A 22-year-old woman begged the store manager not report the theft of a prison costume because she said she had just been released from jail.

“It is not for me,” the woman explained when she was caught outside Beate Uhse, a sex store in Bergen, Norway Tuesday afternoon.

Store manager Kristine Gjelsvik said she first became suspicious when the woman opened her mouth.

“She behaved normal, but when she spoke I could clearly tell that she was high,” Gjelsvik to the paper Bergens Tidende.

Securitas, a private security company, was called and the woman was stopped just outside the store. She had taken a sexy prison costume, a nurse costume and a dildo worth a grand total of NOK 4500 ($600 US).

“She urgently asked us not to report the theft. She said she had just been released from jail, so it is a little ironic that she stole a prison costume,” the store manager said.

The events began shortly after 1 p.m. Saturday, police said, when a man walked into the Bright House cable office in Olympic Plaza, vaulted the counter and grabbed clerk Lynn Ann Holcomb in a choke hold.

The man told her this was a robbery and she pointed to the cash drawer. He turned her loose, snatched more than $600 from the drawer and ran off, city police said in a news release.

But behind the counter, authorities found a wadded up driver’s license receipt, with a number and name. The receipt led Tarpon Springs, Florida police officers to Robert James Johnson, 52. The victim identified him as the robber, police said.

Johnson was charged with strong-arm robbery, aggravated battery, fleeing and aggravated assault on an officer. He was held Saturday in lieu of $130,000 bail.

Pasadena, Texas police have captured a man they suspect robbed a bank using a car he had taken out on a test drive but never returned. The most helpful clues: He obligingly left a copy of his driver’s license copy at the car dealership, and after the robbery he called a wrecker to take the car back.

Pasadena police arrested Rene Castillo, 34, about 6 p.m. Wednesday at an apartment complex in the 8600 block of Theta in Houston.

Castillo is accused of walking into the Southwest Bank of Texas at 2222 Shaver Street on Tuesday morning and demanding money from a teller. He fled the bank with an undetermined amount of cash in a 1999 Ford Contour.

Witnesses were able to give police the car’s description and license plate number. The car had been reported stolen from Advantage Auto Sales in Houston on Monday when a man test drove the car but never returned it

The man had the car, but the car dealership had the man’s driver’s license. Bank personnel were able to identify Castillo in a photo lineup using the driver’s license.

Police were contacted late Wednesday by the car dealership after a wrecker was summoned by Castillo to return the car. Officers set up surveillance at the apartment complex and arrested Castillo when he left the complex in a different vehicle, a used car he bought after the bank robbery.

Castillo is charged with robbery and is being held in the Harris County Jail in lieu of $20,000.

On Tuesday at 2:28 a.m., Carol J. Miller, the night clerk at Dairy Mart, 14960 South Ave., in Middlefield, Ohio reported the store had been robbed.

Miller said the robber made off with $120 and that he held his hand in his pocket to give the impression he had a gun. Officers from the Middlefied Police Department, Geauga County Sheriff’s Department and Ohio State Hightway Patrol responded to the scene.

Upon investigating the store’s digital surveillance equipment, evidence and register tapes, Miller confessed she had stolen the money and given it to her boyfriend. Miller, 45, 3247 Kinsman Road, Mesopotamia Township, is scheduled to appear in the Chardon Municipal Court on Monday at 8:00 a.m. on charges of petty theft and falsification, both first degree misdemeanors.

David E. Jones, 25, of Emery, S.D., was arraigned before District Justice Bradley Lunsford at 1 p.m. yesterday for indecent exposure and open lewdness.

Jones was released on $10,000 unsecured bail and was not committed to Centre County Prison. His preliminary hearing will take place at 8:30 a.m. Sept. 24 at Centre County Courthouse in Bellefonte.

According to court documents, at about 1:30 p.m. on Sept. 7, two women said a man matching Jones’ description followed them through Wal-Mart, 1665 N. Atherton St., and winked while walking past them with his penis exposed.

Wal-Mart authorities located the suspect on their video system and were able to follow his path through the store to determine he made a purchase at a front checkout counter. Because the suspect used his bank card to make the purchase, police were able to identify him.

The Patton Township Police Department contacted Jones, at which point he admitted to being at the Wal-Mart at 1:30 p.m. on Sept. 7 and to exposing himself to the women, according to the documents.

Tonda L. Benson, 21, of Cleveland, pleaded guilty in Ashtabula, Ohio Municipal Court Friday, September 19, to misdemeanor charges of fleeing and eluding and receiving stolen property, a court spokesperson said. She pleaded not guilty to a misdeameanor charge of petty theft. Bond ws set at $7,500 cash or surety.

Benson ran out of the Ashtabula Mall around 7:45 p.m. Thursday after Sheriff’s Detective Van Robison saw her dumping a bag filled with $286 worth of clothing, allegedly stolen from Dillard’s Department Store, in a garbage can. She scurried across Route 20, around the Ashtabula Township Fire Department and into a wooded area near Howard Road.

A woman reported Benson jumped out of the woods and attempted to stop her for a ride. She was finally successful in flagging down a car - an unmarked car driven by Ashtabula County Sheriff’s Detective Brian Hubbard.

It’s hard to imagine a dumber thing to steal.

It’s very small and valued at about $2,500.

But the portable tracking device that Lem Lom is accused of snatching Monday night from outside a Janesville, Wisconsin home automatically alerted police when it was taken, and then it told investigators where to find it.

Lom was arrested on a charge of felony theft.

“He apparently didn’t know what he had because he would be awfully stupid to steal a tracking device,” said correctional officer Thomas Roth, who runs the home detention program at the Rock County Jail.

Since November 2000, low-risk, nonviolent inmates have been sent home with electronic tracking equipment. The inmates wear a cigarette pack-size transmitter on their ankle that acts as a 100-foot tether to a portable tracking device.

If they wander too far from their tracking device, the jail is alerted.

Each battery-powered tracking device has a built-in global positioning system satellite receiver, so it knows where it’s located. Each unit also contains a cellular phone to transmit its location back to the jail through the Internet.

The jail usually has five to eight inmates on home detention, and Roth can check their whereabouts at any time on a computerized map.

The tracking device that Lom, 40, of 802 Center Ave., Janesville, is accused of stealing Monday had been issued to a Janesville woman serving jail time for a drunken driving conviction. She’s been on home detention since June 16.

After driving home from a medical appointment at 8:35 p.m. Monday, the woman put her tracking device on the grass outside her home on Rockport Road.

At 8:48 p.m. Monday, the jail received an alert that the inmate’s tracking device had left her home zone. At 9:15 p.m., the female inmate called the jail and reported that her tracking device had been stolen.

On-duty jail staff called Roth, who was able to track the device through the Internet on his home computer.

A trail of electronic dots showed the tracking device traveling west on Rockport Road to Linn Street, turning south, traveling one block to Riverside Street, turning west and then going to the corner of Center Avenue and Riverside Street, where it stopped.

Police were dispatched to that location.