Folks, there are some news makers
that we'll always remember,
but few tales have left a bigger impact
than John and Lorena Bobbitt's.
Their marriage came to a gruesome conclusion
when, in a fit of rage, Lorena committed the one act
every man fears the most.
Joining us now, please welcome Lorena Bobbitt.
I'm gonna ask you this question...
What... what made you take it, though?
I mean, you cut it off. Why you leave with it?
Now we got to go find it. Yes.
You know, here we are out here...
We got grass on it. I'm trying...
It did, it did.
Take me back to that time. What happened?
It was a quiet night, and, um...
I heard a call go out to the hospital.
I was answering the telephones,
and I received a call from Manassas City Police Department.
They were requesting that county officers respond there.
Just came across as a nonchalant call
that went to the... for an officer to go to the hospital.
It was just two officers responding.
It was not a big deal.
I get to Prince William Hospital,
where I meet a couple of the Manassas city police officers
that had been previously dispatched to the call.
One of the officers who I know
came to me and he goes,
"Danny, you're not gonna believe this."
And I was like, "What? What's up?"
And he goes, um,
"This guy's wife pulled his dick off."
Of course, we didn't want to give
that information over the radio.
The news media would pick up on that quickly.
It's gonna take a lot of other resources,
uh, to actually... uh...
deal with this particular call for service.
One of the officers came across the radio...
"I need an officer to come by the hospital
"and, um, get a key to go to the apartment
and look for the appendage."
And I was just like, "An appendage?"
You know, what could that have been?
We didn't have cell phones then.
Everything that we communicated amongst each other
was over the radio.
Thought in my mind, I said,
"I can't say 'penis' on the radio.
"There's seven words you can't say on TV.
I'm sure 'penis' somehow winds up in there."
I arrived at the hospital. I was
directed to the room where the victim was.
And when they pulled back the sheet, I saw
a man's
testicles or scrotum
without the penis.
It was cut very clean.
I get this call... I can't remember exactly,
something like 4:00 in the morning, 3:30 in the morning.
My wife actually was away with the kids,
so it was just me by myself.
I said, "Do you have the part?"
And they said, "We don't."
I said, "So, should I bother coming down?"
I said, "If you can't find it, I can't put it back on."
And at that point, it hadn't been.
It hadn't been found, it hadn't been heard from.
It was lost in action.
And so, when I got to the E.R.,
I was confronted with John on his back, bleeding profusely.
He'd lost about a third of his blood volume,
and at that point, the only option
was to do what we call a Perineal Urethrostomy,
which is to expose the mid-bulbous urethra
to the perineum so he could sit to pee like a woman
for the rest of his life,
and that's where I thought we were headed.
I have another cup I can... I can use,
a silver one.
No?
I don't remember too much. I just remember her...
um, playing with me.
Playing around with me while I was sleeping,
but I, you know... I think she was trying to get me excited,
or something.
Then she put her arms around me
at the same time I started falling asleep again.
You know, falling back asleep.
Well, she was... she was playing around with me,
you know, when I was sleeping, 'cause I remember her...
Her... her, you know, playing around, and then...
It was a pull, then a jerk.
It was horrifying. It was very, uh...
It was terrifying. I was confused.
I thought I was dreaming.
I'm thinking okay,
Freddy Krueger's hand came through the wall.
You know?
Here I am, bleeding to death,
bleeding... blood everywhere,
and my penis is gone, and, uh...
All I can think of now is,
"I'd better not go back to sleep."
So, I collected myself
and applied pressure, and, uh, um...
My friend Robbie was staying with us.
I woke Rob... my friend up. I kicked him and, um,
he didn't realize what was happening, uh,
because he'd just woke up out of his sleep.
I kind of was, like, waiting for my friend to get ready,
'cause he... he went and brushed his teeth.
So, why do you think she did this to you?
Well, I was divorcing her, leaving... leaving the marriage.
I told her that our marriage didn't work out.
She wanted to keep the marriage,
and try to make it work, and, uh,
she felt real hurt about me ending it.
But I didn't know how shocked she was.
I thought she was just gonna be as happy as I was,
calling it quits, but...
us men don't understand women,
so it didn't work out that way.
So when I came in the first thing in the morning,
I was told to respond over to Maplewood Drive
in regards to, um,
a wife that had cut her husband's penis off.
