Because she had a “weird feeling” at the right moment, a Gillette, Wyoming, mother caught a man crawling around outside her 12-year-old daughter’s bedroom window after trying to take a video of the girl in a towel, court documents say.
Stoni Owen Daugherty, 48, of Rozet, now faces one count of attempted felony voyeurism and another of felony voyeurism, each punishable by up to 10 years in prison and $5,000 in fines.
He was charged Tuesday and is scheduled for a preliminary hearing Nov. 5.
The case started Oct. 24, when Gillette Police Department Officer Tyler Dillman was dispatched to an address in Gillette for a report of a mother finding a 48-year-old man crawling around on the ground outside her 12-year-old daughter’s window.
Dillman met with the mother, the mother’s boyfriend, and the girl.
According to an affidavit filed in the case, the mother said that at about 8 p.m. that night, her daughter told her someone was looking through her window while she was in a towel after showering.
The mother’s boyfriend went outside and found Daugherty near the trunk of a vehicle, about 10 yards away from the girl’s window, says the affidavit. Daugherty was the only person outside, the mother’s boyfriend added.
The mother’s boyfriend told Dillman that he recognized Daugherty as a friend of his dad’s, and as someone who would sleep on the family’s couch occasionally as he was helping with a few projects.
When the boyfriend asked Daugherty what he was doing, the latter said he’d hurt his leg, and that’s why he was crawling around on the ground, the document says. The mother’s boyfriend told the mother to call police.
Daugherty ran toward his BMX-style bicycle and fled, according to Dillman’s account in the affidavit.
The Girl’s Account
The girl told Dillman that two or three days prior, she noticed a black cellphone in her windowsill on the inside. She yelled for people to come to her room. When she grabbed the phone and looked at it, she noticed it was recording, the affidavit says.
Daugherty came into her room and said that was his phone, she added. She told him that she was going to delete the video, and Daugherty asked, “Why?” then took the phone from her, the affidavit relates from her police interview.
In the morning hours she is “not decent,” the girl explained to Dillman.
And the night Dillman responded to the home, Oct. 24, the girl had emerged from the shower in a towel and noticed something outside her window. She peered closer and saw a hand holding a cellphone, she told Dillman, according to the affidavit.
Normally she braces a blanket against the window with a speaker to block any onlookers, but that speaker had been moved, says the document, allowing a small access point to look into the room.
The Arrest
Three days later, police responded to an address where they learned Daugherty was now staying. Officers contacted Daugherty there, recited his Miranda rights and asked him about his phone, the document says.
Dillman’s account says that Daugherty claimed he’d lost his phone, but then he changed his story and admitted to having a cellphone and consented to officers searching it.
The Search
On the phone, officers noticed multiple video recordings of a girl who looked like the 12-year-old in question, the affidavit says, adding that they found those videos in the phone’s “trash” or deleted folder.
She doesn’t appear aware that she’s being recorded in those videos, Dillman wrote.
One video angles up a young girl’s shirt; another captures her changing a toddler’s diaper; another zooms in on her crotch while she’s wearing shorts; another zooms in on her buttocks, the affidavit says.
Officers found videos of “what appears to be a different unsuspecting female sitting on a couch,” with the camera zoomed in on her crotch, Dillman wrote.
Officers found a video that appeared to have been taken by someone taking a video through a window in the dark, from outside. It shows the girl walking through a bedroom with a towel wrapped around her. She looks right at the camera, and the person filming ducks down, the affidavit relates from the video.
Dillman’s account describes the video further, saying the girl started yelling that someone was looking at her through the window.
The Warrant
Wanting to search the phone more, officers applied for a warrant. They also questioned Daugherty. He admitted to “making these recordings for his pleasure,” wrote Dillman in the affidavit.
Police arrested him that afternoon and seized his cellphone.
They believe the phone may contain more videos, photographs or “other evidence of voyeurism and/or child pornography,” Dillman wrote. More charges could follow if that’s the case.
The Campbell County Public Defender’s Office did not answer its phone at 4 p.m. Friday and could not be reached for comment by publication time.
Clair McFarland can be reached at clair@cowboystatedaily.com.
