One officer said something like, “We can’t tell our officers, because this will spread like wildfire. First, the Commanders had to discuss strategy. I knew the police would be able to use search warrants to trace the website to the source and that would get our answer. I had his attention, and he immediately brought me into a meeting with the highest-ranking command staff. I literally jumped out of our still-moving car and yelled at him, “I can help you solve a crime in which your officers are victims. As we pulled up to police headquarters, he was out front talking to citizens. Lewis to be a good man who I could approach at a moment’s notice, so I told my colleague we would just drop in on him. The spokesperson at the time was Captain Steve Lewis, who is now the police chief of Ellisville, Missouri. We noticed police officers were regularly using this bathroom, so I knew the next step – go to Chesterfield Police. Videos were continuing to be posted, according to our Philadelphia source. We went into the restroom regularly to check the ceiling tiles - never a camera.Īfter several days, we knew we had to take another approach. So my colleague Dave Sharp and I parked nearby and watched. We knew the camera had to be hidden in a ceiling tile, so we pulled it down. It took another couple of days before we finally found a perfect match, and we knew we had our hidden camera location – a Mobile On the Run on Clarkson just south of Interstate 40. He apologized that he *never uses a customer’s restroom, so he’s constantly using public restrooms, and there are too many to count. The “chimney sweep” guy gave us bathroom after bathroom that he’d recently visited. What we now thought would be easy, still took days to pin down. I remember yelling in gratitude, and the owner called his employee to head back to base and talk to us in person. I asked: “Do you have an employee with an arm chimney sweep tattoo?” I’ll never forget walking in and telling the owner, “Please hear me out in the interest of justice and helping others.” He laughed, and he did. Out of frustration, I told my colleague that we would personally visit one of the last chimney sweep companies on our list, which was a business in St. Our next stop was to call chimney sweep companies which again led to hang-up after hang-up. Our Philadelphia tipster continued monitoring the site and noticed a man with an arm tattoo that said “chimney sweep,” along with a chimney logo. I sensed that the owners were concerned that my reporting of this story would somehow hurt their business, even though I’d explained they were potential victims and that would not name them in my reporting. Every business that I called hung up on me. We also called some of the businesses from the logos our tipster found. We were looking for the same tile pattern and failed to find it. The Philadelphia man sent us “non-pornographic” screengrabs so that we had a view of what the bathroom looked like and for the next several days, photographer Dave Sharp and I checked every public restroom we could find, working our way East from Wentzville. Top Story: Family previously reported gun to police before St.
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