SPRINGFIELD, MO — Perhaps he’s a Romeo with multiple lovers and a tight budget for sex toys. Perhaps he’s too embarrassed to shop for dildos in the traditional way. Perhaps he’s a confused moralist who thinks he can decrease demand for vibrators by decreasing available supply. Whatever his motivation, the legal system calls what he does one thing: stealing. So far, the Missouri sex toy thief has knocked over at least three Springfield area shops during the last weekend – and all he took was about $1,000 worth of adult novelty items.

Safe and sound were expensive clothing, magazines, videos, all other merchandise — and cash registers full of money.

Springfield investigators believe that the sex toy thief used a pipe or club of some sort to break into one of the shops and drove a minivan into two others in order to bypass the locked doors. Security cameras located inside of one of the three shops caught the suspect en flagrante, although his identity is still unknown.

“I think it was random,” Darlene Hedrick, the owner of Victoria’s Palace, which was among those hit suggested to local KSPR television. “He just decided to go out and get some toys and have a little fun. So, he decided, let’s hit them all, see what I can get.”

Victoria’s Palace got off easier than Cosmic Fish or Adam and Eve, the latter two having been on the receiving end of the thief’s minivan.

“Once inside, it appears he knew exactly what he was going for,” Springfield Police Department representative Grant Story observed to KSPR. “He went straight to the back to grab a bunch of adult items and then flee the area.”

Although the police department does not yet have a positive ID on the suspect, blood samples and finger prints found at one robbery location will hopefully assist in his eventual identification and capture. He is described as a white man with a large build, in his mid-thirties with dark hair.

What the thief’s motives were is unknown, especially given that at least some of the stolen toys were later found in a dumpster in Tom Watkins Park. Perhaps they weren’t the right color – or were too full of phthaltes for his preference?