In June of 1993, a small Virginia town became the center of the world for many. It was there that Lorena Bobbitt attacked her husband, John Wayne Bobbitt and cut off his penis after years of sexual and mental abuse.
The Beginning
It was said to be a quiet night when a “nonchalant” call comes over the radio for officers to go to the hospital.
Police Radio Transcript
- Dispatch: Hello, this is dispatch
- Police: Hi, this guy walked into Prince William Hospital, he was, uh, he was assaulted by his wife. It might…uh, y’all need to send somebody over there.
- Dispatch: What’s the guys name, do you know?
- Police: Don’t have any information ‘cause right now the guy’s in some serious pain.
Two officers responded: Dan Harris and John Tillman. When they arrived, another officer said, “You’re not going to believe this; this guy’s wife pulled his dick off.”
Police Transcript continued:
- Police: Look, an officer is requesting that you send another officer out there to the E.R.
- Dispatch: Okay. Has he lost a part of his body?
- Police: I don’t know how much damage has been done. It evidently must have been quite a bit. Apparently the hospital needs it ASAP and to try and…salvage the man’s dignity.
A dispatcher is interviewed and says they didn’t want to give that information over the radio because the media.
Harris makes a call across the radio – “We need someone to come to the hospital to get a key and go look for the appendage…’
Officer on the other end was like, “What appendage?”
At this time, there weren’t cell phones so everything is being relayed over the radio. Dan Harris says that he is reluctant to say “penis” on the radio. He said, “There’s 7 words you can’t say on TV. I’m sure penis somehow winds up in there!” Plus if they say it over the radio, the reporters and media folk will jump on it.
Crime Scene Technician Cecil Deane showed up at the hospital, and they pulled back the sheet for him to see the man’s twig and berries. There was only part of the twig. It was a clean cut. Microsurgeon, Dr. David Berman was called in. He asks if they have the “appendage.” Nope. At this point the man had lost about a third of his blood volume and without the missing schlong, Dr. Shen says they may have no choice but to do a perineal urethrostomy where they connect urethra to perineum (taint) so he “could sit to pee like a woman for the rest of his life.”
In a later interview, John Wayne Bobbit said he didn’t remember much, but he remembered her playing with him while he was sleeping and trying to get him excited. He said he remembered she put her arms around him, then he started to fall back to sleep. Then he felt a pull, then a jerk. John said it was horrifying, terrifying, and he was confused. He thought he was dreaming. He’s “thinking Freddy Kruger’s hand came through the wall.” Then, he realized there was blood everywhere and his penis was gone. “All I can think is, ‘I better not go back to sleep,’” so he applied pressure.
Friend Robert “Robby” Johnston was staying with them, so John woke him up. Then John had to wait for Robby who went to brush his teeth! When asked why he thought she would do this. John said that he’s divorcing her, and she didn’t want to do that. He had told her it wasn’t working out, but she was not here for that. He thought she’d be as happy as he was, but it didn’t work out that way.
Crime Scene Tech, Sindi Leo responded to the scene, and her advisor at the time, Jerry Hawks, said they thought she’d [Lorena] swallowed the penis. Leo said there was blood in the parking lot, on the sidewalks, up the stairs up to apartment number 5, through the living room, and to the bedroom. Officer Tillman enters and is trying to find penis, but at the same time keeping the crime scene intact. He was shining his flashlight in the bedroom and saw a butt imprint on the bed with about an inch deep puddle.
Leo was told that John had been extremely intoxicated, and that’s why he’d laid on the bed for a while after the slice. Officer Tillman didn’t find the penis in the bedroom, so they moved to the kitchen. They check the freezer, the garbage disposal, and the dishwasher. They found pamphlets about rape and domestic abuse on a table.
The Police Station Talk to Lorena
Another radio call comes through that the lieutenant has Lorena at the station.
- Police: What happened when you got to the shop? (the salon she worked at)
- Lorena: Nobody was there. Nobody was there. So, I just kept on crying and screaming and I fell.
- Police: Where did you go from there?
- Lorena:I went to see my friend Janna.
- Police: What did you do when you got to her house?
- Lorena: Nobody was opening the front door. So I just stood in the front door and I just, I was knocking at the door and her husband came downstairs and I was looking for…I said “Where’s, where’s Janna? Where’s Janna?”
Cut to an interview with Janna, Lorena’s boss at the salon, where she said she was trying to calm Lorena down when Lorean said, “I cut his penis off.” Janna said, “What?” Lorena came to the police to report abuse by her husband, John. The police were like, “We’ll get to that, but first, where’s the penis?”
