Dog cloner suspected to be kidnapper of Mormon missionary sex slave in 1978

Bernann McKinney from California paid a South Korea cloning lab £25,000 to make a duplicate her dear departed pitbull Booger from a piece of the dog's ear tissue. When the story hit the news with photos of McKinney, many people in the UK said Bernann McKinney looks an awful lot like an infamous fugitive named Joyce McKinney who has been on the lam for 30 years.

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?

A cloned dog, a Mormon in mink-lined handcuffs and a tantalising mystery (Daily Mail)

Mark Frauenfelder is the founder of Boing Boing and the editor-in-chief of MAKE and Cool Tools. Twitter: @frauenfelder. Come and hear Mark speak at the ALA conference in Chicago on July 1.

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takeshi

Carnations up the nose notwithstanding, do you think she might love him enough to serve a prison sentence?

Interstate flight and all…
avar1ce

Well. She used to have a nice ass.

Maybe Botox is a good idea, after all…
Fee

I *think* the reason the mail used quotes is because they are not sure (I am not sure) that she was found guilty of rape. As I recall there was an argument that a man cannot be raped in *that* way… that is, of course a man may be receptively raped, but if a man is unhappy/distressed and unwilling he won’t have an erection and it won’t be possible to rape him. I’m not saying I agree with this, just that this is, as I recall, the sort of thing the court spent time in debating.

I think it was the case that she was found guilty of kidnap and false imprisonment but not the rape. I expect a dozen people with newspaper clippings from the 1970s will be able to prove me wrong….
Fee
Purly

Given that they both have the same surname, could they potentially be different people with the same ancestry?

My husband’s mother recently discovered the long-lost set of family members that resulted from her grandfather’s running away. My husband has almost an identical twin running around out there!
John Coulthart

“but if a man is unhappy/distressed and unwilling he won’t have an erection and it won’t be possible to rape him. I’m not saying I agree with this, just that this is, as I recall, the sort of thing the court spent time in debating.”

The Telegraph report on this story answered that question:

“After repeated rejections, her tactics changed. She changed into a see-through nightie, played some romantic music, spread-eagled her captive on the bed, and is alleged to have sexually stimulated him and forced him to have sex.

“Anderson claimed that, fearing that he would be imprisoned for weeks, he eventually relented and agreed to marry her. As soon as his chains were loosened, he escaped and went to the police.”

Also:

“In court, Joyce McKinney’s counsel said: ‘Methinks the Mormon doth protest too much…you have seen the size of Mr Anderson and you have seen the size of my client.’ ”

I was at school in 1978 and remember well the inevitable “lucky bastard” comments from teenage friends. It was a big deal at the time, a national talking point.
arkizzle

Modus @ 78 FTW!
arkizzle

She was a looker..
kc0bbq

I hope they’re the same person for a selfish reason. I just can’t get into mad science without a certain threshold of barking mad being involved.
Frank_in_Virginia

If so, this violates one of the first rules of the Internets: “If you have ever done something weird in your life, don’t do anything else weird.”
Xopher

Me? At Denvention 3.
Anonymous

She was a looker..

the major word is WAS…
dbarak

They say dogs and their owners look the same. The second picture proves it.
raisedbywolves

WTF, this story gets more and more bizarre…
Lilorfnannie

How could it not be the same person? That’s the best laugh I had all day!!
Bren

Ah, the Mail, and now the Times.

#44 – It isn’t tablodization of BB. This is just the “of note” follow on to an interesting cloning story! I expect my BB to give me cloning stories … wherever they lead.
JoeKickass

OK I have read the article a couple of times and I can’t for the life of me figure out why they DailyFail felt it nessecary to list the victim’s weight:

“…charged with kidnapping a 17-stone male Mormon missionary…”

Do British papers to this alot when reporting the news “Today in Leeds 20-stone Prime Minister Margret Thatcher addressed the 15-stone Queen of England…”
ulor

@42 So he is not a real person because he is Mormon, so what if he was some other group you don’t like. Is it ok then to kill, maim, hurt, abuse them? I am sure you prolly meant to this to be funny, but I didn’t find it so.
Stefan Jones

Hmmm. Was there any DNA evidence?

Can we use it to make five crazy lady clones so that each of the clone dogs has an identical little girl to play with?
Teresa Nielsen Hayden / Moderator

JG, I have no problem with “Operating Thetan Level 8 vs. Salamander with Golden Plates.”
dbarak

I read yesterday that the Mormon guy was wearing a “Mormon chastity belt.”

