Serial Socks Snatcher In Trouble Yet Again

An Illinois man says his fetish for women's hosiery has been his undoing, earning him three stints in prison and repeated scoldings from judges over the years.

So police say it's no surprise James Dowdy is in trouble again because of his lust for leggings.

Dowdy has been arrested with attempted burglary for his uninvited visit to a parked car and dropping stolen socks.

"He's obviously got some problems", Belleville police Capt. Don Sax said. "We can't crawl into his head and come up with a particular answer to why he does this. We have to assume it's part of his sexual deviation".

"To the best of our knowledge, he's just after the socks", Sax said. "Generally, they are almost always female socks".

In the weeks leading to his latest arrest, Sax said, witnesses reported seeing a person peeking through windows. And often, socks were left behind.

So police responded to one of the reports and saw Dowdy trying to crawl into a house through a basement window, socks in one hand and a flashlight in the other.

His troubles stretch back at least 13 years when he was sentenced to seven years in prison after pleading guilty to attempted burglary when he entered into a female neighbor's home for her socks. He was sentenced following that for breaking into another woman's home and getting caught by police with a bag of socks.

"I know what I did was wrong", he told the judge back then during sentencing. "And the thing with the socks, I would like to get help with it so I can get over it, get it out of my life and get on with my life".

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