Kelsey's Story

Journalism students from the University of Oklahoma listened eagerly to special guests Cherokee Ballard and Britten Follett in Gaylord college of Journalism and Mass Communication Wednesday. The two ex-television reporters spoke with heavy hearts about Kelsey Briggs, the abused toddler who was the subject of the book they co-wrote. They also described their personal television careers to the students and the nature of the business.

Ballard and Follett’s book, Who Killed Kelsey?, is aimed to tell Kelsey’s story and fight child abuse in the state of Oklahoma. The title is such because it has yet to be proven without doubt who the murderer was. However, Ballard and Follett have their suspicions.

Kelsey was an abused two-year-old child who was murdered in October 2005. During the two years of her life, she had frequent scrapes and bruises throughout her body and suffered from a broken collar bone and two broken legs. She was killed from being hit in the stomach. Her mother, Raye Dawn Smith, and her step-father, Michael Porter, were both home at the time of the incident. Her father was overseas serving in the military.

Ballard and Follett are both prestigious names in the television reporting industry. Ballard has spent 25 years in television news and has worked as a professor of Journalism at the University of Oklahoma. She won the Staff Peabody Award and a Regional Emmy Award for her work covering the Oklahoma City Bombing, and was named Oklahoma’s 2008 Woman of the Year.

Follett travels across the country telling Kelsey’s story to students, in addition to the book. She recently entered the corporate world after spending five years as a news reporter for KOKH Fox 25. She is the winner of an Emmy and Edward R. Murrow award, as well as six state and regional broadcasting awards.
Ballard and Follett have set up a website, www.whokilledkelsey.com, which provides biographies on themselves and Kelsey, and presents the opportunity to purchase the book and other wkk? merchandise.