Ryder guilty of stealing $6,000 designer goods

HOLLYWOOD actress Winona Ryder was last night convicted of stealing nearly 6,000 worth of designer merchandise from an exclusive department store.

The 31-year-old was found guilty of grand theft and vandalism but not guilty of second degree burglary from Saks Fifth Avenue in Beverly Hills on December 12 last year.

Ms Ryder, wearing a maroon coat, sat stone-faced in court as the clerk read out the verdicts from the six-man, six-woman jury at Beverly Hills Superior Court.

Ms Ryder looked tearful as the judge said she must return next month to be sentenced on her shoplifting charges. The actress will be back in court on December 6 and could face three years in state prison. She was convicted after the jury heard that she shoplifted for the "sheer thrill" of it.

Prosecuting, Ann Rundle told the jury that the star, who can command about 9 million a movie, stole the designer goods simply to see if she could get away with it. Throughout the trial, Ms Rundle insisted that it was "a simple case of theft".

"She came, she stole, she left end of story," Ms Rundle told the jury, in her closing argument.

During five days of evidence, the court heard that Ms Ryder arrived at Saks for a pre-Christmas shopping trip last year. During her shopping expedition, she bought several items but stole many more. Her haul of stolen goods included designer hats, tops, socks, bags and hair accessories, ranging in price from 15 to 700. She spent more than one-and-a-half hours in total at the store and a security video tape seen by the jury showed her wandering around, picking up armfuls of designer clothing. The most damning evidence against Ryder came from former Saks security officer Colleen Rainey who said she watched through the slats of the fitting room door as the actress tried and failed to get the security tags off two other bags, cutting herself with scissors in the process. Ms Rainey also watched as Ms Ryder wrapped various goods, including socks and hair accessories, in tissue paper, before stuffing them into her bags.