DaytonDailyNews.com

Special reports

Gangs in Dayton

Police officials in Dayton have long denied that gangs are a problem here. Whenever the subject came up, there was a quick denial, as if Dayton was shielded from the types of activities happening in other cities. That's changing. Thanks to a federal grant, police are building databases about local gangs, tracking their activities and cataloging information about members. Perhaps more importantly, they are talking openly about their attempts to stop the cycle of what gangs do: lure young people, carve out turf, engage in violent crime. Originally published February 2008

Martyr of the Amazon: Sister Dorothy Stang

Dayton Daily News columnist Mary McCarty and staff photographer Lisa Powell have been chronicling the life of Dorothy Stang for more than two years. For Martyr of the Amazon, the three-part series on Stang's life, McCarty and Powell traveled to Brazil and to the area of the Amazon where Stang is revered as an almost mythic figure. Originally published August 2007

Bluffton University Bus Crash

When a charter bus carrying the Bluffton University baseball team plunged 30 feet off an Atlanta overpass, the players and coaches plunged into the nation's consciousness. Five players, the bus driver and his wife died from their injuries. We look at the crash and how it changed so many lives so quickly. Originally published July 2007

The cost of death

We explore the death care business — its prices, practices and Ohio's laws governing the industry. Includes behind-the-scenes video from funeral homes and crematoria and a comparison of funeral prices at Dayton-area funeral homes. Originally published June 2007

Ohio's Nuclear Legacy

For nearly five decades the government quietly enriched uranium at the Portsmouth Gaseous Diffusion Plant near Piketon, first for bombs, then nuclear reactors. It stood as a proud monument to Ohio's nuclear legacy. This project reports on the ugly truth of that legacy. Originally published November 2006

Innocence Betrayed

Reporters Laura A. Bischoff and Mary McCarty spent seven months on Innocence Betrayed. They conducted extensive interviews with members of the Elkins family, police, prosecutors, attorneys, investigators and officials in the Ohio Attorney General's office. Innocence Betrayed is a story of a grievous miscarriage of justice and one woman's fight to set it right. Originally published August 2006

Lethal Protection

In the project Lethal Protection we report on the safety of armored Humvee vehicles. Congress has spent tens of millions of dollars to armor Humvees in Iraq. The steel armor shields soldiers from harm but also makes the vehicles more difficult to control and more likely to roll over. Dozens of soldiers have died in those accidents. Originally published June 2006

Casualties of Peace

The Dayton Daily News spent 20 months examining thousands of records on assaults on Peace Corps volunteers occurring around the world during the past four decades. Reporters interviewed more than 500 people in 11 countries and filed more than 75 Freedom of Information Act requests and appeals. The examination found that young Americans — many just out of college and the majority of them women — are put in danger by fundamental practices of the Peace Corps that were unchanged for decades. Originally published October 2003

Dayton's WWII Enigma code breakers

The breaking of Germany's World War II 'Enigma' code is widely known today. But there's an untold story: How NCR engineers in Dayton, led by Oakwood resident Joe Desch, worked in secret to develop the machines that helped break the code. Originally published February 2001