PORT TOWNSEND –Chimacum High School Principal Rex E. Whipple pleaded not guilty on Friday to a voyeurism charge as his attorney vowed to prove that someone else filmed and placed homemade videos of a naked teenage girl on his school district-issued computer.
“We have a person of interest that we have a reasonable reason to believe may have done this,” Alton McFadden told visiting Kitsap County Superior Court Judge Anna Laurie during Whipple’s arraignment in Jefferson County Superior Court.
Jefferson County Prosecutor Juelie Dalzell said that the Whipple family wants the case resolved as soon as possible, but McFadden said that a fair trial was even more important.
McFadden said experts would have to examine the videos in some detail.
“Somebody placed this on his computer, placed it there, and took his computer,” McFadden said.
Whipple, 46, has been Chimacum High’s principal for more than four years. He is accused of surreptitiously shooting videos from outside and inside his Port Ludlow home of a 15-year-old girl in the nude and several states of undress.
He has been charged with voyeurism, a Class C felony, which carries a penalty of up to five years in prison and/or a $10,000 fine.