Speaker 1: Years ago, a criminal trial began in a case that
Speaker 1: shocked the world. Lorraina Bobbitt goes on trial for maliciously
Speaker 1: wounding her husband and a lot of people are watching.
Speaker 1: The twenty four year old manicurist from Venezuela is accused
Speaker 1: of severing the penis of her husband, twenty six year
Speaker 1: old John Bobbitt, while he was sleeping Lorena bob It's
Speaker 1: unthinkable act divided a nation and also amused it. But
Speaker 1: to see it on the news, what happened to him?
Speaker 1: Very funny? Really. Bobbitt claims she was temporarily insane at
Speaker 1: the time of the crime. It was a story about
Speaker 1: a woman who said that her husband had been abusing
Speaker 1: her in terrible, horrific ways for years, and she did
Speaker 1: something horrible, something she was found not guilty of doing.
Speaker 1: What kind of evidence do you need? You show up
Speaker 1: in court with your dick in your hand and nobody
Speaker 1: gets convicted of anything. This week on the thread, why
Speaker 1: did Lorena Bobbitt do it? And did she deserve to
Speaker 1: get away with it? Listen to my story about a
Speaker 1: man named John Poor ex Marine win A little fraction
Speaker 1: gone big one night African win w whout DOFs back
Speaker 1: up Win's wife of Na Penis that is clean cut.
Speaker 1: I'm Sean Braswell And This is the Thread a podcast
Speaker 1: where we unraveled the stories behind some of the most
Speaker 1: important lives and events in history to learn more about
Speaker 1: the surprising connections between them Today. The case of Lorraina Bobbitt,
Speaker 1: her attorneys claimed she was so out of her mind
Speaker 1: after suffering from years of domestic abuse, that she could
Speaker 1: not resist the impulse to wound her husband while he slept.
Speaker 1: The shocking story of Lorena and John Wayne Bobbitt from
Speaker 1: the early nineteen nineties remains seared into the memories of
Speaker 1: millions of Americans, and twenty five years later, it has
Speaker 1: returned to the spotlight, including in the new docuseries Lorena.
Speaker 1: But the incredible tale is also part of a larger story,
Speaker 1: one shaped by a controversial criminal defense, legal insanity. So
Speaker 1: what's the Thread? In the last episode, we heard about
Speaker 1: the horrific shooting in a Colorado movie theater in twelve
Speaker 1: James Holmes murdered twelve injured dozens more. He was mentally
Speaker 1: ill by almost all accounts, but that wasn't enough to
Speaker 1: mount a successful insanity defense. One of the main reasons
Speaker 1: that proving legal insanity can be tough today for defendants
Speaker 1: like Holmes was the public reaction to the outcomes in
Speaker 1: some earlier cases, cases like a rain of Bobbitt's. In
Speaker 1: the early morning hours of June twenty six, year old
Speaker 1: John Wayne Bobbitt awoke to every man's worst nightmare. John
Speaker 1: wakes up out of a dead sleep. Marissa Kashino is
Speaker 1: a scene your editor at Washingtonian magazine. She spent a
Speaker 1: lot of time covering the Bobbit case for its twenty
Speaker 1: fifth anniversary. He told me that he thought at first
Speaker 1: that it was like a Freddy Krueger thing. Freddy Krueger
Speaker 1: was a famous movie serial killer from the nineteen eighties,
Speaker 1: the one who had razors for fingers. He thought he
Speaker 1: was having a nightmare. He just sort of didn't understand
Speaker 1: what was going on. He was totally disoriented. John had
Speaker 1: been out with a friend and returned late that night
Speaker 1: to the apartment he and Lorraine shared in Manassas, Virginia.
Speaker 1: So John's out clubbing. He comes home about three in
Speaker 1: the morning. Lorena says, you know, he wakes her up.
Speaker 1: He smells like alcohol, and he climbs on top of her.
Speaker 1: So Lorena says that she said clearly that she did
Speaker 1: not want to have sex, and that John ignored her
Speaker 1: and went ahead and had sex with her anyway, um,
Speaker 1: and then promptly passed out. Next Lorena would later claim
Speaker 1: she went to the kitchen for a glass of water,
Speaker 1: She sees a knife, she grabs it. Um, she goes
Speaker 1: back into the bedroom, and you know, the rest is
Speaker 1: sort of history. She cuts off his penis while he
Speaker 1: is asleep. Lorena later claims she had no memory of
Speaker 1: her moment. Insteed, she doesn't really come to until she
Speaker 1: goes downstairs and gets into her car and realizes that
Speaker 1: she can't drive because her hands are full. So she
Speaker 1: looks down and she's got a bloody knife in one
Speaker 1: hand and she has his penis in the other hand,
Speaker 1: And that, she says, is when it kind of hits her.
