Re the Korean dog cloning

[Guest guest]

Several of us muckrakes suspected that

dogfighting money might be behind the latest

Korean dog cloning caper, & went looking for it,

to no avail.

 

Turns out we were barking up the wrong tree.

 

I guarantee that the actuality of the

situation, as dug up by British investigators,

never even crossed my mind.

 

 

 

 

The Daily Mail, UK 07th August 2008 3:14 PM

 

A cloned dog, a Mormon in mink-lined handcuffs and a tantalising mystery

 

At first it seemed a straightforward example of

the oddball stories which emerge during the long,

slow, news days of high summer.

 

A 'Californian woman' had paid £25,000 to a South

Korean laboratory to have her dead pitbull

terrier cloned, in the first transaction of its

kind.

 

'Bernann McKinney' had saved tissue from the ear

of her beloved 'Booger', which was frozen after

the dog died, and then used as DNA source

material to produce five pitbull pups.

 

So far, so silly season. (But as the eccentric

Miss McKinney beamed joyfully from the world's

television screens on Tuesday, vague bells began

to ring.)

 

The face was familiar, albeit older and heavier. The surname was the same.

 

So was the alleged American, ex-beauty queen

background and the unusual devotion to pitbull

dogs.

 

Surely it wasn't? Could the new owner of the

world's first commercially cloned pups be the

same woman who had gone on the run from British

justice 30 years ago, having been the star of one

of the most bizarre, entertaining and downright

saucy court cases in living memory?

 

In 1978, Joyce McKinney jumped bail and

disappeared after being charged with kidnapping a

17-stone male Mormon missionary, whom she had

chained to a Devon cottage bed with mink

handcuffs and forced to have sex.

 

At the time, she famously said of her victim: 'I

loved him so much that I would ski naked down

Mount Everest with a carnation up my nose if he

asked me to.'

 

Were these two blonde, American, dog-loving and,

yes, quite possibly barking mad, Miss McKinneys

one and the same person?

 

Last night, when we spoke to 'Bernann' on the

telephone, having tracked her down to a Seoul

hotel room, her hostile reaction hardly quashed

the intrigue.

 

Asked: 'Are you really Joyce McKinney?' she

snapped: " Are you going to ask me about my dogs,

or not? Because that's all I'm prepared to talk

to you about. "

 

Not exactly a flat-out denial, then.

 

So, dear readers, let us turn back the clock 30

years to Joyce and the sensational circumstances

of what became known as the 'Mormon Sex Slave

Case'.

 

Joyce McKinney was born in Avery County, North

Carolina, in August 1949, the daughter of two

school teachers.

 

She first made the headlines, albeit local ones,

in 1972 when she was crowned Miss Wyoming, but

soon tired of the world of beauty pageants and

enrolled as a drama student at Brigham Young

University, in Utah, the heartland of Mormon

America.

 

It was there that she met 19-year-old Kirk

Anderson, a 6ft 4in fellow drama undergraduate,

some seven years her junior, from a small town

near Salt Lake City.

 

There was a brief fling, and McKinney later

claimed that she had miscarried his baby.

 

Overcome by guilt, Anderson, a devout Mormon,

apparently sought advice from his bishop, who

told him to sever ties with McKinney and move

away from Utah.

 

She was not prepared to be spurned so easily.

Private detectives were hired to trace Anderson

from the U.S. to Ewell in Surrey, where he was

living as a door-to-door Mormon missionary.

 

In the summer of 1977, McKinney flew to England

with an architect friend called Keith May.

 

Armed with an imitation revolver, May confronted

21-year-old Anderson on the steps of Ewell's

Church of the Latter Day Saints, and frog-marched

him to a car in which McKinney was waiting.

 

Chloroformed and hidden under a blanket, the

bespectacled Mormon was driven some 200 miles to

Okehampton, where his kidnappers had hired a

17th-century 'honeymoon' cottage for £50 a week.

 

McKinney later said that she had packed the

fridge with Anderson's favourite food and studied

The Joy Of Sex in preparation for what was to

come.

