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Steven Spingola is a former Milwaukee Police Department (MPD) homicide detective and lieutenant of detectives, an investigative crime journalist, published author, and criminal justice instructor.

During his career with the MPD, Spingola spent almost 15 years chasing down cold-blooded killers. Known in law enforcement circles as the sleuth with the proof, he developed a local and national reputation as a top-notch, highly qualified investigator. In fact, Spingola caught some of the city’s higher profile cases, including two strangulation deaths linked to the infamous North Side Strangler and the disappearance of a seven-year-old girl, Alexis Patterson.

Upon retiring from the MPD, Spingola became a fraud investigator for a prominent Wisconsin financial institution. In 2009, he initiated a review that resulted in the arrest and prosecution of a local attorney who defrauded his clients and other financial institutions of $2.5 million in a check-kiting scheme. The accused attorney, while out on bail, allegedly robbed a bank in Wales, Wisconsin.

But it was in retirement that Spingola became an aggressive advocate for victims of violent crimes. In 2009, he started the Spingola Files (SF)—a Web site that heightens the profile of unsolved homicide investigations and monitors the activities of organized crime.

To raise the necessary funds to dig deeper and take his team of SF investigative journalist on the road, the former detective sells Spingola Files polo shirts and publishes true crime magazine articles.

The Killer in Our Midst: the Case of Milwaukee’s North Side Strangler details Spingola’s investigative role in the deaths of Florence McCormick and Sheila Farrior. DNA profiles linked both slayings, as well as at least four others, to a yet identified serial killer. Three months after Spingola published The Killer in Our Midst, police arrested Walter Ellis, a north side Milwaukee man. The Milwaukee County District Attorney’s office later charged Ellis with the murders of six women with ties to prostitution and/or crack cocaine addiction.

After Ellis was charged, former Assistant U.S. Attorney and WTMJ-AM 620 talk Jeff Wagner described Spingola’s profile—outlined in The Killer in Our Midst—“eerily accurate.”

In June 2010, after reading several posts on SF’s Web site, the families of Colonial Parkway murder victims asked Spingola to conduct an independent, journalistic inquiry into the deaths of three couples and the disappearance of another that occurred near Yorktown, Virginia from 1986 to 1989. During this visit, Spingola and his investigative staff at SF contacted tipsters, interviewed a handful of family members, and spoke with law enforcement veterans familiar with the cluster of murders that puzzled a generation of detectives.

In August 2010, Spingola released a detailed set of findings pertaining to SF’s visit to Virginia in the e-magazine article Predators on the Parkway: a Former Homicide Detective Explores the Colonial Parkway Murders. Spingola claims his SF staff, with the assistance of one of the victim’s family members, likely developed a person of interest in one of the couple-homicides. He also believes the murders of Cathleen Thomas and Rebecca Dowski, whose bodies were discovered inside Thomas’ vehicle on the Colonial Parkway, are directly linked to the deaths of Lollie Winans and Julie Williams. All four women were lesbians, all had their throats viciously slit, and all were found dead in national parks, although National Park Service rangers discovered Winans’ and Williams’ bodies inside the Shenandoah National Park, 180 miles west of the Colonial Parkway.

Through his SF Web site, Spingola recently announced that his team of investigative journalists and other law enforcement veterans would visit an area “traversed by one of America’s most infamous killers” in mid-October.

Steven Spingola is currently an instructor of Criminal Justice Studies at Gateway Technical College. On occasion, media outlets request that Spingola provide the background regarding various aspects of criminal justice, such as the FBI’s ViCAP initiative, the North Side Strangler investigation, and other Wisconsin homicides. . He was recently profiled on Milwaukee Magazine's daily buzz report. MZMcBride (talk) 23:10, 12 May 2020 (UTC)