Ex-janitor gets 9 years prison for placing cameras in Tega Cay, Lake Wylie YMCA women’s locker rooms
By Andrew Dys, The Herald (Rock Hill, S.C.) | |
McClatchy-Tribune Information Services |
Eddy was almost 60 and seemed to all to be a harmless old man with a quick smile.
Turns out the smile was a lecherous leer.
The whole time from March to
Miraculously, no children were videotaped. No kids at their most vulnerable in a place that any woman before
Tuesday, Eddy, now 60 and claiming to be sorry, a man without any criminal record before these crimes that threatened to wreck families and lives and without questioned caused panic for the victims, was sentenced Tuesday to nine years in prison for crimes Judge
Eddy also must register as a sex offender for the rest of his life.
Nobody had to tell his victims that
One camera was right below the sink at belt level where a woman would lean in to get the mascara right in the mirror above.
For the first time Tuesday in Alford's courtroom at the
Of the 36 counted victims, about a dozen were in court. Many clutched husband's arms. Three of these women in court used words to describe what Eddy did as "sick" and "without an ounce of regret." How Eddy was "outgoing and friendly" and "seemingly genuinely nice" but at the same time was "victimizing" the women who exercised and swam at the
These victims talked in court, and in letters read in court, of Eddy's "offensive" behavior that stole not just their trust in public places, but their most private moments. Other victims were just too ashamed, the shame not their own doing but dropped like a bomb upon them and their families by Eddy the voyeur, to even go to court.
An employee of the
"It was offensive not only that he put the cameras up, but that he made friends at the same time," that woman said.
The Herald is not naming the victims.
All of the victims demanded prison time for
Eddy's wife, Robin, spoke emotionally of how Eddy's acts were out of character and that she still loved him. She spoke just feet from women who shrank back in their courtroom bench seats from this man, Eddy, who took away their trust and feeling of safety and security.
Eddy's lawyer,
The victims had to sit there and listen to an explanation of how any man could tape women on the toilet.
A psychiatrist Eddy started seeing just two days after his arrest in
Yet the psychiatrist said Eddy was not a sexual predator.
The victims had to listen to that -- a version that made Eddy into some kind of victim of himself. That Eddy sought some kind of answer to being broke and having a personal crisis by watching tapes of women taking a shower at the
Eddy, incredibly, only spent about a minute apologizing to the victims in court.
After pleading guilty to 36 counts of voyeurism -- peeping and recording for sexual gratification -- Eddy turned toward the victims who did have the courage to face Eddy in a public courtroom that he was "sincerely sorry."
"I had no right to do what I did, and I wish I could undo it," Eddy said to the victims as he stood underneath a blown-up courtroom picture taken from the videos of him leering as he installed the cameras last year.
But then Eddy made what happened all about him as he tried to get out of the crimes with probation so he could move to
Eddy never mentioned how he had set the cameras up so many days and kept the footage to later take home and stare at.
Facing anywhere from probation to life in prison because each of the 36 guilty pleas carries up to three years each in prison, Eddy never mentioned the female children who could have showered and dressed in the viewfinder of his awful cameras.
He just wanted to go to
But prosecutor
"
Behind Joyner, in the courtroom gallery, those women victims sat there looking at the man who had tried to use them to excite himself.
That's when Judge
Alford acknowledged that Eddy's reckless actions "wrecked his (Eddy's) life" but Alford made it clear to all in that courtroom that the sentence had to reflect what Eddy "did to these many victims." Alford also mentioned how Eddy had hurt the other victim -- the
Justice in this case of so many victims, Alford said, also means "sending a message to anyone else" considering making a homemade peep show that justice will drop on the peeper like a wrecking ball from a crane.
When Alford announced the nine year sentence,
The victims walked out of that courtroom. Many held hands and arms of husbands. They walked out of the building toward the parking lot.
One of the victims said as she walked: "He deserved what he got for what he did to us -- and he deserved more."
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(c)2014 The Herald (Rock Hill, S.C.)
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