 

May chained the prisoner to a bed. For two days,

McKinney tried to persuade the missionary to

marry her and father her children. She even read

Scriptures with him in bed.

 

When this failed to melt his opposition, McKinney reverted to Plan B.

 

This involved slipping into a 'see-through

nightie', playing a cassette of 'romantic music',

having Anderson 'spread- eagled' and sexually

stimulating him.

 

She claimed this was a bondage 'game' played with his full consent.

 

He later told a court: 'I couldn't move. She

grabbed the top of my pyjamas and tore them from

my body until I was naked. I didn't wish it to

happen. I was extremely depressed and upset after

being forced to have sex.'

 

This 'rape' occurred three times.

 

For the record, his pyjamas, later produced in

court, were light blue and 'silky'. He also

claimed to have been wearing some kind of Mormon

chastity belt underneath. Alas, to no avail.

 

Fearing he would be kept prisoner for weeks

(later there would be a body of male opinion

which felt pangs of severe jealousy at his

plight), Anderson promised to marry her.

 

But after she loosened his chains, he escaped and went straight to the police.

 

McKinney and May were arrested at a roadblock

three days later and charged with false

imprisonment and possessing an imitation firearm.

 

There was an entertaining, if not downright

titillating, committal hearing at Epsom

Magistrates' Court, during which her counsel said

of Anderson: 'Methinks the Mormon doth protest

too much... you have seen the size of Mr Anderson

and you have seen the size of my client.'

 

McKinney spent three months on remand in Holloway

Prison - to which she had been driven weeping

through the bars of a Black Maria - before being

released on bail on grounds of her failing mental

health.

 

Now the case, which had already become a

worldwide cause celebre, was about to be given a

new lease of life with a sensational twist.

 

McKinney met the similarly bailed May and the

pair fled to Canada, using false passports and

disguised as deaf-mute mime artistes.

 

It was later alleged that McKinney was helped to

escape by her former landlady, an Irish woman,

who went with her to a West End theatrical

outfitters.

 

There, they bought the wigs and glasses which

were later used in their flight from justice.

 

By now an international fugitive, McKinney

reappeared staying at the Hilton hotel in

Atlanta, Georgia, disguised as a nun.

 

Before long, the Press caught up with her and she

dropped her disguise to revel in her sexual

notoriety - she posed topless for a number of

glamour magazines before the U.S. authorities

finally caught up with her and she was arrested.

 

Once again, she was freed on bail and, by now -

1979 - there seemed to be no appetite in the UK

for forcing her extradition.

 

McKinney, meanwhile, had allegedly vanished into

an increasingly desperate world of prostitution,

drug abuse and psychiatric problems.

 

She resurfaced once more in 1984, when she was

arrested near Salt Lake City Airport, where Kirk

Anderson - the Mormon she had kidnapped - was

working.

 

In her car, police found a length of rope and a

pair of handcuffs. The implication was clear that

she was about to make a second kidnap attempt,

but she failed to show up in court and the case

was dropped.

 

By the late Nineties, McKinney was back in North

Carolina, dogged by ill health and often in a

wheelchair, living on benefits in a remote

smallholding with only three ponies and a

fiercely devoted pitbull called Hamburger for

company.

 

On one occasion, she had broken into a dog pound

to rescue a pitbull terrier - possibly Hamburger

- which was to be put down for mauling a jogger.

 

'I love those pitbulls,' she explained. 'They're such sympathetic animals.'

 

Locals, who knew of her racy past, treated her

with suspicion, if not fear. She had a taste for

litigation and was described as 'one wild woman'.

 

In a rare comment on the Mormon affair, she said

in 1999: 'I loved Kirk and all I really wanted

was to see his blond-haired babies running round

my home.

 

'Nobody can understand what it is to lose the man

you love to a cult, and I believe that is what

the Mormons are. Back in Britain [then] nobody

knew what a cult was.'

 

May was last heard of selling plumbing supplies

in California, while Anderson was an estate agent

in Utah and understandably reluctant to rake over

his past misfortunes.

