Private Investigator Accused of Planting Tracking Device on Tuscaloosa Woman’s Car

A private investigator in Tuscaloosa has been arrested and charged with electronic stalking after he reportedly placed a tracking device on a local woman's vehicle earlier this year.

According to a Tuscaloosa Police spokeswoman and details from court documents filed on Thursday, a woman who lives in the area discovered a tracking device on her SUV in June of this year, a couple of weeks after it was allegedly placed there by Michael Eugene Hearing.

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Hearing, 58, is a former city police officer who now works as a licensed private investigator.

Investigators said the device they found was registered to Hearing and set up to provide real-time updates on the woman's location multiple times a minute and send alerts whenever she left a predetermined area.

The victim discovered the tracker after she reportedly began to suspect her ex-boyfriend was following her.

Hearing was charged with first-degree electronic stalking for allegedly placing the tracker.

He was booked in the Tuscaloosa County Jail but has been released on bond and his mugshot was not publicly available Thursday. That freedom may not last, though - Hearing was charged with a trio of sex crimes in Hale County in 2023 and ultimately pleaded guilty to second-degree assault in a deal that dropped charges including sodomy and incest.

In that guilty plea, Hearing was sentenced to three years of unsupervised probation, and on Thursday, Attorney General Steve Marshall filed a motion in Hale County Circuit Court to revoke that probation in the wake of his new arrest.

The motion asks to have Hearing detained in Hale County and held until a judge can meet with prosecutors and hear a case to revoke probation in the 2023 case. He pleaded guilty to second-degree assault, which is a felony, and revocation of probation could see him serve some or all of a 10-year prison sentence attached to the older case.

For more exclusive coverage of crime and courts in West Alabama, stay connected to the Tuscaloosa Thread.