Man admits to placing camera in air freshener
Española police arrested a man on breakingand-entering and voyeurism charges this week after his neighbor found a video recording device hidden inside a Glade air freshener in her bedroom.
Video captured on the camera showed the suspect, 67-year-old Johnny Chacon of Española, planting the device in the woman’s home, police said.
Chacon was called to the police station Tuesday and admitted to placing the camera in his neighbor’s house, according to a criminal complaint. On Wednesday, he appeared in Santa Fe County Magistrate Court, where a judge ordered him released on an unsecured bond of $2,500, with a GPS and an alcohol monitor.
Chacon is prohibited from going near the home of his accuser.
According to the criminal complaint, the woman was changing out the refillable canister in the plug-in air freshener when she noticed a blinking blue light inside. After discovering it was a camera, she called police.
Officers found the camera system and a memory card with four videos inside the device, including footage of a man who appeared to be installing the camera.
When police showed the video to the woman, she identified the man as her neighbor, Chacon.
“She was very concerned and upset about the whole situation,” a police report says.
According to the complaint, the woman told police she had known Chacon for a long time but didn’t think he had ever been inside her home. A police detective who filed the charges wrote, however, that the man had obviously been inside the woman’s house because he knew which color and size of air freshener to purchase, to make sure it matched the one she had.
An attempt to reach Chacon by phone was unsuccessful Wednesday.
According to national news reports, the Española woman is not the first to be spied on via air freshener.
In 2012, Robert Lyzenga, a pastor in Lafayette, Ind., was accused of hiding video cameras in an air freshener in the women’s restroom at his church, according to the Indianapolis Star. Police found images of two women and a girl using the bathroom, the newspaper reported, and later discovered more videos and photos on a laptop belonging to the former pastor.
He was charged with child exploitation and voyeurism, and he was fired from the church.
Lyzenga ultimately admitted to hiding two cameras disguised as air fresheners inside the church bathroom and was sentenced to four years in prison, the Star reported.
And in the fall of last year, police in York, Maine, responded to a vacation home after guests staying there discovered multiple hidden cameras inside air fresheners in the bathrooms, officers said in a Facebook post.
They discovered the culprit was inside the house: 32-year-old Joseph McGrath of Massachusetts was accused of installing the cameras in the bathrooms to take footage of friends and family who were vacationing with him. He was charged with violation of privacy and sentenced to 30 days in jail, according to Massachusetts news reports.