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 "unsolved death" ...
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Maywood Confidential
On the evening of Oct. 23, 2006, as a premature snow fell in parts of the Chicago area, Maywood (Illinois) Police Officer Tom Wood pulled his marked SUV to a dimly lit corner known for drug sales, rolled down his window part of the way and began talking to somebody, likely a person he knew. Within minutes gunfire exploded from the street, ripping through the car and hitting Officer Wood in the head and elsewhere, killing the 37-year-old father of five almost instantly. More than six years later, the murder is still unsolved, and an eerie pall has been cast over the official investigation, and Maywood itself. The nonprofit Better Government Association (BGA) and WFLD-TV/FOX Chicago set out to determine what happened – why Officer Wood was killed and why the official investigation into his death had failed to produce an arrest or criminal charges. In a figurative sense, our findings (which form the basis for our entry) indict not a person, but a culture of corruption and apathy in Maywood that may have contributed to Officer Wood’s death, and certainly played a role in the subsequently botched homicide probe.
Tags: Murder; police officer; corruption; homicide
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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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The Killing Fields
An investigation on murders of women with records of prostitution reviewed hundreds of homicide records and unclassified deaths, showing that more than eighty percent of the murders remain unsolved.
Tags: sex trade; strangling; hooker; trick; DNA; cold case; slaying; brothel; adult entertainment; red light district;
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Who Killed Her Daughter?
"The package of stories focused on the unsolved slaying of four young women within central Virginia that occurred within a seven-month span in 1996."
Tags: forensics; murder; serial killer; Richard Marc Evonitz; slaying; law enforcement; FBI lab; Darrell Rice; innocent; death penalty
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Harvest of Women: The True Story About the Murders of Girls and Women in Juarez, Mexico (1993-2005)
Author Diana Washington Valdez examines the circumstances behind the approximately 470 deaths of girls and women between the years of 1993 and 2005 in the border city of Juarez, Mexico. Her investigation discusses the brutality with which many of the victims were murdered, and the inability of local law enforcement to properly investigate these killings. Various law enforcement authorities undercounted the tally of dead by about 100, tried to blame the crimes on scapegoats, ignored viable suspects and "rejected or minimized information and leads provided by the FBI in El Paso, Texas." Investigations were further hindered by the fact the police and military were involved with the Juarez drug cartel, which "has operations in all the places where similar murders were committed during the past six years." Members of the Mexican government "protected prominent people involved in some of the murders and hid the findings of previous investigations. Therefore, it is unlikely the case will ever be completely solved, and the killers brought to justice.
Tags: Murder; murder of women; brutal murder; mutilated victims; mutilation; rape; drug cartel; government corruption; law enforcement corruption; unsolved murder
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Legacy of Wrongful Convictions
These stories systematically examined every DNA and death penalty exoneration in the country, a total of more than 250 cases in which a crime was left unsolved by an inmates exoneration and release from prison. The series found that, in many cases, searching anew for the real culprit would have been a simple task. Often, however, that simple step was not taken by law enforcement.
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River of Death
After more than 20 years, the officer who headed the investigation into the Green River Killer may see the case closed at last. A look into the investigation and how it may have been solved.
Tags: crime; serial killers; murder; police; detectives; unsolved; green river killer
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York Riots
The York Daily Record looks back at the race riots of 1969 and the two unsolved murders they created -- one a young black woman who made a wrong turn into a white neighborhood, the other a white police officer patrolling the streets in an armored van. In 2001, after digging into the story for a year, authorities charged 9 white men in the death of the black woman, including the city's mayor. Authorities later charged two black men in the death of the police officer. Ineptitude and wrongdoing emerged on every level -- "then and now" -- among prosecutors, police officers, judges, and others.
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Getting away with murder, Truth elusive in old murder, Chief: 1995 murder case will stay open, Shady elements link cases, Elusive businessman had tie to murder victim
The Tribune-Democrat revisits the 1995 murder of Deanna Horner. Six years later, the case remains unsolved, and when columnist Susan Evans re-examined the circumstances surrounding the murder she found some "disturbing" questions which may link Horner's death to a Florida mobster and shady real estate deals.
Tags: unsolved murder; Deanna Horner; Johnston; real estate; mob
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Justice Denied
After the death of an innocent paperboy in a feud between motorcycle gangs, the deaths of seven others followed to protect the killers. Milwaukee Magazine tracks the developments of this unsolved case from 1974 into the present. This investigation examines a series of unsolved murders, allegedly linked to the Outlaws Motorcycle Club, whose "Milwaukee chapter ... gained notoriety during the late 1960s, growing out of the Chicago chapter and establishing a criminal presence as drug traffickers and car thieves." The story describes how a bomb - decorated like a Christmas present and left in the car of the president of a rival motorcycle club - killed an innocent paperboy in 1974. The report details several more "Outlaws murders" in the 1970s and the 1980s. The investigation alleges that the unsolved murders have been acts of retaliation. It reveals that "police say they know the killer," but no one has been prosecuted. The report sheds light on the police investigators' suspicions that "their years of police work were discarded by Waukesha County District Attorney Paul Bucher..."
Tags: police; money and politics; gangs; detectives; drugs; firearms; theft; automobiles; courts; unsolved murder; motorcycle club