Landlord alleged to have videotaped girl showering

Jen Lawson

Thursday, Aug. 19, 2004 | 9:27 a.m.

A landlord accused of rigging his tenant's shower with one-way mirrored tiles and videotaping an 8-year-old girl as she bathed was arrested Tuesday on child pornography charges.

Gerard Luna, 48, allegedly even manipulated the family's bathing schedules to make his peeping and taping more convenient, according to the arrest warrant issued last week.

He was being held this morning in the Clark County Detention Center on one count each of using a minor in producing pornography and attempting to use a minor in producing pornography. He is scheduled to appear in court Friday.

Nevada doesn't have a voyeurism law, Metro Police Lt. Jeff Carlson said, so Luna could not be charged with spying on the family as they showered, just the videotaping of the child.

District Attorney David Roger said he would like to see the state institute a law against voyeurism.

"I think it's something the Legislature should consider in 2005," he said. "I feel voyeurism is the first step toward more heinous criminal acts."

Luna had converted his house near Boulder Highway and Lamb Boulevard and built an apartment, which he rented to a couple and their 8-year-old daughter.

In January the girl noticed a red light coming from a mirrored bathroom tile as she showered, according to the arrest report.

Her mother checked the wall and found what appeared to be a hole behind one of the tiles. The shower wall separated the family's apartment from the main part of the house where Luna lived.

The girl's parents became suspicious and confronted Luna, who admitted to looking through the holes because he said they were wasting a lot of water and he wanted to monitor their usage, the arrest report says.

Luna had previously told the mother and the girl that they needed to take their showers in the afternoon because of a lack of hot water in the mornings.

The couple believed Luna made that request because his wife would be out of the house in the afternoon, according to the warrant. He made no such request that the girl's father shower at a specific time of day.

After the girl noticed the red light, she told her mother who called Metro Police. Luna gave officers permission to search his home and he showed them the holes he had created about six months earlier.

He admitted that his water monitoring method was not efficient and that he should have patched the holes. But he told police "he became interested in the thrill of watching people without their knowledge," the arrest report says.

Luna said he taped the 8-year-old girl once and that the footage had since been recorded over.

During the search of his house officers found a cache of commercially produced pornography in Luna's closet, including 169 tapes and 500 video slides, the arrest warrant says. Many of the tapes were of a voyeuristic theme, but none featuring the family members showering were found.

Luna told police he had been previously employed in the pornography industry but had no particular interest in child porn.

The family no longer lives in the apartment they rented from Luna.