Sex Offender Wins Claim for Return of 300 Undergarments

A Ventura County man who served three years in prison for stealing women’s underwear has won a legal battle to get back more than 300 undergarments that were seized when he was arrested, authorities said Friday.

The man, Darrell W. Fortner, 42, of Oxnard, went to court Thursday to seek the return of panties, bras and negligees which have gone unclaimed since he was arrested in 1981. The request was granted by Superior Court Judge Charles McGrath of Ventura.

Fortner, who then lived in Thousand Oaks, stole lingerie from the homes of women while working as a tree-trimmer, Deputy Dist. Atty. Robert D. Meyers said. He would ask to use the bathroom, then steal underclothes, sometimes from clothes hampers, Meyers said.

He was arrested after several women complained. When the police went to his home with a search warrant, they found a cache of undergarments, a videotape camera and two-way mirrors in a bathroom and a bedroom. Videotapes showed he had spied on live-in housekeepers.

Convicted of burglary, theft, lewd conduct in public, child annoyance and making an obscene telephone call, Fortner was sent to Atascadero State Hospital in 1982 as a mentally disordered sex offender. After a few months, he was discharged as untreatable and imprisoned. He was paroled last year.

The undergarments will be returned because “there was no evidence they were stolen,” Meyers said. “He could have walked through the door and purchased them.”

The judge also gave back Fortner’s camera, but he refused to return the trick mirrors.