Was the Mormon Manacler unmasked by a Pit bull’s ear?

I must admit that news of the first cloning of a pet dog for a paying customer totally passed me by. The Daily Mail along with many other papers reported that RNL Bio, a Seoul cloning company has produced five pit bull puppies from a piece of the original dog’s ear. They are genetic doubles of Booger whose death from cancer two years ago left his owner Bernann McKinney so bereft that she sold her house to raise the £25,000 needed to bring him back to life so to speak.

Miss McKinney, 57, who was described as Californian scriptwriter named the puppies Booger McKinney, Booger Lee, Booger Ra, Booger Hong and Booger Park, after herself and the South Korean scientists behind their birth.

Ms McKinney, also described as a former beauty queen, said Booger became an indispensable part of her life after intervening in the mastiff attack which led to one of her hands being amputated. When she was left wheelchair-bound following reconstructive surgery, the pit bull became her hands and legs, fetching clothes from the dryer and drinks from the fridge, opening doors and taking off her shoes, she said.

McKinney? 57 years old? Former beauty queen? It did not take long for a notorious case from the seventies to be dusted off...

Again the Mail , along with many other papers gives the Manacled Mormon back story

Joyce McKinney was born in North Carolina, in 1949 and first made the headlines in 1972 when she was crowned Miss Wyoming, She subsequently enrolled as a drama student at Brigham Young University, in Utah and it was there that she met 19-year-old Kirk Anderson, a 6ft 4in fellow drama undergraduate, some seven years her junior. There was a brief fling but Anderson, a devout Mormon, apparently sought advice from his bishop, who told him to sever ties with McKinney and move away from Utah. McKinney was not prepared to be spurned so easily. Using private detectives she traced him to Ewell in Surrey, where he was living as a door-to-door Mormon missionary.

In the summer of 1977, McKinney flew to England with an architect friend called Keith May. Armed with an imitation revolver, May confronted 21-year-old Anderson on the steps of Ewell's Church of the Latter Day Saints, and drove some 200 miles to Okehampton in Devon, where his kidnappers had hired a 17th-century 'honeymoon' cottage. May chained the prisoner to a bed. For two days, McKinney tried to persuade the missionary to marry her and father her children. She even read Scriptures with him in bed.

When this failed to melt his opposition, McKinney reverted to Plan B. This involved slipping into a 'see-through nightie', playing a cassette of 'romantic music', having Anderson 'spread- eagled' and sexually stimulating him. She claimed this was a bondage 'game' played with his full consent. He later told a court: 'I couldn't move. She grabbed the top of my pyjamas and tore them from my body until I was naked. 'I didn't wish it to happen. I was extremely depressed and upset after being forced to have sex.'

Fearing he would be kept prisoner for weeks Anderson promised to marry her. But after she loosened his chains, he escaped and went straight to the police. McKinney and May were arrested three days later and charged with false imprisonment and possessing an imitation firearm.

McKinney spent three months on remand in Holloway Prison before being released on bail on grounds of her failing mental health. McKinney and May and the pair fled to Canada, using false passports and disguised as deaf-mute mime artistes.

McKinney resurfaced in 1984, when she was arrested near Salt Lake City Airport, where Kirk Anderson was working. In her car, police found a length of rope and a pair of handcuffs. The implication was clear that she was about to make a second kidnap attempt, but she failed to show up in court and the case was dropped.

By the late Nineties, McKinney was back in North Carolina, dogged by ill health and often in a wheelchair, living on benefits in a remote smallholding with only three ponies and a fiercely devoted pitbull called Hamburger for company. Anderson meanwhile is an estate agent in Utah and understandably reluctant to rake over his past misfortunes.

What, then, of 'Bernann McKinney' who has had her pitbull Booger cloned and claims to be a Hollywood scriptwriter and university lecturer?

Joyce will be celebrating her 59th birthday this week, while Bernann claims to be two years younger. It is a fact, though, that former beauty queens (and even less celebrated mortals) often reduce their ages later in life.

Both Joyce and Bernann use wheelchairs, while the latter's late pitbull Booger sounds very similar in name to Joyce's faithful Hamburger. There is no record of a Bernann McKinney living in Los Angeles, nor does anyone of that name belong to the Screenwriters' Guild.

No university drama department we contacted has heard of any such teacher. It is an undisputable fact, however, that Joyce was once a drama student. But perhaps the most persuasive circumstantial evidence to suggest that Joyce and Bernann are the same woman is that a Joyce Bernann McKinney is registered as living in Avery County, North Carolina - birthplace of the Mormon sex slave kidnapper.

