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Kentucky Center for Investigative Reporting Wins National Edward R. Murrow Award
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KyCIR and 89.3 WFPL’s “Man With Many Chances” series honored with one of the country’s top broadcast journalism awards.
Kentucky Center for Investigative Reporting (https://kycir.org/series/richard-carley-hooten/)
Fundamental failures throughout the criminal justice system allowed a veteran felon to continue his predatory habits with little intervention. Then a young girl died.
KyCIR and 89.3 WFPL’s “Man With Many Chances” series honored with one of the country’s top broadcast journalism awards.
Richard Carley Hooten, a longtime felon and focus of our “Man With Many Chances” investigative series, will spend the rest of his life behind bars. Hooten, 50, was sentenced today in Clark County Circuit Court, in Southern Indiana, to a term of life in prison without parole, according to the News and Tribune. Hooten pleaded guilty last month to killing 17-year-old Tara Willenborg in March 2013 in her Clarksville apartment. Last year, we examined how fundamental failures throughout the criminal justice system allowed a six-time felon and serial rapist to continue his predatory habits with little intervention
Decisions by prosecutors and judges put him back on the street instead of behind bars, and at the time of Willenborg’s rape and murder, Hooten was free on bond in connection with a felony gun case. For months before the killing, Clark County authorities failed to arrest Hooten, a registered sex offender, on outstanding warrants.
KyCIR’s R.G. Dunlop and 89.3 WFPL were honored today with a regional Edward R. Murrow Award for the “Man With Many Chances” series.
Longtime felon was focus of recent KyCIR investigation into flaws in the court system that allowed him to roam free and eventually kill.
Richard Carley Hooten had two warrants out for his arrest and a wife who ratted him out to police. Yet for six months, he still evaded capture by Clark County authorities.
An investigation by the Kentucky Center for Investigative Reporting found that fundamental failures throughout Indiana’s criminal justice system allowed the veteran criminal to continue his predatory habits with little intervention.