KING 5 Investigative Reporter

Chris is a KING 5 investigative reporter who enjoys digging beneath the surface to uncover important stories.

His investigations have led to several new laws in Washington that: keep guns out of the hands of felons and domestic abusers, target businesses that are cheating the welfare system, uncover corruption at state-licensed drug and alcohol treatment centers, improve monitoring of offenders serving sentences on home detention.

His stories have changed public policy: at the state’s fraud investigation unit; in the way police departments trace guns used in crimes; in the monitoring of offenders on King County’s work program; in the liberal use of “half-days” at Washington schools; to reduce the use of an automated bail system that released suspects accused in serious crimes; by revealing how Seattle’s worst parking violators were going unpunished; by revealing public employees cashing in on unneeded overtime; and improved inspections of commercial trucks on Washington roadways.

His stories led to criminal charges against people who rolled back car odometers, bilked the food stamp program, a man who posed as a doctor to cash in on the flu epidemic with a fly-by-night clinic, and a home-based daycare resident who sexually abused young clients.

He also spent many years covering the case of notorious skyjacker DB Cooper.

In addition to several regional Emmy and Murrow Awards for investigative reporting, Ingalls won a Peabody Award for outstanding television in 2011, the national Emmy Award for investigative reporting by a local TV station in 2013, and a national Sigma Delta Chi Award from the Society of Professional Journalists.

He arrived at KING 5 in 1994, after launching a broadcast career in radio in Dayton, Ohio. While a student at Wright State University, he began working at WHIO radio before moving to the television side of WHIO’s newsroom. He covered the crime and courts beat for five years in Dayton.

At KING 5, he has worked the federal criminal justice beat since the days after 9/11.