To be honest it looks like the two newsworthy McKinneys are one and the same person. The press, both tabloid and broadsheet, had a field day with the Manacled Mormon case back in the seventies and is having a field day again. McKinney was a very disturbed woman but for a while she briefly the biggest news story in Britain.

A German farce in Palestine

It’s amazing what you can find when you are looking for something else. I had been looking for some information on Harold Cole, perhaps the worst British traitor of WWII and I found this – a BBC report on the release of intelligence files regarding German wartime plans for subversion in Palestine,

In 1944 the Germans planned to make existing tensions between Jews and Palestinians a great deal worse and planned. With the support of the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem (a piece of vermin who was in exile in Berlin and who had been involved in the raising of Muslim SS divisions in Bosnia and Albania) to arm Palestinian villagers and incite them to rise up against the Jews.

A small commando team of two German officers and three Arabs was formed in Berlin in early 1944. Their leader, Colonel Kurt Wieland, an Arabic speaker who knew Palestine, had several meetings with the Mufti and they agreed a plan: drop by parachute, establish a base, gather intelligence and radio it back to Berlin; and recruit and arm Palestinian supporters with Nazi gold.

The plan went very, wrong Before the team flew out, the Mufti's people meddled in Colonel Wieland's careful plans, changing his equipment without telling him. Their first flight was abandoned but when they were on their way, in October 1944, the pilot lost his way and flew too high when they began their jump. They had planned a landing north of Jericho but instead landed south, lost their radio equipment and became separated. Colonel Wieland and his two companions hid in an Arab village, in a cave and a ruined monastery. They found no support for any Arab uprising and were captured a week later. The other two men were never found.

It does not surprise me that the Germans tried to exploit tensions in Palestine but the timing of this intervention would have no affect whatsoever on the outcome of the war. I would have thought that it would have (from a German perspective that is) been far more effective had it taken place earlier (say 1941) when Britain was at its lowest ebb. Germany had already stirred things up in Iraq by supporting a coup by Rashid Ali. The British invasion or Iraq diverted forces that might have been better served in North Africa. Having to deal with an uprising in Palestine at the same time might have led to a British defeat in North Africa and the subsequent loss of oil supplies from Iraq and Iran... On the other hand it could have been the same farce it was in 1944.

Personally I am glad it was as ineffective as german attempts to put spies in Ireland or to raise a British SS formation.

Let's Go Thundering

Again from Storefront Hitchcock

1974

From the Jonathan Demme Film Storefront Hitchcock

Photo Hunt - Dark

The theme for this week's Photo Hunt is dark. This photo was taken in the Malpaso Bar in Millstreet on a quiet Monday evening. It may be a small pub but I love it.

Feeding time

Feeding time at the South Pole Inn, Annascaul. This week's entry for Friday Ark and Carnival of the Cats

Happy Shopper Messiah preaches sermon on the mount

The Gazette (a news site for Middlesbrough and Teeside) reports on David Shayler’s recent sermon on Roseberry Topping a very distinctive hill near Middlsebrough.

David Shayler a local lad and general nutter about town has bounced back from a jail sentence in 2002 for leaking secrets including allegations that the secret services plotted to assassinate Libyan Leader Colonel Gaddafi, securing a career as a prophet (albeit a bargain basement one)

Preaching bare foot to a handful of climbers Shayler claimed that anyone can perform miracles and that Middlesbrough could be promoted as the home of the new Messiah to attract pilgrims and change people’s perceptions of the town.

He said it was good there were not too many people at the sermon, because “that’s how it was in the Bible.” Reiterating his claims to be the new Messiah, Shayler admitted people “might find it strange” He said: “When people think of Middlesbrough, they tend to think of unemployment, child abuse and a failing football team. But I want to set the record straight. Why not promote Shayler as the Messiah and get people here on pilgrimages?”

Mr Shayler spoke of the “miracle” he believes he performed when striker Massimo Maccarone scored a last-gasp winner in the quarter and semi-finals of the UEFA Cup in 2006. (Fat lot of good his miracle did the Boro – they got stuffed 4-0 in the final)

Last year Shayler claimed Mary Magdalene had visited him and anointed him the new Messiah.He also claimed the Rod of Aaron, the staff which is said to have been carried by Moses’s brother, has an anagram written on it in Hebrew which says “David Shayler is God.”

