Former chief facing voyeurism charges

Accused of secretly filming female coworkers at fire stations

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A former Jefferson County firefighter and fire chief has been charged with two felony counts of voyeurism after he allegedly took secret videos of an East Jefferson firefighter as she undressed in her bedroom at East Jefferson Fire Rescue’s Station 1-5.

Patrick Henry Nicholson Jr. made his first appearance in Jefferson County Superior Court Dec. 17 and entered pleadings of not guilty to the two felony charges.

Nicholson, who most recently was fire marshal for Kittitas County and was a 2019 candidate for fire commissioner in Yakima County Fire District 4, was released from jail on his personal recognizance.

The alleged voyeurism incidents occurred in December 2012.

According to court documents, Nicholson was a firefighter/paramedic with East Jefferson Fire Rescue from June 2007 to November 2015 and had also been the fire chief for Discovery Bay and Brinnon during that time span. He had also worked as a reserve deputy for the Jefferson County Sheriff’s Office.

The hidden-camera videos came to light in January 2021 when Nicholson’s wife contacted the Yakima County Sheriff’s Office about a sex crime. She claimed her husband was addicted to pornography and had filmed other women in the nude five years earlier, and she contacted authorities after finding an old iPod that appeared to have deleted videos on it. She then took the device to have the files restored, and discovered videos of women that were secretly recorded while they were in the shower and bedrooms at different firehouses, according to the statement of probable cause for Nicholson’s arrest.

Nicholson’s wife, who told authorities she had filed for divorce and gotten a protection order against him, recalled finding sex videos on a laptop Nicholson owned when she moved into his Sequim home sometime around 2015. She said she confronted him and he promised to destroy them. She also said she forgave him and moved on, but she discovered the videos on the iPod last fall, and then soon after, the same videos on two other laptops that he had promised to destroy but didn’t.

The woman also told police she found a writing pen that had a camera inside it after her husband moved out.

Police obtained two video files that were made in Tacoma and the city of Phoenix, Arizona, as well as nine other videos made in Clallam County that authorities believe Nicholson made of women he had sex with who did not know they were being filmed.

Other video files, 23 in all, were also found that were taken in Jefferson County. One included a medical call to Port Townsend High School where a 14- or 15-year-old girl was being evaluated for a medical condition, and others included videos of the backsides of female firefighters, as well as another firefighter in her private bedroom getting ready for bed at Station 1-5 in Port Townsend.

Detectives examined a bedroom at the firehall and found a wall outlet where they believed a camera had been hidden.

Nicholson’s trial has been set for March 14.