The Coldest Case In Laramie - Episode 6

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Previously, on the coldest case in Laramie.

Those drag marks got pretty close to Dave's place.

And there was a little bit of just real tiny splatter like on the door.

That's mine.

What?

Well, that's your blood.

That's my blood.

If it's on his door, it's my blood.

We know who did this.

We just have to prove it.

He didn't see it coming.

And they confronted him with all these lies about what the physical evidence was.

And after seven hours.

According to the documents, during a police interview, Lamb initially denied the homicide allegation, but later said, quote, Fred Lamb did it.

Dot, dot, dot.

I'm not denying that I did it.

Quote, bottom line is, I killed the girl.

Wow.

I would say I am 99.9% sure Fred Lamb murdered Shelly.

For decades, Shelly Wiley's case seemed to go very very cold.

There was nothing much in the case file that indicated it was a high priority.

Not until Robert Terry came along.

Shortly after Terry took over Shelley's case in 2009, he started bringing in people police hadn't talked to in decades.

Not as suspects necessarily, but people who might have known something.

One of those people was Fred Lamb.

Fred came from a very influential family in Laramie.

His parents were as close to Laramie royalty as you could get.

His mother was a respected elementary school teacher.

His father taught at the university for decades, even ran the school's civil engineering department, served a term in the Wyoming State House.

But Fred chose another path.

Straight out of high school, Fred enlisted in the Navy and went to Vietnam, where he lost some of his hearing.

After coming home, Fred became a cop.

Then a sheriff's deputy.

Shortly before Shelley was killed, Fred quit law enforcement and joined the National Guard full-time.

By the time Terry became a detective, Fred was working maintenance at the jail.

Like a lot of the cops in Laramie, Terry knew Fred.

He'd heard some of the stories about him.

He'd heard that Fred had served in the military, that he was a former Navy SEAL.

He'd heard about Fred's brush with Laramie fame as the only survivor of a plane crash when a rescue mission for missing skiers went down in 1979.

Fred suffered a crushed hip and a broken back.

The other two men on board both died.

Terry knew Fred as a good old boy, as a good old boy.

They liked to tell jokes, shoot the shit, hunt and fish.

When Terry brought Fred in for their first interview in 2009,

it was the first time Fred had been asked about Shelley's murder in 24 years.

Thank you very much for coming down.

Oh, no problem.

They ran through Fred's story of that early morning in 1985 again.

It was a friendly conversation,

a relatively brief one.

Terry was just at the beginning of his investigation.

There was a lot of file left to sift through.

But Fred brought up something curious,

something that wasn't in the case file I had,

and that Terry also didn't seem to know about before the interview.

Fred talked about the results of the polygraph he said he took back in 1985.

Yeah, I took it for for Gary Pulse, who was in your position.

Yeah.

And I

he said I was too truthful for his polygraph.

And well, because of the uniqueness of my military position, there were questions that he had to ask directly that I had been committed or involved in.

Have you ever killed anybody?

Well, fuck, I was in the military for 19 years.

Absolutely.

And I answered him, and, you know I knew Gary I was extremely comfortable with him the other person that was giving them at that time was

Glenn Bennett who worked for the sheriff's department yep I recognized his name but they figured that Gary should give it to me because I had been away from him for 10 to 12 years and had been working directly with Bennett for quite a while so they had Gary do it so that there wouldn't have been a

conflict of a conflict there.

I hate to use that word.

Yeah.

We have something similar here at the police department.

If Terry was extra suspicious about this conversation, it didn't show up in the case file.

At the end of the interview, he took a swab from inside of Fred's cheek for DNA, but he seemed more interested in other leads.

He didn't compare Fred's DNA with any samples from the scene.

In 2009, Terry worked this case more than any detective had worked it in decades.

But he worked it in his spare time, and he didn't work it for long.

Months after interviewing Fred, Terry was promoted to sergeant.

