Around the corner from the center is St. Mark’s United Methodist Church, where prisoners in good standing can attend services. They crowded the sanctuary with their babies, partners and other visiting family members as I joined them for prayers one Sunday. The week Ms. Dockery died — the pastor, Tony Brinson, told me — inmates stood up during services to speak of what they had witnessed, many in tears. I interviewed several as we sat in the pews; each was wearing a GPS-tracking ankle monitor.

Other inmates, such as Nini Mora, who used her own money to buy Ms. Dockery Tylenol — some of the only medical care she received during her ordeal — were not eligible for outside privileges. So I interviewed Ms. Mora over Facebook Messenger, asking her to record her thoughts as diary entries and send me the audio clips. I also spoke with Ms. Dockery’s mother, her sisters and her aunt, who all told me of their searing loss.

Eyewitness testimony, I knew, was not enough. So I reached out to the Elkhart Board of Commissioners, which runs corrections in the county. Not once was I allowed to speak with a member; over the months I was working on the article, the board responded solely through a lawyer, Michael DeBoni of the Goshen law firm Yoder, Ainlay, Ulmer & Buckingham.

Typically, a reporter and a representative of a public entity will engage in on-background conversations to answer simple questions of fact, such as: How many inmates are there? And how many guards? But Mr. DeBoni refused to ever get on the phone with me. Nearly every snippet of conversation was conducted through formal legal letters, each delayed by several days.

It was such an unusual correspondence that I have since initiated a freedom of information request to find out how many hours Mr. DeBoni’s firm spent working on responses to my questions and the hourly rate the firm has charged the county. (I may report back when and if that request is fulfilled.)

Nonetheless, little by little, my editor Shaila Dewan and I found that the official picture of what Ms. Dockery endured was emerging. It came via documents I obtained through the Indiana Access to Public Records Act.