All That And A Carnation Up Her Nose

[Written August 12, 2008]

As I watched the opening ceremonies of the Olympics on Friday night, I didn’t think that anything could make me happier, or more grateful, to be alive. I was wrong.

Tales of human weirdness don’t always trump tales of human triumph - but in this case, for me, it’s a serious toss up. Joyce McKinney is back. I remember hearing about her as a child - how she kidnapped that Mormon missionary in England; held him at gun point; hand cuffed him, spread eagle, with several pair of mink lined hand cuffs; and repeatedly raped him. Those were the only details I ever knew. But, this morning, the Associated Press re-introduced me to a person about whom 80’s Movies of the Week starring Meredith Baxter Berney were made. And, underneath the laughing on the floor ‘til I wet myself amusement I feel, I am deeply frightened of this woman.

As we all should be.

Scary enough that she started out as a Beauty Pageant Queen (Miss Wyoming no less) but then she joined the Mormon Church and attended BYU. Not that any of those points are necessarily cause for concern individually – I mean, there are many former beauty queens living quietly among us and I have never once been accosted and had my hind quarters sprayed with Aqua-Net, teeth coated with Vaseline or Preparation H slathered under my eyes – but any of us that also attended BYU know that a beauty queen with a testimony and several screws loose is not someone that you want anywhere near your dorm room or, apparently, that special Elder that you are faithfully waiting for.

Clearly he was her soul mate. “I loved him so much,” she told a judge, “that I would ski naked down Mount Everest in the nude with a carnation up my nose if he asked me to.” I actually did that for a boyfriend once. But even I didn't dare ski naked in the nude. Her willingness to be naked and nude simultaneously is proof that hers was a love deep and everlasting. So is the fact that, when the object of her obsess… um… affection was called on a mission to England, she hired a private investigator to find him so she could whisk him away to their 17th century “Honeymoon Cottage” where she assaulted him in ways that, I’m sure, Jane Austen could only dream of.

She raped the poor boy for days, was arrested, spent three days in jail, was released on bail, then she and her accomplice fled to Ireland posing as - I kid you not - deaf-mute actors before heading to Cleveland, by way of Canada, where police lost track of her. She surfaced again in 1984 and was arrested for stalking the workplace of the man she kidnapped in England. Police found rope, handcuffs and notebooks detailing the man’s daily activities in the trunk of her car. She was to stand trial in 1986 but disappeared again. No doubt, this time posing as a blind rodeo clown.

At the courthouse in her hometown of Newland, North Carolina, she is quite the celebrity. A frequent defendant and “person of note in [the] little community” she has warrants out for her arrest and charges of passing bad checks, animal cruelty, assault on public officials and making threats against another woman. The husband of the woman she threatened saw her picture and said, “That’s our Joy. Years ago she was a beautiful girl worthy of the Miss Wyoming crown. She’s ugly as sin now, but, sure enough, that’s her.”

So, basically, she has been out and about harassing, stalking and assaulting people and then vanishes - escaping the consequences every time! Until now. Now she is back in the news because she paid a South Korean company a whopping $53,000.00 to clone her freakin’ dead pit bull, that she actually named Booger, and is now the proud owner of five cloned puppies.

Initially, she claimed that she was not the Joyce McKinney that made the missionary her sex slave in 1977, but that her name was Bernann McKinney and is a screenwriter. Never mind that the two women share the same birth date and place, social security number, that Joyce McKinney’s middle name is Bernann and that the Hollywood address on the business cards she handed out to reporters in Korea doesn’t actually exist. Oh, one other minor detail - the two women have the same damn face. Good Lord.

Granted, that “ugly as sin” comment is mean. But also funny as hell because, here is the thing… After she admitted that she was the same woman that had allegedly raped that poor missionary, she was quoted as saying, “I thought people would be honest enough to see me as a person who was trying to do something good and not as a celebrity,"

First of all Honey, you are NOT a celebrity – YOU ARE A RAPIST. If you had been a man that had kidnapped, chained up and repeatedly raped a Sister Missionary – your ass would have been locked up years ago. Secondly, cloning Booger is not a service of “good” that you are providing the world. It is weird.

And, why is it weird? Not only weird, why is it absolutely terrifying? Seriously, does anyone really need to ask? Does anyone not see what is really going on here? Is the grand scheme really so hard to recognize? Come on, the dog was just a dress rehearsal, people! This woman is planning on cloning Elder Poorguy! In a moment of foresight, infused with true Lewinsky-esque brilliance, she kept a stained pair of leopard panties, or a soiled set of mink handcuffs, and she is going to clone herself a little Elder to have and to hold hostage until death do they part.

And she must be stopped. That man, nay... all of mankind, is not safe until she has been. I don’t care what it takes. Quick! Trip her, grab her, hook her, net her, bag and book her – before she escapes to China posing as a one-legged, midget javelin thrower from the isle of Malta.