Crime & Safety
Peeping Tom Banned From Cobb County For Secretly Videotaping Neighbor
Breaking: Man sentenced to prison for secretly recorded neighbor in East Cobb.
EAST COBB, GA -- An East Cobb man who secretly installed a video camera in the bedroom of his next-door neighbor's home pleaded guilty this week to multiple charges, including burglary and invasion of privacy, Patch has learned.
His sentence? Time in prison and lifelong banishment from Cobb County, the District Attorney's Office announced Friday.
Michael Derek Roberts, 58, grew close to the family next door over the course of a decade. The neighbor even gave Roberts the garage-door code to their home, in a nice subdivision off Post Oak Tritt Road.
Last spring, Roberts, a technology firm executive, installed a camera in the family's bedroom when they were not at home. The woman found the camera and removed it.
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When Roberts found out, he sent her a text, saying that he was "testing" the camera in her home because his Wi-Fi wasn't working. He also claimed the camera itself wasn't working, according to the Cobb DA.
Roberts went to her home to get the camera, but instead of a neighborly exchange, the woman called police.
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When investigators viewed the video from the camera, they found bedroom foodtage of Roberts' neighbors in the nude.
“This crime was such a personal invasion to the victim and her family -- made worse by the fact that they have lived next-door to the defendant for 12 years,” Assistant District Attorney Katie Doyle, who prosecuted the case, said in a statement. “We are glad that was recognized by [Cobb Superior Court ] Judge Ingram both in terms of the prison portion of the sentence and the banishment from Cobb County.”
Roberts was sentenced to 15 years -- with three of those to be in prison. Other charges that Roberts pleaded guilty to were criminal trespass and aggravated stalking for violating a protective order to stay away from the woman, the DA said.
Once he serves his time in prison, he cannot ever enter Cobb County again.
Image courtesy of Cobb Sheriff's Office
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