Sunday Special: An Episode of ‘The Coldest Case in Laramie’

The Daily

The New York Times

Daily News, News

4.4 • 102.8K Ratings

🗓️ 5 March 2023

⏱️ 25 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Today, we’re taking some time out of our regularly scheduled programming to share the first episode of “The Coldest Case in Laramie.” In the new series from The Times and Serial, Kim Barker, a Times investigative reporter, digs into the 1985 murder of Shelli Wiley, a young woman who was a few years older than Kim when they both lived in Laramie, Wyoming. The long-unsolved case took a turn in 2016 when the police arrested someone for Shelli’s murder: a former officer named Fred Lamb. The evidence against him seemed solid, but prosecutors, confusingly, dropped the case. They’ve never refiled. How did a case that seemed this open-and-shut fall apart with such a whimper? To find answers, Kim heads back to Laramie and grapples with conflicting memories and dueling narratives. In episode one, Kim starts to call up Shelli’s family members to try to piece together what happened. To listen to all eight parts, visit nytimes.com/laramie.

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	Hey, it's Michael.
0:02.0	Today, we here at the Daily wanted to share an excerpt from a new podcast series from NYT
0:09.0	Audio and Serial.
0:11.0	It's called the coldest case in Laramie, and it's hosted by my colleague, Investigative
0:17.0	Reporter Kim Barker.
0:19.0	In it, Kim revisits an unsolved murder that took place while she was in high school in Laramie
0:25.0	, New York City, New York City, NY, nearly 40 years ago, a case that seemed to break wide
0:30.7	open a few years ago with the arrest of a local police officer.
0:36.1	The evidence against the officer seemed strong, but then prosecutors abruptly dropped the
0:42.2	case.
0:43.2	Kim wanted to know why.
0:47.1	She chronicles her re-investigation of the case over eight episodes.
0:52.3	Take a listen to episode one.
1:02.7	Years ago, when I was a teenager, I lived in Laramie, Wyoming.
1:08.0	I've always remembered it as a mean town, uncommonly mean, a place of jagged edges and cold
1:13.8	people.
1:14.8	Where the wind blew so hard, it actually whipped pebbles at you, actually pushed trucks
1:19.8	off the highway.
1:21.9	Laramie stood in an elevation of more than 7,000 feet and got so sucked in by winter storms,
1:27.6	it felt like we were trapped, like there was no way out.
1:31.6	My family moved away before my senior year in high school.
1:35.1	I never wanted to go back.
	...

Please login to see the full transcript.

Previous episode | Next episode

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from The New York Times, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of The New York Times and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.