Somehow I can’t see the pilgrims flocking away from Rome, Jerusalem, Mecca or anywhere else to visit a Z-list prophet... On the other hand he might find a few suckers but only a few I would imagine.

Thanks yet again to Fortean Times

A grandfather, an uncle and an aunt I never knew

Red Cushing and the several deaths of Yakov Stalin Part II

Red Cushing’s first account of his encounter with Yakov Stalin appears in his autobiography “Soldier for Hire” (pp166)

“The first newcomer to arrive was posted to our hut. He introduced himself clicking his heels and uttering a Russian name that meant nothing to any of us... He explained later that it was the family name of Joseph Stalin and that he was the son of the Russian dictator. While serving as a lieutenant in an anti tank battery, he had been captured near Smolensk.

“Right from the first his behaviour struck me as distinctly odd. I often caught him pacing up and down our hut as if he had something on our mind.... For all his political moonshine, Jacob (Yakov) had many likeable qualities... and in time we may have become firm friends. One evening, however, at the end of an unusually long brooding spell, he suddenly rushed outside, sprinted across the compound, scrambled up the wall and attempted to crawl to the perimeter wire. A shot rang out, followed by a blinding flash, and poor Jacob hung there his body horribly burned and twisted. . We heard afterwards that the sentry’s bullet had got him fractionally before he was electrocuted”.

Cause 3: A fight over fa dirty toilet

18 years later in 1980 Cushing, then in retirement in County Cork, gave a second, slightly expanded account in a Sunday Times article (As with my earlier posts on Red Cushing, I am extremely grateful to Ciaran Crossey’s magnificent website Ireland and the Spanish Civil War). Here is an edited extract:

Joseph Stalin died in 1953 with one abiding regret: he had been unable to discover the fate of his eldest son, Jakov. All Stalin knew was that he had been captured by the Germans at the Siege of Smolensk in 1941, and held in a prisoner of war camp. Rumours that he had died there conflicted with stories that he had escaped. The Russian leader was unable to establish the truth, and though towards the end of this life, he offered a reward of a million roubles, no information was forthcoming.

The story was well known to his erstwhile American and British allies: In July 1945 an Anglo-American team sifting through German unearthed the full details of the story. Realising the implications the British Foreign Office reacted quickly, and on July 27, 1945, Michael Vyyyan, a senior Foreign Office official, wrote to his opposite number in the American State Department. "Our own inclination here is to recommend that the idea of communicating to Marshal Stalin should be dropped…It would naturally be distasteful to draw attention to the Anglo-Russian quarrels which preceded the death of his son."

According to these records, Jakov Stalin committed suicide in a particularly horrifying manner, in the bleak surroundings of Sachsenhausen Camp. The only surviving witness to the incident Thomas 'Red' Cushing, still talks of the extraordinary pressures which drove Stalin to his death 'I remember it as if it were yesterday,' said Cushing. 'It was one of the saddest events of my life.'

Yakov Dzugashvili Stalin arrived towards the end of 1942 and billeted with Molotov's nephew, Cushing and the other Irish POWs. Relations between the Russian and Irish prisoners deteriorated quickly in the claustrophobic atmosphere of the camp. The Irish suspected Kokorin, a small self-centred man anxious to curry favour with the German guards, of passing information to the Gestapo. They were equally contemptuous of Jakov. Unlike Kokorin, he became increasingly aggressive in his defence of Russian communism, continually 'shouting bolshevist propaganda', according to a statement Cushing made. There was a constant barrage of accusations between the two sides.

In early 1943, the atmosphere was poisonous. Small events sparked off violent quarrels. There were rows over the distribution of Red Cross parcels, and petty disputes about national habits. The incident that triggered off the final tragedy of Jakov Stalin was typical: it concerned the latrines.

On the afternoon of Wednesday, April 14, 1943, in a particularly heated exchange, Cushing accused Stalin's son of refusing to flush the lavatory and of deliberately fouling the wooden seat. The row spread quickly to the other prisoners. Murphy accused Jakov of the same behaviour. Outside the hut, O'Brien confronted Kokorin with the allegation that he defecated on the ground and fouled the latrine used by the British soldiers. O'Brien called Kokorin 'a bolshevist shit'; Kokorin called O'Brien 'an English shit.' A fight broke out and O'Brien hit Kokorin.