And, uh, the sergeant at the time, Jerry Hawks,
advised that they thought she had swallowed the penis.
So I had to go over there, like, immediately,
as soon as I got in the door.
When I arrived on the scene,
the first thing I noticed was there was blood droplets
in the parking lot next to where these cars would be.
Going into the sidewalk, and going up the stairs,
to apartment number 5,
and then went through the living room,
and into a bedroom on the left-hand side,
which would be probably that balcony right up there.
When I first came into the apartment,
two things I'm doing...
I wanted to try to find, um, the body part, the penis,
but also I didn't want to disturb
the crime scene as much as I could.
When I got to the bed, I remember shining
my, um, my... my flashlight,
and even to this day I have this vivid picture
of a, um... a butt imprint.
And inside the butt imprint, if I would've actually
stuck my fingers down and measured,
probably... seemed like about a good inch deep
that was filled with blood.
And I could see where, if he would've swung his legs over
to the side of the bed,
there was a V-shape blood spatter that was
pulsed in waves that was landed onto the carpet.
From what I was advised, he was extremely intoxicated,
and that's why he laid on the bed for a while
after the... the, um...
the penis was cut off.
I don't think he felt it right away.
I finished looking in the bedroom
as much as I could, looking for the penis,
and I didn't see anything in there.
But I did remember that he said something
about a knife, so I walked in the kitchen,
and I remember looking around the kitchen.
Of course we searched in the sink,
in the, um, garbage disposal, the freezer.
I remember even in the kitchen
looking in the dishwasher.
They located some pamphlets regarding rape
and, uh, spousal protection.
And about that time, I remember, uh,
a radio call coming out.
It was our lieutenant at the time
that was in charge of our squad.
He was actually with Lorena.
What happened when you got to the shop?
Nobody was there.
So I,
I, I just
keep on
crying and screaming and
I fell.
Where did you go from there?
I went to see my friend Janna.
What'd you do when you got to her house?
Nobody was open the door.
So I,
I just stand up 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?"
I tried to calm her down and she's crying,
and then she said, "I cut his penis off."
And I said, "You did what?"
Mrs. Bobbitt eventually arrived
at our police station,
and she was there to report the sexual abuse
that she had endured from Mr. Bobbitt.
I commented to her that,
we did have a detective on the way
and we were gonna get to that,
um, but I needed to ask her what she had done
with Mr. Bobbitt's penis,
uh, that that was kind of the urgent matter at hand.
I could see her face had actually...
She just gave me that "Oh, my God."
It just... brought her back to that moment.
I said...
"Just look around..." Um...
They said, "No, we look around the apartment.
We cannot find it."
I said I remembered tossing things
out of the car.
I asked her, "Where were you
on the road or what were you near?"
Look around, on the corner, there is 7-Eleven.
Then they went there immediately.
I think it was Pope's Road or Poke Road.
Polk... P-O-L-K. "Polk's" Road,
at the intersection of Old Centreville Road.
Apparently said that
when she arrived at the stop sign,
she tossed it out
her left side,
driver's side window.
She was driving so she threw it... her left arm out,
would throw it over the roof.
It went over the side and landed in a grassy area,
tall grassy area, and I remember it being
about knee-to-thigh-high at that time.
I was here for approximately an hour,
and then I was advised that the knife was located
in another county where Lorena Bobbitt worked.
And then I was advised that she had thrown the knife
into the garbage can.
I had to get there before the garbage service came
and collected the trash.
And it was garbage day,
so I had to get there fast.
When I got there, there was a metal trash can.
It was very difficult to get it out.
I had to reach down in there practically on my hands
standing... a handstand to get the knife out.
When I came out with the knife, some guy was standing there
and he was like, "Oh, my."
When they found out that she had not swallowed the penis,
and she had thrown it in a corner field,
they all responded over there to try to look for it.
Mike Perry got there.
He walked up to the sergeant and asked him,
said, "Hey, where's it at?"
And the sergeant just took his hand
and just pointed straight down.
He wouldn't even get close to it.
I mean, he would just... "It's right there."
Officer Hurley is religious
and he didn't want to apparently
put his hands on it.
From what I've heard,
Sgt. Hurley stepped on it,
and indicated that here it is,
and then Officer Perry retrieved it.