Alrighty then.
Teresa Nielsen Hayden / Moderator

It’s true. I saw him there.

The case has gotten weirder. Let me send the story to Mark and see if he wants to do an update.
Antinous

Especially the MST3K version.
JG

Mormon chastity belt= White, short-sleeve shirt, clip-on black tie.
Try it it works!
dbarak

Unless you’re posing in one of those Mormon hottie calendars…
- Antinous
  
  Unless you’re posing in one of those Mormon hottie calendars…
  
  Link???
Aloisius

This article is weird.

They put rape in quotation marks as if kidnapping someone, tying them to a bed and forcing them to have sex isn’t rape.

Then they call her past racy. Racy? She is a sexual predator for goodness sakes!

Then apparently after she kidnapped and raped this guy, she was pursued for topless pictures in glamor magazines so she could “revel in her sexual notoriety.” WTF?

If the roles were reversed, I’d fully expect the perpetrator to be sent away to jail and gang raped by guys named Bubba for 30 years.
Anonymous

Best headline ever
MsCongeniality

Wait…they escaped to Canada disguised as deaf-mute mimes? You couldn’t make up something that insane. Bravo!

Also, I’ve never heard of a Mormon chastity belt, could they be talking about the maaaagic union suit?
arkizzle

JoeKickAss

I understand your issue, and how shit the Mail is, and indeed how they paint a picture with irrelevant details to get an under-handed point across.
But in this circumstance it was probably in connection with the kidnapping. I don’t know the details, but it does seem mildly curious that the smaller McKinney could kidnap a 17-stone man, maybe she has a very commanding voice :)
prom77

#12 and #18, I completely agree. I only skimmed the article, admittedly, but ‘rape’ in quotations jumped out at me. It makes some very unsavoury assumptions about being male to presume that men couldn’t possibly turn down sex.

Elements of our society seem to have blithely accepted it as a fact that men are animals who cannot control their urges. It’s insulting to victims of female-on-male sexual assault, and to men in general.
The Unusual Suspect

The mention of the victim’s weight was no doubt a part of her defense. It would be hard to imagine a woman overpowering a very large man like that. (Well, if it weren’t for the GUN.)

And Mormons typically wear special undergarments (chastity-related or otherwise) as a part of their faith.
jesushootscores

Mormons are predators
arkizzle

RE: me @ 14

“maybe she has a very commanding voice”

Or, indeed, an imitation revolver and some chloroform. Shoulda read the details.. :)
Pipenta

The “journalist” is an asshole. He thinks it is hilarious that this poor guy was stalked, kidnapped and sexually assaulted. It is not funny. The fact that she was a beauty queen makes her no less creepy. The details of the victim’s weight, religion and clothing are not relevant, funny or titillating.Above and beyond the horrors (Yes, horrors.) that happened to the victim, he has to endure the snarky contempt of the so-called journalists and everyone else who not only dismisses the trauma he went through, but also finds it fodder for jokes.

This gal is beyond being a nutter, she’s a creepy-ass predator, a severe borderline personality disorder and she stalked and hunted this man and is capable of even worse. Those of you who are laughing and thinking, oh, I’d like to have a beauty queen stalk me, well I wish you the experience of a borderline in your life, just for a little bit, just for an uncomfortable moment so that you could have enough discomfort to begin to empathize with what this man has endured.

She got away with it. I wonder, had it been a male predator and a female victim, if jail time would have been so easily avoided. I think of Snow Crash and I think, yes, tattoo BPD right across her damned forehead.
Anonymous

*rolls eyes*

oh, please. the Mail?
Brian Damage

That poor woman, a slave to only missionary sex! One would think she’d have done it doggy style by now.
dejanigma

I dunno.. I gotta agree, I don’t think any beauty queens could rape me… can’t rape the willing… :]
Frank_in_Virginia

@20

http://www.newsweek.com/id/147061?tid=relatedcl
Antinous

JG,

You’ve never read Teresa’s bio on Wikipedia, have you?
arkizzle

Pipenta, agreed. I thought it strange that the victim’s ordeal was discussed in such a light-hearted tone.

Sadly, the journalist also calls the committal hearing “entertaining, if not downright titillating”, during which McKinney’s counsel, further trying to discredit him, said: “Methinks the Mormon doth protest too much..”