A new detective took over the case.

His theory seemed to be that Shelly might have been killed because she was on the wrong side of a cocaine deal, another version of one of the first rumors about Shelly.

For years, detectives also tried to match swabs taken from the crime scene with their favorite suspect's DNA.

And for years, they came up empty.

Until 2015,

Five and a half years after Robert Terry first swabbed Fred's cheek, lab techs tested Fred's DNA against blood found on the door of apartment number three.

Finally, they got a match.

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Not long after he got the match for Fred, Robert Terry took back the case.

He ordered more tests, and he made plans for his second and final interview with Fred on August 17th, 2016.

This interview was crucial.

Terry's one shot.

He wanted a confession.

The meeting took place in a small interrogation room at the station,

pretty nondescript, save for a pattern wall hanging in a circular table.

Video captures all seven hours, two minutes, and 29 seconds of it,

beginning with the niceties.

You're obviously not under arrest.

You drove down here on your own, came down.

But since I'm going to ask ask you some questions here at the police department, I'd like to advise you your rights.

More as a formality, if you're okay with that.

Okay.

I think we did this in 2009, too, so it's pretty

much going on.

Fred is 67 years old.

Bald with a pot belly.

Wearing a green shirt, jeans, and a khaki vest.

You wouldn't think twice if you saw him with a fishing pole in his hands.

He looks relaxed, leaning forward under the table.

Terry is on the other side.

He looks younger than his 39 years.

Wears a blue dress shirt and a tie, like he's on the management track at a men's warehouse.

Except that he has a gun in his side holster and handcuffs tucked into the back of his slacks.

He's got a couple of binders and photos with him.

The case file.

So I thought we could just start with kind of like the basics.

I've got the story, I think, you know, what was going on, but maybe you can just tell me in your own words.

what was going on that day, you know, and I hope, you know, since we've talked before, you know, seven years ago now, you know that, you know, I'm not lying to you, you know, as I'm talking to you.

Yeah, okay.

From the beginning, Terry makes a very particular choice.

He signals that he isn't talking to Fred as a witness to a crime or as a suspect.

He's talking to Fred as a former cop, a colleague of sorts.

And that's why we're here.

You know, we got to figure this out.

You were there.

You're my best friend.

You're my ally in this.

They went through the story again.

What Fred remembered remembered from that early morning in 1985,

what he did after he heard knocks on his door and someone shouting fire.

Terry was friendly but probing.

He asked Fred about the layout of the apartment where he stayed that night, what he wore, and where he parked his truck.

Fred's version of events didn't change much from his previous interviews, except for one key detail.

In the past, Fred said that when he heard a woman's screams, he didn't react much at first.

In this interview, he said that after he heard knocks on the door and realized a fire was raging nearby, he hopped into his truck to go find a payphone to call for help.

Only by the time he got to the payphone, he heard sirens, so he doubled back and parked a couple of blocks away from the apartment.

Oh, you parked on Monroe Street, where Terry Miners' place is.

I'm sorry, you parked on Monroe.

Terry seemed excited about this,

suggested to Fred that he parked on Monroe Street.

This is important because Monroe Street happens to be where the bloody matchbook and footprints were found.

Fred initially agrees that yes, that's right.

That's where he parked.

Before backing off, saying he isn't so sure.

No, I wish parked over here.

Let me get myself straight here.

That's what.

Fred said he was getting muddled about the layout of the streets around the apartment.

He got turned around enough that he asked Terry for a city map.

Yeah, we can get you one of those.

Yeah, I am really, really confused.

Well, we don't want to confuse you, Fred.

I want to clarify today.

Well,

that's what I'm trying to get upset in my own mind.

Terry got him the map.

Fred turned it around for a bit, and Terry tried to get him to confirm that it was Monroe Street, where he parked.

But Fred never really commits, blames his bad memory.

