Shoes to steal for

I don't know if the interests of The Manolo extend from the shoes to the fetish of the shoes, but if so here is a story for him. It's about a man who is in court after being overwhelmed by the abundance of the beautiful shoes in our capital city as compared with the situation in Stockton-on-Tees:

A shoe fetishist who moved to London found the fashionable footwear there so exciting that he robbed a series of women of their shoes to satisfy his sexual obsession, a court was told.

Omar Abd-el-Gowd, 26, told police that he had been obsessed with ladies' shoes since the age of 12, and that he had taken shoes for "sexual purposes" for years.

But when he moved from Stockton-on-Tees to the capital, he was driven to new levels of obsession by the array of trendy shoes he encountered.

Toby Fitzgerald, for the prosecution, told Inner London Crown Court: "He found that fashionable - to him - and sexually attractive shoes were to be found in greater abundance in the capital. He told police this was the trigger for him to go beyond simply taking shoes."

He began robbing shoes from the feet of women as they walked down the street. For over a year, Abd-el-Gowd targeted well-shod women in London, in most cases getting away with a single shoe, but once making off with a pair.

The readers of the normblog are advised that this is a case where they really should read the whole thing, as they will learn the shoe-removing techniques alleged against Mr Omar Abd-el-Gowd, and also come to this statement from the prosecution:

[H]is past relationships with women had been somewhat complicated by the fact that he would find a particular girlfriend's shoes more sexually attractive than the girl herself...

Somewhat complicating this would certainly be. Mind you, other reports of the same case might be thought rather to make light of the problem of the shoe fetishism by the way they have been illustrated. (Thanks: DML.)