In fact, I had to take pictures a couple days later
of him standing next to where he found it,
pointing at the ground.
A firefighter was the one who find it
and pick it up, I guess,
from a grassy area.
Oh, my gosh.
I'm not quite sure why nobody wanted to handle this thing,
uh, but rescue squads have gloves,
so that was always fortuitous and with that,
it was carried ceremoniously into the 7-Eleven,
where, uh, somebody knew to put it on ice,
in a hot dog bag, of all things.
So, I pushed John up to the O.R.
and knew that I had this item on its way.
The part comes in and we're washing it up
at the sink with some pHisoHex
and then just put it in ice
till it gets put back on.
I'd never done one of these before.
I do microsurgery at the time.
But I sort of had a game plan,
which was essentially just connecting the artery
and the major veins.
Dr. Berman was the one who had to do
most of the work under the microscope,
but Dr. Sehn made sure the plumbing worked okay.
The only time I remember being a bit tense
is, um, I secured a tourniquet
at the base of the penis, just for the blood supply.
The key point is when you take the tourniquet off,
you gotta have flow, so there was that sort of moment
of "God, it better work."
That tourniquet came off, and, uh,
the penis pinked up,
and it looked really terrific, right from the start.
There were policemen on the scene,
sitting with their... legs crossed
in a protective stance thinking about all this.
I mean when a woman cuts off a man's penis,
it didn't happen every day.
You know, oh man.
I started thinking about my wife, you know.
Being a woman, it wasn't as big a deal for us.
You know, we're like,
thinking, "God, what did he do
to make her do something like that?"
I had to go to the hospital
for this rape kit.
I told them that during the marriage,
John was
raping me a lot.
As much as I wanted to fight him and say no,
it seems like,
...the more he just wanted to do it.
Ironically, I was in one side of the hospital,
and then he was, at the same time,
at the same hospital, just on the other
side of the hospital.
What was your reaction when you found out
what happened to your brother?
If I'd have seen her, I would've killed her.
You went looking for her, didn't you?
Yep. Where did you go
looking for her?
Any... I didn't even know where to go looking, but I looked.
If the cops didn't meet us at the hospital,
we would have found her.
You think she tried to kill him?
Think she tried to hurt him in the worst way possible,
for any man.
She did worse than kill him.
She took away the thing
that means most to a man, you know?
It took 100 years to create
the first shelter for battered women in this country,
after the United States Congress
passed its first law to prevent cruelty to animals.
Battery is the single most significant cause of injury
to women in this country.
It is an overwhelming moral, economic,
and public health burden
that our society can no longer bear.
There hasn't been adequate resources
and recourse and redress
of the terrible violence that women face.
For lots of women, they thought,
"I won't be believed," or "I'll be called names,"
or "I'll be treated as a horrible person."
My name is Anita F. Hill.
In the case of Clarence Thomas and Anita Hill,
it will be their versions of an alleged sexual advance
that will get the national spotlight.
In 1991, Clarence Thomas gets nominated,
and the sexual harassment thing arises,
Nothing like what happened today
has ever happened before.
A nominee to the U.S. Supreme Court
went before 14 U.S. senators and the world
to deny he sexually harassed a former woman assistant.
Telling the world is the most difficult
experience of my life.
I felt that I had to tell the truth.
I could not keep silent.
And all of these white men...
In the Senate basically come to his defense,
and it was a very hard thing for a lot of women
to realize that that is the way it was gonna go down.
The nomination of Clarence Thomas of Georgia
is hereby confirmed.
I think a lot of people thought and still think
that Anita Hill was telling the truth,
and she was treated horrifically.
It scares me that when we're in a he-said-she-said situation,
it is the man who has the credibility,
it's the man who has the authority.
Even women believe the man,
as many women believed Clarence Thomas.
Live in West Palm Beach, I'll have the story
of the Kennedy rape case tonight.
William Kennedy Smith,
found not guilty of rape.
Today's verdict can't possibly end
the fascination, the obsession with this case.
It cannot stop those with passionate feelings about rape
from thinking that it was just another attack on a woman
who was defiled by both her attacker and by the system.
For days now, charges that naval aviators
sexually harassed female colleagues.
83 women were sexually assaulted
at the Tailhook convention at the Las Vegas Hilton.
