“Jack the Gripper”, Serial Hugger, May Be Charged With A Crime


St Louis, Missouri – When does hugging to far? Men have been asking this age-old question for years, well not really, but there is one man in St. Louis who may be forced to find out the answer. A man who was dubbed “Jack the Gripper” is what is called a serial hugger. According to ABC News the Gripper would approach women and pretend to know them and then they would be tricked into giving him a hug.

If this wasn’t bad enough, it isn’t so cut and dry that the Gripper could even be charged with anything. Prosecutors in Missouri are now trying to determine if hugging 36 women is serious enough to warrant a criminal charge.

Des Peres, Missouri Detective Marshall Broughton told ABC News,

“He’d say, ‘Hi, remember me? I lived down the street in the corner house. How ya been?. Obviously [the women] didn’t remember him, but he did it so quickly and convincingly that they felt embarrassed that they didn’t know him.”

Broughton told the Riverfront Times said the 44-year-old Gripper was identified after one of the victims of the alleged improper hugs took down the license plate of his car and gave it to the police. Police looked at security tapes from a local supermarket where the Gripper was seen in the process of criminally hugging more than one woman. Broughton further confirmed that one of the Gripper’s victims picked him out of a lineup.

Website Jezebel goes into the ins and outs of serial hugging saying that,

“He’s banking on the razor-thin line between being friendly and being harassed. Will it save him from prosecutors?”

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