 

What, then, of 'Bernann McKinney' who has had her

pitbull Booger cloned and claims to be a

Hollywood scriptwriter and university lecturer?

 

She says she is 57 and a former beauty queen. In

an interview in a Korean newspaper, she was

described as a grandmother, and initially alleged

that she had sold her home to pay for the cloning.

 

(The company responsible says that it would

normally charge £75,000 for the controversial

procedure, but that it has cut the fee in return

for Miss McKinney's co-operation in their

publicity campaign.)

 

In another Korean interview, she described being

the victim of an horrific attack by an enraged

bull mastiff, that shredded her left arm to the

elbow, tore open a leg and ripped three fingers

from her left hand.

 

She survived only because her faithful Booger

chased it off. Even then, the injuries were so

bad that she was confined to a wheelchair while

surgeons reconstructed her left hand and arm.

 

Booger remained by her side throughout her

recuperation and gave her the will to go on.

 

She claimed to have been a university drama

teacher before the accident. Now she planned to

write a Hollywood film script about the cloning.

 

Let us look then at the similarities between our two Miss McKinneys.

 

Joyce will be celebrating her 59th birthday this

week, while Bernann claims to be two years

younger.

 

It is a fact, though, that former beauty queens

(and even less celebrated mortals) often reduce

their ages later in life.

 

Both Joyce and Bernann use wheelchairs, while the

latter's late pitbull Booger sounds very similar

in name to Joyce's faithful Hamburger.

 

There is no record of a Bernann McKinney living

in Los Angeles, nor does anyone of that name

belong to the Screenwriters' Guild.

 

No university drama department we contacted has

heard of any such teacher. It is an undisputable

fact, however, that Joyce was once a drama

student.

 

But perhaps the most persuasive circumstantial

evidence to suggest that Joyce and Bernann are

the same woman, is that a Joyce Bernann McKinney

is registered as living in Avery County, North

Carolina - birthplace of the Mormon sex slave

kidnapper.

 

She has been on the voters' register there since 1988.

 

'Who started all this?' Miss 'Bernann' McKinney

demanded to know when she was phoned in Seoul, as

she prepared to return to the U.S. with one of

the puppies. (The others will remain in care

among the scientists who have cloned them in the

short-term.)

 

Told that there was a growing internet debate

about whether she was indeed the Mormon

kidnapper, Miss McKinney replied: 'I'm only going

to talk to you about the dogs and the death of

Booger. I've got people waiting to dine with me.

I'm not talking about anything else.'

 

And that was that. She would neither confirm nor deny the link.

 

And yet, weighing the body of evidence, it would

seem that 30 years on, the notorious Miss

McKinney had once again gone to extraordinary

lengths to get her longed-for 'babies'.

 

In the end, they were to be the offspring of a

dead pitbull ear, rather than that of a

bespectacled Mormon trussed in the missionary

position in a honeymoon cottage on Dartmoor, next

to a pair of ripped, light blue silk pyjamas.

 

Additional reporting by George Gordon.

 

----

 

The Guardian, UK Friday August 8 2008

 

Kidnap mystery

Now she has her pit bull cloned. But once she manacled a Mormon for sex

Beauty queen who fled UK while on bail resurfaces with her five puppies

Ian Cobain

 

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

the picket line at Grunwick, inflation was

sprinting away at 13%, Elvis had just died and a

band called Baccara were at Number One 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 Ewell,

Surrey, was kidnapped at gunpoint by McKinney, a

former cheerleader and beauty queen from North

Carolina. With the help of a friend, Keith May,

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 friend. The pair were charged

with false imprisonment and possession of an

imitation .38 revolver, and brought before Epsom

magistrates.

 

McKinney explained at the commital proceedings

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. " She had

hired a private detective, tracked Anderson down

and came to Britain with May.

 

It was a tabloid dream. Mormon Sex Slave Case,

screeched the Daily Mail. McKinney and the

Manacled Mormon, yelled the Mirror. Even the

Guardian got in on the act with the only-slightly

more coy: Missionary was " shackled for sex " .

