The Coldest Case In Laramie - Episode 7
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for details previously on the coldest case in army, obviously via deny can tell you there.

And if you hand me this case file on somebody adults.

yeah, i'd be right where you.

right? right?

There was a fun print, like a bloody fun print on a match book. And they found match, but they didn't investigate him. And then they let him leave.

He had a 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 of, I have blood evidence of credit in that crime scene, which he says a lot really. I mean, that's almost too much.

Well, i'm sure you have questions. shock.

Yeah.

absolutely in shock. About a half hour after fred was arrested, Robert Terry brought fred's wife, Linda into the police station. Redden, Linda, i've been married for thirty four years.

After they got together, lender became a dispatch for police in the share of office. He stayed there for decades, retired just months before her husband was arrested. Terran linden knew each other a little from her time at the department. So this is a delicate conversation. He told her that this whole thing was pretty uncomfortable for.

Um after asking .

you a few questions about what he remembered from one hundred eighty five Terry runners through the outline of the case eventually got down to the interrogation with fred Terry laid out his evidence in theories for Linda. You seem to want to know what .

you made of him I I just I still can't believe that friend did this, because that's not friend for this general, general. The only one time he lost his temporary had running up in a little, and SHE was a baby, little first chairs. They sit in and he was flapped around, and chap water was making dinner, and SHE went off and he was screaming, bloody murder.

And he came upstairs, put IT strict to both walls when he said, you should know, not put up there. Well, yeah, I guess they should have. But you know, you know that he would just, he could just snap and then he was fine.

And I think that's kind of what we concluded is that he has and episode I I guess that's the best way .

to have black out episodes .

where he he loses his mind and he is violent.

Well, well, no, yeah, I mean, he was a seal. They drop those guys in there. They had to exist for weeks.

They had to do all this coverage. yeah. And if they made IT, they got picked up. Any only way you can deal with that shit is to put you at your mind if you've got to do IT. So he could have even thought he was i've had him think that he was back in nm now when he's having an episode at night and he start flash yellow and .

talking .

and vietnam flying his arms and and when we refers married, I mean, if he was have an eps so you just move got out the room because he killed you.

Does he remember those .

when he wakes up? No recollection of that.

Somebody from the the seal team called in the other night that they had made a pact. There's five others that if any of them was in trouble, they get together. And the guy is gonna here.

Some data do stuff. So i'm sure let's bring and all sorts of show up that he's had bury that he doesn't even remember, right? But he assures .

him I just even .

father him doing anything like that except if if he was in his steam out all that canna ship filing as arms like he did, like he does I guess I can see that .

because he .

is totally somewhere else when he have a new episode. There's no, no where else your computers is not there.

I admit I was surprised when I came across lind's interview, mainly surprised because Linda herself and see all that surprised. SHE seemed to offer detective Terry a pretty damming profile of her husband, a man who was prone to sudden ages and blackouts stemming from his time as a navy seal. Although on that navy seal point, this wasn't the first time i'd heard IT.

A few people who knew fred and learn had that impression. One former cop told me he thought fred was an expert in nigh fork, but have even mentioned his military service in previous interviews with police reference, killing people in vietnam is a reason. Why is polygraph was? But this was new for as time with the seals as an explanation for Shelley murder.

A P, T, S, D, induce black out. A murder with no memory attached. I need little package that explained at all.

Hi Lucy. This is kim barker. Come for the time, from the time.

Yes, good. You talks so fast. I feel like i've gotta ch, you sorry, up. No words. According to his military records, fred liam served in the navy from one thousand nine hundred and sixty seven and one hundred and seventy one.

He split his time between the the naval crews are in a logistics support base, neither location, so much action at both of these places. He officially spent his time as a athole pr, which is to say that he worked at the military equivalent of a king goes, there is no record of bread having been an nv seal. On the one hand, I took us to mean the read lied that is capable of keeping a lie going for decades.

If he could do that, IT seemed plausible that he could also lie about a murder and keep IT to himself. But on the other, the fact that fred wasn't a seal that punched a hole in the argument, that he was some highly trained vet who might have flown off the handle and murdered someone without that story, what you're left with is a man with a bad back, a bomb league e and lousy hearing. He said he was just at the wrong place at the wrong time, trying to sleep off one too many jack and cokes.

