Several of the house-sitting instructions were odd enough.

"Sauna is clean with fresh towels. Remember – it takes about 45 minutes to heat. Let me know when you first turn it on ... that it is working ... send me a text:

"Warm shower/30 minutes/cool shower/20 minutes/stretch and shower."

Send me a text? Stretch and shower?

Who was this guy?

The text messages from the Happy Valley high-tech exec – in Black Butte for the weekend with his wife and daughters – were relentless.

"The sauna feels great before bed."

"Use the upstairs and our bed. Never know what you might find downstairs."

"There is also baby oil and lotion upstairs for after sun. Gotta keep the tan."

Maybe it was the reference to the baby oil. Maybe it was the odd question about the pool level, where the girls left a hose running. "That gave us the sense that he knew something was wrong," Justine Keller, 18, says. "That he was watching."

And so it was on a summer Sunday afternoon in Happy Valley that two 18-year-old girls say they discovered two wireless Netgear VueZone surveillance cameras in the master bath that the homeowner, Kurt Higgins, seemed so eager for them to use.

The events of that day have sparked a long and labored criminal investigation by Gil Millett, a detective with the Happy Valley Police Department, who notes, "I think we're going to have additional victims. Based on the evidence I'm looking at, the behavior seems to be predatory."

And that lengthy investigation has traumatized the families of current and former La Salle Catholic College Prep students who long considered Higgins' five-bedroom house their second home.

* * *

Higgins, 51, is the co-founder – and executive vice-president of business and corporate development – at FileString, a file control platform that, according to its website video – "attaches a digital string to the important files you share so you can control your content ... and revoke access to files so they can never be opened again by people to whom you've sent them."

Higgins did not respond to several requests for comment. His attorney, David T. McDonald, said Wednesday he has been informed of the law-enforcement investigation, and added, "I do not have any comment on any pending investigation."

As Higgins' daughters moved through La Salle, he was a "dad figure" for several of their closest friends, according to the 18-year-old who answered the door when Happy Valley police arrived at the home on July 28:

"I spent more time with him than with my own dad during high school," the girl told me. "We were so comfortable at that house. If I didn't want to be home for a couple days, I'd stay there."

"If you knew the Higginses, everyone loved Kurt," another teenager said. "Everyone said, 'He's the man. He's the best.'"

Both 18-year-olds agreed to speak with me about Higgins if I did not name them. I also spoke with four parents – under the same conditions – who say their daughters regularly camped out at Higgins' home.

One girl said Higgins let them drive his black Audi. Another recalled that he hugged everyone a lot. "That was the hello and the goodbye," said one of the regulars, who estimates she slept over at the Happy Valley home 25 times.

And it didn't set off alarms, they say, that he so often suggested the girls hang out in the master bedroom suite

"He told us to sleep in his bed when he was out of town with his wife," said a teenager who began hanging out at Higgins' house when she was 16.

More than his bed was available, she recalled: "There were times when he would say we could wear his clothes if we wanted to change into something comfortable. I thought it was weird."

And the girls recall that Higgins constantly invited them to change or shower in the deluxe master bathroom.

It was always a suggestion, never an order, one of the La Salle grads said. The girls used the bathroom often, especially when they were transitioning from the athletic field to a La Salle football game or dance.

"You get as many girls through as possible," one teenager said. "You're using every shower, and every mirror. We knew where the towels were. We turned on the music. We chilled in there. There were times where we just sat in their bathroom and hung out. There were heated floors. We'd be there for an hour."

And, curiously enough, all of this seemed innocent until Justine Keller says she and her friend discovered the surveillance cameras.

* * *

Justine Keller was not a member of this Happy Valley sorority. She attended Central Catholic, not La Salle. All she knew last summer was that her close friend told her she didn't want to be alone at Higgins' house, so she drove over to spend the night with her.

She was unnerved by the volume of text messages from Black Butte: "He constantly kept checking in on her when it was completely unnecessary." Justine remembers her friend saying Higgins wanted her to sleep in his bedroom. Because she said that made her friend uncomfortable, Justine slept in the master suite that night. She changed in his bathroom.

And she was stunned when her friend approached her Sunday afternoon, saying, as she recalls, "I think there are cameras in here. I think they're in the parents' bathroom. Above the bath."

