A living family investigation becoming a documentary
Denial at Every Turn
The Story of Ricky Dingle
A nephew’s living investigation into a case time was supposed to bury—following the paper trail through punishment, delay and geriatric release while fighting to bring Ricky Dingle home without reducing a complicated life to a case number, a headline or a plea for sympathy.
Active reporting
Last updated · October 2026
Dingle Family Archive
A living record
The case is the core.
The relationship is the heartbeat.
This project will hold the record of Ricky Dingle’s case, the continuing effort toward geriatric release and the questions that remain. It will also document what has unfolded between us: two Black men carrying the same last name, learning one another across prison walls.
I have not seen my father since I was five. Through Ricky—my father’s older brother—I have learned more about that family line, about myself and about the weight and possibility of carrying the name Dingle. Somehow, a man inside prison has helped heal something in me outside it.
“This man has been healing me from inside a prison.”
Stephon Dingle
The present chapter
Waiting for a hearing.
Building the record.
Ricky and his legal team are pursuing geriatric release. This project will track that process through filings, correspondence and on-the-record reporting. No legal conclusion will be published ahead of the evidence, and no storytelling decision will be allowed to interfere with his representation.
The first public chapter will explain where the matter stands, what the governing process requires and what remains unresolved. As the reporting grows, this living library will grow with it.
The living case library
Follow the record as it grows.
This page will develop alongside the reporting. Every addition will be dated, sourced and clearly labeled.
01 · Building
The case in five minutes
A plain-language account of what happened, what the record establishes and what remains disputed.
02 · Building
The timeline
The original case, trial, appeals, post-conviction efforts and the current pursuit of geriatric release.
03 · Building
The document room
Selected and carefully redacted court records, filings and primary documents with reporting context.
04 · Building
Ricky’s voice
Recorded conversations and letters that allow Ricky to appear as a whole person—not merely a case.
05 · Continuing
Reporting updates
Dated developments, new records and changes in the legal process—never silent rewrites.
06 · Public record
Methods & corrections
How the work was reported, what remains unknown and how to submit information or request a correction.
Support the reporting
Help me build the record—and the documentary—this story deserves.
Your support helps fund the reporting and documentary work required to pursue the truth: court and public records, legal review, expert consultation, reporting travel, interviews, archival preservation, case-building and the independent production time needed to follow new evidence wherever it leads. You are helping give a complicated life the rigorous public record—and the fair hearing—it deserves.
This is an evolving reporting project. Documented fact, attributed accounts, disputed claims, analysis and unanswered questions will be labeled distinctly. Corrections and substantive updates will be recorded publicly.
