FBI detainee Michael David Barrett, 48, stands accused of recording peephole videos of Erin Andrews in Nashville and Milwaukee hotel rooms in 2008.
The ASSOCIATED PRESS reports Barrett was returning from Buffalo when he was arrested at Chicago O’Hare Airport on Friday night and charged with “interstate stalking for taking the videos, posting the videos online and trying to sell them to celebrity Web site TMZ.”
Barrett’s initial court appearance is Saturday morning in U.S. District Court in Chicago.
More:
Seven of the eight videos posted online were taken through a modified door peephole while the 31-year-old Andrews was alone and undressed in hotel rooms in Nashville, Tenn., in September 2008. Investigators believe the eighth video was taken in a hotel in Milwaukee in July 2008.
Meanwhile, TMZ.com has this:
Marshall Grossman from the law firm Bingham & McCutchen, tells TMZ Barrett allegedly contacted hotels in the various venues “where Andrews was working in order to locate her and her room number — and some of the hotels revealed that information, permitting him to target her.” Grossman says Barrett would remove the peepholes from the doors — or as the complaint states, “hacked off” — and inserted tiny camera devices to secretly film her.
Unbelievable that Barrett was able to obtain that information.
I’m assuming the next step now will be for Andrews to go after sites that knowingly published the material.
4:01 am on October 3rd, 2009
I would think the next step would be to go after the hotels that gave out her information. And you won’t get anywhere with site owners. If she sent a cease and desist and they complied… it’s over. If they didn’t, maybe. But in general, you go after the bandwidth provider for the site. A physical location verses an ip address that can be fraudulent.
12:12 pm on October 3rd, 2009
I’m with Pete on this one
9:59 am on October 4th, 2009
Erin may not be a brilliant sports reporter, but she’s certainly smart enough to spell L-A-W-S-U-I-T. This will mean lots of cash settlements for her, along with the satisfaction of seeing this perv go to jail. And of course, the whole sordid tale has definitely not hurt her career. I wish her good luck.