Two cameras, in an open cabinet beside the TV and a DVD unit, nestled – and partially obscured – in the folds of a black towel. One camera was pointed at the shower, Justine said, the other focused on the area where you might dry off or stretch out.

Something else: Someone had taken a black Sharpie or Magic Marker, Justine said "and tried to scribble out the gray part (of the camera) so it would appear all black," and, perhaps, better blend in with the towel.

"I felt so sick," Justine said. "We were trying to figure out what to do. We were looking at the cameras. We saw the name on it, and we were searching the internet on our phones. If it's a motion sensor. If it's on all the time. If you can access it from your phone."

Justine and her friend drove to the home of another La Salle student who spent Saturday at Higgins' house, from which Justine called her parents.

"They came over," Justine said. "My mom immediately wants to get the police involved."

That's not surprising. Leslie Keller spent 17 years as a deputy district attorney in Multnomah County. Ron Keller retired from the Portland Police Bureau in 2009 with 30 years of service, the last 17 as a detective.

"To Justine's credit, she took pictures of the cameras the way they were," Ron Keller said.

* * *

Gil Millett is just as frustrated as the families I spoke with, both by the pace of the criminal investigation and the lack of severity in the potential charges.

The detective said he will recommend that Clackamas County charge Higgins, at the very least, with invasion of personal privacy: "One attempted and one actual. We have two girls involved; we can't place one in the bathroom. Right now, it's just a misdemeanor crime."

"These are pretty egregious offenses," Millett added. The detective has long believed the penalties for filming women in a state of undress without their consent needs to be upgraded: "It should be a felony crime, especially if it's for your own gratification."

Why has the investigation dragged on for almost four months?

"It's the computer forensics," Millett said. "They take a long time. The district attorney doesn't want to get involved in a plea negotiation. That's why we're at the mercy of the (FBI) computer forensics lab."

When Ron and Leslie Keller first met a Happy Valley patrol officer and a county sheriff's deputy on the night of July 27, Ron Keller says he urged the officers to secure a search warrant.

"I said, 'You need to write a search warrant to go into the house to seize the evidence before it's destroyed or taken,'" the retired police detective said. "You need information that a crime has been committed. You know the evidence is still likely to be at the scene."

No search warrant was secured. Instead, police arranged for Justine's friend to send Higgins a text late Sunday night, saying, "Hey I just want you to know that I'm not spending the night at your house tonight. I found the cameras and I feel very violated. I don't know if I should tell my parents or not."

Higgins' response, according to copies of the texts supplied to me by the Kellers:

"No problem. I am sure the house is fine. We have been trying to get the surveillance in front and in the house working for a while. The cameras in front or (sic) the house have not been working. Call in the morning. We are headed to bed now. Good night."

When Millett arrived at Higgins' home Monday afternoon, he said, he had not yet written the extensive request for a search warrant. He says he asked himself, "Do I need a search warrant or do I have enough finesse to get some statements from Mr. Higgins?

"I relied on my experience. I got statements from Mr. Higgins."

Leslie Keller recalls Millett telling them that Higgins "admitted he put out the cameras to view (his house sitter) but the cameras weren't working."

Millett would not confirm that. He did say, however, that the investigation has been delayed by the attempt to acquire deleted computer files from Netgear, which is based in San Jose.

The wait has been brutal for teenagers and parents alike, they tell me. One of the girls, her parents say, has sought counseling. Another parent says his daughter "shared that she looks at even her male teachers differently now. She's more cautious."

Two families also tell me that a woman claiming to be an investigator for David McDonald – a criminal defense attorney who has extensive experience, his website tells us, in defending those charged with sex crimes – tried to contact their daughters.

One of the teenagers said the investigator called her on her cell phone on Oct. 7, asking if she had a close relationship with Higgins, and if he'd ever done anything to make her feel uncomfortable.

Yet all three families say Higgins has never contacted them since the July night that Justine Keller reports the cameras were discovered.

As one mother said, "My daughter is at your house when the police arrive, and you've treated her like a daughter for two years, but you don't call me and let me know? You're not up front with me about it? You would have thought they would have called and said, 'There's a misunderstanding.'"

-- Steve Duin