The IRE Resource Center is a major research library containing more than 23,250 investigative stories — both print and broadcast. These stories are searchable online or by contacting the Resource Center directly (573-882-3364 or rescntr@ire.org) where a researcher can help you pinpoint what you need. Browse or search the tipsheet section of our library below. Stories are not available for download but can be easily ordered by contacting the Resource Center:
Search results for "Ozarks" ...
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Puppy Pipeline
The Post tracked a puppy mill pipeline stretching from the Ozarks to South Florida, one that brought thousands of sometimes-sick puppies from mass-operations to local pet stores. At least 2,500 puppies were delivered to Palm Beach, Martin and St. Lucie counties from out-of-states breeders in an 11-month period. Roughly one in three of those came from breeders or distributors cited for problems by the U.S. Department of Agriculture, which oversees wholesale dog breeding. Citations varied from keeping animals in too-small and rusting cages with exposed nails or wires, to caked feces, to infestations of roaches and other insects that covered the walls and ceilings of kennels. In dozens of cases, kennel owners averted USDA inspection entirely.
Tags: puppy mill; puppies; USDA; dog breeder; breeding; Department of Agriculture; animal mistreatment
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The Mysterious Death of Janie Ward
This hour-long report is a result of a five-year investigation into the death of a 16-year-old girl 20 years ago in a small town in the Ozarks. It's about two daughters -- one wealthy and popular (a cheerleader and beauty queen); the other poor and self-conscious. It's about two fathers -- one a powerful judge who allegedly shielded his daughter from the law he's sworn to uphold; the other a bail bondsman who is trying to avenge his daughter's death. And it's about one family's fight for justice against what they believe is a corrupt judicial system that closed ranks around the powerful judge to cover-up a murder. When 16-year-old Jamie Ward fell off a 9-inch porch in the woods near Marshall, Ark., on September 9, 1989, her parents refused to blieve that the fall had killed their healthy teenager. Instead, they began to suspect to suspect she was murdered by the judge's daughter. After years of demanding an investigation into her death, an independent medical examiner associated with Parents for Murdered Children exhumed Janie's body a second time for an extremely rare third autopsy. Because the case was 20 years old, most of the files were not digital; rather, the investigation focused on old-fashioned reporting: finding and interviewing eyewitnesses (all of whom had not been reinterviewed since the original investigation); analyzing inconsistencies in the witness statements, double-checking the forensics with independent experts.
Tags: autopsy; unsolved death; forensic science; criminal justice system; reopened cases; Arkansas
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A Perilous Place to Play, Navigate
The Lake of the Ozarks in Missouri is the third-most accident-prone waterway in the U.S., after the Atlantic Ocean and the Colorado river, according to U.S. Coast Guard boating accident data from 1995-2004.
Tags: Lake of the Ozarks; boats; accidents; boating accidents; Coast Guard
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Peril on the water
Missouri has the most alcohol related boating accidents of any state. The authors crunched the numbers, looked for possible reasons for the high rate of accidents, and discussed legal options to encourage less drinking on the lakes.
Tags: U.S. Coast Guard; boats; boating; accidents; intoxication; Lake of the Ozarks; CAR; computer assisted reporting
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Troubled Water
This investigation by reporters at the Columbia Daily Tribune discovers the truth about the dangers of recreational boating at Missouri's Lake of the Ozarks. During the course of the investigation, the Tribune discovered that the Lake of the Ozarks is the third most dangerous body of water in the country, worse than that of the Pacific Coast and Gulf of Mexico.
Tags: Missouri State Water Patrol; Lake of the Ozarks; United States Coast Guard
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Testing the Waters
A News-Leader analysis of 6,700 water quality records from 382 southwest Missouri communities revealed that small providers "are among the state's most frequent violators of laws designed to protect the public health. Most infractions stem from simple failure to test for potentially harmful elements such as bacteria, industrial chemicals and naturally occuring radioactivity." The special report included graphics outling the water treatment process, a timeline of water supply problems in the Ozarks and descriptions of contminants often found in water supplies.
Tags: water treatment; bacteria; Ozarks; Missouri; radioactivity.
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Hero or Huckster?
Bo Gritz, a leader of the Christian Patriot movement, plans to form a "constitutional covenant community" in the Ozarks similar to Almost Heaven, a colony that he founded in Idaho in 1994. He also wants to teach people how to cope with the computer-and-millennium-related chaos that he believes will erupt in the year 2000.
Tags: Y2K; Military; Right wing
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Prospect and Peril
The Tribune deals with lead prospecting in Mark Twain National Forest. Doe Run Co., a mining operation, drilled prospecting holes in 1992 and 1993. Over the past 25 years, nearly 20 companies have drilled more than 200 such holes on national forest land in the Ozarks. Environmental issues are discussed.
Tags: None
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Plauged by Distrust
The reporters investigated Phil Peters. Peters ran the Area Connection, formerly called the Agency on Aging. They found that Peters was stealing from the non-profit, tax supported agency which served low-income elderly in the Ozark Mountains.
Tags: None
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"Lead mining fever in the Ozarks"
Environmentalists reveled early this fall when public pressure forced the MIssouri Conservation Commission to rescind its approval for lead prospecting on public lands within the Ozarks watersheds of southern Missouri. The celbration was short lived, however, as activists now struggle to block efforts, again by Doe Run Mining Co., to do exploratory drilling on 7,970 acres of U.S. Forest Service land north of the pristine Eleven Point River. Missourians have already borne considerable risk as the supplier of approximately 80 percent of the nation's mined lead each year. A state Department of Health study, in results reported in August, found elevated lead blood levels in 17 percent of randomly selected children, ages six months to six years, living in an area knowns as the Old Lead Belt in St. Francois County, about 80 miles south of St. Louis.
Tags: lead mining; lead poisoning; pollutants; Doe Run Company