The man believed to be behind a series of recent peeping Tom incidents in Clayton’s Moorlands neighborhood has a long history of engaging in such voyeurism. Even so, he’s only facing a misdemeanor charge.
Last May, the RFT reported that an unknown individual had been spotted at least a dozen times in the Moorlands over the course of the previous 18 months. Clayton police now tell the RFT they believe that man is Alec Drago — and court records indicate Drago’s activity in the Moorlands was hardly his first run of peeping.
In 2016, Drago was sentenced to five years in prison after pleading to a felony invasion charge that stemmed from an October 2015 incident during which Drago looked through the bathroom window of an O'Fallon family's home, peering at a 35-year-old mother and her six year-old daughter, both of whom were undressed.
After being spotted, Drago was chased by the man of the house through multiple yards, according to a St. Charles County Sheriff’s Department probable cause statement. Drago got away on foot, but his girlfriend's car was found parked nearby. And when police showed up at Drago's house, they saw him wearing the same maroon sweatshirt and hat as the suspect in the chase.
Drago made what is known as an Alford plea, which means he didn't concede guilt, only that there was enough evidence to likely convict him. The five-year prison sentence was handed down the following March.
But that incident wasn't Drago's first time facing charges for this sort of elicit behavior. He was arrested under similar circumstances in November 2013 for invasion of privacy and trespassing, spending seven days in jail after pleading guilty, and was also arrested for trespassing in September 2015. In both cases he was caught outside people's windows. The September 2015 incident was in a neighborhood just to the north of where he was chased by a husband a month later.
It’s not clear how much of the five-year prison sentence Drago actually served.
Reports of a prowler in the Moorlands began surfacing in August 2021, with neighbors spotting him again and again over the course of the following year and a half.
The RFT published home security camera footage showing the dexterous prowler boosting himself up on a railing and stepping onto a narrow ledge.
Corporal Jenny Schwartz with Clayton PD confirmed last week that police believe Drago to be that man.
However, Drago doesn’t appear to be facing charges related to the incident captured on camera. He is instead facing one misdemeanor charge of harassment in Clayton municipal court. The date of that alleged offense was August 14.
Schwartz tells the RFT that at one point, the police referred the charges to the St. Louis County Prosecuting Attorney’s Office, which would have been the office to bring a felony case. The office took the case under advisement before referring it to municipal court.
In 2017, the state law governing what constitutes invasion of privacy changed, with some acts that would have previously been charged as class D felonies now being class A misdemeanors.
Chris King, a spokesman for the county prosecutor's office, said that his office never opened a file relative to the case and therefore had no record as to why it was referred to municipal prosecutors.
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