From People - November 25, 2002
Dress Rehearsal?
Court papers reveal convicted shoplifter Winona Ryder may have tried her hand before
Throughout her trial for shoplifting, Winona Ryder maintained
the same look of wideeyed innocence that fans have warmed to
onscreen. But after she was convicted of felony vandalism and theft on Nov.
6, even her pals couldn't call it a bum rap. "She feels like she's in The
Crucible," says Ryder's rocker friend Courtney Love. "She's got a
problem. It's not a physical addiction. It's a compulsion. It's the same madness
as any other shopaholic."
| Now unsealed court papers have
shed light on just how compulsive Ryder may have been. During her trial
prosecutors were barred from presenting evidence of three prior incidents
in which Ryder, 31, allegedly shoplifted. On two occasions her forays in
Barney's New York stores in Beverly Hills and in Manhattan were even recorded
on surveillance tapes similar to those shown in court (where she was tried
for stealing $5,560 worth of goods from the Saks Fifth Avenue store in Beverly
Hills). Once, she was asked to pay for a sweater that was found concealed
under her coat, but another time, at the Neiman Marcus in Beverly Hills,
she wasn't stopped because there wasn't a female security officer on duty
to search her. Ryder wasn't charged in any of the incidents. In general,
"some of [the stores] don't think it's worth going to court,"
says a former Beverly Hills police detective who did not want to be named.
"They get the merchandise back, tell them not to come back into their
store, and that's the extent of it." If Ryder does indeed have a compulsion to shoplift, she isn't the first wealthy person to experience it. "Kleptomania doesn't know one socioeconomic group," says psychologist Marcus J. Goldman, author of Kleptomania: The Compulsion to Steal. Why? "It's the kind of thing people use when they don't have a lot of other things going on in their life," says Goldman. "People like this tend to he lonely, isolated, very depressed, people with anxiety. They often have trouble with interpersonal relationships." |
Spree
Interrupted? |
Ironically, Ryder's TV exposure during the trial may prove a professional boon.
"What difference does it make?" says veteran casting director Mike
Fenton. "I truly believe that short of murder, the press that actors get
just makes the world more aware of them. "
Ryder is expected to be sentenced to community service and probation at a Dee.
6 hearing, after which she will, no doubt, get back to stealing scenes. "Last
time I talked to her, she seemed relieved more than anything else," says
her friend Marc Klaas. "This has held up her life and career. She wants
to do other things than contemplate a public humiliation."