The precise role-played in these exchanges by Jakov Stalin, and indeed his responsibility for them, remains unclear. What does seem certain, however, is that the accumulated effect of constant bickering, rows, accusations - and finally the fight - broke the spirit of a man already suffering from confused emotions about his loyalties, his background and his future.

That evening, at curfew, Jakov refused to go back into the hut. He demanded to see the camp commandant, claiming he was being insulted by the British prisoners, and when his request was turned down, he appears to have gone berserk.Wildly waving a piece of wood, he ran about the area of the camp, shouting in broken German, to the SS guards on duty, 'shoot me, shoot me'. Then, in what appears to have been a clear desire to kill himself, he turned and ran towards the three-stage electrified fencing-surrounding perimeter.

Cushing himself saw what happened: "I saw Jakov running about as if he were insane. He just ran straight onto the wire. There was a huge flash and all the searchlights suddenly went on. I knew that was the end of him... Afterwards the Germans tried to make me take him off the wire and wrap his body in a blanket. It was the first time I felt sorry for the poor bastard."

Once again make of this what you will. There is no doubt that Yakov Stalin died in Sachsenhausen in 1943. There is also no doubt that Cushing, Walsh, O’Brian and Murphy were there at the same time. Languishing in a concentration camp, it’s no surprise that his mental state was at a low ebb. As for the last straw? I would not be surprised if it was a fight over a toilet rather than the Katyn massacre but then again what do I know....

Red Cushing and the several deaths of Yakov Stalin Part I

It was my good fortune to wander into the bookshop in the departure lounge at Cork Airport. Otherwise I would not have picked up a copy of Terence O’Reilly’s Hitler’s Irishmen.

Hitler’s Irishmen is mainly concerned with the fortunes of “James Brady” (a pseudonym – we do not know his true identity) and Frank Stringer, two soldiers who were imprisoned in Jersey at the time of the German occupation and who became the only Irishmen to join the Waffen SS. It also provides a detailed account of the farcical attempt to raise an “Irish Brigade” from the POW population. Roger Casement had tried the same thing during WWI with little success – his Irish Brigade numbered just over 50 men. This attempt attracted a mere handful; and some of them had no intention of serving the Reich. Brady and Stinger and the Friesack Camp are for another day though.

By 1942 the Germans realised that four of the recruits (William Murphy, Patrick O'Brien, Andrew Walsh and our old friend Thomas “Red” Cushing) were not quite as loyal to the Reich as originally thought. The four were sent to a segregation unit in Saschenhausen concentration camp.

Born in 1907 Yakov Iosifovich Dzhugashvili (I will use Stalin rather than Dzhugashvili)was Joseph Stalin’s oldest child. An artillery lieutenant, he was taken prisoner by the Wehrmacht at Smolensk in July 1941. By 1942 he too was in Saschenhausen sharing accommodation Vasili Korkorin, the nephew of Vyacheslav Molotov , Murphy, O’Brian, Walsh and Red Cushing.

Yakov Stalin died in Saschenhausen in April 1943. The general consensus seems to be that he effectively committed suicide either with or without the help of a German bullet. However, more than one reason has been put forward for his suicide.

Cause 1: Abandonment

According to a Time article from 1 March 1968 Yakov, devastated by his father’s refusal of a German offer to exchange him for Field Marshall Von Paulus (who had surrendered at Stalingrad in January), picked his way through a maze of trip wires to the camp fence. He then called to a nearby SS guard: "Don't be a coward. Shoot, shoot." When the prisoner made a grab for the fence, the guard obliged, firing a single bullet which killed him in instantly.

Cause 2: Shame over the Katyn massacres

In June 2001, however, the Daily Telegraph carried an article which purported to provide the definitive answer to Yakov’s end. Already dispirited by his father’s rejection of an exchange for Von Paulus, Stalin was so overcome by shame at the news of his father's massacre of 15,000 Poles at Katyn in 1940 that he committed suicide by flinging himself on to the camp's electric fence.

According to professor John Erickson, (an authority on the Great Patriotic War who died in 2002) "It is clear that Yakov, who had become close friends with the Poles and had made two abortive escape attempts with them, was so distraught when goaded with the news of his father's massacre of the Polish officers, which was revealed in German newspapers in 1943, that he took his life. Driven to despair by the horrific conditions in the camp - he was emaciated and on the point of starvation - and the strain of the propaganda campaign the Germans had involved him in, the news that his father had sanctioned the Poles' murder was the final straw."

To be continued