Unamused Cat
July 9th, 2008, 03:12 PM
http://i246.photobucket.com/albums/gg107/snarkyphotos/socks.jpg
BELLEVILLE, Ill. - A 36-year-old man whose admitted hankering for hosiery has landed him three prison stints and repeated judicial scoldings is accused of burglarizing a home this week, then stealing away with women's socks police say they found in his bedroom.
James Dowdy's arrest in this St. Louis suburb came while he was free on bond awaiting trial on attempted burglary and disorderly conduct charges filed last year for another supposed sock caper.
While Dowdy remained jailed Wednesday on a felony burglary count filed the previous day, his mother pressed publicly for the legal system to institutionalize her live-in son for psychiatric treatment for the fixation she says has tormented him most of his life.
Prison, Linda Dowdy insisted, won't do him any good in tackling his fetish -- which she thinks took hold when he clung to some of her socks as keepsakes when he was forced to live for a year with his dad as a child.
"He cries to me all the time, `Mom, I hate myself. I'd rather be dead than live like this,"' the 59-year-old mother, her voice cracking, told The Associated Press. "He doesn't hurt anybody, and he never takes anything of value. He takes nothing but socks."
Yet she fears, as do police, that he may eventually be killed as an intruder.
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/chi-ap-il-socksnatcher,0,4312881.story
BELLEVILLE, Ill. - A 36-year-old man whose admitted hankering for hosiery has landed him three prison stints and repeated judicial scoldings is accused of burglarizing a home this week, then stealing away with women's socks police say they found in his bedroom.
James Dowdy's arrest in this St. Louis suburb came while he was free on bond awaiting trial on attempted burglary and disorderly conduct charges filed last year for another supposed sock caper.
While Dowdy remained jailed Wednesday on a felony burglary count filed the previous day, his mother pressed publicly for the legal system to institutionalize her live-in son for psychiatric treatment for the fixation she says has tormented him most of his life.
Prison, Linda Dowdy insisted, won't do him any good in tackling his fetish -- which she thinks took hold when he clung to some of her socks as keepsakes when he was forced to live for a year with his dad as a child.
"He cries to me all the time, `Mom, I hate myself. I'd rather be dead than live like this,"' the 59-year-old mother, her voice cracking, told The Associated Press. "He doesn't hurt anybody, and he never takes anything of value. He takes nothing but socks."
Yet she fears, as do police, that he may eventually be killed as an intruder.
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/chi-ap-il-socksnatcher,0,4312881.story