Manacled Mormon case

Kirk Anderson, a young Mormon missionary, went missing on 14 September 1977, in Ewell, Surrey, England. He was allegedly abducted from the steps of a meetinghouse of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints by Keith May, aged 24, who had posed as an investigator into Mormonism, using a fake handgun and chloroform.[9] Three days later, a freed Anderson made a report to the police that he had been driven to a cottage in Devon and chained to a bed against his will, at which point Joyce Bernann McKinney [10][11][12][13] had attempted to seduce and then raped him.

Police set up a sting operation by having Anderson set up a 21 September rendezvous with McKinney and May, leading to the two suspects being arrested.

On 19 September 1977, McKinney and May were arrested and charged with kidnap and assault. They vigorously denied the charges. While being taken to Epsom for a court appearance, McKinney held a notice up at the window of the police vehicle saying, "Kirk left with me willingly!"[14] At the committal hearing, she stated of Anderson: "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."[15] Press reports and McKinney's solicitor referred to the size differential between McKinney, who weighed 120 lb (54 kg), and the 250 lb (110 kg) Anderson, described as being 6 ft 2 in (1.88 m) tall.[16][17] Under the Sexual Offences Act 1956, then in force in the United Kingdom, no crime of rape was deemed to have been committed since the victim was male; however, indecent assault of a man did apply.[18]

McKinney and May skipped bail and absconded from the UK on 12 April 1978. Their trial for kidnap had been due to begin on 2 May.[19] In June a judge at London's Central Criminal Court sentenced McKinney and May in absentia to a year in prison for skipping bail (if their bail money, £1,000 each, was not paid to the court in forfeit).[3] No extradition proceedings were instituted by the British government.

On 18 July 1979, May and McKinney were both arrested in the US by the FBI on charges of making false statements in order to obtain passports.[20] They both received suspended sentences.[4]

The coverage in British newspapers in the final months of 1977 was extensive.[9] Some newspapers sought to obtain "scoops" on the story, and to undermine each other as they managed to obtain and publish exclusive information. For example, the Daily Mirror researched McKinney's past and reported over several days that she had been a nude model. The Daily Mail attempted to devalue the Mirror's reports by advertising itself as "the paper without Joyce McKinney".[21]

Brian Whitaker has observed that the case provided "light relief" for the newspaper-reading public, from more serious stories about politicians.[21] Roger Wilkes states that the coverage of the case "cheered Britain up no end".[22]

A Church of Scotland working party on obscenity in 1979 observed the "gusto" with which newspapers covered and followed the case, observing the coverage was accompanied by "the kind of illustration which a decade ago would have been under plain sealed cover".[23]

The coverage was extensive in part because the case was considered so anomalous, involving as it did the issue of rape of a man by a woman. Backhouse and Cohen reported in 1978 that many men, privately, expressed their disbelief of such a possibility.[24]

The case was documented in Joyce McKinney and the Manacled Mormon,[25] a book by Anthony Delano in 1978, who based his work on assembled Daily Mirror coverage.[26] The events were documented musically by the UK band Radio Stars in their recording of 'Sex in Chains Blues'.

In 1984, McKinney was again the subject of police action for allegedly stalking Anderson, though he was now married with children.[27] At the time of her apprehension, McKinney was found living in her vehicle near Salt Lake International Airport, where Anderson worked. A search of the vehicle uncovered road maps, rope, handcuffs, and notebooks keeping detailed records of Anderson's routines. McKinney insisted that she had driven to the airport to book a flight, though it was later revealed that she had driven several thousand miles from her home in North Carolina.[28]

In 2008, a story about a woman named "Bernann McKinney" appeared in the media after the woman had her pet dog cloned in South Korea. Journalists tied the two incidents together in articles identifying facial similarity between "Bernann McKinney" and Joyce Bernann McKinney.[7] After initial denials[10][29][30] the International Herald Tribune and other publications carried an admission by McKinney that she was the person named in the 1977 case.[16]

The revival of interest in the story led the documentary filmmaker Errol Morris to produce a 2010 film, Tabloid, based on the media sensation surrounding the story.[31] The film gives extra details, from press reports of the day and from participants in the story, to the use of a (possibly fake) gun during Anderson's abduction, and Anderson being tied up during his alleged rape by McKinney.[32] The film also gave further details regarding McKinney's work as a call girl, earning funds for her team's international adventure by offering bondage and S&M services around the time she became obsessed with Anderson.

In January 2016, McKinney filed suit against Morris, claiming that she had been misrepresented in the film and that Morris and others related to the documentary's production had broken into her home, stolen personal items related to the case, and threatened the life of her service dog if McKinney did not sign release papers allowing them to use her footage for the film. Legal representatives for Morris stated that "evidence will show that [McKinney] willingly – in fact, eagerly – participated in the lengthy interview that is featured in the film."[8] Morris stated in an interview later that year that the charges had been dismissed as "frivolous".[33]

Anderson as of 2011 was a real estate agent and shied away from publicity. Keith May, McKinney's co-conspirator from the 1977 case, died in 2004.[5] At one point, McKinney lived in Newland, in the western North Carolina mountains.[28][10] More recently, she has lived as a homeless person in the San Fernando Valley region of Los Angeles.