Lorena told them to just look around the apartment, and they told her that it’s not there. She said she remembers throwing things out of the car. Where were you? What were you near? Corner near 7/11. Police immediately head to Polks Rd.
Lorena had gotten to the stop sign and tossed it out her driver’s window, over the roof, and it landed in a tall grassy area that was about knee to thigh high. Crime Scene Tech Leo was told the knife was located in another county in a garbage can near Lorena’s job. Leo said she had to get there before garbage pick-up, which was today. She found the metal trash can and basically had to dive in head first to get the knife. Meanwhile at the scene of the penis search party, Sergeant Willard Hurley found the appendage but wouldn’t touch it. Volunteer Firefighter Mike Perry asked where it was, and Sergeant Hurley just pointed. Apparently, Hurley was very religious and didn’t want to put his hands on it. One officer said he heard that Sgt. had stepped on it. Perry retrieved it.
In the documentary interview, while Lorena was talking about them finding it she seemed shocked, embarrassed and laughed. Dr. Sehn said nobody wanted to touch it, but they finally did with their gloves and brought it into the 7/11 to put it on ice in a hotdog bag. Dr. Sehn got John ready for operation, but they were still unsure if this would work. All the men (officers, doctors, etc.) are sitting with their legs crossed. Protecting their junk. Lorena was taken to the hospital for a rape kit. Rape kit was done: vaginal /cervical swabs, stains located in the crotch, no evidence of blood, spermatozoa were detected.
Lorena told the police that John had raped her throughout the marriage and the more she fought and said no, the more he wanted to do it. She was on one side of the hospital and he was on the other side.
John Wayne Bobbit’s brother, Todd Biro said he’d have killed Lorena if he’d seen he, and the brothers HAD gone looking for her. Todd said, “She did worse than kill him. She took away the thing that means the most to a man.”
Four years earlier, 1989
Surgeon General, Dr. C. Everett Koop said it took 100 years to create the first battered women’s shelter after the law was passed to prevent cruelty to animals.
Nightline showed rape in the US statistics for 1990:
- Reported: 100,000
- Committed: 1 Mill est.
Women don’t tend to report because they think, “I won’t be believed. I’ll be called names and treated badly.”
In 1991, Anita Hill accused Supreme Court nominee Clarence Thomas of sexual assault. Everything was he said, she said and all these white men came to his defense. Women realized that this is how it’s going down with assault and abuse. Men have credibility and are the ones to be believed. In 1992, naval aviators attended the Tailhook Convention at the Hilton in Las Vegas and over 100 Navy and Marine officers were alleged to have assaulted 83 women.
“We were just used to nothing happening.” Kim Gandy about women getting assaulted
Back to 1993 in Manassas on the morning after the chop
Carlos Sanchez, a journalist for the Washington Post said he had a morning routine to call the police in Prince William County. When he heard this story he went to the house immediately, not knowing if Lorena was there. Sanchez said there were 2 hispanics there: him and Lorena. Her only words to him were, “He raped me.” One day after the incident Lorena went to get food at a restaurant. A woman was reading the newspaper said, “This is great, someone finally did what I always wanted to do!”
Neighbors think it’s hilarious. Comedians do stand-up bits. John Wayne Bobbit shared his jokes; “Jeffery Dahmer called Lorena up and said, ‘You gonna eat that.’” and “Good thing they found it. Look real funny on a milk carton.”
Dr. Berman became famous for the successful reattachment and when asked about John’s chances for getting full function back, he said he was optimistic that he’ll regain full function, but we won’t know for 2 years. It’s possible he’ll be a “sexual cripple.” Lorena asked her friend Janna what to do. Janna was her boss and Lorena had seen how well she’d done and wanted to be like that. Janna owned 3 salons, fancy cars, and a nice house. Lorena worked at one of her salons.
Janna hired Lorena an attorney, James Lowe and also hired her an agent/manager from Hollywood, media rep, Alan Hauge to protect her from the media. Hauge told her to respond to reporters that she didn’t have anything to say and to contact my media rep. He had a ton of business cards made for her to hand out. Vonda Vandaveer, journalist for the Manassas Journal Messenger said, you can’t say penis in a newspaper, so they needed to figure out what to use. Dr. Sehn said that penis came out of the closet as a term in the public vocabulary.
At this time most newspapers had a policy not to identify victims of sex crime. Carlos Sanchez found out about a public relations firm representing Lorena and called his editors. They said, if she’s hired a publicist, she knows they’ll use her name, and she wants her name used. They printed her name immediately. Lorena says it was a nightmare and she couldn’t leave the house.
