Panty Raid
Serial Panty Thief Arrested
By Daniel Muniz

Garth Flaherty, age 24, is a serial panty thief who primarily targeted the college girls who attended Washington State University (WSU). The vast WSU main campus located in Pullman Washington has an enrollment of over 18,000 undergraduate and graduate students. Consequently, the university and the surrounding areas of that college town provided ample hunting grounds for Flaherty to satisfy his fetish.

However, the underwear of thousands of young college girls frolicking around soon became more than an obsession to this young man. Instead of experiencing a momentary juvenile delight that could be written off as a frat boy prank, Flaherty turned his hobby into something bordering on mental illness.

In the end when Flaherty was caught, police confiscated five bags of assorted bras, panties, and other lingerie.

The booty weighed an eye popping 93 pounds and police estimated that his stash contained about 1,500 items. Although his prized possessions must have been sleek sexy thongs and g-strings, the horde of underwear consisted of all styles, colors, fabrics, shapes, and even sizes.
 

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Apparently, any panty regardless of how big it was became a worthwhile target and was not off-limits to this thief. Flaherty simply had to get his hands on any woman’s underwear.

In the numerous apartment buildings that primarily housed college students, Flaherty lurked in and out of the common laundry rooms. His young age and youthful appearance didn’t arouse any suspicion of the tenants because of the large number of college kids living in the immediate vicinity of WSU. Since Flaherty was inconspicuous, he could loiter around ogling and eyeing his prospects without attracting attention to himself.

Since most people don’t want to waste their time waiting for their clothes to get washed or dried, they would step away from the laundry room to go back to their apartments. That gap of time allowed the panty thief to peruse through the washing machines and dryers to filch whatever caught his fancy.

And a little bit of thievery wouldn’t have caused much consternation.

Almost all college girls have had their thongs or briefs snatched at one time or another so although the stealing would have been annoying, it would have just been written off by many women as an adolescent prank. Instead, lots and lots of underwear began disappearing. Perhaps cheap panties from Wal-Mart wouldn’t have caused any grief but anything from Victoria’s Secret or other big department stores is expensive and becomes something more than a nuisance.

As a result, the local police began to receive complaints.

Law enforcement alerted the public about the panty bandit. Soon afterwards, more women stepped forward with complaints about their missing undergarments. The police stated:
 

"When you steal someone's underwear, it's kind of a personal thing. This isn't like taking a gallon of milk from someone's porch. I'll be the first to admit there's kind of a tongue-and-cheek flavor to the story, but he affected a lot of people." Cmdr. Chris Tenant - Pullman Police Department Source: ABC News

So even with the increased public awareness, Flaherty didn’t stop. He still needed to indulge in his fantasies.

Nobody suspected him while he was flying under the radar and especially since most women would be too embarrassed to complain to the police about these incidents. However, the thief had to continue to feed his addiction even though the word was out and people were on the lookout for him.

Eventually, an employee of an apartment complex observed him pilfering underwear from a laundry room. The employee wrote down the license plate number of his car and called the police.

The authorities apprehended Flaherty and confiscated his horde of women’s underwear. He was then slapped with 12 felony theft charges. Although the charges may seem excessive, he did steal from several hundred women and the monetary value to replace 1,500 bras and panties is outrageously expensive.

Overall, this guy needs help.

A panty raid is common mischief among adolescents and frat boys but the magnitude that Flaherty took it to is alarming.

It would be a waste of time to devote resources to a prank but behavior at this level definitely raises red flags for anything that could happen in the future. Although we live in the age of “Girls Gone Wild” videos, behavior like this is something that society needs to keep an eye on.

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