I should say that witnesses at the scene in 1985 mentioned Fred sticking around the apartment as police and firefighters arrived.

A couple of people even mentioned his truck being in the parking lot as the fire was going.

If he did move his truck early that morning and park it over on Monroe Street, it's a little unclear when he would have had the time to do it.

In any case, they go back and forth on this for a little while longer before Terry finally asked Fred about the blood on the door.

Back in 1985, Fred told police that his blood got on the door when he knocked his bloody knuckle on it a few days before Shelley's murder, which even back then, the state lab guys said didn't make sense.

Now, Terry actually had Fred stand up and reenact the whole thing with a bottle of water and a prop door.

Okay, so you're on the porch.

Those spots come like this, right?

According to our picture.

Think that would have...

Is that about what you think?

Or your water?

Sure.

How about it?

We get it on the carpet.

Am I in trouble?

I don't think so.

I think they'll.

water's a little thinner than blood.

That's true.

It's probably going to run a little bit.

Not dots.

Yeah, you do.

And then you've got the long streets and the comet trail.

And I can't see where it ran out, but the last one should have a comet tail on it.

About an hour and a half into the interview, Terry turned to what kind of shoes Fred was wearing.

Fred had told him he was dressed in his National Guard gear that morning, which included a pair of jump boots made with with a waterproof material called Corfam.

So Terry started taking out pictures of the crime scene,

flipping through ones taken just outside of Shelly's apartment,

including one picture of a bloody boot print.

I know walking back and forth is probably evident that you had to walk through that scene at some point, whether it was dark or what.

Yeah, so I'd have been focused on that, not paying attention.

What the hell?

I could have walked on a riddle.

And you're not going across gravel.

I mean,

we're not in the evidence safeguarding mode.

We're thinking fire, safety, life safety.

Every day like something criminal would happen.

Right.

So I'm not cognizant or even paying attention to what I'm doing.

And that's important.

I mean, that's.

With few exceptions, police officers are allowed to exaggerate and lie in interviews.

Another Laramie detective who worked this case even falsely told a woman that her fingerprint had been found on the bloody matchbook.

So here, Terry didn't actually know what kind of boot prints are in the picture he's showing Fred.

From the file, it's clear that lab techs never matched the print with a specific type.

And they never got Fred's boots to compare them to.

Only snap photos of them.

The murder was in October in Laramie.

Hard to believe Fred was the only person wearing boots.

Does that look

pretty familiar to you?

Oh yeah, that's a heel.

Looks like a Corafan heel print.

Looks like it to me.

About an hour later, Terry moved on to asking Fred about the fire.

I don't have too much experience in arson stuff,

but like the accelerant used in there, you know, we know that it was obviously highly flammable.

What would you have used?

I mean, if to make something burn that hot that quick.

What would I have used?

Yeah.

In a panic mode or a planned mode?

Well,

in this case.

I mean, it's panic.

It's something that's probably done after the fact, obviously.

Not thinking too clearly.

The closest sort of gasoline I could find, usually a lawnmower gas can

or

some gas can sitting out somewhere, would have been my guess.

At this point, Terry really only had one piece of solid evidence tying Fred to the scene of the crime.

He had confirmation that Fred's DNA matched the blood on the door of apartment number three, but nothing else.

His blood wasn't found inside of Shelley's apartment.

Yet Fred seemed to believe everything that Terry said or even implied.

I mean obviously we did a lot of blood typing back in the day.

So there was O and A.

Those are the two contributors to the blood in this case.

A is you,

O is her.

So that's how it's been kind of,

I guess, broken down in there.

And so all the A's we tried to then get DNA on, you know, to eliminate and or include you.

Yep, no reaction.

So that's kind of how we went about it.

Just to be kind of upfront with you.

Every swab

we've tested, they pretty much took about as many swabs as I would today.

I might have taken a few more, but pretty much anywhere there was blood, they swabbed it, took a reference sample.

