The two-person staff of the island newspaper maintain a longstanding fascination with the case, and twenty-five years later, use the mysterious tale to ply the friendship and test the investigative mettle of a post-graduate intern rookie reporter.

Opening in medias res as the news staff of The Weekly Islander pays for lunch at a restaurant, editor Dave Bowie and founder Vince Teague test young intern Stephanie McCann's powers of deduction regarding their unorthodox tipping procedure.

They discuss some local unsolved crimes and oddities, which have gained circulation in mainland newspapers as far away as Boston during the traditional Halloween season interest in such tales.

The friendly assessment becomes more intense as the elderly island natives and Stephanie return to the office, and she asks if the veteran reporters have "ever come across a real unexplained mystery".

More than a year later, thanks to a sharp-eyed rookie spotting an out-of-state cigarette tax stamp among the man's personal effects, the John Doe becomes known as The Colorado Kid.

In the Weekly Islander offices, the three friends, old and new, ferret out all the answers they can from the facts of the 25-year-old investigation, then speculate on what might have happened, and meditate on the nature of true mysteries.

Though Dave and Vince shared other unsolved crimes and oddities with outsiders, they have kept the Colorado Kid a secret due to their belief that a big-town newspaper or glossy travel magazine would tell the story inaccurately by wanting to provide resolution to the account that stubbornly defied a clean culmination.

[9] Scott Shepherd served as showrunner, with Lloyd Segan and Shawn Piller executive producing, together with the writers of the series pilot, Sam Ernst and Jim Dunn.