Woman Sexually Rejected By Mormon Refuses To Accept Death Of Dog

In an unexpected twist, the dog owner who recently made news by paying $53,000 for five clones of her former beloved pit bull turns out to be the same woman who 31 years ago made headlines in England when she was charged with stalking a Mormon missionary, abducting him in England, and then handcuffing him to a bed and making him her sex slave.

Dog lover Bernann McKinney acknowledged in a telephone call to reporters over the weekend that she is indeed Joyce McKinney, who in 1977 became a British tabloid sensation when she faced charges of unlawful imprisonment in the missionary case. She jumped bail and was never brought to justice.

Through tears, she explained that she went public with her efforts to replicate her dog Booger, who died two years ago, hoping people would be able to focus on that story rather than [her] past. "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," McKinney said.

57-year-old McKinney says that as far as she is concerned, the Joyce McKinney of 31 years ago does not exist. She maintains her innocence and says the woman who made the news then is a "figment of the tabloid press. ... I don't want that garbage in with the puppy story."

Joyce McKinney's story is the stuff of pulp fiction: a North Carolina-born beauty queen who moved west, won the title Miss Wyoming USA and went on to college at Brigham Young University, where she became obsessed with a Mormon fellow student. When that young Mormon took a missionary trip to England, authorities say, McKinney hired a private detective so she could find and follow him.

She and a male accomplice were accused of kidnapping the 21-year-old missionary as he went door to door, taking him to a rented 17th-century "honeymoon cottage" in Devon and chaining him spread-eagle to a bed with several pairs of mink-lined handcuffs. There, investigators say, he was repeatedly forced to have sex with McKinney before he was able to escape and notify police.

In a 1977 court hearing mobbed by the British press, Joyce McKinney said she had fallen head-over-heels in love with the Mormon man and acknowledged tracking him to England. "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." But she denied raping him, saying the young man was a willing partner. In the interview, McKinney repeated the same argument her lawyer made all those years ago, saying "I didn't rape no 300-pound man. He was built like a Green Bay Packer."

Back in 1977, McKinney and her accomplice spent three months in a London jail before being released on bail. The pair then jumped bail, posing as deaf-mute actors in Ireland, to board an Air Canada flight to Toronto and eventually a bus to Cleveland, Ohio, where investigators lost their trail.

Unbelievably, Joyce McKinney surfaced again in Utah in May 1984 and was arrested for stalking the workplace of the same Mormon man she was accused of imprisoning in England. When she was arrested in Utah, police found a length of rope and handcuffs in the trunk of McKinney's car, along with notebooks detailing the man's daily activities. Set to stand trial for lying to police and harassment in 1986, McKinney again disappeared just before proceedings, and the case was dismissed.

When contacted by reporters, London police announced over the weekend that they have given up on trying to make another case and will not seek McKinney's extradition. McKinney boasted to reporters, "They don't have a case-- it's been 31 years. They don't care."

"It's taken years of therapy to get past this," she said. "We go to church and serve the Lord and try to lead good lives and do good things."

During her phone interview with the AP, McKinney refused to say where she was when she called. While in South Korea doing PR for the dog cloning story, she told reporters she was a screenwriter and handed out business cards with a Hollywood, California address (which turned out later to be a phony address).

Kevin Frey, sheriff of Avery County, North Carolina (McKinney's hometown) said there are several charges on file against Joyce McKinney, including an active warrant seeking her arrest on a 2003 charge of communicating a threat against another woman. Other charges include passing bad checks, an assault on a public officials and a 2004 animal cruelty charge alleging she failed to take proper care of a horse. That charge was dismissed.