Speaker 1: You know what has happened. It's the middle of the night,
Speaker 1: and loren is not sure what to do. She sort
Speaker 1: of freaks out. She starts driving in her kind of
Speaker 1: state of trauma and shock. She throws the penis out
Speaker 1: the window of the car into a grassy field that
Speaker 1: is near a seven eleven. Lorena later told police where
Speaker 1: she thought she'd thrown the dismembered organ, and investigators were
Speaker 1: able to recover it and the seven eleven, so they
Speaker 1: bring it inside and um. According to one of the
Speaker 1: surgeons who later operated on John, they packed the penis
Speaker 1: in a hot dog bag full of ice, and that
Speaker 1: is how it arrived to the emergency room at the hospital.
Speaker 1: The doctors in the emergency room had never seen anything
Speaker 1: like John's injury, and no one was sure if the
Speaker 1: preserved member could be reattached. So it's an eight or
Speaker 1: nine hour surgery, very intense, and the surgeons say that,
Speaker 1: you know, they kind of held their breath and at
Speaker 1: the end they took the tourniquet off, and the organ
Speaker 1: pinked up and the blood flow was flowing, and they
Speaker 1: sort of breathed a sigh of relief that everything, uh
Speaker 1: seemed to be in working order. Pretty soon, the tales
Speaker 1: of John's unusual surgery and Lorraine's unspeakable act we're all
Speaker 1: over the news. Within days, Lorraine and John Wayne Bobbitt
Speaker 1: were global celebrities. Pretty quickly. The Bobbit's story became, you know,
Speaker 1: a huge media circus, tabloid sensation. You know, everybody wanted
Speaker 1: to know more about it. Just one of the most
Speaker 1: talked about stories of the year, the case has struck
Speaker 1: un sore. Details of a marriage gone berserve Bobby's could
Speaker 1: only get more attention if they were starring in a
Speaker 1: TV movie. Lorena and John had to quickly figure out
Speaker 1: how to navigate that world, which you know, as a
Speaker 1: marine slash warehouse worker and a manicurist they were completely
Speaker 1: unfamiliar with. I mean, this thing threw them into the
Speaker 1: limelight in a way that neither of them, I think,
Speaker 1: you know, could have ever previously imagined. The Bobbit's marriage
Speaker 1: and lives were opened and dissected for public consumption. Lorraina
Speaker 1: Bobbitt originally Lareda Gallo, was from Ecuador and also spent
Speaker 1: part of her childhood in Venezuela. She was a young
Speaker 1: immigrant to Virginia when she met John Wayne Bobbitt, and
Speaker 1: at first Lorena was very smitten with him. He was
Speaker 1: a marine, he was very nice to her while they
Speaker 1: were dating. She says that John was, you know, her
Speaker 1: first real boyfriend, her first you know, sort of everything.
Speaker 1: In less than a year, they were married, and their
Speaker 1: marriage was chaotic, to say the least. Um they were
Speaker 1: scraping by. John at that point was a warehouse worker
Speaker 1: and Lorena was a manicurist. She worked a nail salon.
Speaker 1: Like many young married couples, the Bobbit's had a complicated relationship,
Speaker 1: But what the media and the late night comedians mostly
Speaker 1: wanted to focus on was John's penis, even if much
Speaker 1: of what they said were little resemblance to what actually happened.
Speaker 1: I'm kind of curious how you lose your dick and
Speaker 1: not notice bring do you suddenly wake up a Kendall
Speaker 1: I mean picture to Citiot out into Woods three and
Speaker 1: the more and looking into pushes. Even with his manhood
Speaker 1: being discussed on every channel, John stayed quiet. Meanwhile, Lorena
Speaker 1: hired a publicist to tell her side of the story.
Speaker 1: Vanity Fair was the magazine that got the first full
Speaker 1: length feature interview with Lorena. Um Loreno went and did
Speaker 1: a big photo shoot at her that lawyer's house, in
Speaker 1: her bathing suits. In the article and elsewhere, Lorena claimed
Speaker 1: that John raped her that night and was abusive for years.
