#286: Reinvigorate Your True Crime Obsession

It’s hard to separate the true crime genre from the 2014 game-changer that was Serial. The podcast that took the world by storm led to Serial Productions' sale to the New York Times, giving it the right kind of storytelling ammunition to pull off some fantastic investigative reporting.

That reporting firepower comes in the form of New York Times journalist Kim Barker as she covers a cold case from her hometown, Laramie, WY.

The Coldest Case In Laramie has Baker investigating the 1985 murder of her schoolmate Shelli Wiley, something she’s motivated to revisit thanks to a strange break in the case in 2016 and the subtle gnaw of a familiar story.

Despite being exactly what you want from true crime, The Coldest Case In Laramie isn’t immune from the exhaustions of the genre. The meticulous reporting breathes valuable detail into the narrative that stretches across eight episodes, but the sense of having been here before makes the nostalgia seem more familiar than it should.

To be fair, there isn’t really a way to get around that – the necessity for detail, the deliberate pacing, the required impartiality – these things make for a true crime podcast you want to sink your teeth into.

As Baker dives into the depths of the town’s history and as she interviews dozens of locals, we start to fit the pieces of Shelli’s case together with some renewed perspective and, as you’ve been primed to expect, more questions arise.

What we get as a result is an encapsulated example of what makes cold case murders and true crime podcasts so compelling in the first place: there’s always another version of the story to be told if someone’s willing to piece it together.

Have a listen and share what you think.

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