DOCUMENT: Bizarre, Crime

Toilet Spy Gets Slap On Wrist

No time in can for Maine man caught under women's loo

Gary Moody

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Toilet Spy Gets Slap On Wrist

OCTOBER 25--The Maine man found hiding in a filthy chamber beneath an outhouse toilet copped a plea yesterday and got off with a slap on the wrist from a judge who suggested he might consider treatment.

Gary Moody, 45, who pleaded no contest to criminal trespass, was fined $1000 and ordered to pay $700 restitution in connection with the bizarre June 26 restroom incident at a New Hampshire park.

District Court Judge Pamela Albee ruled that disorderly conduct charges against Moody would be dropped if he stays out of trouble for two years. According to a riveting (and repulsive) Carroll County Sheriff's Office report--a copy of which you'll find here--Moody told investigators that he dropped his wedding ring into the women's room toilet and simply climbed in to retrieve it.

He was nabbed after a 'female entered the restroom and saw a man down in the 'vault' looking up at her.' Moody claimed that he was 'changing his clothes' in the park's loo when the ring headed south. So he 'climbed down through the hole and when he was searching for the ring' someone else came into the room (embarrassed, Moody tried to hide in the filthy space).

Asked why he was in the women's bathroom in the first place, Moody explained that, 'the men's room was busy.' He did not have a handy explanation, however, for why he did not just tell a park ranger about the supposedly missing ring.

Citing extensive media coverage of Moody's case and the resulting embarrassment for the defendant, Judge Albee said he was deserving of sentencing 'compassion.' (7 pages)