Deep reporting on a failed KKK murder plot reveals white supremacists working in Florida prison
A pickup truck with a Confederate-themed sticker is parked outside the Reception and Medical Center, Florida’s prison hospital where new inmates are processed, in Lake Butler, Fla., April 16, 2021. In 2013, at a prison dorm room in the facility, Warren Williams, a Black inmate who suffered from severe anxiety and depression fought and bit Thomas Driver, a white prison guard. When Williams was released a few months later, Driver and two fellow members of the Ku Klux Klan conspired to kill him. The KKK man they enlisted to do the killing was an FBI informant. (AP Photo / David Goldman)
By Jason Dearan, David Goldman, Marshall Ritzel, Samantha Shotzbarger and Peter Hamlin
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.
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
Worshippers leave a weekday church service in Palatka, Fla., April 14, 2021. – AP Photo / David Goldman
Customers wait in line at a Dairy Queen on a warm evening in Palatka, Fla., April 14, 2021. – AP Photo / David Goldman
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.”
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.
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