Reporter under suspicion in bathroom camera case

Foster's and Rochester Times reporter Conor Makem

ROCHESTER - A Foster’s Daily Democrat and Rochester Times reporter being investigated by police in connection with the planting of a suspected camera in a women’s bathroom in the building where he worked has been placed on suspension, according to the Foster’s publisher.

Meanwhile, police are beginning a forensic study of the employee’s electronic devices, including laptop and desktop computers, an iPhone and a digital camera among others to determine if charges will be brought against the employee, who has not yet been arrested.

The employee under investigation was named as Conor Makem in the Search Warrant affidavit. The forensic study of Makem’s electronic devices may take longer than normal as he refused police his personal passwords, as he said he was advised to do, according to the search warrant affidavit on file at Rochester District Court.

Merchants Plaza houses a bank as well as several office suites.

Foster’s Daily Democrat Publisher Patty Foster told The Lebanon Voice on Friday that Makem, 45, was currently under suspension.

The newspaper is conducting its own internal investigation, she said, adding she hadn’t personally talked to Makem since the search warrant was executed.

According to the search warrant affidavit written and filed by a Rochester detective, a woman using the bathroom within a cluster of offices at Merchants Plaza noticed what she thought looked like a lens protruding from the ceiling of the bathroom around 4 p.m. on Monday.

According to the document she was unsure what to do, so she alerted an employee at the Foster’s Rochester Bureau office – later identified as Makem – to its whereabouts.

With the woman looking on, Makem saw it, tugged on the camera and removed it from the ceiling.

The woman then saw she was late to an appointment and said she had to go, but before she did, they agreed that Makem would alert police to what she had found, the affidavit said.

Around 5 p.m. the affidavit states, she said she got a voicemail from Makem saying he had reported the incident to police and turned the device over to them. A couple of hours later, concerned that no police had called, she, herself, called police, who said they had never talked to Makem and he had never turned in the device, according to the search warrant affidavit.

A Rochester Police Officer went to the paper’s Rochester Bureau on Tuesday and again on Wednesday to interview Makem, but he wasn’t there either day. Also on Wednesday the officer spoke to the woman who originally spotted the device. She told the officer that Makem had called her on Tuesday morning and told her she didn’t have to worry about the device, because he had discovered it was just a red light. The woman then asked Makem if that is what police had said. According to the affidavit, Makem then acted surprised and said no, he’d never actually given it to police after playing around with it and discovering it was just a red light. He said he had thrown the device into a Dumpster. She told him he had better go find the device as the police would want to inspect it, the affidavit said. About 10 minutes later she said he called back to say he couldn’t find the device in the trash.

Later that day, the same Rochester Police Officer went back to the Merchants Plaza building and spoke with the property maintenance man, who said the day before, Makem had told him and another woman who works in the building that the device was “a circuit board with some wires hanging off it,” the affidavit stated. 

The officer and maintenance man then went into the women’s bathroom and pulled the tile from near where the device had been found. The tile appeared to have been filed smooth, the maintenance man said in the affidavit. He said a regular tile wouldn’t come out so clean.

The officer than searched the nearby Dumpster after the maintenance man told him it hadn’t been emptied since Sunday. The officer found no device, according to the affidavit. 

The next day, Thursday, police returned and explained the chain of events to Foster’s Rochester Bureau office manager, who said he couldn’t believe Makem had lied to him, and that Makem had told his superior that he reported the incident to police, the affidavit states.

According to the affidavit, Makem refused to give officers his computer passwords, saying he had been advised not to.

The affidavit was hand-delivered to and witnessed by Justice Daniel M. Cappiello, who signed the search warrant.

The Search Warrant states that there is probable cause that the crimes of Interception and Disclosure of Telecommunication Prohibited, Falsifying Physical Evidence and Violation of Privacy have all been committed. 

Interception and Disclosure of Telecommunication Prohibited, and Falsifying Physical Evidence are both felonies in New Hampshire, while Violation of Privacy is a Class A misdemeanor.

Makem is a longtime reporter for Foster’s Daily Democrat and the Rochester Times as well as a locally well-known musician with the Makem Brothers.

According to Wikipedia.com he is the son of  Tommy Makem, who is “one of the most famous Irish musicians in the world, first as a member of The Clancy Brothers and later as a solo act.”