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




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.
Tabloid dream

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."
Lawless

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."
--
Republicans - They Take Special Pride in their Ignorance.

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