Speaker 1: The claims sparked a nationwide debate. As the case went
Speaker 1: to trial, it was billed as a battle of the sexes.
Speaker 1: I must say one of the stunning things was the
Speaker 1: circus outside. Barriers put up with women on one side,
Speaker 1: men on another. This is John's attorney at the time,
Speaker 1: Greg Murphy. There was such a huge crowd out in
Speaker 1: front that we had to arrange with the sheriff and
Speaker 1: the court so we could get through and into the
Speaker 1: court house. Hundreds of reporters and caravans of satellite trucks
Speaker 1: converged on the historic Civil War town Manassas, Virginia, not
Speaker 1: far from Washington, d C. The Oscar Meyer wienermobile also
Speaker 1: turned up, so did a local rock band who played
Speaker 1: fifty Ways to Cleave Your Lover. And then there were
Speaker 1: people in the in the community capitalizing on it. People
Speaker 1: selling underwear, underpants, boxer shorts that said Manassas to cut above, um,
Speaker 1: a plastic tube that was a uh a bob at
Speaker 1: penis protector. I mean, there were t shirts that said
Speaker 1: the love hurts. I mean, there was so much going
Speaker 1: on out there. Cable television, including a new station called
Speaker 1: Court TV, brought Lorraine's trial into homes across the nation.
Speaker 1: It was probably the first case to go literally viral
Speaker 1: over the internet. UM, and it was about eight months
Speaker 1: before o J. Simpsons case, which really took off. Lorraino's
Speaker 1: trial began twenty five years ago in January, and at
Speaker 1: the heart of it was the Insanity Defense. Tired of
Speaker 1: standing idly by while the world goes crazy, Diane Lockhart is,
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Speaker 1: in a new, post factual world, a world where the
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Speaker 1: the standard playbook out the window. New characters new, ripped
Speaker 1: from the news storylines in a dynamic cast that is
Speaker 1: more stacked than ever. Christine Branski is back, is the
Speaker 1: venerable Diane Lockhart, Rose Leslie, Cushed Jumbo, and Andrew McDonald's
Speaker 1: characters challenge the patriarchy at every turn. Well Actor Michael
Speaker 1: Sheen shakes up the screen as infamous lawyer Roland Blum
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Speaker 1: Season three of the Good Fight. The Resistance starts now
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Speaker 1: all Access. The malicious Wounding trial of Lorraina Bobbitt began
Speaker 1: today in the Nassas, Virginia. She has admitted emasculating her
Speaker 1: husband last June. Earlier. Today, she pleaded not guilty to
Speaker 1: the charge. This is believed to be a first step
Speaker 1: in a defense of insanity. The charge against Lorna carried
Speaker 1: a maximum sentence of twenty years in prison. She also
Speaker 1: faced deportation Marissa Kashino again. The prosecution was out to
Speaker 1: prove that Lorena was of sound mind when she um
Speaker 1: when she cut off John's penis, that it was a
Speaker 1: malicious act, that she had essentially attacked John not in
Speaker 1: self defense, but out of revenge that fateful night. According
Speaker 1: to prosecutors, Lorena acted out of anger, and she admitted
Speaker 1: that fact to the police. She told him she did
Speaker 1: it because her husband didn't wait for her to have
Speaker 1: an orgasm. He was selfish. She said, so I pulled
Speaker 1: back the sheets and then I did it, Greg Murphy again.
Speaker 1: They interviewed her again the next day to make sure
Speaker 1: they understood that this is the detective as to the
Speaker 1: reason she gave, and she repeated, because he have orgasm
Speaker 1: and not wait for me. Um, That's obviously not what
Speaker 1: she testified to. Prosecutors argued that letting Lorena off the
Speaker 1: hook for her action because she was upset or angry
Speaker 1: with set a dangerous precedent. She was angry and she
Speaker 1: retaliated against But you know, folk, we don't live in
Speaker 1: a society that is governed by revenge. We don't live
Speaker 1: in a society and which whoever has the biggest knights.
Speaker 1: Lawyers for the defense could not argue that Lorena had
Speaker 1: not done the deed, but they could argue she lacked
Speaker 1: criminal intent. So Lorena's defense team put on a defense
Speaker 1: called Irresistible Impulse. It's a kind of temporary insanity defense.
