Thousands of unsuspecting teenage girls and women at two Brooklyn high schools were for 17 years the target of a peeping handyman who secretly installed video cameras in the school bathrooms and recorded 800 videos, authorities charged yesterday.
Michael Conte, 46, a machinist at Westinghouse Career and Technical HS, was arrested by NYPD late Tuesday in Suffolk County, moments after he made bail on charges that he rigged surveillance cameras in a woman’s home there.
Police said Conte admitted that he had collected video footage from cameras in the fourth-floor female faculty bathroom at Westinghouse HS and a girls’ locker room at the elite Brooklyn Technical HS.
A search of the Staten Island home Conte shares with his mother and sister turned up the hundreds of videotapes and DVDs of perverted bathroom images dating to 1988, a stolen shotgun, three computers and several high-powered pinhole cameras – including one in the toilet, authorities said.
Some of the tapes, police said, contained images of his mother and sister and of guests who used his bathroom.
It was also not clear exactly how long Conte had been taping at these specific schools – or whether he taped at other schools where he may have worked.
Conte has been charged with child endangerment and unlawful surveillance, a felony that carries up to four years in prison for each count.
Authorities warned that more charges were pending, including from the alleged taping on Staten Island and in another home in Pennsylvania.
His lawyer, George Vomvolakis, said last night that he could not comment on the charges because he had not spoken with prosecutors.
“We’re just trying to gather up all the charges right now,” Vomvolakis said. “The charges are stemming out of an apparent videotaping at a high school.”
A city Department of Education spokesman said the agency was trying to pin down how long Conte had been working in the schools, but that it was difficult because he only worked part time for the department and part time for the head custodian at Westinghouse.
He also could not say if Conte worked at other schools.
Department lawyer Michael Best said Conte has been relieved of his duties and that the agency is moving to fire him.
Conte was first arrested Sunday in Selden, L.I., after a woman who works at Westinghouse HS and had used him to perform handiwork at her home discovered a hard drive in her garage that recorded images of her bathroom.
He was awaiting an arraignment hearing last night at Brooklyn Criminal Court.
Additional reporting by Kieran Crowley and Alex Ginsberg