CSI: The Heeljacker

My first introduction to criminology was the great McDonaldland criminal the Hamburglar.  In McDonaldland crime is often burger related, and the perpetrator, more often than not, was the Hamburglar (true story, as a kid, and perhaps during an embarrassingly long part of my teenage years, I thought David Bowie was singing "robble, robble").

Robble, robble, you've torn your dress.

It never really made sense to me that a robber would have such an oddly specific target.  I mean sure, there are burglars that target art, banks, jewelry, etc., but I've never heard of a thief that stole only van Goghs, will only rob SunTrust, and puts back any jewelry that isn't Cartier.  I mean, only burgers?  What about french fries?  The Big Mac?  Chicken Nuggets?  Obviously this sort of esoteric thievery is rare at best.

But now we have the heeljacker.  It seems that in his earlier crimes, the heeljacker would replace the heel in hopes the owner wouldn't notice.

Here we have exhibit A, the United Nude Eamz Pump where the heel has been replaced with a part of Herman Miller's classic Eames chair.

Too embarrassed by his lackadaisical security, the designer of the shoe promptly renamed it the Eamz and claimed it was in homage to the chair.  A likely story.

The heeljacker became more brazen as you can see with exhibit B, the Kei Kagami Archive Moulded Balance shoe.

With this shoe, the heeljacker is taunting us, gluing the shoe onto the base for a model airplane.

Eventually, due to a lack of creativity or perhaps just boredom with his craft, the heeljacker stopped replacing the heel, just leaving the shoe to defy gravity on its own.  We see this in exhibit C, a D'Orsay Pump from Giuseppe Zanotti.

And again with exhibit D from McQueen.

My training in Criminal Profiling comes direct from Scotland Yard (if you replace the word "Scotland" with "Back" and remove the space).  What we're looking at here is most likely a man, 45-55 years old, shorter than average, maybe 5'6"-5'8", uncomfortable with his stature, possibly in the public eye furthering his need to make women stand more at his level.

Hmm, we may have to bring him in for questioning.