Californian man locked up over hair cutting spree
When police finally came to Michael Howard's home they came across quite a
lot of hair.
They discovered a thin carpet of it covering the floor, huge mounds of it on the
bed, piles of it in the closet, and to capture that perfect hairy moment, photos
of severed ponytails lined up as neatly as bodies in a morgue. Californian police
then deduced they had finally caught up with the notorious "Haircut Bandit".
For three weeks in December of 2001, Howard cruised the streets of Los
Angeles and Long Beach, California, casing bus stops and park benches for
women with ultra-long tresses. Before he was caught, Howard chopped hanks
of hair or entire ponytails from the heads of nine victims, aged 12 to 45.
His attorney, deputy public defender Gregg Hayata, says Howard became
fascinated with hair as a boy and that as an adult, the sound of scissors cutting
hair sexually aroused him.
Police also unearthed reports from friends that Howard had often paid women
as much as $200 to let him cut their hair. They confiscated more than 40 hair
fetish videos depicting people getting haircuts. "There were naked women
getting their hair cut, videos of (Howard) cutting women's hair, some of a
couple who had each cut each other's hair and shaved each other's heads," one
police officer said. "There was a Spanish game show where, if you answered
the question wrong, they would cut your hair." They also seized photos of the
apparently consensual bobbing of a woman's long hair and of a row of about 15
neatly severed ponytails.
On Thursday, Howard entered a surprise guilty plea and was sentenced to eight
years in prison for his hair-raising rampage. Full Story