FILM REVIEW – TABLOID – 2010
Spoiler space warnings
I remember the ‘Manacled Mormon‘ case as it was presented in the late 1970’s, as the lurid, absurd story of male rape, (by a woman), Mormon chastity garments and kinky sex unfolded, leading to trials, escapes from justice and media hounding that makes modern Paparazzi behaviour seem tame by comparison.
In many ways, the expose of Mormon cult absurdities paved some of the way to my own recruitment into a Hindu meditation sect some seven years after the Joyce McKinney saga began. I didn’t think the group that drew me in (Divine Light Mission) was a cult because it wasn’t remotely like The Mormons.
The film recaptures the whole absurd fiasco through interviews with surviving participants talking directly to camera, and newsreel footage from the events themselves. There are no actors or reconstructed events.
McKinney’s presentation of herself is breath taking, as she moves from bubbly good humour to distress and all points in between with mesmerizing charisma. You feel inclined to feel she deserves an Oscar but she is just being herself, or is she? Her story shows some self contradiction and conflicts with some of the competing views on what she did, which draws her spirited defence into question as much as it gains her sympathy.
The story is bizarre on just about every level. McKinney was a US beauty queen, and Miss Wyoming, who moved to Utah and got herself involved with the Church Of The Latter Day Saints. (The film does not mention that she was a member of the church herself). She began a passionate affair with a respected Mormon, Kirk Anderson, and they got on well enough for Kirk to take his girlfriend home to meet his parents.
His mother took an instant dislike to McKinney, seeing her as too sexual and hot for a squeaky clean Mormon boy. It seems to be her and the Mormons who initiated what happened next. McKinney found that her boyfriend had left her overnight, leaving many of his things behind and making no effort to say goodbye or say where he was going.
McKinney went to much time and expense to track him down, hiring private detectives, who located him in a London Mormon temple. He seems to have moved just to get away from McKinney, by choice or through church pressure.
McKinney pits together a rescue team, including a privately hired pilot, and Keith May, her chief accomplice and fellow plaintiff in the case, who has since died, before the film was made. Anderson is still alive, but refused to have anything to do with the film, wishing to put the whole sorry affair behind him.
The pilot, Jackson Shaw, was bemused by McKinney, and found that he was being taken to nudist beaches and private parties. He admits that he hoped to date the glamorous young lady himself when he presumed she abandoned her fixation on Anderson (which she never did).
The stories now began to splinter and go in different directions. Errol Morris, Tabloid director, doesn’t challenge this. He lets the splits and redirections speak for themselves, which gives the film its true heart.
McKinney planned on getting Anderson away from the cult, as she was freely describing it. When he saw that her plans involved a fake gun, and chloroform, Shaw decided to have nothing further to do with her, and left the team in London.
McKinney claims that Anderson met with her on the steps of the London Church and left with her voluntarily but a Mormon who witnessed his departure from the church steps claims that Keith May abducted him at gun point and took him to a car where McKinney was waiting.
Once in the car, voluntarily or otherwise, Anderson was taken to a secluded holiday cottage McKinney had chosen in Devonshire, and they all stayed there for three days. McKinney claims that Anderson was free to come and go as he pleased. His court defence was that he was a prisoner, chained and manacled to a bed in a spread-eagled position, and repeatedly raped by McKinney.
The rape of a man drew the silly case to the attention of the British tabloids that began to have a field day with the absurdities of a case involving Mormon missionaries, abduction, bondage, etc. Matters peaked with McKinney’s revelation that Anderson was wearing a chastity garment, known as holy underwear in Mormon circles. The press made much of this, and a talking head, Troy Williams, himself a Utah DJ and former Mormon, is drawn in to cast some light on the beliefs of the church. Outside of marriage, Mormons are expected to stay chaste and not to commit self-abuse. The chastity garment, to be worn at all times, helps to deter this. Failure to maintain discipline, Williams notes, in stone faced tone, can mean that a Mormon does not get to an afterlife where he gets to be a God in charge of the planet of his choice.
To McKinney, what she and May did was an attempted deprogramming exercise, with McKinney hoping to get herself pregnant and prove that Anderson had been having sex with her. This would have proved that he was not celibate and lead to his excommunication from the church.