McKinney's counsel told the magistrates that

" methinks the Mormon do protest too much " .

 

McKinney was remanded in custody at Holloway

prison, north London, pending the full trial but

released on bail three months later because of

her failing mental health. May was also bailed

and at this point they fled to Canada disguised

asmime artists.

 

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

 

But then last Tuesday, courtesy of the Associated

Press news agency, came the delightful story of

one " Bernann " McKinney, whose pet dog Booger the

pit bull terrier had been successfully cloned by

a team of South Korean scientists.

 

Announcing that she planned to give her identical

pets the names Booger McKinney, Booger Lee,

Booger Ra, Booger Hong and Booger Park, in honour

of the team at Seoul National University that

carried out the work, a delighted McKinney could

be seen beaming from several news websites and

newspapers, including the Guardian. And some of a

certain age beamed back, thinking: " Ohmygawd! "

 

A simple check of public records in North

Carolina yesterday confirmed that Joyce and

" Bernann " are, indeed, one and the same person,

and that the predatory beauty queen of 1977 has

matured into the pit bull-loving 57-year-old of

2008.

 

The years have not been particularly kind to

McKinney. She has put on a little weight (haven't

we all?) and has used a wheelchair for more than

a decade. After crossing the border from Canada

she travelled 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, where her parents had been

schoolteachers, and moved on to her late

grandparents' wooden farmhouse.

 

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 boot 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 because of its attacks on

humans. 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 that was the setting for the

Burt Reynolds film Deliverance. Even here,

however, some men say they are wary of her, and

caution visitors not to stray on to her land,

warning that they could be attacked by her pit

bulls.

 

Anderson himself married after returning to Utah,

and found work as a travel agent in the small

town of Orem.

 

And by and large, McKinney has also led a

blameless life over the past three decades. She

could not be contacted for comment yesterday, 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. Everywhere I go, people will always

remember me as a woman who did the unthinkable.

Just try to imagine what that feels like. "

 

In theory, however, McKinney remains a fugitive

from British justice, and after breaking her

cover to hail the success of the scientists in

Soeul, could face extradition to stand trial back

at Epsom.

 

Is this possible? We asked Scotland Yard. The

young woman - clearly too young - who answered

the call, listened patiently for a few minutes.

" I'm sorry, " she said finally. " I haven't a clue

what you're talking about. "

 

----

 

The Times, London August 8, 2008

 

Missing years in Bernann McKinney's strange

journey from Mormon sex case to clones called

Booger

James Bone in New York and Dominic Kennedy

 

The secret life of the owner of the first cloned

pet dog has started to emerge after she was

unmasked as the " manacled Mormon " kidnapper Joyce

McKinney.

 

The middle-aged blonde calling herself Bernann

McKinney made headlines this week when five

identical puppies were created using an ear from

her dead pitbull.

 

Confronted with allegations yesterday, she denied

being the woman who fled an Old Bailey trial in

the 1970s accused of kidnapping her former lover

at gunpoint, handcuffing him to a bed and forcing

him to have sex.

 

However, a resident of Joyce McKinney's home town

of Newland, North Carolina, who saw footage of

the woman with the cloning scientists in South

Korea, told The Times: " That's her. That is the

woman I am familiar with. "

 

'I loved Kirk so much I would have skied down

Mount Everest in the nude with a carnation up my

nose'

 

Before her dog, Booger, was cloned, it was

treated at a local veterinary clinic but Miss

McKinney was so erratic as a client that she had

been banned by at least two local vets. Police

were also once called to treat her horse after a

complaint of abuse but no charges were filed. A

social worker, psychiatrist and others also

mounted a " group intervention " .

 

A British newspaper that tracked her down to the

town nine years ago found that the former model

had become a heavily-built, plain-looking loner.

