Guards Take Inmate’s Stuff Of Dreams

With stuffing from pilfered pillows, a 33-year-old Ada County Jail inmate fashioned a life-size doll to keep in his bunk.

Deputies took the doll from Mark M. Olsen and stripped him of jail privileges last month.

Carefully painting the doll’s face with markers and tucking areas to resemble limbs and a head, Olsen had dressed it in a T-shirt, long johns, a bra and underwear, jail records show.

Olsen was arrested in December on a misdemeanor stalking charge - his jury trial is scheduled for March 30.

“I don’t think the doll was for sexual contact. I think he was just keeping it more for companionship,” Undersheriff Dee Pfeiffer said.

Olsen was disciplined for taking underwear, possibly from a female inmate - not for keeping a doll, Pfeiffer said.

Olsen has been seeing the jail’s psychologist. Pfeiffer said Olsen tried to tell deputies he had permission to keep the doll. But dolls are not allowed in jail.

“If an inmate can create a near life-size doll, that could be used to fool a guard for an escape attempt,” Pfeiffer said.

But Olsen wasn’t considered a flight risk. As a kitchen worker, he was granted special privileges, including more lax supervision than other prisoners. That ended Feb. 15, when Capt. Dan Douthit learned about the doll.