Banker Blames His Dog for All of His Sex Tapes Leaking Online
He was just trying to record his dog, like the incredibly attentive pet owner that he is.
By Rachel Sugar
A former Morgan Stanley investment manager is accused of secretly videotaping “multiple sexual encounters” with women in his Upper East Side apartment, reports the New York Post. But according to the defendant, it’s all a big misunderstanding: he didn’t mean to record the sex, he told the court. He was just trying to record his dog, like the incredibly attentive pet owner that he is. And that’s his curse, you know? He’s just so attentive that he accidentally forgot to turn off the puppy cam, had sex in front of it many, many times, and then, whoopsies, posted the videos to YouTube and Vimeo.
"I have this camera set up in my apartment to watch my dog when I'm not there,” John C. Kelly, son of high-profile lawyer John Q. Kelly, explained at his arraignment yesterday. “It’s on and sometimes stays on. So I accidentally recorded myself having sex because it’s always recording.” Which, okay. As of yesterday, I have some sympathy here. Like John C. Kelly, I also happen to have a puppy cam set up, because my dog has some serious anxiety issues and I apparently also have some serious anxiety issues, the kind that cause you to set up a puppy cam. Usually, I remember to turn it off when I get home, because as much as I like anxiously checking in with my anxious dog, I do not, in general, need footage of myself wandering around my tiny apartment without pants eating frozen raspberries from a measuring cup. But yesterday, I did not turn the camera off, had a real dumb fight with my boyfriend about comma usage, and now there are several hours of embarrassing footage of me crying about comma usage. So I guess what I’m saying here is, I think I have about as much sympathy for John C. Kelly here as it is possible to have for John C. Kelly.
As it turns out, that is not actually that much sympathy at all. Because while accidentally recording something you really (really) didn’t want to record when all you wanted was to see what your terrier was up to, I report first hand, is all too possible. How exactly all that accidental footage accidentally ended up on the Internet remains unclear. Even if John C. Kelly’s suspiciously elaborate-for-a-puppy-cam setup was set to livestream every second of his dog’s exploits — in which case, he is also terrible, because that shit is boring — it seems like the moment you realize you livestreamed yourself having sex with someone who did not consent to being livestreamed is the moment you freak out and take it down. Or, if you are John C. Kelly, the moment you do nothing, wait for the women to bring footage to the Manhattan DA’s office, and then argue that you are the real victim here because one of the recorded women was stalking you.
And maybe she was. Maybe you are. Maybe the webcam, the “stealth phone app,” and the “hidden camera in the bookshelf” were really all intended for next-level dog-surveillance. That could all be true. Maybe the time John C. Kelly was fired from Morgan Stanley for allegedly “writing bad checks” was also his dog’s fault. But also, probably not.
Image via Flickr
