the solo purse-snatcher, the disease known to officials
a transvestite purse snatcher, a drug addict with a criminal record all too well known to public officials, bizarrely outfitted in a strapless cocktail dress, spike heels, tattered feather boa, and auburn wig, brutally tore the life sustaining purse from the woman’s unwitting grasp.
Context
Poor Tony glimpsed from the outside, months after the Christmas debacle: the post-Wo fugitive now working purses solo, the "criminal record all too well known" the public face of the same desperation the street scene rendered from within. The magazine sees a lurid figure in a feather boa; the theme sees a sick man snatching anything that might turn into a fix.