They swabbed that door, so they got all those blood samples off the door.

Pillowcase, checked for any biologicals on that,

Swabs from the wall.

Ran all that stuff.

So we're pretty much done with that.

There were about five swabs that had A typing on it.

Type A, which

was you.

Any reason why that would happen?

I mean, she's...

Oh.

And this is blood evidence, not.

I don't know.

I honestly don't know.

Okay.

So as you'd guess, most all them swabs are Shelly's.

She was the main bleeder.

She was injured in that really severely.

So she's the main bleeder today.

The ones that that weren't hers, the door for example, that wasn't hers.

The vase and some other swabs weren't hers, Fred.

You know,

we've been talking, Fred, for like two and a half hours

and I'm not real sure, you know, if your memory is better today or if your memory was better then, you know.

And there's certain things I wouldn't expect you to remember minute details, you know.

So, I think you're telling me, you know, the truth on the bloods on the door, and

you know, and I think that blood belongs to who we're looking for, Fred.

You know, cool.

What do you think?

I mean, because it's on the door, it's fresh, it's in the proximity of the crime scene,

and it's not the victims.

So I'm thinking that and I, you know, I'm getting that result.

But, you know, when I told you, you know, today we're going to solve this, and I mean that.

You know, we're going to solve it.

I hope so.

Well,

we are, Fred.

You know, there's two important dates in this case.

October 20th, 1985, and August 17th, 2016, today.

So

first important date is when it happened.

Second important date is the day that we we figure out who did it.

And so I want to talk to you about that.

I need to talk to you about,

you know, why this happened,

why you were there.

I want to hear the story.

I don't care how bad it looks, how bad it sounds.

Fred, your blood.

Your blood's at the crime scene, sir.

There ain't no goddamn way that I did it.

How the blood there got on the door.

I honestly can't answer that.

I know Fred.

But I don't kill people.

There is no way in God's green earth that I fucking did this.

Fred, I'm not saying you kill people.

I'm saying you did this one event.

No, this is the end of it.

Absolutely not.

It is impossible.

It's not impossible.

I was at the club.

I had a few beers.

I went to Dave's house.

I laid down on the couch.

I heard noise outside.

I opened the door.

I looked out, there was nothing there.

I will admit that I had been drinking,

but no, no,

absolutely fucking not.

I know you're telling me that, but the evidence doesn't match that.

Okay?

I'm not here because I'm guessing.

Absolutely impossible.

It's not impossible.

I told you the goal today is for the closure.

Alright.

I didn't do it.

There's nothing to close.

There is.

No.

Your boot prints are in the blood.

What?

Your bootprints are in the blood.

That is correct.

Okay.

I walked down there.

I admit that.

I showed you the pictures.

I showed you your bootprints are in the blood.

And you said, yep, that's mine.

That would be 100% a Corfan boot.

What I didn't tell you, Fred, is there's blood on top of that boot mark.

When you get blood on top of that boot mark, that tells us a lot of stuff.

That tells us that you walked in the blood.

later on blood was transposed on top of that heel impression

that's exactly what happened i the blood in that heel impression comes back to shelly wyler and i was the only one wearing tour fam at the time of this murder at this scene yeah

that's what you told me

I did watch down there.

I did look at it.

I didn't pay any attention to the blood.

I went around the corner in the back.

I know.

I didn't do it.

All stuff you didn't mention in 1985.

All stuff you did not mention in 1985.

I didn't do it.

I understand you're saying that.

I didn't do it.

I get it.

You know, in 1985, you gave a pretty detailed statement on how blood would end up in the crime scene shaded find it.

The blood spatter expert that looked at the door blood

also agrees.

Your story that you gave in 1985 about how the blood got there, absolutely impossible.

A farce.

A lie.

Didn't happen that way.

Unfortunately, the officers in 1985 believed you.

They believed you because they were friends with you.

No, I didn't do it.

