Sue Spalding, Private Investigator

Sue Spalding, local private investigator, was our guest speaker for our March meeting.

She has been an investigator for seventeen years. Originally she studied Child Psychology but took a criminology course and fell in love with it.

A friend of hers hooked her up with an investigator who was looking for a female operative. He was doing surveillance at a picnic and needed a female presence so he didn’t stand out as an adult male watching children.

When Sue started in this field, the requirements were 90-130 hours of driving surveillance with an affiliated company. Now, in Kentucky, there is an exam a prospective investigator must pass to get a license. Another requirement is to have  a million dollars’ worth of insurance before you start practicing.

Sue does mainly workman’s compensation fraud and child custody cases. In the first instance, she (or her operative) watches the subject to see if they do anything that, according to their claim, they shouldn’t be able to do.

In the child custody cases, most have to do with whether the non-custodial parent is really visiting with the child or are they passing the child off to another person to care for them during these visits.

Both scenarios involve long hours of sitting and watching or tailing the subject, mostly in the car. In order to avoid the police cruising up to her car as she watches, Sue makes it a point to alert the local police of her presence. That way, when a nosy neighbor calls to report a suspicious vehicle, the police can say they are aware of the situation.

When asked what she looks for in a person she might hire to be an operative, she says good, detailed reporting and an investigator license.

Sue is also licensed to practice in Tennessee and Missouri. Other areas of her work include insurance fraud, locating people, process server, infidelity and background checks.