The woman in Seoul looked more glamorous. " I

recognise her, " the acquaintance said. " She looks

a lot more tended to than when I have seen her in

recent years. She has scars on her arm. She told

me her arm was bitten off and surgically

reattached. "

 

The sheriff of Avery County, North Carolina, said

that Miss McKinney faced an outstanding arrest

warrant for " communicating threats " in her former

home town. Kevin Frye, the police chief, said

that local people began e-mailing him about Miss

McKinney as soon as the news of her cloned dogs

was broadcast on televi-sion. " I guess I was

surprised she was in South Korea, " he said.

 

Mr Frye said that Ms McKinney had not lived in

the area since he became sheriff at the end of

2006. However, she had a record that included an

arrest on July 14, 2004, for communicating

threats and cruelty to animals and a traffic

violation on August 9, 2002. She also has an

outstanding arrest warrant for allegedly

communicating threats in 2003.

 

The creation of puppies from a dead pet was

hailed as a miracle this week, but the possible

resurrection of Miss McKinney excited Fleet

Street journalists of a certain age even more.

 

In 1977, the former Miss Wyoming stalked her

lover, a Mormon missionary, to a tabernacle in

East Ewell, Surrey, allegedly kidnapped him and

held him in a cottage in Devon. There, the

17-stone Kirk Anderson claimed, his petite, busty

admirer tied him to a bed using mink-trimmed

handcuffs, slipped into a see-through nightie and

forced him into sex. At a remand hearing she

declared her love for the Mormon with the

immortal line: " I'd ski naked down Mount Everest

with a carnation up my nose if he asked me. "

 

Her counsel told magistrates: " Me-think the

Mormon doth protest too much. You have seen the

size of Mr Anderson and you have seen the size of

my client. " To flee on bail, she donned a red wig

and disguised herself as a member of a mime

troupe, together with her alleged accomplice,

Keith May. No extradition warrant was issued.

William Hucklesby, the detective who led the

inquiry, said: " My own view is that we were well

rid of her. "

 

Bob Marshall-Andrews, now the Labour MP for

Medway, was at the time a young barrister who

appeared in court for Mr May. He remembers being

perplexed by the suggestion that the 27-year-old

beauty queen had forced herself upon 6ft 4in Mr

Anderson. " My instinct is that the prosecuting

authorities. . . were very pleased to see the

back of them. I myself was rather sorry. She was

a woman of considerable presence. "

 

Miss McKinney's own lawyer, Stuart Elgrod, has

been bombarded over the years by calls from his

former client. Mr Elgrod is ill but his wife,

Natalie, said: " Not again! She always was a

nutter. Every so often she finds us and drives us

mad. Last time she wanted to know what material

Stuart had because they wanted to make a film

about her. Anthony Hopkins was going to play the

part of Stuart. "

 

After fleeing Britain in 1978, Miss McKinney

spent five weeks in hiding then resurfaced at the

Hilton Hotel in Atlanta, Georgia, dressed as a

nun. In the 1980s, she was arrested near Salt

Lake City airport, where Mr Anderson worked, for

allegedly harassing him. A rope and handcuffs

were in her car.

 

----

 

Deseret News, Salt Lake City August 8, 2008

 

Is woman with cloned pups the '77 kidnapper of LDS missionary?

By Dennis Romboy <romboy, Deseret News

 

A former beauty queen whose obsession with an LDS

Church missionary made international tabloid

headlines 30 years ago appears to be the same

woman who had her dog cloned in South Korea this

week.

 

In 1977, Joyce McKinney, a one-time Brigham Young

University drama student and Miss Wyoming-World,

was accused of kidnapping and raping a missionary

in England. It came to be known worldwide as the

" Mormon sex-slave case. "

 

This week news media reported that a woman named

Bernann McKinney sold her house to pay a South

Korean company $50,000 to clone a litter of

puppies using frozen DNA from her pit bull,

Booger, who died two years ago.

 

" Yes, I know you, " she said, hugging the cloned dogs. " You know me, too! "

 

Apparently, a lot of people know her - not as

Bernann McKinney but as Joyce McKinney. The two

women may be one and the same. Bernann McKinney,

though, denied the connection.

