Deep reporting on a failed KKK murder plot reveals white supremacists…

Years in the making, this richly rendered story of an undercover investigation into klansmen corrections officers hooked readers and made an impact.

Some stories just stick with a journalist.

For AP investigative reporter Jason Dearen, a sparse 2015 announcement — three current or former Florida prison guards, determined by the FBI to be Ku Klux Klansmen, had been arrested for plotting a former inmate’s murder — sparked a yearslong effort to find out more.

The result was an innovative all-formats package in which Dearen and visual journalist David Goldman, working with producers Marshall Ritzel, Samantha Shotzbarger and Peter Hamlin, illuminated a festering problem of white supremacy in law enforcement. With cases of racial injustice in policing drawing scrutiny and with the participation of numerous officers in the Jan. 6 riots, the issue has taken on particular relevance.

Dearen’s big break came last summer when trial transcripts revealed an FBI informant was the star witness against the KKK members, his secret recordings providing a rare, detailed look at the inner workings of a modern klan cell and a domestic terrorism probe. AP’s request for the informant’s audio and video recordings went unanswered for months, but when they finally arrived, Dearen knew he had struck gold. And there was more: A partially redacted transcript revealed the informant’s name, and buried in one of the klansmen’s appeals Dearen found the previously unreleased name of the targeted ex-inmate, scoring the first interview with the man about his ordeal in Palatka, Florida.

Dearen and Goldman then retraced the klansmen’s steps through Palatka. Ritzel would edit Goldman’s footage into a gripping video while Shotzbarger and Hamlin created a riveting online presentation embedded with the incriminating recordings and remarkable visuals.

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A Confederate statue stands outside the Putnam County Courthouse in Palatka, Fla., April 13, 2021. Palatka was the home of former inmate Warren Williams, the intended target of prison guards, members of the KKK who were bent on revenge.

AP Photo / David Goldman

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A guard tower stands beyond the entrance to the Reception and Medical Center, Florida’s prison hospital where new inmates are processed, in Lake Butler, Fla., April 16, 2021. Two prison guards at the facility, members of the KKK, planned the revenge killing of a former inmate. It’s unknown how many of the center’s corrections officers are white supremacists.

AP Photo / David Goldman

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A sign featuring a pistol barrel pointed at would-be trespassers warns, “There is Nothing Here Worth Dying For” at the former home of Charles Newcomb, in Hawthorne, Fla., April 15, 2021. Newcomb, the local KKK chapter’s leader, known as the Exalted Cyclops, was involved in a 2015 murder plot against a former inmate at the prison where Newcomb once worked as a guard.

AP Photo / David Goldman

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The sun sets between the trees in Hawthorne, Fla., April 15, 2021, along a road that runs from the former home of Charles Newcomb, the local KKK leader, to the Palatka home of Warren Williams, scouted out by Newcomb and accomplices for their kidnap and murder plot.

AP Photo / David Goldman

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Shown on April 15, 2021, railroad tracks meet a dead end street in Palatka, Fla., where Warren Williams lived un 2015, when an FBI probe revealed a murder plot against him by klansmen working as prison guards.

AP Photo / David Goldman

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A KKK “blood oath” signed by Joseph Moore is shown at the Columbia County Courthouse in Lake City, Fla., April 16, 2021. In 2015, a murder plot by other klansmen was in motion, and Moore was enlisted as the hit man. Moore, however, was an FBI informant.

AP Photo / David Goldman

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Latonya Crowley, mother of Warren Williams, stands for a portrait in Palatka, Fla., April 22, 2021. An FBI probe revealed a murder plot against her son by klansmen working as prison guards at the facility where Williams was once an inmate. Crowley says she and her son still live with uncertainty and paranoia, adding, “In the state of mind that he’s in today, I don't see him getting better.” The imminent release of one of the guards and the specter of other klansmen have made it virtually impossible for Williams to move on.

AP Photo / David Goldman

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Pastor Karl Flagg, former mayor, stands for a portrait at the funeral home he runs in Palatka, Fla., April 14, 2021.

AP Photo / David Goldman

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A fisherman walks along a dock on the St. Johns River as the coal-fired Seminole power plant stands in the background, in Palatka, Fla., April 14, 2021. After months in a prison cell, Warren Williams longed to fish the St. Johns again. But unknown to Williams, klansmen had a plan to kidnap him and kill him on the river bank.

AP Photo / David Goldman

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Confederate flags are shown on a monument outside the Putnam County Courthouse in Palatka, Fla., April 15, 2021. Each time he reported to his probation officer, Warren Williams would pass the statue. It, along with the gangly oak trees in the court square, are a painful reminder to some of past lynchings. At one time a Black man in Florida was more at risk of being lynched than in any other state, according to a University of Georgia study of lynching records.

