Sat, Aug 09, 2008 page1

• Owner of cloned puppies caught by a sordid history

  CAN’T MAKE THIS UP Joyce McKinney once manacled a Mormon for sex and fled bail to Canada disguised as a deaf-mute mime artist

  • THE GUARDIAN
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  Utter the name Joyce McKinney to Britons of a certain age, and you are inevitably rewarded with the briefest flash of incomprehension, followed by a gasp as their memories take them tumbling back to the dark days of early autumn, 1977.

  It was a miserable time: There were clashes on industrial picket lines, inflation was sprinting away at 13 percent, Elvis had just died and a band called Baccara were at No. 1 with Yes Sir, I Can Boogie. And then, as if to lift the spirits of a nation, along came the most unlikely, the most baffling, the most downright weird news story.
  
  

  A Mormon missionary from Utah called Kirk Anderson, who was going door-to-door in the comfortable, sleepy neighborhood of Ewell, Surrey, near London, was kidnapped at gunpoint by McKinney, a former cheerleader and beauty queen from North Carolina.
  
  

  With the help of a US private detective, McKinney drugged Anderson with chloroform and drove him to a rented 17th-century cottage near Okehampton, Devon. There the unfortunate young man was chained, spreadeagled, to a bed, with several pairs of mink-lined handcuffs, and over the next few days he was repeatedly required to have sex with McKinney, who later explained that she had been keen to bear his child.
  
  

  Eventually the missionary wriggled free, dashed from the cottage and alerted police, who set up roadblocks around Okehampton, capturing both beauty queen and private eye. The pair were charged with false imprisonment and possession of an imitation .38 revolver, and brought before Epsom magistrates.
  
  

  McKinney explained that she had fallen head over heels for Anderson when they were at college together in Utah, adding: “I loved him so much that I would ski naked down Mount Everest in the nude with a carnation up my nose if he asked me to.”
  
  

  
  
  

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  It was a tabloid dream. “Mormon Sex Slave Case,” screeched the Daily Mail. “McKinney and the Manacled Mormon,” yelled the Mirror.
  
  

  McKinney’s counsel told the magistrates that “methinks the Mormon do protest too much,” and successfully argued that she and her accomplice should be granted bail. At this point they fled to Canada disguised as a couple of deaf-mute mime artists.
  
  

  And that, perhaps, should have been the end of the matter.
  
  

  But then on Tuesday came the delightful story of one “Bernann” McKinney, whose pet dog Booger the pit bull terrier had been cloned by a team of South Korean scientists.
  
  

  A delighted McKinney could be seen beaming from several news Web sites and newspapers. And some of a certain age beamed back, thinking: “Ohmygawd!”
  
  

  A check of public records in North Carolina on Thursday confirmed that Joyce and “Bernann” are, indeed, one and the same person.
  
  

  The years have not been particularly kind to McKinney. She has put on a little weight and has used a wheelchair for more than a decade.
  
  

  After crossing the border from Canada she traveled to Atlanta, Georgia, where she went into hiding, disguised as a nun, according to some accounts. Then she returned to the tiny town of Minneapolis on the North Carolina-Tennessee border.
  
  

  There were to be a few more scrapes with the law. In 1984 she was arrested after Anderson spotted her loitering near his place of work in Salt Lake City. When the police searched the trunk of her car they found a length of rope and a pair of handcuffs, but charges against her were dropped after she once again jumped bail.
  
  

  In 1993 she broke into a dog pound in Johnson City, Tennessee, to rescue a pit bull terrier that was about to be put down for mauling a couple of joggers.
  
  

  This raises the possibility that the Booger brothers, so skillfully cloned in Seoul, are exact replicas of a dog that once faced the death penalty.
  
  

  But, as McKinney explained after the break-in: “I love those pit bulls. They’re such sympathetic animals — they’re my kind of dog.”
  
  

  Minneapolis is in the heart of the southern Appalachians, the tough and somewhat lawless mountainous region. Even here, however, some men say they are wary of her, and caution visitors not to stray onto her land, warning that they could be attacked by her pit bulls.
  
  

  Meanwhile, the private detective who helped McKinney abduct Anderson was last heard of selling plumbing supplies in Los Angeles. Anderson married after returning to Utah, and found work as a travel agent.
  
  

  McKinney could not be contacted for comment on Thursday but when a British reporter tracked her down and spoke to her nine years ago she said: “Now everybody understands, and they know what it means to have the paparazzi chasing around after you. I cried all night when Diana died. I may be just an ol’ farm girl, but I’ve hit that wall with her.”
  
  

  In theory McKinney remains a fugitive from British justice, and after breaking her cover in Seoul, could face extradition to stand trial back at Epsom.
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