 

" That's garbage. That's rot, " she told the Telegraph in London.

 

The Daily Mail reached her at her Seoul hotel and

asked, " Are you really Joyce McKinney? "

 

" Are you going to ask me about my dogs or not? "

she snapped. " Because that's all I'm prepared to

talk about. "

 

Though older and heavier in a photo of her

holding one of the puppies, Bernann McKinney

bears striking resemblance to woman whose face

filled newspapers in the late '70s. Her age,

reportedly 57 or 59, also matches that of the

infamous McKinney, who was 27 at the time of the

incident. A 1985 news story lists her middle name

as " Berman. "

 

Joyce McKinney gained international notoriety

when she was accused of abducting then

21-year-old Kirk Anderson, whom she dated while

at BYU, and holding him hostage for three days in

a remote English cottage. She allegedly

handcuffed him to a bed and forced him to have

sex with her. She let him go after he agreed to

marry her. Anderson contacted police.

 

She and an accomplice, Keith Joseph May, fled

England less than a month before they were to go

on trial. She was later arrested in her native

North Carolina, but British authorities did not

press for extradition.

 

Joyce McKinney always maintained she did not hold

Anderson against his will and that the sex was

consensual.

 

United Press International reported her saying in

a court appearance that she loved him so much " I

would have skied Mount Everest in the nude with a

carnation up my nose. "

 

According to a September 1977 combined Associated

Press and UPI story, Joyce McKinney arrived in

Provo in 1973 with an eye for the Osmond

brothers. She became " emotionally distressed and

received counseling " after she was unable to get

to know and date them, the story said.

 

Anderson and Joyce McKinney dated in 1975 but

broke up before he left for his mission. An LDS

Church spokesman told UPI in 1977 that Anderson

reported being harassed, physically assaulted,

having his car tires slashed and being run off

the road after the breakup.

 

Joyce McKinney was arrested in 1984 for following

and taking pictures of Anderson while he worked

at the Salt Lake City International Airport.

According to police, she had two notebooks

detailing his daily activities. Charges were

later dropped.

 

Salt Lake attorney Ron Yengich represented her in

that case. After looking at her recent photo he

said he didn't know if it was the same person.

 

Bernann McKinney told the AP she lives in

California where she worked as a screenwriter who

taught college drama.

 

----

 

Casper WY Star-Tribune Friday, August 8, 2008

 

Are Miss World-Wyoming and dog cloner the same person?

By TOM MORTON, Star-Tribune staff writer

 

Ah, beauty: Immortal, a joy forever, perfect.

 

For Joyce McKinney, the 1972 Miss World-Wyoming,

beauty went fleeting -- first on a crime spree,

then on the lam and, apparently, finally to the

dogs.

 

Three days ago, worldwide news stories showed an

ebullient woman named Bernann McKinney hugging

" Booger, " one of five puppies cloned for $50,000

by a South Korean lab from the DNA of the frozen

ear of her late pit bull of the same name that

died in April 2006.

 

" It's a miracle! " McKinney repeatedly shouted when she saw the cloned Boogers.

 

So is her own apparent resurrection.

 

Photographs of the woman holding the world's

first commercially cloned puppies immediately

ignited wide speculation that Joyce and Bernann

are one and the same.

 

Thirty years ago, Joyce McKinney jumped bail and

went into hiding from British prosecutors who

wanted to try her for kidnapping and sexually

assaulting a Mormon missionary she met at Brigham

Young University in Provo, Utah, and followed to

England.

 

The " Mormon Sex Slave Case " raised eyebrows and

prurient interest from London to Salt Lake City,

with Wyoming stuck in the middle.

 

According to Casper Star-Tribune archives and the

Daily Mail of London, McKinney met the fellow

drama student about six years her junior at BYU

in 1975. The two had a brief affair. In remorse,

he followed his bishop's advice to get away from

her and go to England for a mission.

 

McKinney tracked him down to Surrey, England.

