Dig

We're still following the Stoner case, and we'll bring you an update when we have one. In the meantime, check out this new investigative podcast from KUOW: Seattle, 1999. At Garfield High School, Mr. Hudson is a legend. With a thundering voice and imposing stature, Mr. Hudson — or “Tom” as select students call him — teaches biology and leads an elite outdoors program. But when teen reporters at th...

Alleged victims of the Stoners find each other online and band together to demand justice. But they find themselves running up against police and prosecutors who want them to stay quiet.

17-year-old Aryalle Stoner runs away from home and tells the police that her father, Ronnie Stoner, has been sexually abusing her for years. The cursory investigation that follows is representative of a larger issue with child sex abuse investigations in Louisville.

Over the years, two girls and one young woman report Ronnie Stoner for sexual misconduct and rape in a public middle school and high school. But Child Protective Services declines to investigate, and the school district, Jefferson County Public Schools, continues to promote him.

In 2023, 17-year-old Abbie Jones and her family accuse her high school football coach, Donnie Stoner, of child sex abuse. Another Louisville woman, Alexis Crook, says she was abused by Donnie too, and his twin brother Ronnie, when they were coaches at her private Christian school almost 20 years earlier.

They were trusted educators and respected coaches. But in the summer of 2025, twin brothers Ronnie and Donnie Stoner were indicted on more than 50 charges related to child sex abuse allegations. A group of young women say the abuse stretched back nearly two decades. So what took so long? This is the story of those women who say they survived the abuse, took matters into their own hands and are sti...

Hey Dig listeners. It’s been a while, we know. But we’ve been working on some new stories and will be adding them here when they’re ready. Up first, our reporter Jess Clark has been following the Jefferson County Public Schools system for a while — and when the school district’s board of education voted earlier this year to cut bus service for dozens of magnet schools, Jess started talking to fami...

In July 2022, floods killed 45 people and caused more than a billion dollars of damage in eastern Kentucky. Then, the people who were supposed to help clean up actually made things worse for a lot of survivors. There’s big money in disaster recovery. In “Dirty Business,” we investigate the expensive, messy work of cleaning up after 2022’s catastrophic flooding.

So much has changed since Louisville first proclaimed itself a model city for policing reform: the police chief was fired. The city was upended by protests and grief over Breonna Taylor, and David McAtee. But some things are the same: The anger. The frustration. The disconnect between the police and the community. In our season finale, city leadership makes a very familiar set of promises. Could 2...

“Early this morning, we had a critical incident involving one of our officers who was shot and another person at the scene who was killed.” When LMPD Chief Steve Conrad first described what happened in Breonna Taylor’s apartment on March 13, 2020, he did not mention her by name. But the city would soon learn it — then the country, and then the world. What came next demonstrated how far LMPD had fa...

For LMPD to become the police department it claimed to want to be, the department would have to recruit the best of the best, retain experienced officers, and effectively discipline and remove problem one. But LMPD’s disciplinary system makes the latter hard to do. Former and current officers say the job can chew up and spit out people who want to do community policing — harming the most-policed c...

Even as city leaders were making big promises about the model city they claimed Louisville was going to become, they were making decisions that undermined those policing reform goals. In 2016, there were 117 homicides in Louisville — at that point, the most in decades. Police responded with a “People, Places and Narcotics” strategy that targeted some Black neighborhoods with aggressive patrols.

In 2016, the police chief laid out his vision: Louisville was going to become the kind of place where everyone across the city, no matter what neighborhood they lived in, would get the same treatment from the police — policing that’s about your protection, and safety. But that’s not what happened.

Barbecue chef David McAtee, the man they called Yaya, was a staple at 26th and Broadway in Louisville’s predominately Black West End. He was a friend to everyone who stopped by for a meal — including many police officers. For years, Louisville had claimed to be building bridges between police and Black communities. Yaya was one of those bridges. Here’s what happened to him, and how.

Louisville, Ky., the city now known for the police killing of Breonna Taylor, once made ambitious promises to transform its police department and mend its relationship with the Black community. Just five years before they killed Breonna Taylor in her home, Louisville considered itself a model city for police reform. In a joint KyCIR/Newsy investigation, insiders and documents reveal the systemic b...

Jen Sainato had been waiting for this day for a long time. She’d woken up early, put on her black striped suit, and drove five hours to attend the Louisville Metro Council’s public safety committee meeting. The council had called the police to answer questions about their handling of rape cases, in the wake of our story about Jen’s case. When Jen walked into the council chamber, the police were al...

It’s been two months since we released the first season of Dig. And a lot has changed: city leaders are calling the police department to account, and there have been some changes in Jen Sainato’s rape case that we did not see coming. Visit kydig.org and donate to support this and future seasons of Dig.

Episode 4: In the final episode of this investigation, we learn more about Jen Sainato’s rape case - why it was closed, and how much evidence the police really had against the man she says raped her. (Note: This episode includes description of a rape and injuries sustained from a rape.) Donate to support this and future seasons of Dig.

Episode 3: Louisville officials say rape cases are hard to prosecute. They are not wrong. But we talked with police, prosecutors and experts from around the country who told us it’s not impossible — you just have to be willing to lose a few trials. (Note: This episode includes a series of brief descriptions of sexual violence from courtroom recordings throughout the 14th and 15th minutes, and agai...

Episode 2: Jen Sainato reported a rape to Louisville police in January 2018. In this episode, we hear about her attempts over the next two years to follow up on her case. And we ask LMPD why cases like Jen’s seem to be taken to the prosecutor’s office so early - sometimes before suspects have even been interviewed. (Note: This episode includes brief descriptions of multiple rape reports.) Donate t...

Episode 1: Jen Sainato reported a rape to Louisville police in January 2018. She didn’t feel like they believed her. Jen’s case puts a spotlight on police response to rapes, the prosecutors’ unusual role in rape cases here in Louisville, and how it feels to the people who report. (Note: There are descriptions of a rape, and audio from a police body camera on the scene of a rape investigation, thro...

A woman told Louisville police she was raped in January 2018. She expected them to quickly try to arrest the suspect. But an officer on the scene that night didn’t seem to believe her. The detectives weren’t convinced that a crime occurred. And a prosecutor rejected the case well before an arrest was even under consideration. In the first season of Dig, a new podcast from the Kentucky Center for I...