Louie the organ-playing clown, a 50-year-old ceramic doll, will be returning to the Joyland amusement park in Wichita, after spending ten undoubtedly awful years in the home of an imprisoned sex offender, 39-year-old Damian Mayes.
Wichita police say officers found the clown statue Tuesday at a home of 39-year-old Damian Mayes, who is serving a prison sentence for a 2010 conviction for aggravated indecent liberties with a child and aggravated criminal sodomy
Mayes, who worked at Joyland in the 1990s, showed an unusual interest towards the clown, as evidenced in a 1994 article in the Wichita Eagle about Mayes' efforts to rebuild the Louis, when Mayes was a high school student:
"He'll be scaring the kids even more this summer because he's a lot more lifelike. He's got new hands, which can rest between the songs instead of keeping on playing, like he used to. They're made out of plastic, and they're so real it freaked me out. I think it's also the pointy style of makeup that he wears. It's scarier than the more rounded kind of makeup."
