The first mainstream US print media outlet to cover the matter was the "Chicago Tribune", whose Southwest Bureau Chief, Howard Witt, wrote a piece covering the story on May 20. Witt had received a summary of the situation from Alan Bean, a Texas minister who had founded the advocacy group Friends of Justice. The group sent its document to other reporters and bloggers. In it Bean demanded that outside authorities, not those in LaSalle Parish, deal with the case, and that no incarceration of the defendants occur. Britain's "The Observer" also featured an article on the case on May 20.