Speaker 1: So basically the idea is that in that moment, Loreno
Speaker 1: was so um kind of traumatized by all of the
Speaker 1: past assaults and alleged abuse that she had suffered at
Speaker 1: the hands of her husband, that she snapped Lorna's lawyers
Speaker 1: argued that her four year marriage to John was a
Speaker 1: reign of terror. The evidence will show get in her mind,
Speaker 1: it was his penis from which she could not escape
Speaker 1: a number of witnesses corroborated Lorraine's stories of marital abuse,
Speaker 1: including that momentous night in June. Their next door neighbor
Speaker 1: touched off. I know what he called sounds of painful
Speaker 1: sex coming from the Bobby's apartment the night. But the
Speaker 1: most compelling testimony came from Lorena herself. Lorena was very
Speaker 1: emotional on the stand. She cried, um, she you know,
Speaker 1: went into detail about the horrific things that she claimed
Speaker 1: to have suffered throughout her marriage to John. He kicked
Speaker 1: me and my stone like and he threw me to
Speaker 1: the wall. It was like a side side karate kick.
Speaker 1: That was really scared. I was really afraid. John, Lorena claimed,
Speaker 1: was also violent on the night in question. I said
Speaker 1: I don't want to have sex, and he wouldn't listen
Speaker 1: to me. He wouldn't let me, let me go. Then
Speaker 1: John fell asleep and Lorena went into the kitchen. She
Speaker 1: testified about what went through her mind when she saw
Speaker 1: the knife. I remember a lot of things. He said
Speaker 1: to me, I don't remember the first star every me.
Speaker 1: There was too so many pictures of my head. I
Speaker 1: remember then salt, the debut words, he told me, I
Speaker 1: remember everything. Really, you know, I think she really won
Speaker 1: a lot of the public over. You know, the fact
Speaker 1: that the that the trial was televised really helped at
Speaker 1: least a large part of the population sympathized with her.
Speaker 1: The clerk at the courthouse told me that after Lorena testified,
Speaker 1: the mail just poured in for her, and Lorena also
Speaker 1: became a symbol for a movement larger than herself. Frankly,
Speaker 1: that was you know, twenty years ago, there wasn't a
Speaker 1: lot of attention on on domestic violence. Kim Gandhi as
Speaker 1: President and CEO of the National Network to End Domestic Violence,
Speaker 1: there's no question that there was a tremendous opportunity created
Speaker 1: by the trial. Basically, take the advantage of the media
Speaker 1: circus to try to draw attention to something that was
Speaker 1: a tremendous, damaging problem two countless women all over the country.
Speaker 1: But being the object of widespread public sympathy was not
Speaker 1: enough for Lorena to avoid a guilty verdict. Her lawyers
Speaker 1: had to convince Virginia jurors she was out of her
Speaker 1: mind when she wounded her husband. It was probably one
Speaker 1: of the most bizarre acts that has happened in this countrey.
Speaker 1: In a low, low term, everything about this case is
Speaker 1: crazy and bizarre. This is a classic case of irresistible impulse.
Speaker 1: The defense put on an irresistible impulse in sanity defense
Speaker 1: attorney Greg Murphy again in Virginia, there's not a real
Speaker 1: definition of what that might be, um, but it is
Speaker 1: a defense that's allowed. And Uh, the irresistible impulse is
Speaker 1: that it's in a moment of passion, you lose control
Speaker 1: of yourself and you act out and you do something
Speaker 1: that is chronical. But it's an impulse that is not
Speaker 1: easy to prove because in order to put on that
Speaker 1: defense of irresistible impulse, a defendant really has to have
Speaker 1: been diagnosed with some kind of mental illness or disorder.
Speaker 1: And that meant the experts needed to testify. Both prosecutors
Speaker 1: and defense lawyers called psychologists and psychiatrists to testify to
Speaker 1: the state of Mrs Bobbitt's mental health. Defense lawyers and
Speaker 1: experts argue that Lorrain is suffered from depression, post traumatic
Speaker 1: stress disorder and battered woman syndrome. They claim that she
Speaker 1: finally lost touch with reality after being raped that night.