AP Photo / David Goldman

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A mural titled “Bygone Days,” depicting the Antebellum South, decorates a downtown building as a child rushes to cross a street in Palatka, Fla., April 13, 2021.

AP Photo / David Goldman

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Mannequins stand in a window paying tribute to military and public service members along a downtown street in Palatka, Fla., April 13, 2021.

AP Photo / David Goldman

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A sign stands in a vacant storefront window in Palatka, Fla., April 13, 2021. The town, with a population split almost equally between Black and white, had been devastated by the 2008 Great Recession, when there were more shops shuttered than open in the old downtown.

AP Photo / David Goldman

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Worshippers leave a weekday church service in Palatka, Fla., April 14, 2021.

AP Photo / David Goldman

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Customers wait in line at a Dairy Queen on a warm evening in Palatka, Fla., April 14, 2021.

AP Photo / David Goldman

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Spanish moss hangs from a tree along the St. Johns River in Palatka, Fla., April 15, 2021.

AP Photo / David Goldman

The final package raises the question of just how many klansmen work inside the Florida Department of Corrections and points to how little departments and agencies do to root them out.

The piece had immediate impact, with Florida papers featuring it on home pages and front pages. The South Florida Sun-Sentinel’s op-ed read, “Shocking prison murder plot demands full state investigation,” and a Florida lawmaker called for a federal investigation of white supremacy among prison workers. Politico’s Playbook called it a “MUST READ,” and an Esquire magazine column called it “flat-out astonishing.”

A Black prisoner, a hitman, and the Klu Klux Klan are at the center of a 2015 revenge murder plot. Journalist Jason Dearen (@JHDearen) explains the case to @TSWHITLOW on #BNCLive. pic.twitter.com/1W3l5YIAIX
— BNC (@BNCNews) August 4, 2021

The piece found some 360,000 readers on AP News and kept them there for an average 5 minutes, 30 seconds — longer than any other AP story in memory.

For dogged reporting and an immersive all-formats narrative that exposes a salient, timely issue, Dearan, Goldman, Ritzel, Shotzbarger and Hamlin win AP’s Best of the Week award.

Visit AP.org to request a trial subscription to AP's video, photo and text services.

For breaking news, visit apnews.com

Honorable Mentions:

AP delivers standout all-formats coverage of Simone Biles narrative

Will Graves and AP Olympic staff

gave AP exclusive glimpses into the saga that led gymnast Simone Biles to drop out of most of her events.
During the first week of the Olympics, sports writer Graves and national writer Clare Galofaro used source work — contacts in Biles' camp, USA Gymnastics and others — to keep AP ahead of nearly every development through eight APNewsAlerts, including Biles’ shocking decision to leave the team gymnastics competition after one vault. AP had exclusive video of Biles at her hotel for several days as the world waited to find out if she would compete again, and had live shots of her moving around Tokyo and even going shopping at a pet store. AP also delivered world-class photography of her in action and on the sidelines cheering for her teammates.
Graves, AP’s authority on gymnastics, has built a relationship with Biles that precedes the Rio Games and includes U.S. championships, world championships and one-on-one interviews, giving context to the fast-breaking stories coming out of Tokyo. In May, Biles had opened up in a multiformat interview about the pressures that would eventually move her to pull out of most Tokyo Games competition. Graves also produced a comprehensive explainer on “The Twisties,” the disorientation Biles felt as she was airborne, a story Biles herself liked on Twitter.
https://aplink.news/1j6
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https://aplink.video/br6

AP reveals threat of abandoned, leaking oil and gas wells in US

Cathy Bussewitz, Martha Irvine, Eric Gay, Larry Fenn, Francois Duckett, Peter Hamlin, Samantha Shotzbarger and Alyssa Goodman

teamed up in all-formats to highlight the environmental crisis of an estimated 2 million abandoned oil and gas wells in the United States.
Overcoming the reluctance of landowners fearful their property values would decline if they went public, energy and climate reporter Bussewitz found a fourth-generation Texas rancher who described her beloved land as a “swiss cheese of old oil wells that are just falling apart.” Bussewitz shared the byline with national writer and visual journalist Irvine, who shot video of the site where the rancher had moved 600 head of cattle that may have drunk contaminated water, then combined it with drone footage from the ranch, along with historical photos and footage of abandoned wells. Photographer Gay made striking images of that ranch and another where the rancher had to sue the state of Texas to plug orphaned wells.
Data analyst Fenn and digital artist Duckett leveraged that data into interactives, including an exclusive nationwide map that depicted the known orphaned wells in each state, and producers Hamlin and Shotzbarger, with photo editor Goodman, built a powerful presentation on AP News.
https://aplink.news/nr5
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https://interactives.ap.org/em...
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Teamwork across continents as Guinean wrestler fulfills Olympic dream

