Ryan Alden hid cameras in the bedrooms, bathrooms and closets of least four homes while installing home security systems. One homeowner was alerted to the situation when they called another company to fix their heating and discovered cameras hidden in vents in their teen daughter’s room.
“The homeowner was having some difficulty regulating the climate in their bedrooms. They called out a heat and air company,” Nichols Hills Police Chief Steven Cox told News 9. The home was under renovation with numerous work crews coming in and out but, in October 2018, investigators finally narrowed the list of suspects down to Alden.
A forensic team uncovered “tens of thousands of files” of child pornography on five computers and two phones owned by the 39-year-old, according to The Oklahoman. The material included images both created by him and obtained from others, but police are not certain yet whether he shared the footage he acquired from his customers’ homes.
one parent said. “It took several days for us to try to make sense of what had happened. Our daughters were confused, they were afraid, they were ashamed. We did not know how to protect them.”
Alden was also accused of taking surreptitious photographs of underage girls in various public places including mall changing rooms and high school football games, and of taking upskirt videos of women at restaurants, gyms and churches.
On June 28, he pled guilty to multiple felonies, including possession of obscene material of minors and creating child pornography.
At sentencing Oklahoma County District Judge Amy Palumbo rejected the defense’s request for a sentence of five to ten years followed by probation, stating she believed Alden was likely to reoffend. Instead she sentenced him to life plus nearly 150 years.
“If the law allowed me to have you castrated, I would,” Palumbo told Alden. “Because I think that that would begin to help solve your problem.”
