Celebrity Mound

A judge was expected to decide Monday whether a man accused of stalking ESPN reporter Erin Andrews and secretly video taping her nude should be returned to Los Angeles as a federal prisoner or free on bail to face charges.

Michael David Barrett, 47, of Westmont, Ill., was being held in jail over the weekend after his arrest Friday at O’Hare International Airport in Chicago. Investigators believe he recorded Andrews by aiming a cell phone camera through an altered peephole in the door of her hotel room.

An FBI affidavit said Barrett requested and stayed in a room near Andrews at a Tennessee hotel where seven videos were likely taken. An eighth video may have been shot at a Milwaukee hotel. Barrett is accused of posting the videos online and trying to sell them to celebrity Web site TMZ.com.

Barrett, clad in the bright orange jumpsuit of a federal prisoner, made a brief initial appearance before U.S. Magistrate Judge Arlander Keys on Saturday in Chicago. He faces charges in Los Angeles, where TMZ is based, of interstate stalking and could face up to five years in prison and a $250,000 fine if convicted.

“I don’t think he’s even had a traffic ticket,” said his lawyer, Rick Beuke, who said he has known Barrett for a decade.

“He’s as regular a guy as you’ll ever meet – a great friend,” Beuke added. “I must have calls from 30 people wanting to know what they could do to help.”

Beuke said Barrett has been divorced for some time and has children. A neighbor in Westmont, Srividhya Viswanath, 36, a homemaker, said Barrett lived quietly in a townhome complex with a female companion. She said she never got to know them well in part because they traveled frequently. Westmont is about 20 miles west of Chicago.

A spokeswoman for the Combined Insurance Company of America confirmed that Barrett was an employee who worked in sales management. Amy Burrell-Tichy said the company was cooperating with the FBI.

Beuke said he did not discuss the particulars of the charges when he met briefly with Barrett, surrounded by FBI agents, in court. He said he would study the FBI affidavit and try to meet with Barrett on Sunday to learn more.

Several TV networks and newspapers aired clips or printed screen grabs from the videos of Andrews in July. The 31-year-old has covered hockey, college football, college basketball and Major League Baseball for ESPN since 2004 and was named “sexiest sportscaster” by Playboy magazine in 2008 and 2009.

Asked how Barrett became interested in Andrews, if the allegations were true or how he managed to get the adjacent hotel rooms, Beuke said he assumed it was not true. Chicago FBI spokesman Ross Rice said he did not know how Barrett allegedly became interested in Andrews.

An FBI affidavit said agents reviewed eight videos and all but one appeared to be taken in a single hotel. It said Andrews reviewed several and said they appeared to be of her in a room at the Marriott Nashville at Vanderbilt University.

Authorities said Barrett occupied an adjacent room, and that the peephole in the door of Andrews’ room appeared to have been modified with a hacksaw to permit videos to be made with a cell phone camera.

Bethesda, Md.-based Marriott International Inc. issued a statement Saturday saying the company takes its guests’ security and privacy seriously and has been cooperating with investigators.

FBI agents also went to the Ramada Conference Center in Milwaukee, formerly the Radisson Airport. The affidavit said Barrett made a reservation in the hotel for a night when Andrews was staying there and that the peephole in the room that she occupied had been similarly modified.

But they said Barrett never checked in to that hotel, and the interior of the room did not fully match what was seen on the eighth video.

Wyndam Worldwide Corp., which owns Ramada, did not immediately return a phone call for comment Saturday.

The affidavit said that in making his reservation in Nashville, Barrett specifically requested a room next to Andrews, who was referred to in the FBI document as “individual A.”

Reservation records in the hotel’s computer showed the notation: “INFO-GST RQST TO RM NXT TO (individual A),” the affidavit said.

Andrews thanked FBI agents and federal prosecutors for their work and said she hoped the case will eventually help others.

“For my part, I will make every effort to strengthen the laws on a state and federal level to better protect victims of criminal stalking,” she said in a statement.

Andrews was scheduled to work the Auburn-Tennessee game Saturday night in Knoxville, Tenn.

Her attorney, Marshall Grossman, said the videos appeared to have been taped by a serial stalker who followed her from city to city.

“He wasn’t an accidental tourist,” he said. “He had her in his sights.”

Barrett tried to sell the videos to TMZ, but an employee there informed Andrews’ attorneys, according to the complaint.

