“It got to the point it happened several times a day,” the woman said of finding underwear and suggestive notes in her car and home. “It got too much.”
PANAMA CITY FLORIDA — A man known in his trailer park as “Santa Claus” has been convicted of breaking into a neighbor’s home to leave her notes and panties he wanted to see her wear.
The Bay County Sheriff’s Office arrested Isitro Lee Sanches in April 2017 after serving a search warrant on his Kimbrel Avenue trailer in Callaway, where they found about 90 pounds of women’s underwear. After a one-day trial, jurors on Friday found Sanches, 59, guilty as charged Thursday on three counts of burglary and a count of aggravated stalking.
Sanches faces up to 40 years in prison on the combined charges, according to the State Attorney’s Office. His sentencing is set for May 11.
Prosecutor Calie Rivera told the jury that from January to April 2017, one of Sanches’ neighbors received countless notes and pieces of undergarments in her car, on her front porch and inside her home on her bed. Within each note was a subtle message that a stranger was watching her and waiting for the day he could see her in the underwear he’d picked.
“This case was a nightmare,” Rivera said. “It was one long nightmare from January to April 2017.”
Sanches’ defense attorney, Seth Killion, argued that prosecutors had no direct evidence that tied him to the stalking charge. He conceded Sanches was in her home, but that he did not have a criminal intent.
“The only thing they are going to prove is that he was there,” Killion told the jury. “But they won’t be able to prove he was there with intent to commit a crime.”
The jury disagreed.
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