In the 1960s Hefner had a video tape recorder systems installed to feed video of recorded TV shows throughout the mansion. You could have a different program in a different room playing which would mean a separate system for each program you wanted to play. And, he had a full time engineer (or engineers) to run this. In the 1960s VTR machines (as they were called then) were almost exclusively used by TV broadcast companies because of their high cost and complexity of operation. Some schools had them too. But Hefner had one, perhaps one of the few civilians to do so. Is it unfathomable to think that he also had hidden video (closed circuit TV) cameras installed? Video cameras sent the feed back to the recorder(s) which meant they were quiet. Blackmail films until this point were made thru 1-way mirrors in an dark adjacent room or through a spyhole. It had to be done this way because a film cameras are noisy.

Shortly before Hefner died it was reported he dumped 100s of hours of tapes into the Pacific. I think this was on CDAN. Some of the tapes were returned over the years to the stars that made them. But many were not. The tapes that he dumped into the ocean were rumored (I hate rumors but it's all I have here) to be of dead Hollywood stays only. The ones that weren't dumped allegedly of politicians. Is it too big a leap to think that those would have ended up with the Clowns?