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I wanted to make sure I wasn't missing something, some clue about friend's behavior. I decided to talk to as many of the cops who had worked with fred as I could, the ones who'd investigated Shelley's case and the ones who had. I figured they might have some more thought, at least, and whether the friend they knew could have done this.

By this point, most of them had died or moved. All of them had moved on from police work. The text, gary polls, the officer who'd interviewed jake White men and angle Garcia, who'd been in charge of the investigation in its earliest days, actually still lived in leamy.

I stop by his home. His wife told me that I could find him at his gig at the old territorial prison, which has been turned into a museum. So I stopped by the gift shop pulls, talk to me just long enough to tell me to go away.

He practically ran into a door. Mark staff, only a few former cops didn't talk to me, but didn't want to talk about fred or the investigation. I don't really want to go into that. I said, this is an open case. What did you think after you heard that he was charged with this?

You know, I probably don't want to keep that to myself, too.

I asked the same question to another cop who is twenty four at the time of Shelley's murder. Still remember sitting with her body during the autopsy.

The only thing I could see is i've not surprised .

you left him at that.

I did manage to track down one person in new the case, remembered fred and talked openly. Detective rob gram did that first recorded interview with feed back in one thousand nine hundred eighty five. He was the one who awkward dly asked fred about the blood and door number three, and then, seemingly relieved by friend's explanation, pretty quickly moved on detective grand work for the larrey police department for a decade. He's now seventy five years old, retired and living in a small town in the series. But he has a solid recall of Shelley's case.

I worked on .

twenty three.

two homicides, twenty three, we solved twenty two. No, this is this is what the commenter, and if I don't want to assume I blew IT but not get non french case. Would be easy to say I did, you know, I talked with him, so therefore I may have.

Caused the failure of this bus station, but in the time. Those are things I didn't do. I did what I felt like I could at the time, and I have. Mixed emotions on mother or not, fridge, the suspect and i'm sorry, an unresolved issue.

Pham didn't have a whole lot to tell me that I didn't already know from the file, but he did mention something I hadn't come across, something he said he noticed when he first interviews fred.

fred hands were. Chris crossed. Ed, in small cuts across both palms.

A fred were in this compromises. Well, I was pulling weeds in my parents house. I think that way we know why.

No, glad to something. And so i've photographed these hands. Actually, I think they were polarized, took four or five polar.

These polar roads are not in the file. Gramme knows that, he says a leery detective called him a few years ago about the shell ley wii case. The detective was shocked when gram mentioned the pictures gram thinks they must have gotten last at some point, slip through the cracks in the file cabinet at the station.

But it's confusing to me is that it's not just that the pictures aren't in the file. There is also no mention of these polaroids or Chris cross cuts and friends hands or anything like that in any of grams right ups from the time in his notes. Cram does acknowledge the broken up and scb on friends nuckles, but he never mentioned the hand cuts or the pulling we story. I don't really know what to make of that.

I do think I know why the charges against fred were dropped and why they have never been refiled. After his arrest, fred hired van is his lawyer and wounded out as part of discovery. Fine soon got all the evidence that he later handed over to me.

Here's what I saw from early in the case. The police were focused on the two types of blood found at the crime scene. The first was typo, which met Shelly.

The other was taibi, which police assumed belonged to the killer. There was relatively little of IT compared to Shelley's typo, just a few samples in two thousand. One, the wyoming state crime labs sent those samples off to D.

N. A. experts. Most samples were fainted, degraded, but the test would show that some of the samples had Shelley's DNA on them, and small amounts of unknown DNA.

The best of those samples, the ones that we're obviously not Shelleys, we're found on the door of apartment number three and pieces of a broken vase. Eventually the blood on the door would come back as a match for fred. That one was clear.

The unknown sample on the vase was more complicated IT likely matched to tech at the state crime lab, probably an air in handling the samples. In any case, fred was arrested. More tests were done.

I think Terry had high hopes for these. Some compared DNA from friend Shelly with a blue of blood samples from the sidewalk and walls of the building. They seem like a hail mary to see if more advanced would pick up trace amounts of thread, but they didn't.