Speaker 1: She had an acute UH deterioration of the mental state
Speaker 1: at that time and became psychotics. The prosecution psychiatrists saw
Speaker 1: it differently. We're talking about an impulse that someone has,
Speaker 1: but they cannot stop themselves from doing it because the
Speaker 1: disease of the mind impairs their ability to control themselves.
Speaker 1: In this case, the impulse is clear, it's anger, and
Speaker 1: it's cut off her husband's penis. But there's nothing here
Speaker 1: indicating that she can't control herself. The jury left to
Speaker 1: deliberate at the end of the two week trial. They
Speaker 1: returned after just seven hours to announce a verdict. We
Speaker 1: the jury farmed the defendant, Lorena Leonore bob not feel
Speaker 1: delicious wounding as charged in the indictment by reason of
Speaker 1: insanity Marissa Kasha. The jury found Lorena not guilty by
Speaker 1: a reason of insanity. John obviously felt very differently. He
Speaker 1: felt like everything had been you know, misconstrued, you know,
Speaker 1: he had been totally misrepresented, uh, and that she had
Speaker 1: gotten off, you know, scott free. There was another side
Speaker 1: to the sordid story, John Wayne Bobbitt's it got lost
Speaker 1: in the media circus, late night jokes and Lorna's tearful
Speaker 1: televised testimony. John's lawyer, Greg Murphy. If you looked at
Speaker 1: the transcript of his trial versus her trial, you'll find
Speaker 1: two very different set of facts. That's right. John had
Speaker 1: a trial too before Lorraine's, but it didn't get nearly
Speaker 1: the attention that hers did. There's a lot involved in
Speaker 1: this case, enormous number of facts that or more people
Speaker 1: don't pay any or haven't paid any attention to. But
Speaker 1: the one saient piece is the burning question why did
Speaker 1: she do it? Up next the trial of John Wayne
Speaker 1: Bobbitt and the light it sheds on why Lorrena did
Speaker 1: it and whether she was temporarily insane at the time.
Speaker 1: You know, every good litigator is going to do his
Speaker 1: own assessment of whether the clients telling the truth. John
Speaker 1: Wayne Bobitt's lawyer, Greg Murphy again, and well, it's not perfect.
Speaker 1: With enough experience, you tend to trust your own judgment,
Speaker 1: and I had felt that John was telling me the truth.
Speaker 1: Murphy's instinct also told him there were problems with the
Speaker 1: Rain's story. I had a history of about fifteen or
Speaker 1: twenty years of representing women who had been abused, having
Speaker 1: dealt with and counseled and helped battered women for so
Speaker 1: many years, or rape victims, she wasn't acting like a
Speaker 1: victim in that sense. And that includes the famous spread
Speaker 1: Lorraine did with Vanity Fair, the one that featured photos
Speaker 1: of her in her bathing suit, And that just is
Speaker 1: not the way someone who's been traumatized by being raped
Speaker 1: or battered would be looking to glamorize themselves, especially so
Speaker 1: close to the event. John's trial began a few months
Speaker 1: before Lorraine is in the fall of He was charged
Speaker 1: with marital sexual assault. So far, no one had heard
Speaker 1: much from John, and he had a very different story
Speaker 1: about what happened that night in June. Well, you asked
Speaker 1: about the context of what occurred that night. It's not
Speaker 1: that simple, because what occurred that night probably was a
Speaker 1: result of the pattern of what had gone on for
Speaker 1: years in the relationship, and it was a relationship that
Speaker 1: outsiders might not have expected from the young, attractive marine
Speaker 1: they saw on the nightly news. It was the exact
Speaker 1: role reversal. She had a steady job, she was bringing
Speaker 1: in the money. He wasn't doing much at the time,
Speaker 1: and it was unsatisfying to her that he was no
Speaker 1: longer this picture perfect, all American military person and now
Speaker 1: it was just lying around playing video games, watching TV,
Speaker 1: and working occasionally. Their marriage went downhill quickly. John told
Speaker 1: me that the marriage was tumultuous, that you know, they fought,
Speaker 1: but that he never physically hurt her. On the contrary,
Speaker 1: John claimed he had been the victim of phy cool abuse.
