Joyce McKinney: Kidnapping, Tabloid Lawsuit, and Cloned Pit Bull

Joyce McKinney is an American woman from Newland, North Carolina, and a former Miss Wyoming USA who became internationally notorious in 1977 after she was charged with kidnapping a young Mormon missionary in England. The case, dubbed the “Manacled Mormon” affair by the British tabloids, made her a Fleet Street sensation, and she returned to headlines decades later after paying to have her dead pit bull cloned in South Korea and, in 2019, being arrested in a fatal Los Angeles hit-and-run.

Born in the mountains of western North Carolina, McKinney converted to Mormonism and moved to Provo, Utah, in 1973 to study at Brigham Young University.¹ While at BYU she won the Miss Wyoming USA title.² She has been credited, by herself and interviewers, with an IQ of 168.³

The 1977 Kidnapping of Kirk Anderson

At BYU, McKinney began dating fellow student Kirk Anderson. She later claimed the two had a sexual relationship, that she became pregnant, and that she miscarried. After Anderson confessed the relationship to Mormon church elders, he was moved out of Utah, lived briefly under an assumed name in Oregon, and was eventually sent to England as a missionary, serving in East Grinstead, Reading, and finally Epsom, in Surrey.¹

McKinney hired a private investigator to find him. Along with an accomplice named Keith May, she flew to the United Kingdom.² On September 14, 1977, Anderson was confronted outside a Mormon meeting house in Ewell, Surrey, by a man with an imitation handgun. According to Anderson, he was forced into a car, chloroformed, and driven to a secluded cottage in Okehampton, Devon.⁴

Anderson said he was held for three days, handcuffed and shackled to a bed, and that McKinney tore off his pajamas and forced him to have sex with her while he was chained and unable to resist.¹ McKinney has always insisted Anderson was willing, calling the episode a “honeymoon” and an attempt to rescue him from what she considered Mormon brainwashing.⁵

Charges, Court, and Escape

McKinney and May were charged at Epsom magistrates’ court with kidnapping, unlawful imprisonment, possessing an imitation firearm with intent to commit an offence, and assault.⁴ McKinney spent about three months in Holloway prison before being bailed on December 6, 1977. During committal proceedings, she demanded that reporting restrictions be lifted and testified at length on subjects that produced sensational tabloid copy.¹ The magistrates sent the case to the Old Bailey for trial in May 1978.

She never appeared. In April 1978, McKinney and May fled to Canada and then to the United States on false passports, reportedly disguised as mime artists.⁶ An Old Bailey judge issued arrest warrants on May 3, 1978. British authorities never sought extradition, and the criminal case was effectively abandoned.⁴

The Fleet Street Tabloid War

The case produced one of the most notorious rivalries in British tabloid history. After McKinney fled, the Daily Express paid her £40,000 for her exclusive account, running it on May 22, 1978, under the headline “My Undying Love.” The story cast her as a sweet, love-struck southerner caught up in a Mormon conspiracy.¹

The same morning, the Daily Mirror published a front page headlined “The Real McKinney.” Following a three-week investigation that tracked down an ex-boyfriend in Los Angeles, the Mirror reported that McKinney had previously worked as a sex worker and printed nude photographs of her, including images with whips and suggestive props. The Express editor, Derek Jameson, effectively conceded defeat by buying drinks for his rivals.¹

Later Pursuit of Anderson and Other Charges

McKinney’s fixation on Anderson did not end with the kidnapping. In June 1984, she was arrested near Salt Lake City International Airport, where Anderson worked, on charges of disturbing the peace and giving false identification to a police officer. Police alleged she had been shadowing Anderson, photographing him, and taking notes on his routine. Anderson, by then married, filed a citizen’s arrest complaint alleging harassment; co-workers and his wife said his life had been “torn apart.”⁷

Her lawyers pleaded not guilty and said she had been “conducting research for the ending of a book, and possibly a movie.” She again maintained that Anderson had asked her to help him “escape Mormon domination” and that church officials had brainwashed him into pressing charges.⁸ A trial was set for September 25, 1984. According to later reporting, McKinney disappeared before trial, and the charges were dismissed in 1986.²

In her home county of Avery in North Carolina, the local sheriff’s office said McKinney accumulated additional charges over the years, including passing bad checks and assaulting a public official. An active warrant was issued in 2003 for communicating a threat against another woman. In 2004, she was charged with animal cruelty for allegedly failing to care for a horse; that charge was dismissed.²⁹

