Katie Moore had the honor of accepting a national award from the National Academy of Television Arts & Sciences in September 2023 in the category of Best Local Investigative Reporting for her series of stories titled, “The Man Behind the Warehouse.” As Hurricane Ida slowly tore a path up across Southeast Louisiana, 873 nursing home residents suffered in a complex of warehouses that the owner claimed were equipped to serve as a safe haven for them. Katie dug deep into who made the decision to house them in the facility and first exposed the payment scheme that would ultimately result in a federal charges against the nursing homes’ owner for the misuse of Medicare funds.
Watch Part One: The Timeline of How Conditions Spiraled into Squalor
Watch Part Two: Who Approved the Warehouse as an Evacuation Site
Watch Part Three: How the Owner Made Big Federal Money Off of the Warehouse
The murder of a local fire chief’s wife has captured national headlines, in part, because some investigators suspected she had committed suicide and burned down her home around herself. But Katie found problems with the investigation that may ultimately let her killer get away with murder. Katie’s investigative series launched on television and on digital platforms included a deep dive into how that investigation went wrong. You can see that work by clicking here. Katie’s investigation didn’t end with the airing of the series and the launch of the digital versions. She put together a documentary special titled “Mystery in Ashes” that took home several major journalism awards. The series also garnered some of the highest traffic not only on WWLTV.com, but overall content views for parent company TEGNA.
Watch Mystery In Ashes the Emmy Award-wining documentary special.
The interest in the story was so great that Moore worked with a team of producers at TEGNA-owned podcasting company Vault Studios to produce a multi-part podcast series on the case. It was a huge second-season launch of the hit podcast “Bardstown” in the Apple Store. Listen to Katie’s podcast about the case, “Beyond Bardstown: Lacombe” here. Just pull up Season 2 on the drop-down menu.
When the COVID-19 pandemic hit, the Louisiana Department of Health stopped releasing the names of nursing homes where clusters of cases had been discovered, leaving residents and their families in the dark. Using data from Louisiana coroners, Katie uncovered where some of those clusters were and informed the public so family members could make informed choices about their loved ones’ care. She later wanted to know how the virus was spreading so quickly through the state’s nursing homes, so she dug deep into the Louisiana home with greatest number of deaths.
Watch & read some of Standard of Care, Katie’s Emmy Award-winning investigative series.
Find a full YouTube Playlist of Standard of Care featuring Katie’s in-depth video pieces.
A top building official in the metro New Orleans area was caught having his inspectors sign off on work at home construction projects around the area and Katie first exposed the problem. But then, relying on sources and hundreds of public records, she discovered that same official allowed the city’s new billion-dollar airport terminal to be built without first passing special life-safety inspections in violation of the International Building Code.
Watch Hidden Dangers Part One: Building inspections done with little-to-no oversight
Watch Hidden Dangers Part Two: inside the billion-dollar airport construction project.
Katie’s investigative reporting has led to a number of federal investigations and convictions of powerful Louisianians. In 2013, she began a deep dive that stretched into 2021 involving a local sheriff, one of the most powerful in the state. It began as a probe into sweetheart deals given to two privately-owned work release prison programs and ended with the sheriff convicted of sex crimes that stretched over decades.
You’ll find a full list of Katie’s investigative reports on former Sheriff Jack Strain by visiting the website here.
A link to a video synopsis of the Jack Strain Sheriff’s Secrets investigation is embedded in the photo above.
See a sample of one of Katie’s recent newscasts on the anchor desk here.
Katie Moore 