelley's dad and Vicky divorce life, after Vicky became more of a reckless s according the Lorry, more depressed, more off on her own Shelley's dad kind of disappeared after his daughters murder, spent much of his time alone in the mountains. Didn't want to talk about Shelley's murder, didn't talk much about at all. You seem to walk away from a second marriage with that actually leaving.

After the couple finally broke up, Shelley's father left learning for good. He died alone in buffo yummy, leaving behind Shelley's funeral notice, tucked inside a book and a bitter hatred of the army police. One of Shelley's brothers started drinking after Shelley's death.

He never stopped. He died shortly before my first conversation with loran bRandy when I Ashley's family about her, what he was like, who he was intended to lean on, the platinum des of the long dead SHE put up a room with her smile. SHE was smart, beautiful, inside and out, and IT makes sense.

Shelley is in their minds, forever twenty two, a pretty woman who, like john denver, who loved animals, especially cats, who worked out at the gym regularly before. That was really a thing for women who is often, in fact, the only woman in any of our engineering or industrial management classes. In truth, the most important parts of who Shelly willey was were still in the process of being ired out. Her family mourns this just as much as they more in the person they loved that he was murdered right at that precipice before SHE or anyone else had a chance to find out who he was gonna be.

Um well, I talk to you guys for like more than an hour this evening. I I don't want to be take too much of your time up in the very beginning but like and I hate to say that i'm giving home work right but like their home work here, if you guys could get me like if you could talk to a show and see if you talk to me and I think that he would be really important to talk to just because he would be more familiar with what his role was in the building at the time. And all right.

i'm sure Michelle will talk to you and be great. Okay, all right.

and will to stay just stay in touch um and will three others can go. Okay.

okay. Thank you. sorry. Thank you.

Thank you.

bye.

But I gathered from talking a Lorry and bRandy was that they didn't actually know a lot more about what happened with this case than what appeared in news reports. In that vacuum, they'd started developing some theories. They were pretty clear that the whole thing was missing andle from the start. That thread didn't get a close look as a suspect back in one thousand and eighty five. They figured IT was because he was a former cop, that maybe this was a good old boys protecting .

their own thing.

He was hard for Lorry, an bRandy, to feel like there wasn't something shady going on here. They told me they'd be happy to help me find out what I could.

That's next time on the host case .

and wearing.