Other DNA results .

were also a bit of a wash. There was nothing conclusive that could be drawn from them, and they were the kind of science that would be argued over in any trial with qualified experts on both sides. Leave in the jury unsure of what to make of anything. I've talked to several of the country's top DNA experts, and here's about all uncomfortable with saying, I have them the blood fan on the door of apartment. In number three, there is no other DNA evidence found at the scene that implicates any suspect, including fred.

This is not one of those cases that science will solve, not now, at least so without any other DNA evidence to lean on, the prosecutors would have to contend with the biggest hurle in their case, the matchbook found in the dirt three hundred and fifty feet away from Shelley's apartment next to prince entire tracks. We know that was part of the crime because I was covered in Chelsea blood. The matchbook also had would appeared to be a sum print on IT.

Police later figured that the print wasn't from a thumb, but another part of the hand. So detective tary tried to match to fred. The search warn allowed police to take prints from Oliver friends hands, but Terry never got a match test comparing the polar rays of friends boots with the footprints found next to the match book. We're also on a match.

So even if you could figure out a motive for fred killing Shelly, even if you do raise an eyebrow to with the story of how is blood gun on the door of apartment number three, you'd still have to explain why a matchbook with Shelley's blood was found more than a football field away from where fred spent the night, and why nothing from that match book came back to fred. Really the only thing Terry had on fred, a DNA match on the tiny bit of blood on the door of apartment number three, and the shaky story of how I got there, which freed, volunteered all the way back in one thousand and eighty five. Five months after friends arrest, the prosecutor Peggy trend dropped charges.

Neither trend nor the man who's taken over for her with elaborate and why they never refiled. So I can only offer this educated guess. They never refiled the charges against fred because they're just isn't much of a case against thread. Okay, moving on from physical evidence. What about the witness statements? What about the people I talked with who are absolutely certainly fred killed Shelly, people who have clear memories of friend's behavior, who had strong suspicions that he avoided a hard look because he was long enforcement.

Hyped is kim arka calling.

how are you good? How are you good?

I actually didn't call. We're actually here. Um so I forgot to call as we were approaching no.

Problem pacini was the second person police recorded an interview with, along with his l cunt by the dan. I found audio of that original interview, which took place in the evening after Shelley was murdered. I wanted to play IT for pat. I wanted him to hear what he's said about interacting with fred back in one thousand eighty five.

Now, when you arouse the guy in apartment in three, what did you told, which is told, call the other forms. in. He went in and said his phones there.

and then soon .

as he said that I rein grab ital and his bathroom soap did not go back and check on more time.

I think .

the Price about right when IT is that gets door way OK did you ever see any blood? yeah. Would you explain? What would you? Absolutely IT seemed like that this guy came out and he said, he he does. He said, look at the black in a then look then we have seen IT IT seems ms like he's wounded. Brought IT to our attention and that we just looked that we just couldn't believe because we knew right right off the bed would you have the americas you could just see where you didn't ask to see the blood till pointed out you I don't know, I I am precious, is going to while you were trying to get in the way you remember any blood on .

the door that was IT. Pat never said anything about fred being suspicious. We're seeing guilty as hell. Certainly nothing where the cops say, oh, he's a cop, don't worry about him. I checked whether there was any record of patch saying anything else about thread to a detective either at the scene or before after the recorded interview. There is no record of anything.

If there's anything that you think, write down, give you okay, alright. In rest all the questions I have attributed the enviro forty P M.

哇哦 他 这是。

I can't imagine when that was that they told me not to worry about that. There is no way I drapped at up. No way I know they told me that don't worry about him.

And I just, that was one of the most things I remember about anything is how upset was about him not helping me IT just makes me wonder your mind because that's what is so vivid in my mind, was being so upset with him staying in the apartment and then later finding out he was a police officer. And where would I come up with that? Don't worry about him as a police. I can't imagine my mind as I know they told me that at the interview. I know they did.

哼。

Because if he says he was out and on the sidewalk is like, wow, I I worry never came out of the apartment and that's why I was so sure that he .

was knowing that .

is a cup and he didn't even come out to even check on anything, was just so plain that he had something to do that that I couldn't. I just feel like .

i'm so unreliable that.

Everything I remember that morning is what the heck.

That was shaken. He joked about needing a drink, even though he was early on a saturday afternoon. I text them the next day to check in on him.

