LITTLE ROCK — Authorities in Conway are investigating whether recent incidents in which a man told women he wanted to suck their toes are the work of a felon previously convicted of similar activity.
Michael Robert Wyatt has convictions in Little Rock, Cabot and Conway - including a felony for which he served time in prison - involving comments he made about sucking women's toes or cutting off their feet, according to stories published in the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette in 1999.
That year, Wyatt was arrested in Fayetteville and Springdale on accusations he told one woman he wanted to chop off her toes and asked another if she wanted her feet amputated. Newspaper accounts show Wyatt scheduled for a 1999 trial, but clerks in Fayetteville and Washington County said Wednesday they had no records of what happened to the case.
In Conway, police are investigating several recent incidents that bear some resemblance to the earlier crimes and allegations. Conway Police Department spokesman Latresha Woodruff said Wyatt has not been named as a suspect, but investigators are eager to speak with him.
"We are just wanting to talk to him because his name keeps coming up," Woodruff said. "He has supposedly done this before."
Woodruff said there have been three toe-sucking cases reported in recent weeks.
In the first, 83-year-old Ruth Harrison told police a man came up to her on Sept. 10 as she sat in front of her Hairston Avenue apartment. He then told her he liked feet.
"(Harrison) advised he took off one of her shoes and began sucking on her toe," the responding officer wrote in a report. "She advised the man then asked if he could kiss her and she had told him no and told him he was crazy."
Days later, a 27-year-old Conway woman told police about a Sept. 9 encounter in which a man approached her as she shopped at TJ Maxx, told her he loved her toes and said he wanted to "suck on them."
That victim - who requested that her name not be used - said she reported the incident after hearing about the apartment encounter and hoping the information might help lead to an arrest. She said she went to the police station and was able to immediately pick the man out of a photo lineup. The officer told her afterward she had picked out a photo of Wyatt, the woman said.
"It took me all of half a second," she said. "It's hard to forget somebody that hits on your toes."
The third incident was reported Sept. 15, though it was said to have occurred in mid-August. The woman told police she didn't come forward about it until after she heard news coverage of the other cases.
The victim, a 44-year-old woman, told investigators she was in PetSmart when a man began following her around the store and "commenting on her feet and the things he would like to do to them," Woodruff said.
The man identified himself as Mike from Cabot, Woodruff said, and was also wearing flip flops that revealed he had toes missing on each foot. The women in TJ Maxx reported the man who approached her had "messed-up toes."
A 1999 story published after Wyatt's arrests that year noted that he once told a reporter he had "lost a toe years earlier after dropping a doghouse on his foot."
"Infer from that what you will," Woodruff said, noting police won't make any determinations until they interview Wyatt.
Attempts to reach Wyatt on Wednesday were not successful. An answering machine on a number listed in his name in Vilonia directed callers to a cell phone number. A woman who identified herself as Wyatt's mother answered that number, but she said she had no contact information for her son and nothing to say about the recent toe-sucking incidents in Conway.
"There will be no comment from any of us," she said before hanging up.
In a 1991 story in the Democrat-Gazette, Wyatt spoke to a reporter a week after being convicted of terroristic threatening in Faulkner County. A store clerk had alleged that Wyatt threatened to cut off her feet and suck her toes while she bled to death.
Wyatt contested the allegations while acknowledging he had a foot fetish and had seen a psychotherapist about it.
"I've had an attraction toward feet," he said in the Oct. 24, 1991 article. "I've had a thing toward hands. I must have been born with a foot in my mouth."
Woodruff said it remains to be seen whether Wyatt is related to the recent cases. But she said people should be careful regardless of who the perpetrator is.
"You never know what could happen from this," she said. "I wouldn't say go around being afraid. But be very cautious. If some man approaches you about your feet, you need to be very cautious."