He said that it took him several months to fashion his motel’s viewing vents to “foolproof perfection,” using Room 6 as his laboratory, and Donna as his assistant. He initially considered having two-way mirrors in the ceilings, but dismissed the idea as too obvious and too easily detectable. “I must develop a method that will never result in a guest discovering their existence,” he wrote. “A guest is entitled to his or her privacy and must never know it has been invaded.” He then thought of installing faux ventilators for his viewing pleasure, but first had to hire a metalworker who would fabricate a model of what Foos had in mind—a fourteen-by-six-inch louvered screen containing a dozen slats—and then reproduce eleven more replicas of this model without the metalworker learning the true purpose of his work nor participating in its installation at the motel. Foos himself would have to provide the labor once the louvered screens were completed, although Donna volunteered to help. “I couldn’t let anybody but her help me,” he said, during our dinner.
One of Donna’s tasks was to stand on a chair or ladder in each of the twelve designated rooms and hold overhead a louvered screen and then attempt to fit it into the fourteen-by-six-inch rectangular-shaped opening in the ceiling that Foos had created earlier using an electric-powered saw.
Meanwhile, as he lay prone on the attic floor, he extended his hands down through the opening and helped Donna hold the screen in place and then secured it with long screws that penetrated the three-quarter-inch plywood attic floor. He said that all the screws were flat-headed and were firmly secured at the pointed ends into the attic so they could not be tampered with from below by an occupant of a guest room. Three layers of shag carpeting covered the attic floor, and the nails that kept the carpeting in place were covered with rubber tips to deaden the squeaky sounds that might arise from footsteps.
The openings were placed near the foot of the bed. “The advantageous placement of the vent,” he wrote, “will permit an excellent opportunity for viewing and also hearing discussions of the individual subjects. The vent will be approximately six to eight feet from the subjects.”
After all of the twelve louvered screens were installed in the designated rooms, Foos asked Donna to visit each room, lie on a bed, and then glance up at the vent as he was staring down at her.
“Can you see me?” he would call down through the ventilator. If she answered, “Yes,” he would come down to the room and, while standing on a ladder and using his pliers, would attempt to bend the louvered slats at such an angle that would conceal his presence in the attic while maintaining a clear view of the bedroom.
“This trial-and-error process took us weeks,” Foos continued. “And it was also exhausting—with me constantly going up and down between the attic and rooms, and my hands aching from all those adjustments with my pliers, and Donna, who was helping during her free time from the hospital, was as worn out as I was. But she never complained. She showed much love for me during that time. Why would a woman help with such stuff if it wasn’t for love?”
Foos said he began watching guests during the winter of 1966, and, while he was often turned-on, there were also occasions when what he saw was so uneventful that he fell asleep, slumbering for hours on the attic’s thick carpeting until Donna would wake him up during one of her periodic visits, usually prior to her leaving for the evening shift at the hospital. Sometimes she came up bringing him a snack, perhaps a piece of fruit or a soda and sandwich—“I’m the only one getting room service at this motel,” he told me with a smile; while at other times, though briefly and infrequently, Donna would accept his invitation to lie down next to him on the rug and watch whenever a particularly engaging erotic interlude was occurring in one of the rooms below.
“Donna was not a voyeur,” he said, “but rather the devoted wife of a voyeur. And, unlike me, she grew up having a free and healthy attitude about sex, and this included having oral sex and intercourse with me in the attic sometimes during her days off from her nursing job. The attic was an extension of our bedroom,” he continued. “It was a place where we could be alone when the children were around. The doors into the attic were always locked, and only we had the keys. Some couples in their homes installed mirrors on their ceilings, or watched hard-core porno while in bed, but the advantage we had while making love quietly in our attic was the possibility of peeking down on a live sex show taking place just seven or eight feet below us.”
He went on to say that when Donna was not with him, if he was aroused while watching a performing couple below, he would either masturbate (he kept a hand towel nearby) or he would commit to memory what he saw and recall the stimulating imagery while making love to Donna later. “Even a sexually fulfilling marriage can use a little added spice,” he said.