King County prosecutors have charged a 54-year-old Seattle man and registered sex offender with indecent exposure for allegedly masturbating in the Auburn SuperMall parking lot June 2.
Prosecutors claim Kenneth R. Libke committed the felony while he was parked in the lot. Libke’s arraignment was Thursday in Kent.
According to Auburn Police Detective Anna Weller’s certification for determination of probable cause – the basis for the single charge – a mall security officer had been monitoring a surveillance video feed of the parking lot at 12:15 p.m. when she saw a grey Jeep suspiciously parked outside of Nordstrom Rack.
The man at the wheel seemed nervous, as though he were preparing to shoplift, the officer said. The officer trained the camera on the Jeep as it moved to the front of the store then zoomed in for a closer look. Through the windshield she saw a man in the driver’s seat, right arm and hand pumping up and down in a highly suspicious manner.
At this point according to Weller’s account, a person walked past the Jeep, the vehicle moved forward and then turned, giving the officer a clear view into the front passenger compartment. There sat a man, naked from the waist down. And in a wave of nausea, the guard knew exactly what the man was doing.
The officer told police she nearly threw up at that point but pulled herself together, according to Weller’s account. Concerned that others might see what she had witnessed through the Jeep’s untinted windows, she called police.
In the meantime, Weller’s account continues, another security officer found a second witness. This second witness later told police that over the previous six months he had seen the same man cruising the parking lot, as though searching for something. That something the witness believed to have been women, whom the man would drive toward before slowing his vehicle.
The witness wrote down the Jeep’s license plate number, and according to Weller’s account, he later positively identified Libke from a photo montage.
Libke, in jail on $50,000 bail, has a long history of sexual crimes, including convictions for public indecency in 2010, lewd conduct in 1993 and 1997, and indecent exposure in 1980, 1981, 2002 and 2006. In 1981, he was convicted of battery on a peace officer.