FBI agents matched information in the e-mail to Barrett, and examined telephone records and credit card charges from Barrett’s Nashville hotel stay. Agents also concluded that the videos of Andrews were likely recorded by a cell phone.

Messages left at a phone listing for a Michael D. Barrett in Westmont weren’t immediately returned. Barrett’s father, Frank Barrett, 78, of Milwaukie, Ore., a suburb of Portland, said Saturday morning that he hadn’t yet been able to speak to his son. But he said the arrest came as a shock and the situation “does not match the Mike I know.”

“He’s always been an upstanding, hardworking guy,” Frank Barrett said.

Erin Andrews returns to the sidelines tonight for ESPN, her first time back on live TV since the popular reporter was the unwilling subject of a video made behind her back.

Andrews was at the center of a maelstrom of attention after a peeping tom spied on her in a hotel room, videotaped her nude and posted the grainy footage on the Internet.

Andrews, 31, will be working the sidelines for ESPN’s broadcast of the South Carolina vs. North Carolina State college football game.

While she’s looking forward to getting back to work after a tumultuous summer, Andrews is willingly baring her soul on TV next week – in an emotional appearance on the season premiere of “The Oprah Winfrey Show.” Andrews opens up for the first time about the videotape ordeal she calls a “nightmare.”

According to ABCNews.com, Andrews tells Winfrey she felt like she was violated all over again after the story broke and a swarm of press and paparazzi camped outside her house in a gated community in Atlanta.

She even compared herself to Britney Spears in a desperate call to 911.

“My last name is Andrews. I’m all over the news right now,” she told the 911 operator. “I’m the girl that was videotaped without her knowing, without her clothes on in the hotel. They’re looking at me through my window.”

Andrews says that when the operator asked if she was okay, she responded: “I did nothing wrong, and I’m being treated like . . . Britney Spears.”

“I just felt like I was continuing to be victimized,” Andrews tells Winfrey in the interview, which airs on Sept. 11.

Andrews, nicknamed “Erin Pageviews” for her popularity on the Internet, is also appearing in a GQ magazine spread this month.

The photos, taken before the Internet video was in the news, show Andrews wearing a football uniform covered in mud.

(source)

Sexy ESPN sportscaster Erin Andrews was the target of a peephole pervert who surreptitiously shot a video of her walking around her hotel room naked — and posted it on the Internet.

The sideline siren wants the creepy cameraman brought to justice, both for herself and to keep other victims from having to go through the same nightmare.

Andrews’ lawyer, Marshall B. Grossman, confirmed yesterday she was “surreptitiously videotaped” while “in the privacy of her hotel room.”

“Although the perpetrators of this criminal act have not yet been identified, when they are identified, she intends to bring both civil and criminal charges against them and against anyone who has published the material,” Grossman said.

In the video, Andrews is seen primping her hair and putting on her makeup.

The video and screen grabs first surfaced on the Internet under the title “Hot naked blonde who looks a lot like a sports blogger favorite in her hotel room,” according to the sports-and-gossip Web site Deadspin.

The site on which the images first appeared didn’t identify the woman as Andrews, whom Playboy calls “America’s Sexiest Sportscaster.”

But ESPN believes she was the victim of the crime.

It quickly got the video yanked by warning that it was taken by a peeping Tom — and that anyone circulating the film could be convicted as an accessory.

ESPN said Andrews “has been grievously wronged” and pledged to help with the investigation.

“Our people and resources are in full support of her as she deals with this abhorrent act,” a spokesman said yesterday.

At least one more version of the video, on YouTube, was also removed.

It’s been speculated that the video was taken in Omaha, Neb., last month while Andrews was covering the College World Series. But the local police department and US Attorney’s Office said no reports had been filed with them.

Meanwhile, voyeurs who tried to access the pictures after they were taken down were directed to sites that showed a blurry video of a naked, attractive blonde, touted as Andrews.

And when they clicked on the video, they got a computer virus.

“There are lots more sites out there pretending to host the Erin Andrews peephole but really hosting malicious software,” wrote Graham Cluley, of the anti-virus firm Sophos.

He said hackers took advantage of the instant celebrity status of the original video to circulate a fake. “And — surprise, surprise — if you visit those Web pages you could be putting the security of your computer at real risk,” he said.

Meanwhile, Andrews isn’t talking about the horrifying incident.

“We request respect of Erin’s privacy at this time, while she and her representatives are working with the authorities,” Grossman said.

(source)