I'm OK, but just keep going over everything and still beating myself up. He wrote back. I know I have a bad memory, but not that bad.

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Gilbert had only lived with Shelly for a few months over the summer and fall before Shelleys murder, but the trauma of the whole deal has stayed with her for the last thirty seven years. Of all the people I spoke with, micelles memories were the most specific, the most visual, the most present. A year after meeting machine zoom, I producer alvin, a kite, flew to colorado at to talk about about what we have learned.

We regreted by city, a White powder puff of a dog who SAT down near the homes. Welcome at, as if to highlights message said, is in charge. We just live here.

Michaels has been work, invited us under the kitchen. He told us that malle was running late. He was still the gym.

Ricks, a retired cop and a little protective over macho. When he got back, he SAT down at the table with us for the interview pending. No book in hand .

that came to color .

out to ask Michelle l. About something SHE had told me there before a threatened card SHE remembered receiving shortly after Shelley's murder, the card was slipped into an apartment SHE escaped to where almost nobody knew he was. The car had a few twenty dollar bills in IT and a message telling you to get out of town um this car that was left you can you like refresh can you again just sort of refresh my memory and what you remember about the card?

The card that was melt to me? Oh, I was, I was a huge memory, real specific. Like, I can see that.

I can see where I was in my basement apartment. I don't know why that stuck with me. One, I think IT scared the hell me.

And two, IT felt like a lot of money, because I didn't have a thing at that point. My money burnt down, you know, my money burned in the apartment. My clothes burned.

I didn't be anything. And so hundred dollars was a lot of money. And one, I was afraid that police, we're going to take IT from me because I needed IT and too scared me because IT basically that cards had to leave town.

right? It's coming to your you, you the way you remember red, it's it's coming to your new apartment.

It's not the way remembered is a fact. IT came to my new apartment because that lady brought IT to me from upstairs and and I didn't. Nobody really knew I was at that apartment that was quick.

And then you reported that to the police.

oh, right away because i'm scared. And that's what kind of IT was like a fleeting thought for a second because I thought they're going to take that money from me. And I wanted IT and then, but I was also scared.

Yeah.

they gave IT back to you, right? Yeah, I think so.

So I want to show you something that might ease your mind when IT comes to the card because we were able to get a lot of the evidence in the case.

really.

yeah. So we actually have the police report about the card. Oh wow, we have all all of IT um I just have to call this up. Okay.

so this is like nine pages .

so I just want you to read IT and if you can feel free to read IT out loud so or a frick wants to like go around the back.

would you please deliver this card?

So was that IT? I mean, you can go through the .

pages like IT has a picture of the money IT as a picture of the cart. If you want to scroll down, I can true, you had to scroll down OK h SHE grow all the way down of you go .

all the way down. Where's the written part inside of the card?

IT just sort of says merry Christmas. There's no mention of there being like this written part that like was in the case file the card was inside an envelope with Michelle le's name on IT. He was sent to the house of least stinson micelles boston Fosters. Lee, would you please deliver this card? And noton side said.

that's not, that's not. That's not card. That's not. There is something written inside that's not how I remember that because why would I be afraid of him?

Why would I be afraid of twenty doll bills in a Christmas card? That's not how I this came to my house. So that, wow, that's not. However, remember that.

Do you think it's possible? Like and i'm just .

asking this.

rick knows this. Like do you think it's like the whole idea that your memory can betray you a little bit?

possibly. Sure, sure. But that's just almost mind barging to me.

I just don't how come for the past thirty seven years I was afraid of this card? I don't. I just my minus born right now. I just don't. There was something written inside IT wasn't merry Christmas IT wasn't IT wasn't that I just don't I feel like there's another card, like there was another one I don't know what to say and is a .

binging out because the memory is so vivid?

Yeah yeah. Because I feel like I remember that and and lee and I were so close, I went to be afraid of lee handed me something I don't feel like I remember that way.

Could there have been two cards? I don't know, but I kind of felt like I will sometimes remember things in a way that's like different, then went my you different, especially when you're Young and especially when something this formative happens when you're Young.

