The interesting saga of panty thieves!

The news of thieves being caught for stealing valuables is quite normal – and commoners find it pretty usual as theft is the kind of criminal offence that knows no location, situation and time.

But what if some people are found to be stealing women’s undergarments -- panties to be specific -– almost regularly? 

Let us have a look at some of such thieves held over the years over the otherwise interesting theft. 

On June 6, KSAT reported that a US man was arrested twice in less than a week after police say he broke into different women’s apartments and stole their underwear.

Brandon George, 30, was arrested on May 23 on a burglary charge and released the following day on a $40,000 bond from Walker County Jail in Huntsville, roughly an hour north of downtown Houston.

Jail records show George was arrested again on June 1 on a second burglary charge. This time his bond was set at $75,000 and records show he is still behind bars.

KSAT sister station KPRC reported that George allegedly broke into at least three apartments at the Republic at Sam Houston Apartments over the last five months and stole the tenant’s underwear, in addition to other small personal belongings.

Police said they were looking for additional victims. However, he does not have a prior criminal history.

Also in the US, police in southern New Jersey arrested a suspect who they say is stealing women‍‍`s underwear, CBS News reported on March 22 last year.

A victim said the suspect took bras, panties, $800 in cash and a shoe on March 9.

"That‍‍`s crazy. And a lot of these young girls are by themselves and that would be pretty scary," she said.

Police say 10 days later, the suspect, identified as Jorge Navaheredia, broke into another home and came face-to-face with the victim in her bathroom.

Cops say he ran away but was eventually caught when police found him hiding in a kitchen cabinet under the sink.

Police believe Navaheredia is connected to four burglaries, but there could be more victims.

In yet another incident as reported by the Business Insider on September 6, 2021, police officers in the southern Japanese city of Beppu have accused a man of stealing 730 pieces of women‍‍`s underwear from coin laundries.

Authorities were first alerted by an unnamed 21-year-old female college student, who accused Tetsuo Urata, 56, of pilfering six pairs of underwear from her at a laundromat on August 24, per local news broadcaster Abema TV.

The city police showed up on Urata‍‍`s doorstep that week, where they found 730 pieces of underwear stashed in his apartment. Urata has been arrested and has admitted to the authorities that he stole the underwear found in his possession, according to Yahoo Japan News.

"We haven‍‍`t confiscated such a large number of panties in years," a Beppu city police department spokesman told Abema TV.

Several other high-profile cases of men stealing women‍‍`s underwear have come out of Japan in recent years. This March, Takahiro Kubo, a 30-year-old electrician, was accused by the authorities in southwestern Saga Prefecture of stealing 424 pieces of underwear and swimsuits from teenage girls.

He was caught when a resident in Saga filmed him attempting to steal a swimsuit drying on a clothesline.

In 2019, police arrested Toru Adachi, then 40, in Oita Prefecture on suspicion of stealing 10 pieces of women‍‍`s underwear from a coin laundromat, local news site Japan Today reported. The police netted a haul of more than 1,100 items of female underwear kept in futon cases at Adachi‍‍`s home when they searched his place.

Serial underwear theft happens in the US, too. In July, the Associated Press reported that Alabama police found more than 400 panties in the home of John Thomas Uda, 27. Uda was also accused of stealing underwear from laundromats in 2019, per the Daily Beast.

A mental disorder!

Many underwear thieves suffer from psychiatric issues, according to their statements after their arrest. 

In 2014, a Chinese man, accused of stealing more than 2,000 pieces of panties and bras, admitted to having mental problems since he was young and that he did not know how long he had been obsessed with women’s undergarments.

In February 2008, a Singaporean professor in a Chinese university, who nicked bras and panties, pleaded guilty to stealing women’s underwear from a university dormitory.

A lawyer for the professor was reported as saying his client suffers from a psychiatric disorder and has been taking women’s underwear since he was 14.