Speaker 1: This is how John summarized it on the Steve Harvey
Speaker 1: Show a few years ago. I was ever abusive, No
Speaker 1: one ever, no one that knows me can never tell
Speaker 1: you that was ever abusive, no abusive person. And I'll
Speaker 1: believe in violence. Uh did the court. She was the
Speaker 1: one that was violent. She attacked me, She stabbed to
Speaker 1: the forks. You know, she try to run me over
Speaker 1: the car. John claimed he was asleep on the night
Speaker 1: of his famous wounding, and he immediately held his ground
Speaker 1: to stop the bleeding and eventually got up, went into
Speaker 1: the other room awakened Robbie. Robbie saw what occurred and
Speaker 1: he took him to the hospital. Robbie Johnson was John's
Speaker 1: best friend, the one he was out with earlier that
Speaker 1: night he was sleeping on the bobb It's couch. People
Speaker 1: forget about Robbie, and then he also forget what Lorna
Speaker 1: did next, while she was still holding the knife and
Speaker 1: the severed penis in her hand. After leaving John's bedroom
Speaker 1: with these two things in hand, she went into the
Speaker 1: living room where Robbie was asleep, and she stole a
Speaker 1: hundred dollars out of his wallet. And then she looked
Speaker 1: around and found his game boy, stole his game boy,
Speaker 1: left carrying all four things in her hands. Not exactly
Speaker 1: of the actions of a person who was traumatized by
Speaker 1: being raped that night. Supposedly, we can't know for sure
Speaker 1: what compelled Lorena to do what she did, or whether
Speaker 1: John abused his wife for years in the manner that
Speaker 1: she claimed. John denied those claims, but there were several
Speaker 1: witnesses that testified to his abuse of Lorraina. Still, like Lorena,
Speaker 1: he was found not guilty. I'm thankful for the jury
Speaker 1: and they believed me, and uh, I just want to
Speaker 1: get on with my life, and you know, because I
Speaker 1: got a lot of healing to do it. And the
Speaker 1: facts that came out in John's trial do cast some
Speaker 1: doubt on whether Lorena really was insane. The facts just
Speaker 1: don't fit irresistible impulse. Here she goes in and gets
Speaker 1: the knife, and then she walks out thinking, you know,
Speaker 1: clearly thinking about what she's up to. Because she goes
Speaker 1: in and steals hundred dollars in a game boy, it
Speaker 1: all seems premeditated. It doesn't seem at all to be
Speaker 1: an irresistible impulse. Newsweek took a poll shortly after the trials.
Speaker 1: Two thirds of those surveys said Lorraine should be found guilty,
Speaker 1: but most thoughts she should receive little or no jail time.
Speaker 1: The jurors in her case, however, did not have that option.
Speaker 1: They had the insanity defense. This is Andrea Alden, author
Speaker 1: of Disorder in the Court, Morality Myth and the Insanity Defense.
Speaker 1: It's a lot easier to accept a temporary insanity defense,
Speaker 1: I think for somebody like Lorena Bobbitt, who didn't have
Speaker 1: a long, undocumented history of mental illness um and so
Speaker 1: people were more um inclined to be sympathetic for towards
Speaker 1: her plate. Although her crime was incredibly horrific, many in
Speaker 1: the public also felt that John deserved his wound. This
Speaker 1: is Richard Bonnie, a profess sort of law and of
Speaker 1: medicine at the University of Virginia. The basic dynamic of
Speaker 1: that case for some people is going to be he
Speaker 1: deserved it, he had it coming to him. I mean,
Speaker 1: as a matter of law, he didn't have it coming
Speaker 1: to him. There's a legal term for when members of
Speaker 1: a jury find a defendant like Lorrain of Bobbitt not
Speaker 1: guilty because they don't support punishing them even for an
Speaker 1: action that is against the law, nullification. So the way
Speaker 1: that I think about what happened in the Rain of
Speaker 1: Bobbitt case is that by giving the insanity instruction, you know,
Speaker 1: there was an outlet for what is essentially a nullifying
Speaker 1: motivation that the jury had um and it wasn't really
Speaker 1: about the insanity defense at all. Lorrain of Bobbitt spent
Speaker 1: forty five days in a psychiatric hospital and then she
Speaker 1: was released. She was grateful to be out of the spotlight.
Speaker 1: John on the other hand, really continued to seek the spotlight.
Speaker 1: He did a tour of radio shows, He went on
Speaker 1: the Howard Stern Show. John Wayne Bobbitt had a terrible situation.
