Craig Stingley had no legal training, no renowned lawyer or civil rights advocate on his side. Yet for 13 years, he refused to accept that the justice system would not hold anyone responsible for the murder of his 16-year-old son Corey.
The quest for justice dominated his life.
He collected police reports, witness statements and other evidence from the deadly Dec. 14, 2012, incident at a Milwaukee-area convenience store. The youth attempted to steal $12 worth of flavored malt drinks from the store before abandoning the items and leaving. That’s when three men tackled him to the ground to hold him for the police.
The medical examiner determined he died of brain injury from asphyxiation after a “violent struggle with several individuals.” Manner of death: homicide.
When prosecutors chose not to charge anyone, Stingley waged his own legal campaign that forced a reconsideration of the case. A ProPublica 2023 survey pieced together a detailed timeline of what happened inside the store, recounted what witnesses saw and examined the backgrounds of the three customers involved in the altercation.
Finally, this week, in an extraordinary turn of events, Stingley will see a measure of accountability. A criminal complaint filed in Milwaukee County Circuit Court on Monday charged the surviving clients — Robert W. Beringer and Jesse R. Cole — with felony murder. The defendants are due to appear in court on Thursday.
Beringer’s attorney, Tony Cotton, outlined the outlines of a deferred prosecution agreement that can lead to charges being dismissed once both men plead guilty or plead no contest. The court could require the men to make a contribution to a charity in Corey Stingley’s honor and perform community service, thereby avoiding prison, according to Cotton and Craig Stingley.
In Wisconsin, felony murder is a special category for incidents in which the commission of a serious crime – in this case, false imprisonment – results in the death of another person. The Dane County Prosecutor’s Office, which is handling the case, declined to comment. Cole’s attorney said his client had no comment. Previously, the three men had argued that their actions were justified, citing self-defense and their need to respond to an emergency.
For Stingley, a key part of the accountability process has already taken place. Last year, as part of a restorative justice program and under the supervision of a retired judge, Stingley and the two men interacted face to face in separate meetings.
There, in an office on a Milwaukee college campus, they confronted the traumatic events that led to Corey Stingley’s death and the still lingering feelings of resentment, grief and pain.
Craig Stingley said he believed that after years of downplaying their role, the men had shown regret and a deeper understanding of what happened. For example, Stingley said, he and Cole expressed their different views on what happened and even reviewed the store’s surveillance video together.
“I have never been able to breathe so clearly and so deeply and feel so free as after that meeting ended,” Stingley said.
Restorative justice programs bring survivors and offenders together – through meetings, letters or community panels – to attempt to deepen understanding, promote healing and discuss how best to repair a wide range of harms. This approach has been used by schools and the juvenile and criminal justice systems, as well as countries grappling with large-scale atrocities.
Situations in which restorative justice and deferred prosecution are used for such serious charges are rare, Cotton said. But, he added, the whole case is rare — from the prosecution’s refusal to file charges at first to the holding of multiple reviews over a decade.
“Our hearts go out to the Stingley family and we believe the restorative justice process allowed all parties to openly express their feelings,” Cotton said. “We are pleased that a fair and just result has been achieved.”
The legal quest
The Milwaukee prosecutor at the time of Corey Stingley’s death, John Chisholm, announced there would be no charges 13 months later, in January 2014. Cole, Beringer and a third man, Maurio Laumann, now deceased, were not guilty because they did not intend to harm or kill the teen and were not trained in proper restraint techniques, Chisholm determined.
Craig Stingley, who is black, and other members of the community protested against the decisionclaiming that the three men – all white – were not good Samaritans but had acted violently to kill a young black man with impunity. “When a person loses their life at the hands of another, it would appear that an ‘attributable’ offense has occurred,” the Milwaukee branch of the NAACP said in a statement at the time.
Looking for a way to reopen the case, Stingley re-examined the evidence, including security video. In a painful exercise, he watched his son’s elimination, by his estimate, hundreds of times, analyzing who did what, frame by frame. What he saw only reinforced his view that his son’s death was unnecessary and his right to due process violated.
Corey Stingley and his father lived just a few blocks from VJ’s Food Mart in West Allis, Wisconsin. That December day, Stingley walked to the back of the store and put six bottles of Smirnoff Ice in his backpack. At the front desk, the teen provided his debit card to pay for an energy drink, but the employee demanded the stolen items. Stingley returned the backpack, walked to the cash register to retrieve his debit card, then turned to walk out.
Cole told police he reached out to stop Stingley and claimed the teen punched him in the face, although that was not evident on the video. The three men caught the youth. During a scuffle, the men tackled Stingley to the ground.
Laumann held Stingley in a chokehold, several witnesses told investigators. ProPublica later discovered that Laumann had been a Marine. His brother told ProPublica that he likely learned how to apply chokeholds as part of his military service decades ago.
Beringer held Stingley by the hair and pressed on the teen’s head, a witness told authorities. Cole helped keep Stingley down. Eventually, Stingley stopped resisting. The police report says Cole thought the teen was “playing with a limp” to get them to loosen their grip.
“Get up, you punk!” Laumann told the motionless teen when a police officer finally arrived, according to a police report. Stingley was foaming at the mouth and had urinated through his clothes. The officer found no pulse. Stingley never regained consciousness and died in hospital two weeks later.
