Here’s the kind of lead-in sentence that you see almost every day:

The woman who had her pet dog cloned by South Korean scientists flatly denied early Thursday that she was a bail jumper accused of sexually assaulting and kidnapping a male Mormon missionary more than 30 years ago in Surrey, England.

Okay, not even I see lead-in sentences like that very often, and I do this every day.

The story of the woman who had her pet dog, Booger, cloned by South Korean scientists got significantly stranger today, when reports surfaced that Bernann McKinney, shown in this utterly terrifying picture posing with one of her new clones, was actually Joyce McKinney, a woman who was charged in 1977 with false imprisonment and sexual assault of a 19-year-old Mormon missionary.

Allegedly, McKinney (then 28) met the man in America, then tracked him to England, kidnapped him with the help of a friend and spirited him off to a remote cottage in Devon where she chained him to a bed.  Refusing to respect his missionary chastity belt, McKinney either persuaded or forced him (depending on who you believe) to have sex with her before he was able to escape.  She was then arrested.

McKinney was quoted as saying during a court appearance that she loved the man so much that “I would have skied down Mount Everest in the nude with a carnation up my nose” if he had asked her to.  She also denied his story of the cottage encounter, saying that far from being reluctant, as she recalled it he was “grinning like a monkey.”  (Tragically, she may not have realized that monkeys “grin” when they are afraid.)

Apparently, McKinney was released on bail due to “failing mental health,” although she recovered enough to get a false passport and flee to Canada along with her fellow kidnapper in 1978.  Representatives of Air Canada said at the time that the two had fooled them with a clever cover story in which “[t]hey said they were going to a deaf and dumb acting troupe in Toronto.”  Accordingly, they communicated during their trip only with “hand gestures and written replies.”  Afterwards, the Times reported, McKinney “seems to have disguised herself as a nun for several months and disappeared into the Appalachian mountains.”

Bernann McKinney has flatly denied that she is the accused Mormon-raper, although the Times reprinted a 1977 picture (right) so you can decide for yourselves.  “That’s garbage,” she told a Times reporter when contacted in Seoul.  “If you print that rot I will sue you.”  (They printed it anyway.)

Link: FOXNews.com
Link: London Times Online