Serial, New York Times take on 'Coldest Case in Laramie' in new podcast

After more than 37 years, the coldest case in Laramie in now under a national microscope.

The murder of Shelli Wiley — a 22-year-old University of Wyoming student who was found stabbed in her burning Laramie apartment on Oct. 20, 1985 — is the subject of a new podcast by Serial Productions and The New York Times.

Aptly named "The Coldest Case in Laramie," the podcast follows New York Times investigative reporter Kim Barker as she revisits the decades-old case. Barker was a sophomore in high school in Laramie at the time of Wiley's murder.

In the podcast's early episodes, Barker interviews police, Wiley's family and friends, witnesses and various other people tied to the case — including two interview subjects who lived in Fort Collins at the time of the podcast's taping.

Barker's interest in revisiting the case was spurred in 2020 when she learned a former police officer had been arrested in 2016 as a suspect in Wiley's murder and the arson of her apartment, she told the podcast's listeners in its first episode.

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Months after the suspect's arrest, the Albany County attorney dropped the charges, citing a need for more time for additional DNA testing of evidence. Charges against the suspect have not been refiled, according to the New York Times.

Laramie's Assistant Police Chief Robert Terry, who spoke with Barker for her podcast, told the Coloradoan the Serial production has so far resulted in a few "words of advice from folks" — including a plea to try increasingly popular genetic genealogy techniques like those used to catch the Golden State Killer in 2018.

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While the Laramie Police Department is familiar with such techniques — they were one of several agencies to use them in recent years to help identify a serial rapist and murderer who sexually assaulted victims across Wyoming and Utah in the 1990s and early 2000s — Terry said there are no unknown DNA profiles in the Wiley case that could benefit from such testing.

Wiley's case remains the oldest open cold case at the Laramie Police Department, Terry said, noting that any next steps will be determined by the Albany County Attorney's office.

This article originally appeared on Fort Collins Coloradoan: Serial, New York Times take on 'Coldest Case in Laramie' in podcast