Last edited: October 29, 2003


Gay Killer Charged with Being Peeping Tom in Public Bathroom

365Gay.com, September 21, 2003

By 365Gay.com Newscenter Staff

Virginia Beach, Virginia—A Virginia man on probation in the killing of a Knoxville, Tennessee man could have his parole rescinded and be sent back to jail.

Chad Allen Conyers was arrested during a sting operation by police at a store bathroom in Virginia Beach.

Conyers’ murder trial sparked outrage after a judge released him on parole without serving time in the strangling death of Joseph Camber in 2002 in Knoxville.

He was originally charged with second-degree murder in the April 2002 death of Joseph Camber, 36, but pled guilty to the lesser charge of voluntary manslaughter.

The judge in the case sentenced Conyers to 15 years, but said that he would be freed on parole. If he remained out of trouble for four years the sentence would be expunged.

At his sentencing Conyers admitted that he had met Camber at the Carousel II, a Knoxville gay bar, that the two had left together, and that he had strangled Camber to death. But, he never said what sparked the killing.

Camber, an organizer of Knoxville Pride, was a bartender at the club and was celebrating his birthday when he met Conyers.

His body was discovered early the next morning in a parking lot. Conyers was identified through DNA evidence in Camber’s fingernails.

Shortly after he was paroled Conyers moved to Virginia Beach where he got a job in a clothing store. Police arrested him at the store in the men’s washroom, allegedly peering into a stall where an undercover agent was conducting a sting operation.

Police routinely use the soliciting section of the Virginia sodomy law to charge gay men with soliciting for sex. Activists in the state have accused police of using the law to entrap gays. 


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