Keegan Kyle

USA TODAY NETWORK-Wisconsin

MADISON - Our “Making a Murderer” quest for state prison documents hit its first barrier on Monday — technology.

Responding to our request for emails referencing the popular Netflix series, state prison officials said we must provide a list of “individuals whose email accounts you want searched.”

“Our search system does not allow us to search all 10,000+ employee email accounts,” Department of Corrections spokeswoman Joy Staab wrote in an email.

This complicates our quest but doesn’t end it.

We hoped the state would release all emails referencing the Netflix series so we and our readers could filter through them for key details. Now, we need to shrink our net and hope that too many big fish don’t slip away.

One obvious place to start is at the top of the organization: prison executives, managers and supervisors. If something important happened, they might’ve heard about it from lower ranks or outside prison walls.

Here is our narrowed list of Department of Corrections officials whose emails we are requesting be searched, under state open records laws, for references to the Netflix series:

Secretary Ed Wall

Deputy Secretary Deirdre Morgan

Asst. Deputy Secretary Don Friske

Jeff Grothman, legislative liaison

Julio R. Barron, chief legal counsel

Joy Staab, director of public affairs

Kristi Dietz, director of detention facilities

Steve Wierenga, director of special operations

Jason Smith, director of research and policy unit

Cathy Jess, administrator of adult institutions

Marc Clements, asst. administrator of adult institutions

Jim Schwochert, asst. administrator of adult institutions

The directors of business, health, security, programs and offender classification of adult institutions

The warden and deputy warden of each maximum security adult institution

Think we missed someone important? Get in touch with me by sending an email to kkyle@gannett.com or through my Twitter handle @keegankyle.

More updates to come. If you’re new to this quest, you can read more about what documents we’re seeking and why in this previous post.

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Keegan Kyle is an investigative reporter for USA TODAY NETWORK-Wisconsin.