Police investigate bizarre hospital trespassing case

While it's a crime so "out there" that even police are in disbelief, officers say it is very real. They say Stephen Mahnken, dressed as a doctor wearing a white lab coat and a stethoscope, was wandering around Thomas Memorial Hospital in South Charleston when he went inside a patient's room.

Mahnken was a veterinarian, but that license was stripped after serious allegations about drug abuse. The male patient was asleep and woke up to find a bandaged monkey hanging from the ceiling, a bandaged teddy bear, notes around the room about castration and cotton placed on his genitals.

"The guy had a big bag of ketchup with him," South Charleston Assistant Chief of Police Robert Houck says. "I don't know if he was going to play a joke, you know, put ketchup down there and make him think that something had happened." Mahnken, who's from Hurricane, first told police he was a physician's assistant, then he claimed it was a practical joke. Police say he was an acquaintance of the patient, but the patient had no idea why Mahnken would do the things he's accused of doing.

"Who knows what he could have done, compared to what he did," Houck says. Mahnken was also carrying X-rays of animals, and the stuffed animals are believed to have been stolen from other patients' rooms. Mahnken was charged with larceny, trespassing, battery and obstructing an officer because he lied to police.