MONROE — A former Walmart employee pleaded guilty Feb. 11 to secretly recording people in the store’s changing rooms and in his Monroe apartment bathroom and was sentenced to three years in prison.
After he gets out of prison, Marcus Tyler Hendrickson, 28, is ordered to spend four years on extended supervision followed by two years on probation, for a total of nine years under supervision of the Wisconsin Department of Corrections.
He’s also ordered to spend a decade on the state’s Sex Offender Registry, during which time he will be required to seek permission from his probation agent for nearly everything in his life.
“He won’t be able to have any romantic relationships without permission,” his attorney, Amber Lucsay, told the court. “That will be true until his late 30s.”
Hendrickson’s sentence was jointly recommended by Lucsay and Green County District Attorney Craig Nolen and accepted by Judge Thomas Vale.
Nolen said the sentence sends a strong message.
“The public needs to know this conduct won’t be tolerated,” Nolen said. “No one should have to be concerned about going to Walmart ... No one should have to be concerned about safety.”
Lucsay supported the sentence because she said it gives Hendrickson time to address his clear treatment needs in a custodial setting. She said he grew up in “a somewhat of a sheltered environment” and emphasized that he has no prior criminal record.
“I think he’s going to be responsive to a therapist and to treatment,” she said.
In two separate cases, one related to a video camera in his apartment and the other related to images he took in Walmart, Hendrickson faced 16 Class I felony charges of capturing or possessing an intimate representation, five Class D felony charges of possession child pornography and one misdemeanor charge of invading privacy using a surveillance device.
As part of his plea agreement, he pleaded guilty to four of the Class I felonies, with the rest of the charges dismissed but “read in,” meaning the judge could consider them at sentencing.
Hendrickson showed up alone to his sentencing and declined to speak to the court when given the opportunity.
Hendrickson was charged with the first case in May 2018 after police found he had installed a spy camera in his Monroe apartment bathroom and covertly recorded two women using the toilet.
One of the women reported to Monroe police that she and a friend discovered two cameras disguised to look like wall hooks across from the toilet in the 4th Avenue apartment. The two Fulao-brand “Hidden Spy Clothes Hook” cameras were ordered through his Amazon account, police found.
But, according to court documents, further investigation revealed this incident was not isolated and Hendrickson had for years been secretly taking and compiling pictures of girls and women without their knowledge or consent.
As Hendrickson was being processed at the jail for charges related to the bathroom cameras, a jailer asked him to remove his socks, and as he did, a “micro SD card fell out.” It was seized as evidence, along with his phone and other devices.
A search of these devices found images of “intimate parts of unknowing females,” some taken in the changing room at the Monroe Walmart store. Hendrickson also kept more photos of female victims in a digital folder labeled “PEOPLE I KNOW,” with photos labeled by the person’s first and last name. The majority of these photos had been taken in Walmart. Many images in his collection were flagged as child-exploitative.
UGDetective Dan Skatrud, of the Monroe Police Department, located one victim who “was very surprised” to see photos of herself, Skatrud reported.
In a statement included in the criminal complaint, she wrote that she worked with Hendrickson at the Monroe Walmart while she was in high school and she “talked with him as a friend.”
“He followed me around but I never thought he would do anything to hurt me,” she wrote. “I never gave him consent to take any photographs of me.”
Skatrud confirmed that Hendrickson was hired at the Walmart in October 2011 and terminated in August 2017.