Craig Stingley unsuccessfully sought to meet with Chisholm in 2015 to discuss the lack of charges. “Do not hesitate to seek legal advice in the private sector regarding your constitutional rights,” a Chisholm aide responded to Stingley in an email. “I offer my deepest condolences to you and your family!”
Stingley’s review of the video, however, led to another legal opportunity in 2017, after he informed West Allis police that there was footage showing Laumann with his arm around the teen’s throat. (Laumann had denied putting him in a headlock.) A Racine County prosecutor was appointed to reexamine the evidence. She released no report for three years, until pressed in court, and then concluded that no charges were warranted.
Eventually, Stingley discovered an obscure Wisconsin “John Doe” status. It allows private citizens to ask a judge to determine whether a crime has been committed if a prosecutor refuses to file a criminal complaint.
A former process engineer at an electrical transformer manufacturer, Stingley had no legal training. Yet in November 2020, he filed a 14-page petition with then-Milwaukee County Circuit Court Chief Judge Mary Triggiano. It cited legal authorities and “material facts,” including excerpts from police reports, witness statements and still images from surveillance video. Stingley cited former U.S. Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis and British statesman William Gladstone in the motion: “Justice delayed is justice denied.” »
This led to the July 2022 appointment of Dane County Prosecutor Ismael Ozanne to review the case. But this process has been slowed down by procedural obstacles. Stingley took the delays in stride, saying he was confident Ozanne and his team were treating the matter seriously and acting appropriately.
In 2024, Stingley said, Ozanne’s office informed him that they had found enough evidence to bring charges against Cole and Beringer, but could not guarantee that a jury would return a guilty verdict. Stingley, researching the family’s options, said he inquired about the restorative justice process. The district attorney’s office supported the idea, arranging a meeting between it and the two men under the supervision of the Andrew Center for Restorative Justice, part of the Marquette University Law School in Milwaukee. The program is led by Triggiano, who has retired from the court.
The concept of restorative justice dates back to indigenous cultures, where people would sit down together to discuss conflicts and resolve problems. It emerged in the United States criminal justice systems in the 1970s as a means of providing alternatives to prison and restitution to victims. Elsewhere, it has notably been used to address the consequences of the genocide in Rwanda, where, from 2002, truth forums led to forgiveness and reconciliation.
Stingley, who still has three adult children and four grandchildren, desperately wanted “balance to be restored” to her family. He decided the best course of action was to meet with the men he considered responsible for his son’s death.
The quest for closure
Stingley brought photos of Corey to the restorative justice meeting with Berringer in April.
The goal: to respectfully share their perspectives on the tragedy and how it impacted each of them personally. What was said was neither recorded nor transcribed. It was not to be used in any legal proceedings.
The sessions began with the Stingley family sharing heartfelt stories about Corey as a son, brother, student and friend. They talked about their great bond, Corey’s love for the sport and their struggle to cope with his absence.
When the discussion turned to what happened in the store, Stingley said, Berringer described having only faint memories of the fatal encounter. He remembers a brief struggle and the teen being grabbed by his jacket, not his hair.
Before leaving the meeting, a tearful Beringer told Stingley he was looking for peace, Stingley recalled.
Cotton, Beringer’s attorney, told ProPublica that the incident and legal proceedings have deeply affected his client. “He definitely felt anxiety about it from day one,” Cotton said.
The result, he says: “Insomnia. Horrible anxiety. Fear because he has to go to court.”
Does the resolution reassure Beringer? “I don’t know,” Cotton said, adding that the hope is that the Stingley family finds comfort in the resolution process.
Cole, at a May meeting with Stingley and some of his family, brought a gift: a pair of angel wings on a gold chain with a small “C” charm and several clear reflective orbs. It was accompanied by a handwritten note, saying: “I hope this sun catcher brings a sweet reflection of the love and light of Corey’s memory and that you feel his presence shining on you every day.”
“I told him I appreciated the gesture,” Stingley said.
Cole, according to Stingley, told him he felt something other than the altercation — perhaps a health issue — led to Corey’s disappearance.
Stingley invited Cole to watch the surveillance video together in a second session. As that day approached in July, Stingley considered stepping down. “It was almost like I had to hoist myself out of the car,” he said. But he said he realized he had been preparing for such an event for 13 years: to reach an honest settlement with the men involved.
After watching the video, he and Cole reviewed the death certificate, showing the medical examiner’s findings. Stingley said Cole emphasized that he did not choke Corey, but that he realized what happened in the store caused the teen’s death, not a pre-existing illness. This recognition eased Stingley’s burden.
“I felt like I was reaching a point where I was finally going to get the justice that I was looking for,” Stingley said, “and this is one of the steps I had to take to get there.”
Triggiano commended each of the participants for their courage during the meeting and the Stingley family for “seeking their son’s humanity rather than vengeance.” She said Beringer and Cole “listened carefully, reflected and truly recognized their connection to the events that led to Corey’s death.”
“The conversations were emotional and difficult but deeply human,” she said.
After the loss of his son, Stingley wanted to see all three men imprisoned. But so many years later, justice now seems different. Now Laumann is dead. Beringer is changed by the experience. And Cole is a father eager to protect his own children.
Now, in Stingley’s eyes, prison no longer matters. Rather, criminal charges will serve as a strong signal of responsibility, justice – and a father’s unwavering love.