Vanity Fair
Hauge said that her first written interview was going to be with Vanity Fair, because they weren’t going to spin or manipulate the story. Kim Masters, a journalist at Vanity Fair was given the story, and Mary Ellen Mark was the photographer. Masters said that it was very clear from her editor that if they [the Bobbitts] hadn’t been an attractive couple it wouldn’t have been as big of a deal to them. There was a big todo about what Lorena was going to wear. She wore a Mickey Mouse shirt. Vanity Fair was like, “No way she’ll be shot in a bathing suit in the pool” Mary Ellen got her in a bathing suit in the pool in like 5 minutes. Masters said that she didn’t think that Lorena came across as very articulate, probably because of the language barrier.
Two months after the incident was the arraignment. Lorena was charged with malicious wounding. A detective read from the statement Lorena made the morning of the castration. Lorena said she should have gotten an attorney then, but didn’t know better. In the statement he read, Lorena said she was mad “because he had an orgasm and didn’t wait for me.” John surendered to authorities and was released on $5,000 bond for the charge of marital rape.
Paul “Butch” Ebert was the DA. He didn’t charge John Wayne Bobbit initially and women’s groups got pissed. Ebert was the youngest commonwealth attorney at age 30 and was a man’s man. Defense Attorney Gregg Murphy met John. He said that John had scrape/nail marks on his face from 2 weeks prior. He was unemployed. He was the dependent one in the relationship.
Murphy said that psychological testing was done on John, and it showed that he was not really able to lie because he can’t handle the complexity required to lie and sell it. At this point in the documentary they say that police had been called 3-4 times to the Bobbitt’s home – 3 times HE called, 4th is her mom saying Lorena responsible. She claims he’d raped her that morning, but he says it was sex.
For a marital/spousal rape charge, you have to prove that you were separated at the time and that the person caused significant or permanent physical damage. This charge was not easy to prove. At this time it is still WIDELY believed that a woman is a man’s property and thus cannot rape her when they are married. John Wayne Bobbitt was charged with malicious sexual assault which carried a sentence of 20 years instead of life like marital rape.
The night before his trial was to start, 20/20 wanted to run the story. Gregg Murphy offered them an interview with John if they waited until after trial. 20/20 refused and aired their special anyway. Lorena did an interview.
John Wayne Bobbit had been called “Johnny Barbell” growing up because he always wanted to be the strongest and fastest. He was a triathlete. John joined the Marines and finished 1st in everything. His friends said he wanted to be like Jean Claude Van Dame.
The documentary crew asked John what the biggest misconception about him is. He said that “he’s a violent person.” John met Lorena at a Marine Corp ball. He thought she was beautiful and had a cute accent. His parents told him not to marry her, but he didn’t listen.
Trial dates were set for John and Lorena, but her PR guy said they needed to move her trial to after his so they know how to defend her better. Media and news around the world was obsessed with the Bobbits. Reporters from all over the world were at the trial. Manassas is a bedroom community near DC, and this was the biggest thing in their town ever. When defense attorney Murphy was asked, “Why didn’t you move the trial?” he responded, “Where are we gonna go?” Everyone knows this case. A lady was outside selling t-shirts that said, “Manassas, VA: A cut above the rest” and boxer shorts that said, “Don’t cut me short.”
Battle of the Bobbits
In 1993, there were now so many cable channels and new ways to reach the public. Everyone described the trial and all the things that were going on as a “circus.” Everything was “out of control,” and the story “took on a life of its own.” John’s friends said that he was actually enjoying the attention and even bragged about being mentioned on the Arsenio Hall show. John’s trial was first and since this was a sexual offense, the defense had to give permission for there to be cameras in the courtroom. John’s attorney, Gregg Murphy decided not to allow cameras.
John Wayne Bobbitt testified that the day before the incident, he worked until 2:30pm and then went out with Robby to a few clubs. They had a couple of beers (Budweisers) and 2 – B-52 shots. John claims that he wasn’t drunk, just tired. He even folded his clothes when he took them off. “Drunk people don’t fold their clothes” according to John.
Then, Lorena testified.
Juror Becki Rinker said that they could only consider the night of the rape and up to 5 days before but nothing before that time or after the night in question. Lorena was asked about the Friday night before when she claimed that John had sex with her in the hallway. She testified that he told her that forced sex excited him. Lorena then testified that they had consensual sex Sunday. When asked why she would have consensual sex after being raped, she told the court that she was afraid that if she didn’t agree that he’d rape her again.