Speaker 1: He's the guy, of course, whose wife cut off his
Speaker 1: Schween John, I'm glad you could come. And most notably,
Speaker 1: he made two porn movies one the first one was
Speaker 1: called John Wayne Bobbitt Uncut, and I think the second
Speaker 1: one was called Frank and Penis, So yeah, very classy stuff.
Speaker 1: John Wayne Bobbitt now lives with a girlfriend in Las
Speaker 1: Vegas and works in construction. After the trials were over,
Speaker 1: Lorraina really seemed to seek normalcy. She wanted to return
Speaker 1: to a normal, quiet, anonymous life. She went back to school,
Speaker 1: she met a guy who she is still with today,
Speaker 1: and she started an organization focused on domestic violence prevention.
Speaker 1: So she has sort of, I think, tried to find
Speaker 1: the silver lighting in the situation and make some good
Speaker 1: of it. But it was her trial itself that really
Speaker 1: started something, and I think it really forced the public
Speaker 1: to grapple with that, to talk about domestic violence in
Speaker 1: a way, uh that you know that that hadn't really
Speaker 1: been discussed. You know. The public debate was a mixed one.
Speaker 1: Kim Gandy again, the president and CEO of the National
Speaker 1: Network to in Domestic Violence. There were a lot of
Speaker 1: people who were shocked to learn that this kind of
Speaker 1: thing goes on in people's houses. And I do think
Speaker 1: that it helped with eventual passage of the Violence Against
Speaker 1: Women Act. This is lorrain A bob It again in
Speaker 1: a interview with Steve Harvey. Well, I'm glad that after
Speaker 1: twenty two years, you still laugh about it. But something,
Speaker 1: something good has come out of my negative and people
Speaker 1: are still laughing about it, just as they have ever
Speaker 1: since it happened. And it seems that Lorena and John
Speaker 1: Wayne Bobbitt are destined to live out their lives as
Speaker 1: jokes in late night comedy routines. I think there is
Speaker 1: sort of an instinct to kind of try to make
Speaker 1: light of something when it's too horrific to really wrap
Speaker 1: your mind around. And I think that that that instinct
Speaker 1: would still be there if this happens today. But I
Speaker 1: would like to think that we would treat Lorena more
Speaker 1: as a survivor of domestic violence and assault than as
Speaker 1: a punch line. Modern juries are skeptical about the insanity defense.
Speaker 1: They're hesitant to find a defendant like Lorraina Bobbitt not
Speaker 1: guilty when she clearly committed the acting question. In her case,
Speaker 1: they were willing to embrace it because of the trauma
Speaker 1: she had apparently suffered, but the skepticism was real. Lorraina.
Speaker 1: Bobbitt's trial came just a decade after another high profile
Speaker 1: case rocked public opinion and the legal landscape. Beneath all insanity, Please,
Speaker 1: he decided that he would assassinate Ronald Reagan when he
Speaker 1: was giving speech at the Washington Hilton. The handsome you
Speaker 1: was that he was delusional. You know, the President was
Speaker 1: just a bit player in this drama that was being
Speaker 1: you know, played out in Hinckley's mind. In the next
Speaker 1: episode of The Threat, we explore the trial of John
Speaker 1: Hinckley Jr. The man who shot the President of the
Speaker 1: United States and claimed he did it because he was
Speaker 1: insane with love. So do you want to put your
Speaker 1: hands on a chick? Want to rob on a chick
Speaker 1: and not give consense? So just see that I am
Speaker 1: in a state of panic and you want to take
Speaker 1: advantage Now I'm looking like a targets. All rain about It,
Speaker 1: To about It, The Rain About It. The Thread is
Speaker 1: produced by Robert Coolo, Sophia Perpetua, and me Sean braswell.
Speaker 1: Chris Hoff engineered our show. This episode features Alan Barnes
Speaker 1: with a song called The Ballot of the Bobbitt Hillbillies,
Speaker 1: and Lisa Glover with a song called The Rain of Bobbitt.
Speaker 1: To learn more about the thread, visit ausi dot com,
Speaker 1: Slash the thread all one word, and make sure to
Speaker 1: subscribe to the thread on Apple podcasts, follow us on
Speaker 1: I Heart Radio or listen wherever you get your podcasts.
Speaker 1: Check us out at aussie dot com or on Twitter
Speaker 1: and Facebook. If you love surprising, engaging stories from history,
Speaker 1: look no further than the flashback section of ausy dot com.
Speaker 1: That's ozy y dot com. Gain about it.