A Nebraska mortuary employee lost his job and landed himself behind bars after returning to a dead man's home for a tryst with a life-sized sex doll, according to the Sarpy County Sheriff's Office.
Ryan Smith, 41, was arrested and faces charges for attempted burglary, criminal trespassing and tampering with physical evidence. He was incarcerated at Sarpy County Jail but has since posted $500 bail, his public defender Thomas Strigenz told Fox News Digital.
Smith was one of two employees from Mid America First Call, a company with which the sheriff's office contracts to retrieve and process dead bodies, to respond to a 51-year-old man's "natural death" near 144th Street and Giles Road in the town of Chalco on October 6.
Later that day, Smith contacted the property manager of the residence, claiming that the sheriff's office had asked him to collect a life-sized sex doll so it could be swabbed for "a biopsy," WOWT reported.
Captain Tori Boldt told Fox News Digital that the department would never do such a thing "unless it had something to do directly with some sort of nefarious crime where we think it's evidence, like a murder, or had some sort of trace evidence that would be something we would want to process . . . we would not take anyone's property from the scene of a death like that."
The property manager refused Smith's request, but upon investigating a noise coming from the now-vacant apartment, the property manager found Smith inside with the deadbolt locked and the chain secured.
When the manager let himself inside, Smith's clothing was disheveled, he told police.
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"The landlord called to . . . report this suspicious activity," Boldt said. "They noticed that there were no officers with this person claiming to pick up the doll for us, so he called and said that was strange. [Smith] had left the location, but we knew who he was, so we caught up with him to make the arrest."
Investigators who returned to the scene after Smith's second visit noted that items were positioned differently from how they had been in photographs taken earlier that day. Property, including a survival kit, had been moved. The Douglas County Crime Lab was called to process the new crime scene and collect fingerprints. According to WOWT, investigators also intended to take DNA samples from the doll, which remained in the apartment.
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The Sarpy County Sheriff's Office told Fox News Digital that there was no indication that Smith had tampered with other crime scenes, and that they intended to continue working with the funerary company that employed him.
Justin Dalton, owner of Mid America First, told Fox News that Smith was "not on the clock" when he returned to the apartment and that he was "immediately terminated following his arrest."
Boldt told Fox News Digital that Smith's arrest was not typical fare for investigators in the rural Nebraska county.
"I understand the public's interest in it – it's such an odd story," she said on Wednesday.
Strigenz said that Smith will next appear in Sarpy County Court on December 4.