With the help of an accomplice, she held him up

with a toy pistol, used chloroform on him and

drove him 200 miles to a honeymoon cottage in

southeast England, chained him to a bed using

mink-lined handcuffs, and for two days read him

the Bible while trying to persuade him to marry

her.

 

That didn't work, so she and her accomplice tied

him spread-eagled on the bed and she assaulted

him three times.

 

He was able to escape and call the authorities.

 

During court proceedings, he claimed she forced him to have sex.

 

However, McKinney claimed it was a consensual

bondage fantasy and declared her love for him at

one point saying, " I loved him so much that I

would have ski naked down Mount Everest with a

carnation up my nose if he asked me to. "

 

McKinney also claimed her sex appeal overwhelmed him.

 

" I was Miss Wyoming in the U.S. pageant and I

don't have to seduce boys, " she said in November

1977. " He pulled me into bed. "

 

Despite that claim of prowess, little is known

about McKinney's early life from when she was

born in Avery County, N.C., in August 1949 until

the early 1970s.

 

But somehow she made her way into the beauty pageant circuit in the west.

 

According to pageantopolis.com, which tracks

beauty pageants worldwide, " Joy " McKinney was

named Miss World-Wyoming in 1972.

 

That qualified her to represent the state in the

Miss World-USA contest in 1973.

 

The " Miss World-U.S.A. " pageant organization was

different from the more familiar " Miss America "

and " Miss USA/Miss Teen USA/Miss Universe "

events. Miss World-U.S.A. started in the late

1950s, and ended in the late 1970s, according to

pageantopolis.com. One of its most well-known

winners was Lynda Carter [of Wonder Woman fame]

in 1972, the year before McKinney competed.

 

But McKinney's pageant fame apparently didn't go far.

 

In December 1977, the Star-Tribune quoted former

Miss Wyoming/America chaperone Elizabeth Tolerton

of Cheyenne, who said she didn't know about

McKinney other than she might have been from Utah

and the " Miss World-U.S.A. " organization may have

needed someone to represent Wyoming.

 

Trent Harris, a Salt Lake City filmmaker,

interviewed McKinney in the late 1970s about her

escapades.

 

" All I know is she claimed to be a Miss Wyoming

beauty queen, " Harris said in an interview

Thursday. " I don't remember her talking

specifically about Wyoming. "

 

Whatever glory the 1972 Miss World-Wyoming

enjoyed turned fleeting because within six months

she jumped bail and possibly fled to Canada with

her accomplice in May 1978.

 

The beauty queen turned international fugitive

resurfaced at a hotel in Atlanta disguised as a

nun, then dropped the charade to pose topless for

magazines before U.S. authorities arrested her

and then freed her on bail.

 

She disappeared again only to appear in 1984 in

Salt Lake City where she was arrested for

stalking her former Mormon missionary victim.

That case was dropped.

 

McKinney was back in North Carolina by the late

1990s, with health problems and a reputation as

" one wild woman. "

 

After the stories of her and her cloned Booger

appeared worldwide, people wondered about the

similarities of McKinney-with-dogs and

McKinney-with-missionary.

 

McKinney-with-dogs shared similarities with the

McKinney from North Carolina: sometimes in a

wheelchair, fondness of pitbulls, similar face,

similar age, similar but older face.

 

When contacted by the Daily Mail in Seoul, she

initially neither confirmed nor denied she was

the same McKinney now and then.

 

She later flatly denied the connection.

 

But Harris, who called his interview with her

" three of the weirdest days " -- everything was

" 'look at me, look at me, look at me' " -- didn't

forget a face.

 

" I saw the picture and said, 'that's Joyce,' " Harris said.

 

Reach Tom Morton at (307) 266-0616, or at Tom.Morton.

 

---

--

Merritt Clifton

Editor, ANIMAL PEOPLE

P.O. Box 960

Clinton, WA 98236

 

Telephone: 360-579-2505

Fax: 360-579-2575

E-mail: anmlpepl

Web: www.animalpeoplenews.org

 

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