The man who admitted to hiding in a portable toilet at a yoga festival in Boulder said he first started his voyeuristic lifestyle while traveling in Europe.

Luke Irvin Chrisco, 30, said in a jailhouse interview with the Camera on Friday night that he had trouble meeting people on his travels abroad because of the language barrier.

“I got bored and I guess a little horny,” he said from the Eagle County Jail, where he is being held on suspicion of unlawful sexual contact and criminal invasion of privacy.

Chrisco said he was living in the woods in France years ago and some friends went to a recreation center. He said he was wandering around inside the center when he ventured into the girls’ locker room and noticed a loose vent, where he decided to hide.

“These chicks started showing up that I never had a chance with,” Chrisco said. “But I figured at least I can see them change or something. I’ve come to know how interesting they are.”

Chrisco, who was born in Grand Junction, eventually made his way to Boulder, where he said drilling holes and peeping became a part of his daily routine. He tried to set up several porn sites and escort services while living in a hostel on University Hill.

The sites and the escort service were never for profit, Chrisco said, but to advance what he believed in.

“I wanted to start a new goddess religion,” he said. “I always wanted to be a pimp or create a church of porn or a church of tantric, someplace people could be spiritual but also instinctual,” he said.

Last week at the yoga festival in Boulder, he climbed into a portable potty Thursday but wasn’t caught until his second toilet-peeping Friday, he said.

The venture into the toilets was a first for him, since Chrisco said he normally liked barriers between him and the women he spied on. While he regrets the decision to climb in the toilet tank, he said he enjoyed it.

“I thought, ‘This is really amazing; I’ve been blessed and anointed by the makers of life,'” Chrisco said.

He said he did not have a camera the two days he was hiding in the toilets at the yoga festival.

Contact Camera Staff Writer Mitchell Byars at 303-473-1329 or byarsm@dailycamera.com.