How a carhop helped nab a sex offender with foot fetish

HOUSTON (KTRK) -- Carhops at a Dallas-area Sonic aren't surprised a convicted sex offender with a foot fetish is back behind bars after his arrest in Houston.

Thursday night, Eyewitness News showed video of Harry Russo, 56, as he was brought to the Inmate Processing Center at the Harris County Jail. The Gulf Coast Violent Offenders Task Force tracked him to a west Houston motel where he was arrested for not registering as a sex offender. A 1979 conviction for breaking into a woman's home to rape her landed him on the Texas Sex Offender Registry.

His latest crime is why Sonic Manager Trevor Dobbs remembers him.

"Definitely the weirdest thing I've seen at Sonic," Dobbs told KTVT-TV.

Dobbs works at a Sonic in Allen, Texas. He says he and the other employees had been hearing about a man who was offering carhops in Allen and Plano $20 to see their feet, another $20 if he could gratify himself while looking. It was in December 2013 when Russo approached one of Dobbs' co-workers.

"He ended up giving her $40 to see her feet so he could do his thing," explained Dobbs.

Then employees came up with a plan. The car hop told Russo to meet her behind the restaurant. The other employees called 911 and she stalled until police came. Russo pleaded guilty to indecent exposure, not his worst crime, but perhaps the strangest.

Russo lived in Plano with his parents who told KTVT-TV their son cut off his electronic ankle monitor in August and they've been looking for him ever since until his arrest in Houston.