You cannot make something happen that didn't happen.

Chris, you can't convince me you didn't do it.

Because I'm finding that out.

I mean, that's rather obvious.

I'm objective.

I can only go off what the evidence shows.

Unlike you, that's what I'm relying on.

I'm relying upon the evidence.

I understand.

The evidence does not lie.

No.

The evidence points directly to you.

That is what it is.

I didn't do it.

You were in her apartment.

You were in her bedroom.

Absolutely not.

No.

Absolutely not.

Fred, we got blood in the bedroom, too.

Blood on the carpet in the bedroom.

You were in her fucking house, dude.

No.

Never, ever.

Yeah, I'm sorry, that is a lie.

No.

Fred, you're lying to me.

No.

You were just straight lying.

That, there's her blood, again on her carpet next to her bed and a bloody water bed by the way friend this started in the bedroom no

where did it start then it didn't i did not

do it i wasn't there

i was in apartment number fucking three asleep

maybe for a while but you weren't asleep the whole time well then it woke me up when i heard voices but beyond that I was in that apartment zonked out

out cold.

I didn't do it.

I have absolutely

emphatically

no

memory of

doing something that heinous.

If I did have a memory of it, it would bug me to death.

I have no memory of it.

If I did do it and I did not do it, I know, and that is common.

And I'm with you on that.

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For a while in this interview between Detective Terry and Fred Lamb, the main theme was Terry accusing, Fred denying, almost in a loop.

But now, almost four hours in, there was a little crack.

It's subtle, but it's there.

Fred had gone from saying, I didn't do it, to

I don't remember doing it.

This isn't just going to end.

Because even if I die, if I drop this case and I go get hit by a car or die, don't do that.

There's going to be another detective that's going to pick this up.

That's the way it works nowadays, Fred.

No, understand.

Everybody, Fred, knows what happened.

It's just time to hear it from you.

I don't have anything.

I don't.

If I did do it, I don't remember.

Fine.

Fine.

I can live with that.

I live with that.

You did it, but you don't remember.

I live with that.

I can go to bed tonight, at least knowing that.

You are making progress.

You're making progress.

You're making progress.

I don't know where we go from here.

I don't know what the, if there is a defense mechanism, how to turn it the fuck off.

Okay.

I have not a clue.

Well, maybe I'm fucking screwy as people think I am.

I don't know.

Well, I can tell you something.

Maybe I'm a half a bubble off and just don't know it.

Right now, you got to help Fred.

You got to, Mary.

There's nothing to help.

I didn't do it.

Fred,

today is the day to help, Fred.

This is it.

I didn't do it.

You did, Fred.

I didn't do it.

You did, by

all aspects.

Do it.

Fred.

I'm sorry.

I'm not trying to make your life difficult.

It's not my life.

You're making it difficult.

Do it.

It's not my life.

You're making difficult.

What's going to be difficult, Fred, is where we go after here.

And they're going to hear a story.

Oh, yeah.

And they're going to hear it either from me or from you.

Well, I'll tell them.

You're going to tell them that you didn't do it.

And I don't know why.

I have no idea.

No, I'm going to cheat.

I'm going to say that the evidence points out that I did it.

The evidence points that you did it.

Exactly.

The evidence points that you did it.

So when you tell a rational person

that the evidence points that you did it, but you don't remember,

that's not you taking responsibility.

I don't.

I'm telling you, I don't remember.

I didn't do it.

Well, don't remember remember is different than didn't do it.

I understand that.

Okay.

If you're worried about the repercussion, which I think you are, and that's why you don't want to tell me.

I wouldn't be.

I know.

But the repercussion is there.

It's already there.

Yeah.

It's going to happen.

Thing is, it's the character of the man, Fred.

I can't remember if I did anything.

I'm being...

You saw it with these two.

I'm honest with you.

I don't remember if I did anything.

So how am I going to explain this to the people that you love?

How am I going to explain this?