Not nice at all.
mgfarrelly

I assume there are normal, sane and well-reasoned people working on clone technology correct? Between this hot mess of strange and Raileans I’m beginning to see a pattern of crazy.
guy_jin

Dear UKia: why must you refer to people’s weight in ‘stone’? what the hell is wrong with pounds or kilos? you know, the weights and measures people actually use and understand?
Scraps

“Don’t ski naked down Mt.Everest
With lilies up your nose
Don’t punt up the Ganges in a vest
And holler ‘Thar she blows’”

–the Monochrome Set, “Ten Don’ts for Honeymooners” (1980)
Halloween Jack

Yep. Rape still not funny, even when it involves Mormon missionaries.

The similarity of Mormon missionaries to Geek Squad staffers, on the other hand, as well as Mormon underwear in general, is still acceptable grist for comedy. Craft those japes, jokesmiths!
prelude

HAHAHA.

This is AMAZING. And they are so the same person, come on.
arkizzle

Guy Jin, as much as I’d never defend the use of imperial measures over metrics:

In the UK, people use stone to describe the weight of people. Generally the only people who use pounds are those watching their weight, who are concerned with the smaller increments between, say, 17 stone and 18 stone. They might say “I weigh 17 stone, 2 pounds. I’ve lost 5 pounds this month”. But never “I weigh 238 pounds”

For everyone else, stone is close enough for day-to-day use.

Frankly, I don’t know why everything isn’t metric (but this isn’t the thread for that discussion).
Modusoperandi

I wins! Hurrah!
John Coulthart

Antinous: http://www.mormonsexposed.com/

The Daily Mail uses “stones” so that their aged, metric-hating readership knows what they’re talking about.
- Antinous
  
  I had no idea that ringing doorbells was such good upper body exercise.
Lucifer

People do weirder things on their own without my help.
catbeller

@The &Unusual Suspect

“And Mormons typically wear special undergarments (chastity-related or otherwise) as a part of their faith.”

Say what? I’ve never studied the cult, precisely to avoid this sort of knowledge… I’m not gonna look at the material. I promise this to myself; Scientology was quite enough to inspect.

Ohhhhhkay then.
JJR1971

“released on account of her failing mental health”

Released??? Why wasn’t she involuntarily committed to a psychiatric facility!? She sounds completely off her rocker.

Failure of the UK justice system partly to blame here.

Probably is the same person. Drama queen gone bad.

I’m actually surprised this hasn’t been made into a movie yet, though. It’s certainly got all the elements of a true-crime horror thriller with farcical elements.
angusm

The truth is even more startling. The South Korean lab was having a two-for-one special: “Bernann” McKinney is actually Joyce’s clone.

Begun this missionary-kidnapping Everest-skiing carnation-snorting clone war has …
John Coulthart

Actually, the plot of Jonathan Demme’s Something Wild isn’t far removed from this.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0091983/
Strophe

You guys are missing the real issue here. Somebody needs to hurry and get some ear tissue from that Montauk Monster on ice before it totally decomposes, and send it to South Korea ASAP.
terrybfla

Anonymous says: Best headline ever

Precisely my thought.
John Coulthart

James in Las Palmas is welcome to try and convert me.
Teresa Nielsen Hayden / Moderator

Better if there’s a Sampo in it.
JG

Mormons are just Scientologists who believe in Jesus.
See:
L Ron Hubbard vs. Joseph Smith
Tom Cruise vs. Donny Osmond
Operating Thetan Level 8 vs. salamander with golden plates
Mormon Tabernacle Choir vs. Beck

Well, you get the idea…..
Talia

The linked article is somewhat NSFW. Heh heh.
Nixar

Oh come on, lighten up. Yeah, rape is bad. It happens all the time. It’s very bad.

But THIS ONE? She was hot, batshit insane, and he was a MORMON! A MORMON. t’s nt lk sh dd smthng bd t rl prsn!
Modusoperandi

So…a beauty queen has a fling, they break up, she stalks, kidnaps and rapes him after crossing the Atlantic just to get to him, escapes justice in disguise as a deaf/mute mime, stalks him again back in the US, is arrested and released, then eventually pays a South Korean lab to clone her dog?

