A 37-year-old chef at Grace Farms is scheduled this month for a pre-trial hearing in state Superior Court connection with his arrest on 12 counts of felony voyeurism.
The accused, Patrick Bowdoin of Norwalk, followed a 29-year-old woman into the women’s bathroom at Grace Farms’s restaurant, ‘The Commons,’ one Saturday afternoon in December, entered the stall next to her, then slid a Samsung phone underneath and started recording—until she screamed and he fled, according to New Canaan Police Department arrest and search-and-seizure warrant applications filed in court in Stamford.
Patrick Bowdoin. Photo courtesy of the New Canaan Police Department
Though the charges against Bowdoin had been reported in March following NCPD’s months-long investigation, police withheld many details as well as information about where the offense had occurred, saying they did so in order to protect the victim. Referred to generally as a “security incident” in an email from Grace Farms officials to the interim town planner and in Grace Farms’s monthly reports to the town, the arrest also has not been detailed in either and no connection to the publicly reported arrest of Bowdoin in March was disclosed.
The victim went to police headquarters to report the incident at 1:40 p.m. on Dec. 30, about one hour after it had taken place and after she had notified security personnel at Grace Farms, according to the arrest warrant application. At about 7:19 p.m. that same day, police traveled to Grace Farms. There, the organization’s security director, Rod Khattabi, disclosed to police that he had reviewed video surveillance footage, identified the offender as Bowdoin—“an employee of Grace Farms” and “member of the kitchen staff,” according to the search-and-seizure application—interviewed him and received a six-page written confession.
According to that confession, as cited in the application, Bowdoin had been helping put out pastries at The Commons when he “noticed” the victim having lunch.
Bowdoin saw her “stand up and start walking towards the direction of the women’s restroom,” saw her enter and went in, occupying a far-right stall while she occupied one in the middle, the application said.
He “stuck his phone into [her] stall to record a video,” it said. “Bowdoin stated upon hearing [her] scream he fled the women’s bathroom and exited the building through the fire exit. Bowdoin then stated he deleted the video and returned to work.”
On Jan. 10, police traveled to Bowdoin’s residence with search warrants, and he showed them his cell phones, a laptop and iPad, according to the application, telling police he wanted to talk and “Get all of this off my chest.”
Bowdoin “stated he has a voyeurism addiction which developed in the past year through watching porn.”
“He stated there was only one other occasion he recorded a woman in a bathroom and it was in New Canaan, this past October,” the application said. “Bowdoin stated in that instance he was not caught.”
Police found web searches on Bowdoin’s devices that included ‘bathroom hidden cam up skirt,’ ‘hidden camera up skirt toilet,’ ‘spying on the pissing beauty,’ ‘spy cam up skirt’ on various pornography sites, the application said.
According to Bowdoin’s LinkedIn profile, he worked as ‘Lead Line Cook’ at Grace Farms from December 2015 to December 2017.
Police again interviewed Bowdoin—this time at NCPD headquarters and with his wife and two kids in the lobby—on Feb. 16, and also retrieved a laptop at that time. In the end police found 13 videos and 60 photos that Bowdoin identified as screen shots from the videos, the application said.
One video, 79 seconds in length, “was “of a white female sitting on a toilet in a stall urinating” in New Canaan on Dec. 17, “taken from the adjoining stall by holding the phone under the stall partition.”
In another video taken at Grace Farms one afternoon last October, “a woman wearing a white and black dress and black boots is standing in a corner in a locker room.”
“Bowdoin walks in and opens a locker cabinet with a key and then walks directly behind the female standing in the corner and films under her dress twice,” the application said. “The female then walks into a bathroom that is situated on the other side of the wall. Bowdoin walks over to the same corner as the female walks into the bathroom and the female gets stopped by Bowdoin. Bowdoin and the female a short conversation and as the female leaves she says ‘hope your day gets better Patrick’ and walks out. Bowdoin identified the female as an old employee.”
Other videos where Bowdoin is shooting up women’s skirts took place in Norwalk and Stamford. He told police that he hadn’t uploaded any of it to the Internet.
The monthly security report for December 2017 refers to the matter as follows: “A security incident occurred inside of one of our buildings on December 30, 2017. As we indicated in a prior email, the incident was reported to the New Canaan Police Department and the Foundation is actively cooperating with the police department in their investigation.”
A Jan. 3 email from Grace Farms’s counsel and justice initiatives director to the interim town planner reads, in part: “I wanted to let you know that on Saturday, December 30th, we reported an incident to the police, have been fully cooperative with the police and are assisting the police. The matter is currently under criminal investigation so we are not permitted to disclose any information. Rod can provide you with the name and number of the detective at the New Canaan Police Department. Rod is not permitted to discuss the matter because he is a witness in the matter.”