I would have been at BYU during that time period, but I really don't remember hearing about it there. Oddly, however, when I was in France on my mission in 79-81, at one point the newspapers went crazy with the story. Maybe it was during the trial? I don't remember the details about why it was suddenly in the press during that later period, but it was. Maybe it was when she was caught.
I know this story always provokes hilarity and skepticism, but I think the woman was a nutter stalker. Yes, they had had a relationship, but he ended it. She couldn't let go and stalked him. Stalkers are creepy, no matter what their gender. I was stalked for a while by an exboyfriend in my youth, and it is scary and icky.
She clearly was always unbalanced:
According to a September 1977 combined Associated Press and UPI story, Joyce McKinney arrived in Provo in 1973 with an eye for the Osmond brothers. She became "emotionally distressed and received counseling" after she was unable to get to know and date them, the story said.
(from the Des article)
from the other article:
She was not prepared to be spurned so easily. Private detectives were hired to trace Anderson from the U.S. 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 frog-marched him to a car in which McKinney was waiting.
Chloroformed and hidden under a blanket, the bespectacled Mormon was driven some 200 miles to Okehampton, where his kidnappers had hired a 17th-century 'honeymoon' cottage for £50 a week.
McKinney later said that she had packed the fridge with Anderson's favourite food and studied The Joy Of Sex in preparation for what was to come.
She resurfaced once more in 1984, when she was arrested near Salt Lake City Airport, where Kirk Anderson - the Mormon she had kidnapped - 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.
I feel really sorry for this guy. He was sexually violated by a nutter stalker who apparently continued to stalk him later in life, and no one takes his story seriously because he's a man. The idea of having sex with a creep who's been obsessively stalking you is nauseating. You get to the point where even the sound of their voice gives you the shudders.