One after another, the most serious charges
have been dismissed for lack of evidence.
No woman should be ashamed to come forward and say,
"I've been wronged."
I don't think that there was a lot of surprise
from most women around Anita Hill,
William Kennedy Smith or Tailhook.
Even those of us who have been watching these issues,
we were just used to nothing happening.
Every morning, my practice was to make
an initial round of phone calls to all the police agencies
in the Prince William County area.
The interest in a case like this
for a newspaper like "The Washington Post" was huge,
so I made plans to immediately get to
the Manassas County Courthouse.
I had no idea if the suspect was there,
and I didn't, at that time, really know who she was.
When I walked in the courthouse,
there was two Hispanics... Myself and the woman
who I later learned was Lorena Bobbitt.
And the only words to me were...
"He raped me. He raped me."
I went to get a bite to eat,
and then this lady, she was, like,
reading the newspaper.
And she said something like, "This is great.
Somebody finally did what I always wanted to do."
People were like, "Holy shit."
Like, this woman chopped off this guy's dick.
Who in their right mind
doesn't think that's crazy?
I laughed my ass off,
to be honest with you, when I found out that happened.
Somebody from the apartment just told me,
"Hey, she cut his thing off."
I said, "What?"
To see it on the news, what happened to him,
very funny.
"Hey, Lorena, come on!
Where'd you throw it?"
She told him where the dick was.
See, I would not have told him!
Yeah, I definitely have to get
a good comedy script written up.
Do some standup.
Jeffrey Dahmer called Lorena up and said,
"You going to eat that?"
Good thing they found it.
Look real funny on a milk carton.
TV journalists were looking
for people to put on the air,
but I had never experienced so many people
wanting to be interviewed.
So, you're a celebrity these days, I understand.
Yeah, we've gotten a lot of publicity with the case,
as you can imagine.
Dr. Berman, Mike, our stage manager
just said you're too young
to know anything about penises,
but are you a Microsurgeon?
Yeah, I do microvascular surgery.
This is the first time I've put a penis back on.
It's a really uncommon injury.
I've never done one, never seen one.
Will he ever, ever have a normal sex life again?
I'm optimistic that he'll regain
virtually all of his normal function,
but we absolutely don't know,
and we really won't know for two entire years.
It's possible he could still be a sexual cripple.
Eventually, obviously,
he was on international news.
It was huge.
I needed help, so I asked Janna what to do.
Janna Bisutti was my first boss.
I saw that... how well she did.
She was driving the latest cars,
and, you know, convertibles.
She had this beautiful home in a desirable neighborhood.
She was busy all the time,
and I wanted to be like that.
She owned three salons at that time,
and I worked for her new salon in Centreville.
She hired me an attorney, James Lowe,
and she hired me an agent/manager
from Hollywood.
I got a call one night,
uh, probably about 10:30 at night,
from a good friend of mine in the Washington, D.C. area.
He was a good friend of Janna.
"I've got somebody I think is really gonna need protection
from the media, and I think you can do it."
So once I agreed to be her media rep,
I printed probably 1,000 business cards.
And I said, "When somebody wants to interview you,
"or they want you to make a one-line comment,
"say, 'I really don't have anything to say.
Contact my media representative.'"
So, I'm working for the Manassas, uh,
paper, the "Journal Messenger."
I was the police and court reporter.
At the time, we could not say "penis."
We did not say that in family newspapers.
So how do you refer to this body part?
Well, it's interesting about the word "penis,"
because my father was an OB-GYN,
and my father didn't even use the anatomical words
for what he did,
both for men or women.
It was just their generation.
They didn't call it what it was.
Of course, I'm... Was using "penis" a lot,
had to in this case, you know.
I'm not gonna say, "You cut off your ding-a-ling."
I mean, it's ridiculous.
I think this was the first time that that word
came out of the closet in American culture
in "The New York Times."
I think the v-word had already been out,
to some degree, but it was a cultural moment
for the p-word to get some airing.
Most newspapers had a practice
that if you were the victim of a sex crime,
you were never identified.
And then I learned one day that Lorena had hired
a public relations firm,
and I called my editors and let them know
of this development, and the editor said,
"Okay, well, if she's hired a publicist,
"then she knows that we're gonna use her name.
She wants her name used."
When they learned about my name,
it was a nightmare.
