About this project

Officer in Distress is based largely on interviews with West Jordan Police Detective Brent Jex, the family of Officer Ron Wood and Special Agent Michael Minichino, with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives. It includes information from police reports and recordings; ATF field notes; state and federal court records and transcripts; contemporary news accounts and dozens of additional interviews.

Those interviewed included Katie Jex, Lourie Wood, Birgitta Wood, Marlan Wood, Jana White, Judy Linford, Mike Searle, West Jordan Officer Denise Vincent, retired West Jordan Capt. Gary Cox, confidential informant "Droopy," retired FBI Agent Juan Becerra, Stacy Valdes, Kourtney Berge, Clayton Morgan, Shante Johnson, Brian Murdock and West Jordan Police Chief Doug Diamond.

Additional information came from past Salt Lake Tribune reporting as well as the following sources:

• Laura Hancock, "Failure to book teenager probed," Deseret News, Jan. 18, 2003
• "Honor the Fallen: Army Pfc. Matthew M. Martinek," Military Times
• Michael Daly, "The Army Lied About the Hero Who Died Looking for Bowe Bergdahl," The Daily Beast, June 3, 2014
• Eric Schmitt, Helene Cooper and Charlie Savage, "Bowe Bergdahl's Vanishing Before Capture Angered His Unit," The New York Times, June 2, 2014
• McKenzie Romero, "West Valley City police officer has been missing since Tuesday," Deseret News, March 21, 2013
• Tori Rodriguez, "Can Eye Movements Treat Trauma?" Scientific American, Jan. 1, 2013
• Francine Shapiro, "The Role of Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR) Therapy in Medicine: Addressing the Psychological and Physical Symptoms Stemming from Adverse Life Experiences," The Permanente Journal, 2014 Winter
• Kimberly Kindy, Marc Fisher, Julie Tate and Jennifer Jenkins, "A year of reckoning: Police fatally shoot nearly 1,000," The Washington Post, Dec. 26, 2015
• McKenzie Romero, "Veteran Unified police officer, gunman killed in Holladay shootings," Deseret News, Jan. 17, 2016
• Daniel Woodruff, "UDOC: Multiple errors led to release of fugitive who killed Officer Doug Barney," KUTV, Feb. 5, 2016