KANSAS CITY, Mo. — Almost a year-and-a-half after a 25-year old woman called police when she found video cameras in her apartment, the 48-year-old property owner has been charged with multiple counts of invasion of privacy.
Rodney Sanell now faces 42 counts of invasion of privacy in Jackson County.
The Kansas City woman called police to her Midtown apartment in March 2014. She believed Sanell, her landlord had been spying on her since October 2013, when she went out-of-town and he decided to ‘remodel her bathroom.’
When investigators arrived at her home to take her police report, they found four smoke detectors in the kitchen, living room, hallway, and victim’s bedroom that had suspicious wires in them that seemed to lead to the adjoining tattoo business through a pipe.
Police asked employees of the tattoo parlor if they could check for the pipe, which led to the discovery of a computer monitor in the basement of the building. When they turned it on, at least eleven screens appeared; four of them were black screens from the four cameras that had already been removed from the smoke detectors.
The detectives went to find the other seven cameras, which they eventually located. They found four more pinhole cameras in the bathroom. Two were concealed in the sink vanity’s decorative trim, which showed a view of the toilet, according to the police report. The other two were concealed in the wall and pointed toward the shower.
Three more cameras were discovered in the victim’s bedroom. Additionally, police uncovered eleven camera inside apartments.
A security camera business reported to police that the defendant had purchased several video security items similar to those found at 41st and Troost.
According to prosecutors, other victims include a man who was dating the 25-year-old woman, a roommate of the 25-year-old woman and one of the men she had dated, and a maintenance man who had worked for the suspect for several years.
Detectives with the Kansas City Police Department Sex Crimes division said the videos recovered from the business showed victims in various states of undress.