Everybody wanted a piece of me.
They wanted to hunt me, you know,
down the streets, um...
looking for... you know, it was...
I couldn't get out of the house.
Her attorney never forgave
"The Washington Post" for that,
so much so that, uh, the first print interview
extensively, that she gave,
she gave to "Vanity Fair."
"Vanity Fair" seemed to be,
in my pre-interviews with them,
that they didn't want to spin or manipulate the story.
And I thought, "We have an opportunity right now,
"before the trials,
to get the truth of the story out."
I had just made a deal with "Vanity Fair,"
and I got a call from my new "Vanity Fair" editor,
and he said, "We want you to do Lorena Bobbitt."
I think she's giving one interview at this point,
one print interview. Nobody had seen her,
and this is pre-Internet.
She was this Myst... Figure cloaked in mystique.
The lawyer decided that he would invite me
and Lorena and Janna to his place,
where the shoot for "Vanity Fair" would take place,
and the photographer was Mary Ellen Mark,
who was very well-known.
It was very clear from my "Vanity Fair" editor
that, had Lorena and John not been an attractive couple,
it would've been much less of a thing.
There was a whole deal about what was Lorena gonna wear?
She came with a Mickey Mouse shirt, I think.
One of the things that Janna said at the outset was,
"There is no way Lorena is gonna get into her...
Be shot in her bathing suit in the pool."
It took Mary Ellen about five minutes to get her
in the bathing suit, in the pool.
And I said, "You know, if you don't stop
taking pictures, there will be no words
to go around the pictures."
And Lorena, I have to... I do remember this little thing
where she sort of patted my arm and said, "Don't worry.
I'll do the interview. Don't worry."
The thing about that interview, I have to say,
is she didn't come across as articulate, you know.
You could tell, like, she wasn't really in a place
to present her case to the world.
Lorena Bobbitt appeared on the verge of tears
this morning as she appeared
in Prince William County Domestic Relations Court.
She is charged with the crime of malicious wounding.
Do you understand that charge?
Yes. Are you ready to proceed?
Yes.
At a preliminary hearing this morning,
a Prince William County police detective
read from a statement Lorena Bobbitt made.
When I was at the hospital,
I needed to talk to a detective,
and, uh, that was Detective Weintz.
I should've just got an attorney.
I didn't know any better.
And then I was angry already.
And I turned my back and I...
The first thing I saw was the knife.
Then I said, I ask him, if he was satisfied
with what he did.
And he just half asleep, or something.
He always have orgasm
and he doesn't wait for me to have an orgasm.
He's selfish.
I don't think it's fair.
So I pulled back the shirt,
or the sheets.
Then I did it.
"Because he have orgasm and not wait for me."
And that frustrated her, so she went into the kitchen,
got the knife, came in, and cut it off.
That is not really, in my opinion,
what was being said there.
You have the problem of the second language.
You have the problem of the woman who is hysterical
at the time that the comments were made.
I was in shock still, from what happened.
I didn't know, I didn't understand,
I didn't comprehend what was going on.
I just knew I was in trouble.
John Bobbitt surrendered to authorities here
while the media's attention was focused
on his wife's hearing.
He was released on $5,000 bond,
and he'll return to this same courthouse
tomorrow morning for his arraignment
on the charge of marital sexual abuse.
It hurt to walk, so, I mean,
I was just recovering still,
and I got hit with a charge of rape that I didn't do.
Um... marital rape or abuse,
and, um... why?
Yeah?
Yeah, well, we're getting ready to... getting ready
to take my picture for a Bobbitt case,
like they did yours.
I didn't charge John initially.
And the women's groups were
very upset that he had not been charged.
Paul Ebert, the prosecutor in the case,
is called "Butch" Ebert by his friends.
He is a man spends a great deal of time
hunting and fishing. He's an outdoorsman.
He's a man who, uh, was appointed
to be the commonwealth attorney at the age of 30.
That was the youngest of anyone
to become a commonwealth attorney
in the history of the state of Virginia.
Paul Ebert is a pretty amazing guy.
He's... uh, he's been doing it a long time.
Before the sniper case came along I said,
"I'm known as the penis prosecutor."
Quite a claim to fame.
And, you know, he's a sharp guy.
He comes across as sort of this, you know,
"I'm just a country lawyer" kind of attitude...
