He was the hotel owner who shocked the world when he revealed a very old and very disturbing secret.
For 30 years Gerald Foos, 79, ran the Manor House Motel in Aurora, Colorado, which was purposefully designed so he could secretly watch his guests' most private bedroom moments to satisfy his voyeuristic tendencies — and sometimes had sex with his wife, Donna, while he watched.
With the help of Donna, Foos fitted more than a dozen rooms in the motel with large fake ceiling vents so he could spy on the guests, detailing their private activities in a sordid journal, over three decades. He was never caught.
Hotel owner Gerald Foos, left, and journalist Gay Talese are the subjects of the documentary film Voyeur. Photo Netflix
His sensational admission was revealed last year in an article in the New Yorker by American journalist Gay Talese, now 85, who also wrote a book, The Voyeur's Motel, detailing Foos' life.
But as detailed in a new documentary on Netflix, Voyeur, Foos struggles when the attention is turned on him.
In the documentary, as in Talese's article and book, Foos was happy to admit his shocking habit of watching his guests' intimate moments without their knowledge.
"They couldn't hear me, they couldn't see me, but I could hear them and see them," he said in the film.
"I know a lot of people are going to call me a pervert, peeping tom. I'm prepared for that. But I had to tell someone [about his voyeurism] because I just didn't want to die and it be lost forever."
Foos said he bought the Manor House Motel in the late 1960s after telling his wife, Donna, he was looking for a "laboratory" so he could conduct sexual research.
He said it had to be "absolutely foolproof in so far as anyone ever discovering it".
As well as installing the fake ceiling vents, Foos placed three layers of thick carpet over the attic floor and even used rubber-tipped nails to help silence any footsteps from above.
He also installed "viewing posts" in several bathrooms, so he could watch guests in there too.
Foos ensured only young and attractive guests were in the "viewing rooms".
He went on to watch hundreds of couples in the next few decades, until he sold his motel in 1995. It has since been knocked down. The statute of limitations has passed for any crimes that he may have committed over that time.
Foos would peer down on guests from an "observation platform" he built in the motel's attic. Photo / Netflix
Foos believed he was a "sexual researcher and social observer" and the knowledge he gained from watching strangers having sex, which he recorded in a diary, was a great benefit to mankind.
In a journal entry from 1977, Foos claimed he witnessed a murder in the motel, with a male drug dealer strangling his girlfriend — but there was no evidence to back it up and authorities have no record of such a crime.
Foos first started talking to the journalist, Talese, after writing him a letter in 1980. Talese's New Yorker article and book were the result of many years of contact between the pair. On one occasion, Talese actually visited Foos' sordid motel, and himself watched a couple engage in a sex act from the viewing post in the attic.
Talese's story on Foos took the world by storm upon its release — although there were some inconsistencies detected, and accusations Foos had fed false information to Talese that the journalist didn't verify. For a while Talese disavowed the book, before defending it publicly again.
The documentary follows Foos and Donna as they dealt with the sensational fallout of Talese's article and book, fielding cold calls from journalists and also receiving threats.
"I'll tell you what, man, the sh*t had hit the fan," Foos said in one scene.
"It's in every city in the country right now."
The cameras also captured Foos as he struggled with some of the details Talese included in his article and book — and the huge rift between author and subject it sparked, which also erupted on-screen.
In 2016, through his interviews with Gay Talese, Gerald Foos revealed the shocking secrets of his motel. Photo / Netlix
While he "generally thought [the story] was OK", Foos was "pissed off" Talese had mentioned in the story his valuable baseball card collection.
That was private information no one deserved to have, Foos told the camera in a furious outburst.
