Child Porn Convict Comes Home With Cop—Ordered to Stay Away: Petition

When Timothy Zak went to court May 7 to be sentenced to as many as seven years in prison for secretly videoing his naked teenage stepdaughter, he was allowed another month of freedom before learning his fate.

The day after his sentencing was postponed, Zak returned to the scene of the crime, turning up at the Joliet home where he had set up a hidden camera to record his unwitting stepdaughter, according to a petition filed by Zak's wife.

"On this date Timothy Zak showed up at my residence with a Joliet police officer who had been given the impression that Timothy and I were having some marital trouble and he wanted to come pick up some of his belongings,"  Zak's wife said in her petition for a protective order.

The wife filled the cop in on Zak's pending sentencing, the petition says, and after checking, the officer sent him on his way.

The wife also wrote in her petition that she was afraid Zak meant her harm.

"I expressed my fear and concern for me and my family's safety from the defendant since we are the ones who turned him in," she wrote.

Zak, 46, now resides in Wheaton, but when he videoed his then 17-year-old stepdaughter last year, he was living with the girl and her mother in a house on the city's far west side.

In her petition, Zak's wife told of discovering "nude photos and videos" of her daughter in August. She found the images and videos in an email account she shared with her husband, she said.

"We learned that Timothy Zak had positioned a hidden camera in the hall which angled toward the bathroom and my daughter's bedroom," she wrote. "It is through these means that he was able to record my daughter getting in and out of the shower. He had then taken stills from the video footage of the shots that depicted the most nudity and emailed them to himself."

Zak is free on bond. He pleaded guilty in January to charges of possession of child pornogrpahy and unlawfully videotaping a person younger than 18. A second count of unlawfully videotaping a person younger than 18 was dismissed.

A Will County judge granted an emergency protective order against Zak on May 17. A hearing on the order was scheduled for June 8.

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