The Cloned Pit Bull

In August 2008, a woman calling herself Bernann McKinney drew worldwide attention after receiving five pit bull puppies cloned from her deceased dog, Booger, at a laboratory in Seoul. It was described as the first successful commercial cloning of a dog. Booger, a stray she had adopted years earlier, had once fought off another of her pets during an attack that left her with severe hand and arm injuries, and had served as her service animal until dying of cancer in April 2006.¹⁰

The cloning was carried out at Seoul National University under contract with the biotech firm RNL Bio, overseen by scientist Lee Byeong-chun. Five puppies were born on July 28, 2008. McKinney paid $50,000, a discount from RNL Bio’s standard $150,000 fee, in exchange for being the company’s first client and helping with publicity. She sold her home to cover the cost.¹¹¹⁰

When photos of the beaming client circulated, British tabloid reporters recognized her face. Matching birth dates, Social Security numbers, and hometown confirmed that Bernann McKinney was Joyce McKinney. She initially denied the connection but eventually acknowledged it to the Associated Press.² London police said they would not seek extradition given the age of the 1977 case.

The Lawsuit Over Errol Morris’s Tabloid

Filmmaker Errol Morris released the documentary Tabloid in 2010. It combines McKinney’s own account of the kidnapping, which she describes as a consensual romantic weekend of “sex, cake, and chicken,” with testimony from the tabloid reporters who covered the case.³ Among its more quoted moments, McKinney says that a woman raping a man is “like putting a marshmallow in a parking meter,” and that she “would have skied down Mt. Everest nude with a carnation up my nose” for Anderson.¹²

McKinney protested the film at the 2010 New York Documentary Film Festival and then sued Morris and producer Mark Lipson in Los Angeles Superior Court.¹³ Her complaint alleged defamation, invasion of privacy, fraud, breach of contract, misappropriation of likeness, and intentional infliction of emotional distress. She said Morris and Lipson had tricked her into participating by telling her the project would be a television series about paparazzi that would “clear her name.”¹⁴

The defendants moved to dismiss under California’s anti-SLAPP statute. The trial court granted the motion, and in October 2013 the California Court of Appeal affirmed, holding that Tabloid concerned a matter of public interest, that McKinney was a limited-purpose public figure who had to show actual malice, and that she failed to demonstrate any probability of prevailing. The court also noted she had signed written releases in 2009 and 2010 covering use of her interview, image, and story.¹⁵

2019 Hit-and-Run Arrest

In July 2019, Joyce Bernann McKinney, then 68, was arrested in connection with a fatal hit-and-run in the Los Angeles neighborhood of Valley Village. On June 17, 2019, she allegedly struck 91-year-old Gennady Bolotsky, a Holocaust survivor, with a pickup truck while he was in a marked crosswalk. Bolotsky died from his injuries. McKinney was charged with felony assault with a deadly weapon, hit-and-run with injury, and vehicular manslaughter. At the time of her arrest near Burbank Airport, she was described as a transient living out of her vehicle and was held on outstanding warrants for battery and public nuisance with a combined bail of $137,500.¹⁶

1
The Guardian. McKinney, the Mormon Missionary and Sex: A Tabloid Tale
2
NBC News. Cloned Puppies May Have Exposed a Fugitive
3
Errol Morris. Tabloid
4
Encyclopedia of East and South-East England History. Mormon Kidnapping
5
The Guardian. The Manacled Mormon Revisited
6
The Guardian. The Mormon, the Missionary and the Cloned Dogs
7
The New York Times. Former Beauty Queen Accused of Harassment
8
UPI. Beauty Queen in Sexual Harassment Case Gets Reprieve
9
South Coast Today. Cloned Puppies May Have Exposed a Fugitive
10
Today. Owner Calls Clones of Her Beloved Dog a Miracle
11
Deseret News. Korean Scientists Clone Pit Bull
12
Errol Morris. Tabloid – Variety Review
13
The Guardian. Joyce McKinney Sues Errol Morris Over Tabloid
14
The Hollywood Reporter. Errol Morris Heads to Trial With Irate Subject of Tabloid
15
Loeb & Loeb. McKinney v. Morris
16
Los Angeles Times. Woman Arrested in Hit-and-Run Death of Holocaust Survivor