Serial Productions & The New York Times
10 episodes listed below
A New York Times reporter reinvestigates Laramie's unsolved 1985 murder of Shelley Wiley.
The Coldest Case in Laramie follows the unresolved killing of Shelley Wiley and the later case against Fred Lamb. Its strength is the space it gives to contradictions: blood evidence, police interviews, family certainty, and the uncomfortable limits of old files.
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The show is a solo-narrated documentary series rather than an interview or panel format: Kim Barker, an investigative reporter for The New York Times, reports and narrates all episodes herself, drawing on archival police recordings, case files, and original interviews. Recurring subjects include Shelley Wiley's sister Lori and niece Brandy, who describe the original investigation as mishandled, and Fred Lamb along with his wife Linda, who dispute the case against him. Detective Robert Terry recurs through both archival interrogation tape and present-day interviews defending his handling of the DNA and forensic evidence. Rather than a new case each episode, the season follows a single throughline: the 1985 killing of 22-year-old Shelley Wiley and the decades of stalled leads that followed. Recurring themes include DNA and forensic evidence, police interrogation tactics, false confessions, and how memory holds up or fails over decades. The series also touches on how a small university town processes unresolved violence, referencing Matthew Shepard's murder as part of the same local memory Barker describes. It is produced by Serial Productions with The New York Times, built from more than a year of reporting and interviews. The season does not end in a conviction — charges against the primary suspect were dropped without prejudice, leaving the case technically open. Listeners get a reporter's process and its limits more than a resolved mystery. It suits people drawn to long-form, single-case investigative journalism rather than procedural or multi-case true-crime formats.
Made for: Listeners of serialized investigative journalism who want deep reporting on one cold case, including forensic detail and an unresolved ending, rather than tidy procedural closure.
What sets it apart: Unlike interview-driven true-crime shows, this is a single reporter's narrative investigation of one cold case, shaped by her own personal connection to the town where it happened.
Kim Barker, a Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative reporter for The New York Times, revisits an unsolved murder that took place while she was in high school in Laramie, Wyoming, nearly 40 years ago. She confronts the conflicting stories people have told themselves about the crime because of an unexpected development: the arrest of a former Laramie police officer accused in the murder. To get full access to this show, and to other Serial Productions and New York Times podcasts on Apple Podcasts and Spotify, subscribe at nytimes.com/podcasts. To find out about new shows from Serial Productions, and get a look b...
Based on 5 episodes we listened to · September 2026
Kim Barker tests the stories built around Shelley Wiley's murder by placing interrogation tactics, forensic limits, and uncertain memories under sustained scrutiny.
Kim Barker guides a serialized investigation that keeps returning to how certainty formed around Shelley Wiley's unsolved murder in Laramie. Police files, recorded interviews, forensic results, and conversations with people close to the case are set against one another, making…
One bloody matchbook, one disputed confession, and enough doubt to make your certainty file for reassignment.
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Short reviews from the PlayNext desk, based on the episodes we processed.
Three decades between an afternoon interview and one lasting more than seven hours, with a Laramie apartment fire in between.
The host grew up in Laramie, Wyoming -- wind that pushed trucks off the highway, winters that sealed the town in above 7,000 feet -- and left before senior year with no plans to return.
A careful, uneasy chapter about Jake Weidman's parole fight and the unsolved case that keeps pointing back toward Fred Lamb.
Episode 5 sits with the afterlife of one crime while another stays unresolved. Jake Weidman talks about killing Eric Cain, the guilt that followed, and the psychiatric labels attached to him without letting any diagnosis tidy the story up.
A sharp, uneasy look at the interrogation that made Fred Lam sound guilty, and how much the context changes.
Episode 6 digs into the interview that put Fred Lam back at the center of Shelly Wiley's case. Robert Terry walks him through blood marks, boot prints, and the morning at the crime scene, sometimes leaning on possibilities the file does not fully support.
A careful, uneasy installment about why Fred's arrest still does not make the case feel closed.
Episode 7 sits in the uncomfortable space between arrest and proof. Fred is in custody, his wife Linda is brought into a strained police station conversation, and for a moment the case seems to have a shape. Then the episode starts pulling at it.
A sober late-series turn on Fred Lamb, Robert Terry, and the long, unresolved wait for Shelly Wiley's case.
Episode 8 sits with the pressure around Fred Lamb's long-delayed interview and the limits of finally getting access. Fred and Linda come across as guarded, and the episode makes clear why: the case is still open, the charges were dropped without prejudice, and prosecutors could…
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Journalists chase a decades-long trail through a coronial inquest and Rick Bloom's dozens of aliases.
The Coldest Case in Laramie Episode 6 centers on Robert Terry’s 2016 interrogation of Fred Lam, a former cop whose DNA matched blood on the door of apartment number three.
Jake Weidman's story should have tidied up one question.
Shelly was killed in the early morning hours of Sunday, October 20th, 1985, in the Laramie apartment she shared with her roommate Michelle — attacked in her bedroom, she made it to the sidewalk before being stabbed and dragged back inside, and the apartment was set on fire.
This episode stays tight on the blood evidence, but it still does not close the case.
Fred Lamb stays at the center.