A 50-year-old Chinese man was recently arrested by Shanghai police for allegedly stealing over 70 dresses from various local sellers during the last year. Asked why, he did it, the divorced man said that he wanted to feel like he was getting married again.
Shanghai police had received a report from a wedding dress wholesaler in the city’s Pudong New Area on August 21. The woman, surnamed Wang, claimed that dozens of her dresses had disappeared from her home since the beginning of this year. She added that losing one or two every month wasn’t unusual, but she decided to alert the authorities after eight gowns from her latest batch went missing.
Wang told the authorities that she often hung some of the dresses in her yard, and that’s where they seemed to be disappearing from. After checking security camera footage, police spotted a man climbed up Mrs. Wang’s fence using a long stick to pull the wedding gowns toward him. After identifying the man, they tracked him down to a village in Tangzhen, where they found an impressive stash of 73 wedding dresses worth a total of 60,000 yuan ($8,740).
Asked why he had been stealing wedding dresses, the divorced 50-year-old man surnamed Gu confessed that he just wanted to feel like he was getting married again, and had no intention of selling them for profit.
After checking his home, police found the eight dresses Wang had reported missing from her last batch, as well as others she had lost this year. Mr. Gu has been detained and will likely be charged with theft.