Yeah.

he doesn't .

surprised me that that my mind thought that. And now now that i'm sitting with IT a little bit, I believe you, I believe you, I believe what you showed me, that there wasn't two cards and that my scared brain was so traumatized and felt like. I just, I don't know, maybe I thought like I needed an excuse to go home, that I had to allow myself an excuse to go home and maybe telling my dad that I got a car and now I have to go home. I am not sure what and trying to figure now i'll take me a while to figure out why I well, I believe that .

I think .

just be a nice yes.

I think you're right.

I walked Michelle to the physical evidence in the police files, and now some of the things SHE others told me originally didn't quite line up like friends truck was never actually seen near the match book where Michelle thought I was found. Fd, thn print wasn't found on the match book either, and there's no evidence that he cut the phone lines. There were other smaller things too, like the window screens.

Michelle remembers that thread would offer her to put her and shell's window screens back in. When they fell out, SHE figured he was the one taking them out. T in the first place.

There is no evidence of that in her original interview or in the case file, but the police did here from another man, not fred, who told them that he remembered helping shelling michele le with their screens. Then there was micelles memory of red learning at the women when they were sunday y the case file shows. Fed did notice the Young women trying to get ten.

He told terriers much in two thousand nine and in twenty sixteen. But Michelle didn't remember much about fred until his arrest as well. IT seems possible that talking to terra is what jog that sun bathing memory, lose that more general way.

Talking to Terry when he had a site set on fred might have fashion Michelle memory retrofit them around the idea of his guilt. But you can serve that, see the leaves that people are making here to explain away evidence, to have a point at fred, no matter what. And you can see what a defensive turney would do with that. So a lot of these tests that i'm telling you about, they came back after fred was charged. And I think that there was a real hope that all the stuff is, know what the hope was.

Yeah, hops a bit. No, he doesn't. Doesn't be out always. That makes a lot of sense. Wow.

could even .

could IT he have not done? IT we think .

he might not have. wow.

Not to say about that. It's really odd. It's .

interesting.

And I appreciate all the work you've done that's really helpful to him to to me personally.

And we also don't understand why they ruled out certain people really know we don't and like we're not saying we can't say for certain .

for I didn't do IT yeah.

but that's what the evidence is. But Terry, for certain, feels like Terry really wants them to charge. Fred really wants to move ahead with the case. But I think that that's what we've just told you about is the explanation of why they haven't.

I have a lot respect for robber Terry, and I think he's very smart. That makes me happy that he still believes that because gassing, I want to feel like is there's somebody else still out there for some reason? For me personally, I felt comforting to not a great word, but happy that at least Robert thinks he you did IT.

You offer the good part of my Young adult life into being an adult, raising children. I was always very scared and just very, I never felt complete. I never felt satisfied. I never felt like. I just always felt some big pit hole in my been that was just empty.

And the day that that I got a call from somebody in there me to tell me that flame was charged IT IT was like this weight came off of my back that I could not even describe, but I couldn't. I I felt so good and so happy that somebody was going to be held responsible and that that chelsey mom and dad would flying to be able to put put everything to rest, and that I would have to be scared anymore. You know, because I am exercise one or two hours every day just to make myself feel strong and so that I can protect myself, my kids, and even know, no, know, I happily married and I have, you know, onic's.

I married a cop. Is that iron is IT? So, you know, is that really or, you know, luckily, I don't know, I don't know why I chose what I chose, but I felt countable finally that that he couldn't hurt me or or anybody .

and then to think .

that maybe it's not him largest, it's not good. It's not. I just wish my wish he would just tell me, you know, I would honestly almost could almost say that I wouldn't tell anybody or I wanted, you know, I just wanted know, you want to feel peace again.

I sympathy with Michelle here, how he wanted peace and how he felt talking to friend might give that to her. SHE needed an answer still, thirty seven years later, to the question of who killed her closest friend, the story at least to help .

explain that I felt .

slightly guilty on that last point. I pushed so hard on our memories, I can feel myself collapsing. The careful scathless sh'd built over the years IT fit a little cruel, even though my facts were right, even though I felt justified and the doubt was introducing.

Maybe it's because I couldn't offer her much in the way over replacement for her certainty about fred. In any case, IT didn't seem like fred wanted to say anything i'd asked over and over again in the time i'd been reporting this story, and i'd mostly gotten radio silence. And then when i'd also given up hope, I got a text message from bond, his lawyer, finally fed.

was ready to talk.