DATE: Tuesday, May 13, 1997                 TAG: 9705110152
SECTION: LOCAL                   PAGE: B3   EDITION: FINAL 

TYPE: Public Safety 

SOURCE: BY JUNE ARNEY,STAFF WRITER

DATELINE: CHESAPEAKE                        LENGTH:   64 lines

CHESAPEAKE DETECTIVE TRACKS DOWN PEEPING TOM

Police got the first complaint last October. It came from a woman frightened by a man peeking in the bedroom window of her apartment in Greenbrier.

The next night, the same woman received a note in which the Peeping Tom asked if he could watch her, calling himself ``a voyeur.''

In the weeks that followed, an off-duty Norfolk police officer stopped a man who was walking through the parking lot of the same apartments, The Birches, near Greenbrier Mall.

The man claimed he was hunting for a friend's cat. The man gave the officer his name and left the area, as he was told.

On Nov. 30, about 2:30 a.m., a woman answered a knock on her door and found that someone had left a black slip and bathing suit draped over her banister. She called police who spotted a man in the woods nearby. He denied leaving the clothes, but said he had seen someone running from the area minutes earlier.

Police stepped up patrols at the apartments during the midnight shift. They stopped a man several times but could not prove he was doing anything wrong, according to Chesapeake detective M.J. Fischetti, who was assigned the case.

About the same time, the apartment complex put out a newsletter warning residents about the Peeping Tom and offering safety tips. Apartment dwellers took the situation seriously and began calling police whenever they saw anything suspicious in their neighborhood.

By the end of December, the night-time visitor had gone from weekly visits to peeping as often as every other night, Fischetti said.

``My opinion is that this was escalating,'' he said. ``It could very easily have become more than a peeping thing. . . . It had control of him. If you have control of it, you can stay home.''

The detective compiled a psychological profile of the suspect based on the information he had received from victims and other residents in the apartment complex.

He knew he was looking for a white male, who lived nearby and would be about the age of his victims - between 25 and 33. Information from the apartment residents was conflicting. Some had seen him driving a green Volkswagen and others a purple one.

When Fischetti went to the suspect's home, it turned out he had one of each color.

On Jan. 17, the detective took pictures of the cars. Later that day, residents reported the Peeping Tom had returned.

Three days later, Fischetti followed the suspect. Within 10 minutes of leaving his house, the suspect drove to the apartment complex, where Fischetti caught him looking into someone's bedroom.

On Jan. 23, John Eric Grieger, 27, the same man who had been found in the woods and in the apartment parking lot by the off-duty police officer and had been stopped several times by police, was charged with three counts of peeping, Fischetti said.

That offense is a class one misdemeanor punishable by up to a year in jail or a $2,500 fine or both. Grieger was convicted and has appealed his case to Circuit Court.

``The main thing that pulled it together was the help of the people who lived there,'' Fischetti said. ``Every time he was out there again, they were calling.'' ILLUSTRATION: Photo

Detective M.J. Fischetti of Chesapeake KEYWORDS: PEEPING TOM ARREST CHESAPEAKE POLICE DEPARTMENT

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