It has been almost two years since Thomas Roy Gourneau anonymously mailed a chocolate penis to his former girlfriend’s ex-husband, and that candy dick has been creating trouble for him ever since.
According to the Waco Tribune-Herald, Gourneau mailed the edible genitalia to Tracy Chance’s office at the McLennan County Sheriff’s Office in December 2017. Chance responded by subpoenaing Gourneau’s financial records—presumably to prove that he was the dick-sender—and Gourneau was arrested and charged with misdemeanor harassment in December 2018. He was released from jail after posting $2,500 bond.
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Gourneau has turned down a plea deal and the offer of a “pretrial diversion program,” so the two men are going to court, where Gourneau could still face six months in jail and another $2,000 in fines.
“I question whether if I or somebody not involved in law enforcement had called 911, and said we had a matter that needed to be investigated and told them I had received a chocolate candy bar in the shape of a penis, how long I would be sitting before they arrived at my office or my house to investigate that crime,” Gourneau’s attorney, Cody Cleveland, told the news outlet.
“I just think because this guy works for the sheriff’s office and it got delivered to him at the sheriff’s office that it was easy for him to walk across the hall and get a detective to look into the case.”
A spokesperson for the district attorney’s office said that sending a chocolate dick wasn’t the first time Gourneau had allegedly harassed Chance, and that he had a “long history of improper communication with the victim.” (The criminal complaint against the 43-year-old says that he fully intended to “harass, annoy, alarm, abuse, torment, or embarrass” Chance, and that was emphasized by both the dick and the enclosed “message suggesting that [Chance] engage in fellatio.”)
McLennan County Sheriff’s Chief Deputy David Kilcrease said that he didn’t know “all of the ins and outs” of the chocolate dick incident but he did emphasize that the alleged harassment is the real issue. “[W]e treated this case just like any other case. If they are being harassed and there is a method to stop the harassment, we will handle it,” he said. “If it is a violation of the law and there is a method to get a remedy, then we will provide that remedy. Any citizen who has a complaint, we will talk to.”
Despite the fact that his client could face jail time, Cleveland seems to be really looking forward to hearing what Chance is going to say in court. “Was it the size of it? Was it that it was chocolate and he prefers vanilla? I don’t know, but he will get to tell the jury and explain to them why he feels like this is a crime,” he said. “I think a jury is going to think this is a complete waste of their time. If there has been other harassment, [Gourneau] isn’t charged with that. They have charged him with sending a candy bar.”
Although Gourneau’s chocolate penis vendor hasn’t been named, companies like Dick at Your Door will send anonymous chocolate dicks to any recipient you choose. BUT its website has a disclaimer, warning would-be customers that the products are not to be used maliciously.
“If you have any doubt that sending a product from this site could potentially harm someone, do not place an order,” the site says. “It is your responsibility to use this site as it was intended, as a joke.” (Dick at Your Door’s terms and conditions also state that its products may only be sent to the recipient’s home address, so Gourneau might’ve inadvertently fucked up by shipping it to Chance’s workplace.)
In December 2016, the HR director at a Dallas tech company sued Dicks by Mail, another anonymous penis-shipper, to find out who sent a bag of dick-shaped gummy candies to her office. According to the Dallas News, Melody Lenox filed the lawsuit because she believed that the candies might’ve been purchased by the same person who had vandalized her car and harassed her on Craigslist.
So yeah, apparently those anonymous shipments aren’t always anonymous. We never expected to write this sentence, but please send your chocolate dicks respectfully and responsibly. Please.
