Accused Planet Fitness tanning booth peeper headed to trial

Accused Planet Fitness  tanning booth peeper headed to trial

A 30-year-old Lower Southampton man accused of secretly photographing or videotaping more than 2 dozen women while they tanned at a local gym is headed to trial.

At a brief district court appearance Tuesday, Joseph Clarke Jr. waived more than 2 dozen counts of attempted invasion of privacy and related charges to Bucks County Court. He remains in the county prison in lieu of 10 percent of $500,000 bail.

Lower Southampton police say that Clarke followed women to the tanning booths at a Planet Fitness off Brownsville Road and used his cell phone to photograph or videotape them at least 27 times between April 16 and 25. Among his alleged victims is a teenage girl, police said.

Clarke was caught after he was seen entering the tanning booth area after a customer complaint was filed and a manager called police. While the manager was on the phone with police, a gym employee saw a hand with a phone reaching over a room divider into a tanning booth in the adjoining room, police said.

After Clarke, who joined the gym on March 27, left the room, the employee investigated and found no one else in the room, police said.

Clarke is also charged with two counts of loitering and prowling related to incidents in April and last week at the apartment complex where he lives, police said.

In the most recent incident, on May 10, police responded to a report of a man looking in a bedroom window of an apartment. A man who lives there with his girlfriend told police he saw the Peeping Tom when he went to get something out of his car.

The resident told police that the man, whom police say was Clarke, was standing between a bush and his bedroom window looking at his girlfriend, who was folding laundry.

When Clarke noticed the man outside, he tried to hide and, in the process, broke electrical boxes on the ground, police said. The man attempted to confront Clarke, who ran away, police said.