It’s sad, really. All Linda wants in these challenging times is the opportunity to drive across Auburn at night without being forced to watch a grown man wet himself for his own twisted pleasure.
Still with me? Good, because I’m going somewhere with this.
Just in time for the holiday season come reports of a man who has been approaching young women along Center Street, peeing in his own pants and then racing off, damp and apparently satisfied.
The first reports began to trickle in last month. One woman reported she was approached in the Auburn shopping district by a man in his 30s who got out of his car, peed himself and then took off.
Once the news of that encounter leaked out, similar stories began to stream in, including those of two women who encountered presumably the same man in the same area of Auburn.
The names have been changed to protect the visually traumatized.
The 20-year-old Auburn woman we’re calling Linda said she was driving along Center Street with a friend on a Saturday night when a man in a car abruptly pulled up behind them.
Things took a turn for the wet and weird shortly after.
“He then proceeded to pass us in the other lane and get in front of our car,” Linda said. “Once we proceeded onto Mechanics Row, he stopped his car in the middle of the small one-way road, which was not very well lit other than our headlights, and proceeded to exit his vehicle, staggering towards our car. He had parked his car in such a way that it was impossible to drive around him to escape the situation. He then proceeded to look directly at us and urinate in his pants.
“Once we were able to somewhat process what was happening,” Linda continued, “we put the car in reverse to try to get ourselves out of what could possibly be a dangerous situation. Once he was finished, he got in his car and drove away very quickly.”
Like Linda, her 21-year-old friend, Marie, said the sight of a grown man wetting his pants in front of her was momentarily too bizarre to process.
“My first instinct was that he was having some sort of health issue based on how he was clutching his abdomen,” she said. “We sat in utter disbelief and shock when he finally ‘relieved’ himself about 10 feet in front of us. Despite our shock, we were able to jot down his license plate number and report it to the police station minutes after he sped away.”
Three other women have also reported encounters with the fellow, both along the same stretch of Center Street. Police said they have received four reports, classified as “suspicious person,” regarding the pant-soaked phantom.
If it happened once, you could write it off as an unhappy accident.
But twice? Three times? Four? Five times?
The Pee Pee Bandit case is bizarre, for sure. But is it the MOST bizarre? If you ask some veteran cops, they can cite old cases that give this one a run for its money.
There was the a man in his 50s who had to be warned several times by police for riding his bicycle around the city in the nude. But the temptation was too great and ultimately the fellow was charged with indecent conduct for taking another stark-naked spin on his Schwinn. There is a good chance that to this day, the man still has a probation condition prohibiting him from riding a bike unless fully clothed.
We’ve seen a local bed and breakfast owner charged with using pinhole cameras to spy on women using the bathrooms. Then there was the guy who somehow figured out how to hide inside the woodwork at an Auburn spa in order to spy on the ladies in the tanning beds.
We’ve seen our share, all right, and now we have Sir Pee Pee, a man with a habit so oddball and unique, it’s hard not to crack jokes and try to come up with clever nicknames for the fellow. Phantom Pee Pants has been suggested (by me) and Tommy Tinkle (also mine) has a nice ring to it.
But for Marie and Linda, as it was happening, the encounter didn’t seem funny at all.
“As a woman, I have never felt unsafe or targeted in Auburn until this event,” Linda said. “Although neither of us were harmed, it made us feel incredibly violated and uncomfortable. The fact that this was very obviously premeditated and that so many other young women in the community have also been targeted and affected by this man is even more frightening. I spent that night checking my rearview window all the way home, worried that he would be following me.”
Marie had similar thoughts.
“Auburn is home to an exceptional community, one that does not deserve a man to make women feel so uncomfortable by committing such bizarre acts,” she said. “I worry that if his behavior goes unchecked for too long, it may escalate into a larger problem. To all the other women who have also experienced this, urine my thoughts.”
Ahh . . . I see what she did there.
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