Anderson, with support (or manipulation) from the Mormon hierarchy, claimed that this was all involuntary on his part. He saw himself as a kidnap victim, pursued by a relentless stalker.
The so-called abductors took their victim to London, where he was left free to roam around Trafalgar Square. McKinney points out some obvious facts here. Anderson was a big man compared to her. Many witnesses going round Trafalgar Square alone saw Anderson. He went to get newspapers for the team, and never once made an opportunity to flee or call on the local police for help when he had ample opportunity to-do so. Anderson claimed in court that he felt obliged to honour the wishes of his abductors.
The arrest came at the request of the Mormon Church. McKinney spent some months in prison, pre-trial hearings, and the public was clearly in support of her. The tabloids couldn’t get enough of this and turned it into a media circus. Two newspapers in particular took it on themselves to adopt competing and opposing views. The Daily Express set out in spirited defence of McKinney, while the Daily Mirror was out to expose her as a sex-crazed charlatan.
The trial quickly ran into an impasse and the chief abductors, McKinney & Day were granted bail, which they quickly jumped. (Though not before the publicity shy McKinney turned up at the premiere of the Joan Collins movie, The Stud, just to get more camera attention than the star, Joan Collins.
Disguised as mute actors, McKinney and Day got fake passports and fled the country for the US. Bizarrely they got away with this. McKinney was surprisingly adept at disguising herself. The dup also passed themselves off as nuns and even as Pakistanis.
The British government never pursued the fugitives, though McKinney was eventually arrested for false passport papers in the US over her escape methods. For a time, she kept a low profile, but the tabloids were keen to re-awaken the case, especially when she was rearrested in close proximity to Anderson, ad again carrying ropes and other bondage equipment. (McKinney claimed that these were toys for sexual horseplay rather than instruments of kidnapping and hostage keeping).
The Daily Mirror uncovered a more sordid past than McKinney appreciated. She had worked not just as a reigning beauty queen, but also as a star in pornographic photo shoots, mud wrestling and some call girl massage parlour activity. Lurid photos of her in such activity were circulated in the press, which she claimed were faked. The Mirror4 reporter on film, Kent Gavin, claims that negatives are never faked.
McKinney, deeply distressed by the later revelations, became increasingly reclusive by the early 21st century, and even agoraphobic. She retreated to a caravan park, and started keeping dogs to guard her and warn her of any reporters who might be in the nearby woods taking photos of her to rekindle the now dying scandal.
The dogs proved to be her latest undoing. (In fact even in her call girl days she had dogs with her on her assignments, which was what helped the media track down many of her clients). A large attack dog she took in was given an overdose of some drugs (McKinney claims it was deliberate) that caused it to attack her; viscously enough to m maul her arm and leave her close to death. Another of her dogs, a stray called Booger, managed to ward off the bigger animal and get help for her (supposedly by pressing 911 on her phone).
McKinney was so moved by the little dog’s heroism that when he (Booger), died, she paid a Korean cloning expert, Dr. Wong (who also appears in the film), to clone him and still has the five Booger clones as pets.
The story of the cloning attracted media attention to the woman calling herself Bernnan McKinney, (Joyce’s middle name), and the press re-ignited the stories from the previous century again. This led to sufficient interest for the film to be made, which purposely makes no judgements or conclusions of its extra-ordinary findings. The final word goes cruelly to the media reporters, one of who cheerfully describes McKinney as well meaning, lovely but also ‘barking mad’.
The media hacks come across as sympathetic to McKinney, in the case of the Daily Express, and yet maintain a hard-edged cynical desire to exploit her in the case of the Daily Mirror reporter.
There are several unanswered questions. 1/. While The Sun newspaper admitted that some of the photos of McKinney in her vice girl days were faked, the Daily Mirror never did. 2/. For a largely unemployed beauty queen, McKinney was able to hire private planes and pilots, detectives, a holiday cottage in Devon, and later pay for the first commercially produced cloned pet dogs. Where did her money come from?
Despite being heavily involved in the film making, and accompanying its director on the tours promoting the work, McKinney has now denounced the film as giving a misleading representation of her. She is initiating lawsuits against the film director, and she has been known to turn up at screenings, heckling the movie until being asked to leave. The saga therefore continues.
To cal this film unique would be an understatement, but it is truly un-miscible.
Arthur Chappell
