Man charged with secret videotaping

A College Station man was charged Tuesday with secretly videotaping women while they used the restroom and took showers inside an apartment he shared with three other men. Police said Andrew Cooper, 31, set up a two-way mirror between his bedroom closet and the bathroom and used it to videotape the women without their knowledge. Investigators began studying video cassettes obtained from his room last month, after Cooper`s roommates learned of the secret recordings and contacted police, according to court records. Cooper was arrested Tuesday and charged with four counts of improper photography or visual recording and one count of unlawfully intercepting oral communication. The videotaping charges are state jail felonies, each punishable by up to two years in jail and a fine of $10,000. Intercepting oral communication is a second-degree felony punishable by up to 20 years in prison and a fine of $10,000. He was released from the Brazos County Jail after posting $35,000 bail. Police obtained a search warrant for the apartment Aug. 16 after roommates found a videotape of women - some nude - using their bathroom. After finding the tape, the men discovered the two-way mirror in Cooper`s closet, court records state. The roommates told officers they were trying to borrow Cooper`s video camera when they found the tape, according to a police affidavit. Most of the women, the roommates told police, were friends of theirs who had come to the apartment. Police found and seized eight videocassettes, an adapter used to put movies on a computer, a laptop computer, a two-way mirror, a tripod and a camera bag from Cooper`s room, records state. While looking at the tapes, police found eight different sequences where women were changing clothes, showering or using the restroom, according to the records. Another tape, shot in a darkroom, contained audio of one of the roommates and a female guest having sex and video of them getting dressed after the lights were turned on, documents state. Cooper could be seen on several of the tapes setting up the video recorder and checking the camera angles, the documents state. After speaking with some of the women on the tapes, police determined the secret recordings took place between June 2002 and February 2003. Court records state that one woman discovered a camera in the restroom in August 2002 and told one of Cooper`s roommates about it. The man confronted Cooper, according to the documents, who told him it was an accident and promised to destroy the tape. Authorities were not called after the incident, and partially nude images of that woman were on one of the tapes recovered by police last month.