According to this report in the Beaver County Times, a 66-year-old Raccoon Township man has been charged with invasion of privacy and felony interception of communications for hiding a listening device under his wife’s bed. (Yes, the fact that this happened in Raccoon Township, Beaver County, Pennsylvania, is probably enough to get it posted, but the rest is worth reading too.) Suzanne Cripe told police in February that she had found a transmitter of some kind under her bed, and suspected it had been placed there by her husband, Wayne Cripe.

More specifically, that’d be Wayne Comet Cripe of Raccoon Township, Beaver County, Pennsylvania.

Police investigated the matter, an investigation that was simplified by Mr. Cripe’s statement, “I guess she found the transmitter,” uttered as police approached and before they had asked him any questions. Obviously, Cripe admitted he had bugged his wife, apparently in more ways than one because they have been separated for some time. They still live in the same house, but don’t share a bedroom. This awkward situation seems to have become significantly more awkward when Mrs. Cripe got herself a boyfriend.

As the report explains, Mr. Cripe cited this as a motivation for the eavesdropping, but not quite the one you’d expect:

Wayne Cripe told the police he put the transmitter under his wife’s bed because he wanted to know whether she and her boyfriend were having sex. He told police he was tired of hearing them and wanted to know “if the coast was clear” before entering his home, the report said.

Hm. Maybe, although if you’d rather not hear something, planting a listening device near it is not the most obvious strategy. More often, such devices are used to record sounds (to which, in many states, everyone making the sounds must consent) and so it is at least possible that Mr. Cripes might have been doing a little evidence-gathering in advance of divorce proceedings. Which, frankly, seem long overdue.

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Speaking of which (divorce, that is), this post is sponsored by these divorce solicitors, whom I thank.