A respected woman steals money from a fund for poor children. A co-worker finds out. The woman stabs her co-worker to death. Then the killer commits suicide, leaving unanswered questions about how something so tragic could happen.
That’s the story of Candice Fiore, who police say murdered co-worker Tracey Bagwell and then killed herself after Bagwell learned she had been taking money from the Department of Families and Children in an embezzlement scheme.
The case received extraordinary coverage in Florida Today, more than any other story in recent memory. It appeared on the front page 12 of 13 days from June 7-19, and on six of those days it was the paper’s lead story with the biggest headline.
That has drawn letters from some readers who have criticized the paper for what they feel was a lack of sensitivity for the families of the deceased, and their belief that too much attention was given to Fiore and not her victim.
Typical was a letter from Kim Peters of Merritt Island, who said this about the paper’s decision to post the 911 police tapes of Fiore’s suicide on our Web site, in which her son and husband desperately tried to save her:
“Printing those transcripts and every detail of this awful story like some sports play-by-play has nothing to do with the public’s right to know or need to know. It does, however, have everything to do with sensationalistic journalism.”
Such charges prompted me to talk to the two editors who made many of the decisions in our coverage – Assistant Managing Editor Kristi Bowden and Metro Editor Matt Reed.
During our discussions, it became clear they struggled with unknowns and worried about how the coverage was affecting the aggrieved as the story unfolded. They also indicated having second thoughts about posting the 911 tapes.
“It’s not hard to see yourself in a piece of this story, and one of the hardest things for me was to keep pressing to find out what happened, and doing that without being invasive was tricky,” says Reed.
Says Bowden: “This is one of the most difficult stories I’ve ever covered.”
It started with the discovery of Bagwell’s body in a car outside a Merritt Island church. She had been stabbed 30 times. Initially, that raised fears that a murderer may have been roaming the streets, striking at random – or targeting DCF workers.
“In the beginning, we had no idea what we were dealing with except that we had a brutal murder,” says Bowden. “Obviously, we felt it was critical that we stay on top of the story and keep the public informed.”
The uncertainties grew when Fiore’s body was found after she had been questioned by police. While that raised the possibility of a murder-suicide, there was no proof, just more questions.
“No one knew if she had been pushed, jumped or fell,” says Bowden. “We wondered if it was a murder-suicide or if there was someone out there killing people.”
Meanwhile, the situation prompted the need for information on who Fiore and Bagwell were, which caused more difficulties. Fiore was active in her Cocoa Beach church, and it proved easy to get people to talk about her life, including her husband.
That was not the case with Bagwell. It was difficult to locate people who knew her, and distraught co-workers didn’t want to talk. As a result, editors found themselves “one day telling Fiore’s story and not Bagwell’s, and we were very concerned about it,” says Bowden.
“Unfortunately, that can cause a misperception by the public about how sensitive we are to the (Bagwell) family,” she says.
Editors also faced the decision of whether to run the 911 tapes. They opted to post them on the Web site because of their length. Now, Reed and Bowden are not sure it was the right thing to do.
“My opinion is that if there is news in those tapes, then I would err on the side of disclosing them,” says Reed. “In this case, in hindsight, I don’t know if that powerful news was there.”
Adds Bowden: “It could be argued that it didn’t add a lot to the news coverage, and that could cause us to think twice the next time.”
Finally, woven through all these elements was the core of the story – Fiore’s bilking at least $10,000 from the DCF fund that was the motive for the murder. That necessitated a hard look at the public agency, how it ran the fund and if other abuses occurred.
“That required us to be on our toes as watchdogs. There were things we needed to look into about what might be happening inside that organization that the public needed to know,” says Bowden.
Says Reed: “That’s been our motivation for keeping the story in the paper, not to beat people over the head with it or to get mileage out of it.”
