‘Sex Slave’ Woman Wanted for Burglary, 1977

Was this the best tabloid news story ever? Readers of a certain vintage will recall the name Joyce McKinney, a former Miss Wyoming. Errol Morris told her story of Mormons, cloned dogs, sex, a false leg for a horse, The Osmonds and an escape from justice in Tabloid.

The Manacled Mormon case, also known as the Mormon sex in chains case, was a case of reputed sexual assault and kidnap by an American woman, Joyce McKinney, of a young American Mormon missionary, Kirk Anderson, in England in 1977. Because McKinney and her accomplice skipped bail and fled to the United States before the case could be tried and were not extradited, they were never tried for these specific crimes. According to Anderson, he had been abducted by McKinney from the steps of a church meetinghouse, chained to a bed and raped by her.

Mugshot of Joyce McKinney taken June 16, 1984, by the Salt Lake Sheriff’s Department when she was arrested for stalking her 1977 victim, Anderson.

After the case, McKinney absconded from the United Kingdom and was allowed to reside in the U.S. with a falsified passport. In 2008, it was learned that she made five clones of her pet pit bull in South Korea. In 2016, McKinney sued film director Errol Morris for making a documentary about her.