Lewd, crude vandal leaves his greasy imprint on Nebraska town
By Nate Jenkins, The Associated PressVALENTINE, Neb. - Boy, how people here wish their busiest vandal would find another way to make his mark.
Beginning more than a year ago, some man has been skipping from one business to another at night, pressing his naked behind - sometimes his groin, sometimes both - on windows.
Store owners, church workers and school janitors have had to wash lotion and petroleum jelly off the windows he selects.
Police Chief Ben McBride says it's the weirdest case he's ever seen.
Some residents of Valentine, a town of about 2,650 people, find some humour in the strange vandalism and have taken to calling the perpetrator the "Butt Bandit."
But they also can't help but cringe when finding his marks.
"We were completely grossed out," said Kalli Kieborz, who works in a downtown building. "One day I walked into the office and an employee said, 'Oh, my God, we've been struck!"'
The police chief is far from amused.
"It's not funny," McBride said. "We're worried about the next step."
It started in spring 2007, when the window of a Methodist church was greased with an imprint. McBride figured it was a high school prank. But the church kept getting hit, even after police staked it out.
The bandit struck business after business, window after window last summer.
Then he - and maybe, McBride said, copycat vandals - stopped over the fall and winter.
"People said he was done," McBride said. "Then he started back up this summer."
During one particularly brazen session, virtually all the windows at a local hotel were imprinted.
McBride said no one has reported seeing the vandal in action. The only clue is a blurry picture of him caught by a surveillance camera at the middle school last year.
The man was six feet tall or slightly taller, and slender. He had a dark complexion, and McBride said the man's dark hair was styled in a "1980s, feathered look."
Valentine, in remote north-central Nebraska, promotes itself as "The Heart City." Downtown sidewalks are painted with hearts, and locals encourage people from around the country to send their Valentine's Day cards to the local post office so they can be mailed out with the word "Valentine" stamped on them.
"This is not normal behaviour for Valentine," Cherry County Attorney Eric Scott said. "It's not funny or something people want to be exposed to."
DJ here...
Now what gets me is not the fact that this guy is doing this, and that the local paper is reporting this, but the national news wires have picked this up!
Now, I've never been to Valentine, Nebraska , but a map of the town would indicate it compares in size to Ayr or Acton, Ontario.
So it would seem to me that if they merely posted an image of one of the 'tags', at least one female in the town should be able to I.D. the offending parts.
My guess is that its the local druggist, otherwise a red flag would go up by the purchase of a lot of Vaseline.
Horatio Caine, Nebraska needs you!
I leave you with a comment from a Yahoo reader:
POSTED BY: Flin Flon Man on SAT, SEP 13, 2008 12:35 AM -0500
DJW
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