Voyeur Page #6

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I do not look with pleasure

upon the future,

when a person on the telephone

from the New Yorker

is gonna be calling him up

and asking him this and this and this.

And half of the time,

he doesn't even know what the facts are.

This is kind of

the ultimate single-source story.

The fact that Gay had actually been

on the premises

and knew that

these viewing platforms existed...

We knew that this guy wasn't making

the thing up out of whole cloth.

But, in a place like the New Yorker,

all the T's have to be crossed

and the I's dotted.

Addresses, dates, spellings of names.

All of those things are gone over

in great detail with our fact checkers.

That's an absolute value

that doesn't change.

The question was,

could we wrestle this thing into something

that didn't rely primarily

on Gerald Foos' notebooks?

Because we did find things

at odds with Gerald's account.

He described buying the motel

in a particular year.

We were able to get the deed of sale,

and we noticed that that didn't align

precisely with the date in his notes.

Whenever we found a discrepancy like that,

we wanted the reader to know

exactly what we knew

in terms of when Gerald had made an error.

We made it clear that all of what he saw,

in our in-house lingo, was sort of on him.

The voyeur tells me he bought

this motel in 1966, and I'm quoting him.

This New Yorker fact checker finds out

he didn't buy the motel till 1969.

God, how... That isn't hard

to keep your record straight.

He should know,

when he gives me information like that,

he should get it right and...

It's like...

Come in. God damn it. I wish...

Open the door!

The guy that does the vetting,

he was saying,

"Are you sure, Gerald, that that's '66?"

And, "Yeah," and he says,

"Well, could it be '69?"

And I says, "Yeah, could be very easily.

One of the nine's could've been inverted."

And... But I said, "I don't know that."

I said, "It's a potentiality."

Oh, man. I called him on that.

"Oh, I'm sorry, I got something wrong.

I lost the papers."

I don't care what papers. You need

to remember when you bought a building.

He started keeping notes in 1966,

and even had specific days

like November 26th,

November 28th and December 4th.

'66, '67, '68.

Was he backtracking or writing fiction?

What was he doing?

It doesn't make any sense.

I'm wondering how firmly

I can rely upon him.

I know the motel is real. I was there.

So he gets dates wrong.

But I don't care

whether he opened the motel

in 1965 or 1966 or 1967 or 1968.

It makes no difference.

He held the motel

for more than 15 to 20 years,

during which time he had a lot of time

to look at a lot of things.

The story is the story, and I'm moving on.

Well, I'm really sore

this morning.

That doesn't bode well,

because whenever I get sore like this,

there's a storm coming in.

Anita and I are just kind of loners.

Yeah, we don't neighbor.

Because we found out,

being in the motel business,

there's no sense in doing it.

Because the only thing you're gonna do

is you're gonna expose yourself,

and all they're gonna do

is talk about you to other neighbors.

That's what neighbors do.

Look, here's a blue jay. You see him?

Two blue jays.

Look at 'em.

They don't know

they're being photographed.

We know nobody's coming to visit us.

Nobody ever comes to our house, right?

- Nobody.

- Except the mailman.

We don't have any friends.

All our friends are dead.

- Your friends.

- Unfortunately, yeah.

You guys will be here when it happens,

and I want you to be here.

I don't want anything... I just, like...

We're all in it together.

And that's it. There's nobody else.

Everybody has been worried

about the damn piece.

I bet the voyeur's worried about it, too.

He's the one that really has a worry.

He's right there

in a little suburb of Denver...

waiting to be crucified.

Here it is,

on the front cover of the New Yorker,

in the most prominent section.

I couldn't imagine a more impressive

layout for a magazine article,

with the voyeur's name, Gerald Foos,

not obscure, but right in the headline.

"Gerald Foos bought a motel in order

to watch his guests having sex.

He saw a lot more than that."

That's a terrific headline.

Even if he hates the article,

he'll love the prominence,

'cause the thing about this guy,

he wanted to be discovered.

If he died, no one would care,

no one would know.

But now if he dies...

this thing will put him on the map.

It will get him an obituary

in the New York Times.

Gerald Foos will get an obituary.

Why? Because he's a voyeur who talked.

Talked to me.

Published in the New Yorker.

There it is.

This one is just chilling.

An Aurora motel owner watched his guests

in some of the most intimate moments

without them even knowing.

It went on for decades.

And it's all detailed

in the New Yorker magazine.

The old Manor House Motel stood right here

at the corner of Colfax and Scranton.

Now, in addition to all the sex

that Gerald Foos claims

he watched happen here,

he said he saw a murder,

but never told police.

- What?

- I did too tell police.

said he received a note from Foos

in 1980

saying he purchased the motel

to satisfy his voyeuristic tendencies.

After installing them,

he hovered above in the attic,

and asked his wife to lie on the bed below

to see if she could see him

through the louvers.

He lives up in Brighton.

Reporting live in Aurora,

Lance Hernandez, Denver7.

I can't believe that.

- What?

- I can't believe that.

Suddenly,

I got a little more shaky.

The man is nervous.

For years, he was hiding in the attic.

Now, he's been pulled out of that.

But he's been instructed,

if that's the word, by me,

"Don't go out, don't answer the door.

Don't answer the phone."

Hello. This is.

It's one of the ladies you'd meet

at the Denver Post with Gay Talese.

- How did she get my number?

- I don't know.

Hello, this is Gerald.

- She knows about the book already.

- Yes, ma'am.

What was your question

that you would have for me?

Well, I guess I wanted to know

if you've read it yet

and what you thought of it.

Well, you know, it's...

it's my life, you know, my secret life.

Yeah, we are gonna have this

in the paper tomorrow

and we'd like to get your thoughts.

Well, I can't...

I wish I could give you more.

- Why don't you wait a little bit?

- No, Gerald.

Wait a little bit

until July when the book comes out.

That's what I'd suggest.

And then you call me

and I'll give you an interview.

But you weren't filming any of this,

were you?

Never, never.

That was before the electronic age.

Gerald, that's enough.

I can't tell you any more than that.

I can't tell you any more than that,

because I'm still under contract.

Get off the phone, Gerald.

I'm not gonna answer any more questions

about it, not right now.

Gerald, I have to go.

And my wife has to go,

and she's getting ready

to go do something and...

Gerald.

Okay, well, thank you very much. Goodbye.

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