An Australian airline baggage courier who stole women's hair to satisfy a sexual fetish was jailed for two years and eight months on Friday.
Rodney Petersen, 30, had pleaded guilty to 50 counts of stealing head and pubic hair from brushes and underpants in women's luggage.
The court heard that Petersen, who has a previous conviction for attempted rape, would pull over in his airport courier van and rummage through the lost or delayed luggage that he was returning to Qantas passengers.
He put the hair he found in plastic slips and recorded the owner's personal details in an exercise book, the Victorian County Court in Melbourne was told, the national AAP news agency reported.
The court heard that Petersen suffered from a range of sexual deviancies including fetishism, sexual sadism and frotteurism, in which satisfaction is gained by actual or fantasised rubbing up against another person.
"I am satisfied beyond reasonable doubt that you posed a real risk to the safety of women in the community," said judge Jennifer Coate.
Petersen's sentence took into account a suspended jail term for the 2004 attempted rape conviction.
