What is it like to be a kleptomaniac? Esquire speaks to someone who suffered from the disorder.
I didn’t steal because I was poor. I stole because I was angry and frustrated, which coexisted against each other. Theft had become my way of controlling these feelings, and at the same time a real addiction. I felt entitled to shoplift because I felt I had suffered unfairly in my life and the theft was a sort of compensation for the wrongs that I had suffered. I said to myself, let someone else be the victim.
I would think about stealing even before I got out of bed in the morning. I had become greedy. I was lost. I stole from so many shops that I didn’t even know where I was anymore and I was relying on the labels of the goods to figure it out. I didn’t even know what I was getting, just grabbing items off the shelves at random.
My house is full of things that are stolen: photographic equipment, houseplants, paintings, shoes, CDs, videotapes, DVDs, mouthwashes, aspirins, batteries, light bulbs, a fan, towels, gift boxes, coats, sweaters, books, magazines and children’s toys. I had a ten-by-six-foot storage box full of things I would never use.
In winter I would always wear a very loose coat, while in the summer I chose baggy clothes. I’ve heard of people lining shopping bags with aluminum foil to confuse anti-theft systems. I, on the other hand, always carried razor blades, pliers and a screwdriver with me to remove the safety tags. I preferred shops located in old buildings, as they weren’t designed with shoplifters in mind, and I always positioned myself behind columns to hide from cameras.
Once, I was trying on shoes in a department store and I tricked the saleswoman into going into the back room to get rid of her for a few minutes – the time it takes to act. While she was gone, I slipped a pair of shoes into my bag and went out. I never should have done that, but I immediately went back to the shop. The saleswoman must have been looking for me, because when she saw me I was surrounded by sixteen supervisors. I knew they wanted me. They took me to a kind of cell that was right on the premises of the store. I was not the only one. I had a lot of company in there.
I’ve been arrested five times. And every time, instead of wanting to learn my lesson, I would instead think about how I could do it better next time, so I wouldn’t get caught again.