Man Admits Bugging Bed Of Estranged Wife

MARCH 8--A Pennsylvania man placed a listening device under the bed of his estranged wife to monitor when she was having sex with her boyfriend, police charge.

Wayne Cripe, 66, is separated from his wife Suzanne, 49, but the pair resides in the same Aliquippa home, according to court records. The Cripes are “living in separate bedrooms,” reported David Anderson, an officer with the Raccoon Township Police Department.

Two weeks ago, Suzanne called cops when she discovered a transmitter under her bed. She told officers that she suspected Wayne had placed it there.

When an officer approached him, Wayne stated, “I guess she found the transmitter.” He said this, an investigator noted, before being asked any questions. In a subsequent interview, Cripe admitted placing the device under his wife’s bed “so he would know if his wife and her boyfriend were having sex.”

Cripe further explained that he was “sick of hearing the two of them having sex,” and that the listening device allowed him to know if the “coast was clear” before he entered the pair’s shared residence.

Cripe told a cop that the listening device transmitted to a receiver he kept in his truck. But he claimed to have discarded the receiver days earlier because it was no longer working, adding that he “didn’t have the opportunity to remove the transmitter before it was found.”

As a result of the surreptitious bugging, Cripe was named in a criminal complaint charging him with illegally intercepting communications, a felony, and invasion of privacy, a misdemeanor.

Scheduled for a March 23 preliminary hearing, Cripe apparently is continuing to live in the Grays Lane home he has shared with his estranged spouse. (4 pages)