STRANGE CASE!
WHERE NEVADA, USA WHEN 2-3 JULY 2023
A FOOT FETISHIST FACES MULTIPLE CHARGES AFTER BACK-TO-BACK TOE-TICKLING RAIDS DURING A HOLIDAY WEEKEND IN LAKE TAHOE
If you’re a regular reader of Real Crime, then you’ll no doubt have read numerous stories about criminals sneaking into people’s homes as they sleep.
These stories usually end in kidnapping, torture, rape, murder and mutilation. It’s terrifying, of course. But the following story, which follows the same pattern up to a point, ends very differently. Yet it’s somehow even more unsettling than some of the most gruesome accounts of stalkers, serial killers and home invaders.
The Fourth of July weekend is always a busy time for police across the US, but especially for those with tourist spots within their jurisdictions. One such popular destination for celebrating the holiday weekend is Lake Tahoe, on the border between California and Nevada. Club Wyndham South Shore is a quiet, lodge-style resort on the Nevada side of the lake, and during the holiday weekend there was an increased police presence on the beach close to the resort. But someone slipped through the net.
At about 4:30 in the morning of Sunday, 2 July, a woman sleeping in a room on the ground floor awoke to find someone standing at the foot of her bed, fondling her feet. She confronted the man, who escaped the same way he had come in – through the unlocked screen door leading outside – and slipped away unnoticed by police.
Then the following morning, the exact same thing happened to a different woman, in a different room at the same resort. Again, the prowler fled when confronted and escaped detection by police.
Now, it’s not the foot rubbing in itself that’s weird. Foot fetishes are quite common and there’ll be no shaming on these pages. But most foot fetishists would find a willing partner (or pay one if they had to), or look at pictures or videos of feet and think, “Mmmm… feet”, perhaps buy used women’s shoes online and sniff them. Grabbing someone’s feet while they’re asleep is way over the line. Waking up to find a stranger at the foot of your bed is inherently terrifying, whatever they’re doing there.
Anyway, the serial foot fondler had left something behind and, a month after the incident took place, the D
