A 60-year-old Lakeland man suspected of placing a hidden camera inside a women’s restroom was found dead Tuesday morning in Colt Creek State Park from an apparent suicide, according to the Polk County Sheriff’s Office.
Deputies located the body of Sean Michael Krause at 8:28 a.m. in a wooded area of the park. Krause had been the subject of a search that began Monday after an employee discovered a recording device inside an employee-only county facility.
The investigation started on Monday, September 21, 2026, when deputies were called to the Polk County Tax Collector’s Office Information Technology building in Bartow. An employee reported finding a small camera hidden inside a disposable toilet seat cover dispenser in the women’s restroom.
A detective analyzed the device’s SD card, which contained footage of a man with a long beard setting up the camera inside the dispenser. Staff at the Tax Collector’s Office identified the man in the video as Krause, the IT manager for the facility. The memory card also held multiple recordings of at least three women filmed without their knowledge.
Deputies went to Krause’s home in Lakeland later that day. A witness at the house told investigators that Krause had returned home earlier, confessed to secretly recording coworkers in the bathroom, changed his shirt, gathered medication, and left his mobile phone behind before driving away.
The search led authorities to Colt Creek State Park after a park ranger spotted Krause’s vehicle around 8:25 p.m. Monday. Inside the car, investigators found a small notebook containing a detailed suicide note, prompting an overnight search of the park grounds that ended when deputies located his body Tuesday morning.
Sheriff’s officials stated that Krause would have faced multiple third-degree felony counts of digital voyeurism had he survived.
“Digital voyeurism is a serious crime,” Sheriff Grady Judd said in a statement. “The Tax Collector’s office did an outstanding job taking immediate action, and our deputies worked quickly to gather and review the evidence. Though the investigation is ongoing and we await the findings of the Medical Examiner’s Office, it is clear that Mr. Krause committed very serious law violations before apparently taking his own life.”
The investigation remains open pending official findings from the District 10 Medical Examiner’s Office.