Two naked women found a spy camera in their Key West hotel room. It came from next door
A South Carolina man was jailed in Key West after police said he spied on two young women inside their hotel room with a camera he slid under the door.
Robert Mann Privette, 49, of Summerville, South Carolina, was arrested on charges of burglary and video voyeurism.
He was booked into the Stock Island Detention Center on July 16 and released the same day after posting a $30,000 bond.
This wasn’t his first time spying with the camera, police said.
“Privette admitted to using his camera multiple times during his trips for work all over the country,” wrote Officer Timothy Malak.
Asked how many time he had done it, Privette said he couldn’t exactly say, police reported.
“He could only say ten-plus times over the past year, all over the county,” Malak wrote.
Police collected two cameras, a laptop and two hard drives and placed them into evidence.
In this case, the two women, who are 27 and 24, discovered the camera inside their room at the DoubleTree Resort by Hilton, 3990 S. Roosevelt Blvd., on the night of July 15, police said.
The two had just returned from the beach.
One woman was standing in front of a mirror naked while going through her suitcase, police reported.
The other woman had just gotten out of the shower and was wrapped in a towel when she spotted a long black cord that was affixed to a camera.
The cord was coming from the room next door.
After the woman in the towel yelled, “’That’s a [expletive] camera!” the cord was retracted by someone in the adjoining room and then she heard someone inside the room running around before a door slammed, police said.
The women called 911.
Key West police arrived at the hotel at 9:06 p.m. to speak with the women. Then they knocked on the door to Room 368 to speak with the man inside.
At first, Privette denied having anything to do with the camera.
But after an officer explained he could obtain a warrant to search the room, Privette, who police said was “sitting anxiously and was beginning to sweat,” admitted to placing a camera into the women’s room, according to the arrest report.
Privette said that earlier he had heard the women inside the adjoining room and ran the camera under the door, police said.
He said he saw two women in bikinis talking about going to the beach and he retracted the camera and did not save the video, reports state.
A few hours later, Privette told police he heard them return and again slid the camera beneath the door.
Privette was handcuffed and taken to jail.
Back home in South Carolina, Privette works a side job repairing cell phones and had also recently been a Boy Scout troop leader, according to WCIV ABC News 4.
He was banned from participating in the Boy Scout program in light of the Key West police allegations, though.
Local police are “gathering data and information” but haven’t opened a full investigation into concerns from Privette’s customers that their data may have been compromised, WCIV reported.
This story was originally published July 21, 2020 at 6:47 AM.
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