Gerald Imray, Trisha Thomas, Boubacar Diallo, Youssouf Bah, Alessandra Tarantino, Ricardo DeLuca, Fulvio Paolocci, Andy Drake, Carley Petesch, Jerome Delay, Yesica Fisch, Natalie Castañeda and Janelle Cogan

collaborated across departments and continents to produce the compelling and exclusive all-formats story of one young African woman’s dream to compete in the Olympics.
The AP team had spent weeks following Guinean wrestler Fatoumata Yarie Camara, the only athlete from Guinea to qualify for the Olympics. Camara received only $500 from the government for training but she managed to find a way to train in Rome, where an AP team got behind-the-scenes access while she worked out, got vaccinated, ate pizza and toured the city.
When Camara returned to Guinea, AP spent time with her and her family in one of the capital’s poorest neighborhoods and learned about the sacrifices she and her family had made so she could be an Olympian. But days before the opening ceremony, Guinea withdrew from the Olympics and then — after pressure from the IOC and media coverage from the AP and others — changed its mind.
AP was with her through every development, including her arrival, finally, in Tokyo — and this week as she competed on the Olympic stage. The coordinated effort resulted in a story that scored heavily with readers and viewers.
https://aplink.news/se3
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AP takes a revealing look at fallout for Jan. 6 defendants

Michael Kunzelman

spent weeks gaining the trust of a U.S. Capitol riot defendant, resulting in an exclusive look at how the aftermath of Jan. 6 has affected her and her business.
Kunzelman is an integral part of the AP team across the country reporting on the Capitol riot criminal cases, looking thematic stories beyond the daily court proceedings. He arranged to meet Pauline Bauer after a court hearing in Washington, and after a brief interview she agreed to meet him at her restaurant in Kane, Pennsylvania, a town of fewer than 4,000 residents in a county where nearly three-quarters of voters cast ballots for Trump in November. In Kane he interviewed Bauer and a fellow Capitol riot defendant, the mayor and residents both loyal and hostile to Bauer. Bauer’s arrest and that of a longtime friend have rekindled partisan bickering, mostly on social media some residents say, as many in Kane struggle to comprehend how two of their neighbors could be among the hundreds of Trump loyalists bent on overturning the election that day.
Kunzelman also delivered photos with the piece, which was the second most-read story of the week on AP News, second only to Simone Biles sitting out Olympic competition. https://aplink.news/be9

AP exclusive as fired anti-corruption prosecutor flees Guatemala

Sonia Pérez D.

had spent years cultivating a rapport with Juan Francisco Sandoval, Guatemala’s special prosecutor against corruption, who had won praise from U.S. officials for work that rattled Guatemala’s most powerful citizens, including President Alejandro Giammattei.
Her efforts paid off when Sandoval was abruptly fired, a move that would lead the U.S. to temporarily suspend cooperation with the office of Guatemala’s attorney general. After attending the post-firing news conference, Pérez was ushered into the office of the country’s human rights ombudsman and invited to be the sole journalist to accompany Sandoval in his small convoy of armored SUVs as he fled the country. Across the border in El Salvador, Pérez reported on his comments and took photos and video, agreeing for safety reasons to publish only once he had safely boarded a flight to the United States hours later.
Pérez’s story moved early the next morning and was used by major national and international outlets; a competitive agency didn't report Sandoval's exit until later that day and did so citing the human rights ombudsman.
https://aplink.news/z1e
https://aplink.video/mt3

AP reports rare behind-the-scenes account of ransomware strike

Jake Bleiberg, Eric Tucker and Nathan Ellgren

delivered a rare and compelling multiformat account of what it’s like to experience a ransomware attack, telling the behind-the-scenes story of a 2019 Texas breach that was a harbinger of what has since exploded into a major national security threat.
Reporters Bleiberg and Tucker broke news with their account of the attack on cities and towns by the same gang that two years later would target the world’s largest meat processor. They reviewed thousands of pages of documents obtained through Freedom of Information Act requests to nearly two dozen Texas communities and conducted exhaustive interviews with about 20 current and former officials, seeking to paint a picture of the precise moment government officials learned of the attack and exactly how they responded. They reported previously unknown details of the attacks, revealing that one city had to operate its water system manually and that an Air Force base endured disruptions in its access to a state database that facilitates background checks on visitors.
Ransomware stories are difficult to tell visually, but video journalist Ellgren worked with colleagues to track down material for a widely seen video piece. The package received stellar play in Texas and beyond, with remarkable scores for reader engagement and pageviews.
https://aplink.news/0bb
https://aplink.video/653

Best of the Week — First Winner

Aug. 06, 2021

Deep reporting on a failed KKK murder plot reveals white supremacists working in Florida prison

Featured Honorable Mention

As wells dry up in parched US West, AP reports on residents now without running water

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