Police Allege Man Set Camera to Peep at Boy

A 31-year-old registered sex offender used a color television set as a ruse, outfitting it with a secret surveillance camera and then giving it to an 8-year-old neighbor boy, law enforcement officials charge.

The setup allowed the man, Kyle Kendrick Kirby, to watch the youth as he changed and slept.

“It was a sophisticated setup,” Deputy Dist. Atty. Chuck Middleton said. “That’s the first time I’ve seen this.”

Kirby was arrested last week on charges of burglary and trespassing for the purpose of invasion of privacy. Middleton said the burglary charge stems from Penal Code provisions forbidding someone from entering a home--even with permission--to commit a felony. Bail was set at $50,000.

Middleton said Kirby installed the camera inside the TV set’s housing, using expanding foam to hold it in place, and a relay switch and power splitter to operate it. The camera was directed toward the boy’s bed and transmitted to a receiver in Kirby’s nearby residence.

“It was from one of the small speakers on the bottom of the TV,” Middleton said. “A couple little holes were enlarged ever so slightly so that the camera could get a view. It was very well done.”

Police have found no evidence that Kirby made tapes of the boy, Middleton said. He described Kirby as a friend of the boy’s family, a man who had been entrusted with a key to their house in the Woodbridge section of Irvine.

Police were tipped off by a woman in the neighborhood.

“She had found out about it through some comments made by the defendant,” Middleton said,. “She contacted police, [who] contacted the mom and said, ‘Did your son get a TV?’ She said, ‘Yeah,’ and finally they found it.”

Middleton said the boy had the television set for less than a week.

Kirby previously served a two-year prison sentence, Middleton said, after he snatched a 13-year-old boy from a Pomona street in 1986, photographed the boy and then released him.