ROCK HILL, S.C. — A Rock Hill man was arrested after authorities said he confessed to placing a hidden camera in a tenant’s bathroom so he could watch people shower.
York County deputies said the property owner, Douglas Veihdeffer, hid the camera in a towel rack, with it pointing toward the shower and toilet.
According to a police report, the video showed that several victims had been recorded.
The report says that the tenant who lives in the home on Cardinal Hill Drive in Rock Hill with his wife and child noticed a black fixture, a towel hook, on the inside of the bathroom door that had been there off and on over the last month.
The tenant said that he discovered it in the bathroom that his family and other visitors use. When he inspected it more closely, he pulled on the fixture, which popped off the door, and realized that the towel hook concealed a hidden camera with a micro USB port and a 16GB micro SD card.
The tenant called law enforcement and told deputies that he believed his friend, Veihdeffer, might have set up the camera.
Investigators from the sheriff’s office spoke with Veihdeffer, who they said told them that he bought the camera and installed it in the bathroom because he thought some people who had been at the house might have been stealing from him, and wanted to catch them in the act.
Deputies found several video clips of the tenant’s wife and sister-in-law being recorded in the bathroom shower, on the toilet and also in the cabin of a boat. According to the report, when deputies confronted Veihdeffer with the clips, he confessed to trying to record people without their clothes on.
“I have been scared, tell you the truth,” a neighbor who did not want to be identified said.
She said Veihdeffer had her dinner at her home before.
“I couldn't figure out why he would do something like this,” the woman said.
He was taken into custody and charged with aggravated voyeurism.
"This is the first time I have heard of this one,” said Trent Ferris with the York County Sheriff’s Office. “We have heard of smaller cameras, like cameras that look like pens."
Skip Graham of Spy Tech in Belmont said technology is making it easier for people to secretly watch others.
"The technology now let’s anyone be a cameraman, and a covert camera man," Graham said.
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