Juror Kenneth Hulse said that Lorena seemed frail at first, but then she would kind of flip flop between being frail and being a strong woman. He even commented on her wardrobe and makeup, saying that it would change with her frail/strong attitudes. She would wear more makeup on “strong” days and dresses and less make up on “frail” days.
The doctor that examined Lorena after the dick-offing said that she didn’t have any signs of rape nor was she “emotional.” He also said that her panties seemed to be cut, not torn. The defense hired the former head of forensics from the FBI to look at Lorena’s panties and testify. He said that the panties appeared to have been cut a little and then torn.
On November 10th, 1993 the jury declared a verdict after 4 hours. Not guilty. The jurors said that there had been no substantial proof that anything happened that night. Juror Becki Ricker said that she thought that John’s trial was the “playoff game” and Lorena’s trial was the “Super Bowl.”
This episode opens with Defense Attorney Blair Howard describing his first encounter with Lorena. She called Howard saying that people thought she was a bad person. She said she didn’t know where to go. Howard described Lorena as genuine. Then the documentary cuts to the country and John Wayne Bobbit on a ranch near Colorado Springs. His lawyer thought it would be best if John left to go somewhere in order to get out of the spotlight.
Reporters found him and came out to interview him. One reporter asked if it was painful to ride bulls and horses. John agreed that sometimes it hurts, but he’s getting better. He also said that once a bull kicked him right in the junk. It was out here in the country that John says he met a woman named Stephanie. “We had a lot of good sex,” said John. He also said he wished he’d stayed with her, but he got sidetracked.
Gregg Murphy started to get worried when John started to talk about leaving the ranch. John was teasing that there was a John Wayne Bobbitt look alike contest at a local Hooters he thought he could win. His attorney begged him not to leave the ranch, but John didn’t listen. At this time their story was everywhere. Saturday Night Live did skits, David Letterman did a Top Ten list, and many comedians were doing stand-up skits.
Lorena said that these jokes bothered her because she didn’t know how to handle it all. The papers were calling her a hot-blooded latina. She was living at Janna’s house and was depressed and didn’t want to go through the holidays. The Bobbitts were going through their divorce around the same time Lorena’s trial started.
Initially, they were not going to allow cameras in the courtroom, but Court TV decided to send over a young, good looking, blonde attorney as their correspondent. All of a sudden, cameras were allowed. John’s case had been a sex case so the defense had a choice to say no, but somehow, Lorena’s case was not so it wasn’t up to them. Lorena’s PR guy, Hauge was adamant that no one was going to watch the trial around Christmas time so he recommended moving her trial to January; which they did.
That year, John Bobbitt judged Howard Stern’s Ms. New Years Eve Pageant. Behind John’s seat, there was a HUGE penis meter to measure the money raised. They raised $198,098. All the money went to John. John was living for the media. He met the people who found his penis, sold shirts that said “severed parts” and “love hurts,” and went to concerts and bars. John was using all of these things to capitalize on his…”misfortune.” He loved the attention and “support” he was getting.
DA Paul Ebert prosecuted John and was now prosecuting Lorena. People were curious if he’d be able to try both cases with the same rigor. He was confident there would be no conflict of interest or difficulty with him trying both cases.
Lorena pleaded not guilty due to irresistible impulse. This was Virginia’s version of temporary insanity. If found guilty, she would face 20 years in jail. She was offered a plea bargain by the prosecution where she would admit to premeditation and receive 4 months in jail. Lorena called her PR guy and said that if she admitted to a felony, she could never become an American citizen. She was willing to risk the trial and a 20 year sentence because she wanted to become an American citizen.
Lorena was born in Ecuador and moved with her parents to Venezuela when she was 7. She came to America for the first time when she was 16. When she landed in D.C. she knew this was where she wanted to be. Her family was poor, but happy. Her parents worked hard, but they didn’t have the money for Lorena to have a quinceanera. Lorean told her parents that she would rather go to America for her sweet 16 the next year.
After seeing how beautiful America was, Lorena came back to Venezuela to finish high school, and then she moved to America on a student visa. Lorena didn’t speak English at first, but she took ESL (English as a Second Language) and watched soap operas and game shows to learn the language. Days of Our Lives, All My Children, Price is Right, etc. Lorena knew she had to make it in the United States, and she wasn’t about to let John Wayne Bobbitt take that from her.
FOR PART TWO, CLICK HERE!
