Bizarre backstory to South Korean dog cloning

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, July/August 2008:

 

 

Bizarre backstory to South Korean dog cloning

 

SEOUL, LONDON--Animal advocates scrambled on August 5, 2008

to more fully identify the background of a woman named Bernann

McKinney, who paid $50,000 to RNL Bio of Seoul, South Korea to

clone her deceased pit bull terrier.

At a press conference in Seoul, held to announce the

cloning, the woman cuddled five pit bull puppies and claimed that

the deceased pit bull had once saved her life when she was attacked

by a much larger dog--but no record of the incident could be found.

The cloning team was led by Lee Byeong-chun, a former

assistant to Hwang Woo-suk, whose 2004 claim to have cloned human

embryos and extracted stem cells from them was exposed a year later

as false. However, Hwang Woo-suk and Lee Byeong-chun had verifiably

cloned a dog, and reportedly cloned more than 20 dogs before

McKinney's.

Among the questions under investigation were whether

dogfighters, the dog meat industry, or breeders of dogs for

laboratory use might actually have put up the money for the pit bull

cloning, billed as the first commercial dog cloning.

But Joyce Bernann McKinney, 58, was instead recognized and

identified by British tabloid reporters, with further details of her

life soon exposed by other media.

Born in Avery County, North Carolina, McKinney was named

Miss World-Wyoming in 1972, and participated in the 1973 Miss

World-USA pageant. McKinney became infatuated with a Mormon

missionary whom she pursued to England in 1977. After a male

accomplice allegedly brought the missionary to her at the point of a

toy gun, she allegedly chained him to the bed with mink-lined

handcuffs and forced him to have sex with her for two days between

Bible readings meant to convince him to marry her. He eventually

escaped. McKinney and the accomplice in 1978 jumped bail and fled.

McKinney next posed first as a nun and then topless for

magazines in Atlanta. Arrested again, she jumped bail again, but

reappeared in the tabloids in 1984, for allegedly stalking the same

missionary in Salt Lake City.

In 1993, the Johnson City, Tennessee Press Chronicle

recalled, McKinney disguised herself with a wig and sought work at

the Washington County Animal Shelter to try to gain access to several

pit bulls who were to be euthanized for attacking a couple. She was

charged with attempting to break into the shelter, but the case was

dropped in 1997.

In 2004, in Carter County, Tennessee, McKinney was charged

with conspiracy to commit aggravated burglary, contributing to the

delinquency of a minor, and speeding, after trying to recruit a

15-year-old boy to rob a house in an attempt to raise the price of a

prosthetic limb for a three-legged horse. Again she failed to appear

in court.

" More recently, she surfaced on the criminal dockets in her

native Avery County, where a warrant is active alleging she

threatened another woman; and in Washington County, Tennessee,

alleging burglary, " wrote Daniel Gilbert of the Bristol Herald

Courier.

 

 

 

--

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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