That’s such a cliche.
Stefan Jones

Yeah, if you sent that headline back in time they’d think it was totally made up.
fontastique

Seriously, this his getting irritating…

I do not own a tv, nor do I read tabloid papers.
I tend to read blogs as boingboing to get away from sensationalistic shit rags as the daily mail, so why has it become a habit for you to relay this type of absurd piece of information?
- Antinous
  
  fontastique,
  
  That is your third comment complaining about a post taken from the Daily Mail. Just because you don’t like something, doesn’t mean that nobody else does. You can post whatever you like on your own blog. In the meantime, if you don’t want to read a post, use your scroll bar.
wynneth

@34 – OH SHI…
Talia

#44 they post whatever they think is interesting. Even gossipity tabloidy type stuff can be, particularly as this article ties in to the dog cloning thing which has been all over the news of late.

Its pretty simple to just skip over BB posts you don’t care to read. I promise.
TKendo

Wow. If she plans on adding a little more personal bio to her screenplay she should get in touch with John Waters in the directorÂ´s chair.

Did anyone else feel a little bad for Joyce (the woman)? Terrible thing tis kidnapping, but she more than payed her dues in Karma.
MichaelRN

Compared with all the other elements of the story, the mink handcuffs seem positively mundane.
Big Ed Dunkel

I feel bad for Joyce, but judging from her photos, jealous of the Mormon. Bizarre.

http://www.jamd.com/search?assettype=g&assetid=2635254&text=%2522Joyce+McKinney%2522+%2522Joyce+McKinney%2522
TEKNA2007

FTA:

Joyce McKinney was a beauty queen in the 1970s and was a former Miss Wyoming before going to Brigham Young University, in Utah, to study drama

To study drama? She should have been given a diploma emeritus.
Takuan

@49
they were live mink
Teresa Nielsen Hayden / Moderator

Mormons are neither predators (60), nor Scientologists who believe in Jesus (40). Kidnapping anyone and forcing sex on them is rape.

I’m not saying this story isn’t a hoot, though.
Anonymous

There is no way that is the same woman!
Xopher

She “wishes that the past would be left alone,” does she? She’s a kidnapper and a rapist. I wonder if her victim “wishes that the past would be left alone.”

Honestly, I cannot believe the blatant sexism here. No one who knows male sexual anatomy could doubt that such a rape is at least possible. In 1978, they didn’t pay any attention to such things, which is why she was only charged with unlawful imprisonment and a weapons charge.

The fact that you weigh 238 pounds means nothing when someone (and note, it wasn’t her, it was her male accomplice) points a gun at you. He had no way of knowing it wasn’t a real gun. And once he was chloroformed it was all over.

The most outrageous part of this story is that when she failed to show up in court at one point “the case was dropped,” instead of a bench warrant issued!

I sure hope she’s brought to justice. But I very much doubt she will be.
- Antinous
  
  Where the hell have you been?
moonracer23

I think people are getting mixed up. She hired people to clone her dog. She is not a scientist, just a customer. Therefore she is not a mad scientist.
Teresa Nielsen Hayden / Moderator

Antinous (69), which of his beliefs do you mean — that I can’t read English very well, or that I’m into defending Mormonism?
- Antinous
  
  Ladies’ choice.
JG

#65 “Mormons are neither predators (60), nor Scientologists who believe in Jesus (40).”

Teresa, I think you are missing the element of fun some of us were injecting into this odd story.
Or should we show more respect for dog-cloning, kidnap prone, Mormon screwballs?
I’m just askin’ ?

I know you just LOVE Donny Osmond, sorry to step on your toes. ;)
mattxb

These Times articles have a frankly more convincing lookalike comparison

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/us_and_americas/article4476877.ece

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/us_and_americas/article4481742.ece

Also, they’re not The Mail.
styrofoam

According to CNN, she’s admitted that she’s the same person, and she wishes that the past would be left alone.

It’s definitely a weird story.
takeshi

I’m not sure how much of a “hoot” this story is to the unfortunate Mormon. That said, I am thoroughly entertained.
JG

#71 Antinous, LMFAO, good come back (as usual).

It’s all meant in fun TNH.
I still think that,
Operating Thetan Level 8 vs. Salamander with Golden Plates, is a funny line.
Torley

Who let the dogs out? Woof.
ROSSINDETROIT

According to the Times article it’s the same woman for certain. The story is really strange.
Anonymous

Anyone else reminded of that episode of Quantum Leap, “Moments to Live”, where the guy is kidnapped by the obsessed fan for, um, sexual purposes?