Hollywood star Winona Ryder told detectives who arrested her that she allegedly shoplifted nearly $6 000 of goods from a posh store to prepare for a movie role, a court heard on Monday.
A jury heard the stunning claim on the first full day of the Oscar-nominated actress’ long-awaited trial in which she is accused of stealing $5 560 of luxury goods from a Beverly Hills department store.
Kenneth Evans, a senior store detective for the Saks Fifth Avenue chain, told the court that the contrite star was brought back into the store ”apologizing for what had happened”.
”I’m sorry for what I did,” Evans quoted Ryder as saying. ”My director directed me to shoplift for a role,” she is said to have added.
The detective, the first prosecution witness in Ryder’s trial, told the court that she ”just said she was doing what her director had told her to do in preparation for her role as a shoplifter.”
The prosecution accused Ryder of setting out to steal from Saks on December 12 last year, armed with a pair of scissors with which to cut security sensors off items, under her own ”two-for-one bonus program.”
But her lawyer ferociously denied the charges, accusing shop security staff of lying about alleged shop-lifting spree of the ”Reality Bites” star, who will spend her 31st birthday in court on Tuesday.
Deputy District Attorney Ann Rundle said the star came to the store armed with cash and credits cards with the intention of buying –but also of stealing — goods.
The actress had conceived ”her own two-for-one bonus program,” Rundle told the jury. ”For every item Miss Ryder purchased, she had helped herself to … five-something extras.”
Ryder paid for four items, but then stashed around 20 pieces of clothing and accessories in her bag before leaving the store, which she visited armed with a pair of scissors to cut off security tags, she said.
”That is stealing,” Rundle told the panel on which several people connected to the entertainment industry are seated, including Peter Guber, a heavyweight Hollywood producer and former head of Sony Pictures and Columbia Pictures.
The actress, who is free on $20 000 bail, is charged with grand theft, commercial burglary and vandalism after she was allegedly spotted by a guard cutting security tags off goods.
If convicted, Ryder could be jailed for three years, but prosecution and defence sources say incarceration is unlikely for a first offence.
Ryder’s lawyer Mark Geragos said that an in-store security video showed her enjoying a shopping spree and that guards had targeted her simply because she was a celebrity. They even asked her to get them tickets to a movie premiere, he said.
”This is not a case that’s anything more than some security guards who got out of control,” he said, alleging that prosecution witnesses had told ”bald-faced lies” about the film star’s conduct in the store.
”What was going on here was not really a bust or simple theft,” he told the court.
Geragos also accused store staff of treating Ryder ”inexplicably,” saying that one employee lifted the braless Ryder’s velour top, prompting her to scream at them to leave her alone. But Evans said he had begun monitoring Ryder’s progress through the store on video cameras because she was carrying multiple shopping bags and denied that he knew his subject was a celebrity.
The Ryder case has caused a media furor here and even led to the actress’ arm being fractured in a melee of photographers in June. – Sapa-AFP