Campbell County man pleads guilty to voyeurism

GILLETTE (WNE) – The 33-year-old Campbell County man accused of setting up a recording device in a bathroom and taking pictures of a female getting in and out of the shower and bathtub has pleaded guilty to voyeurism.
Brandon R. Hartwell gave his plea and was found guilty June 29. Eight other voyeurism counts, all felonies, were dismissed, according to court documents.
A plea agreement Hartwell entered recommends a suspended eight- to 10-year sentence with a 180-day split-sentence to be served in jail and four years of supervised probation, in exchange for his guilty plea.
The Sheriff’s Office began investigating the case in December after a company phone that Hartwell had been using was turned over to a new employee, who found photos of a naked female in the deleted photos file.
Based on the content of the photo, investigators got a search warrant for a home and found a camera that had been wired into the outlet in a bathroom. Those living in the home were unaware of the hidden camera, according to an affidavit of probable cause filed in the case.
The camera connected wirelessly to a mobile device and was motion activated, according to the affidavit.
Hartwell told investigators that he had bought the outlet camera to use in his shop, but once he learned how to operate it, he moved it to a bathroom. He told investigators that he occasionally would review the videos using his work cell phone and save certain ones on his phone. He would send the photos to his personal cell phone from his work cell phone, he said, but told investigators that he had lost his personal phone the night before.
When Hartwell was fired from his job, he deleted the photos but didn’t know that they would be moved into a temporary deletion file.
 
This story was published on July 23.