To my wife?

Yeah.

I'll explain it to her.

You're going to explain that.

All the evidence, the DNA and everything, points to the fact that I did it.

I cannot refute that evidence.

I mean, it's pretty cut and dried when you get down.

Blood type is shaky, but but DNA is almost an absolute.

But to my mind, I didn't do it.

You're obviously in denial, Fred.

Oh, obviously.

You were denying.

I could tell you that.

I mean, if you handed me this case file on somebody else,

I'd be right where you're at right now.

No doubt about it.

because that says emphatically that I did it.

But I don't remember if I did anything

and until I figure out or if I remember it how can I tell you

I did it

because then you're gonna say well what'd you do well I did this I did that that's why I did that and you're gonna find out that the that the wheat doesn't match up that's why you do all of that I don't remember

if I did anything I do not remember

so where do we go from here?

I honestly don't know.

I guess the ball's pretty much in your court.

If the preponderance of the evidence says I did it, it should go to the courts.

And you said the preponderance of the evidence said you did it.

Yeah, I understand that.

What do you want me to tell people?

What the book said.

Fred Lynn did it.

Pretty much bottom line thing.

Right.

It happened.

Bottom line is I killed a girl from the evidence presented, and

where it goes from here is, you know,

up to the county attorney and you and everybody else.

Am I doing the right thing if I arrest you on this crime?

Absolutely, if that's what the book says.

Okay.

Absolutely.

You're a good cop.

Be proud, damn it.

Thank you.

Most people would have looked at it and said, and thrown it back on the shelf.

Well

I am no

I'm

not a loss for words for that because I

that's not what I'm supposed to say.

No, it's just under the circumstances

it's

quite a compliment and I'm it's a beautiful compliment and you deserve it.

Thank you.

You know now if you want me to jump up and down and say you dirty rotten crew me down.

Sometimes that makes me feel better about my job.

I don't I'm gonna be honest with you, Fred.

I'm glad the case is

over.

Yeah.

I've lost so much sleep over this in the last couple of years, and I'm nothing in this equation.

Now we both got to move forward.

Right.

To the best of our abilities.

That's right.

Is there anything else, Fred?

I think right now, oh, fuck would be appropriate.

the interview ended fred called his wife and son and told them that he was being arrested for the wiley murder are you sitting down although he messed up shelly's first name calling her sharon

fred handed over his pen bill fold keys glasses and false teeth just a little baby because i gotta take my teeth out okay he faced the wall and held his hands behind his back

terry cuffed him

then let him out of the room okay now i do have walking issues so i'll try not to fall hold on for sure sure.

I'd watched this interview on my laptop in an Airbnb near my mom's house in Arizona.

She and I hung out there, mostly to avoid her 18 cats.

Don't ask.

After the video ended, I closed my computer.

I'd heard from so many people that Fred Lamb was guilty, that this interrogation more or less confirmed it.

But I saw something else playing out.

Terry was implying the existence of way more evidence than there was in the file I'd read.

The blood at the scene, the boot print.

Fred seemed to take Terry's word for all of it, believing that the police wouldn't lie to him.

He was, after all, one of them.

Terry's affidavit of probable cause included several quotes from Fred.

Quote, Fred Lamb did it.

Dot, dot, dot.

I'm not denying that I did it.

And quote, bottom line is, I killed a girl.

I'd been listening for them the whole time.

And sure, they were there.

But they weren't exactly in context.

More like sentence fragments rearranged to appear more damning than they were.

If I'd done that in a news story, I'd be out of a job.

The case had pretty much taken over the Airbnb living room at this point.

Old police reports and Laramie yearbooks surrounded me.

My mom had, of course, not read any of the case file that I had, didn't have the background on the evidence.

But she had caught snippets of the interrogation as it played from my computer.

Enough, at least, to offer a verdict to me, unprompted.

Fred seemed pretty guilty to her.