Yeah, take a picture of whatever you want.
Okay, thank you so much.
Take a picture of everything in here except my penis.
When they came to me about the case,
I told my... The attorney in my office,
I probably wasn't interested, because what I had heard
was that John was being accused of having raped his wife,
and had been a batterer.
After meeting with John, that's when my decision
as to whether I would
take on the representation changed.
When I met him, John had scrape marks,
nail marks, straight down his face
that had occurred two weeks before that.
And John, not earning much of a living,
he's the dependent one in this relationship.
We had a psychological test done on John,
and John is not capable of really telling a lie,
because he doesn't handle... He can't do the complexity
that's required to make a...
To sell a lie, if you will.
One of the facts that impressed me the most
was that the police had been called
three or four times in their relationship.
Three of those times, John had called them,
and the fourth time,
Lorena's mother was actually there.
It was over Thanksgiving,
and, uh, Lorena called the police at that time.
Police came and the mother said that her daughter
was the cause of it all and not John.
John was the one who was being battered.
Tests done on Lorena Bobbitt indicate
she had sexual intercourse before the cutting incident.
In statements to police John Bobbitt has denied
having sex with his wife that morning.
Mr. Bobbitt's made several different statements,
uh, in his account,
and all these statements differ greatly
from Mrs. Bobbitt's account.
If they did have sex, there's nothing wrong
with the two of them having sex.
The question is whether
there was a sexual assault upon her,
and that's the issue.
In order to successfully convict
on a spousal rape charge,
which carried a life sentence,
you need to fulfill two conditions
under the law at that time.
One was you had to be separated from your spouse
at the time of the crime,
and secondarily, you had to, um,
cause permanent damage or significant damage,
physical, bodily damage.
That's the problem with the idea of marital rape.
It's... that is truly, behind closed doors,
and it's not an easy thing to prove
in any setting, I assume,
and that would be true in this case as well.
We are still in a situation where people believe
that a man's wife is his property,
and that a woman must have sex with her husband
when he wants to regardless of her desires.
And the states are all spread out across the map
in terms of which ones recognize
that a husband can forcibly rape his wife,
and which ones say, if they're married,
it's sex, it's not rape.
What John was eventually charged with
was malicious sexual assault,
which carried a lesser penalty.
He faces 20 years in prison
as opposed to life in prison,
had he been convicted of rape.
It was shortly after that that "20/20"
came to us and want...
Said they were going to do a story on this
the Friday night before... Of the week before the trial.
And I said... I asked them, "Please don't," you know.
"We'll give you first access to John
and an interview if you'll hold off on the story
until after the trial."
They refused.
From ABC News,
around the world and into your home,
this is "20/20."
Well, in an exclusive interview with Tom Jarriel,
Lorena Bobbitt, the woman who did the unthinkable,
gives some answers.
What kind of a woman could strike out
in such a shocking way?
What had driven her to such abhorrent behavior?
Mrs. Bobbitt claims that throughout their marriage,
her husband had forced sex on her again,
and again, and again.
I... I scream at him, before,
because I didn't want to have sex,
and, um, because I felt like it wasn't right.
Did you ever think he might kill you?
Yes.
Bobbitt's attorney, Gregory Murphy,
said John will voice his defense
only in testimony at the trial,
and not to "20/20."
Did you ask him specifically, "Mr. Bobbitt,
did you beat your wife?"
Absolutely I asked him. And what did he say?
Absolutely did not.
And there was this portrait being painted of John,
and I thought the longer they did not hear from John,
the more interested I hoped the jury would be
in finding out his side of the story.
When I was growing up,
my nickname was Johnny Barbell.
I always wanted to be the strongest, the fastest.
I can deal with a lot of pain.
I mean, my father used to spank me,
and, you know, he'd try to get me to cry.
I wouldn't cry.
Um, you know, uh, I played sports
and I was on the varsity swim team.
I was a triathlete, and ran, cycled, swam,
so I was in great physical condition.
♪ Where am I heading? ♪
♪ What is the plan? ♪
♪ I've got to be all ♪
♪ All that I can ♪
I joined the Marines and it made me stronger.
What I'm about to suggest isn't for everyone.
It's not easy.
No way.
Our whole battalion of Marines,
I always finished first.
I strived to be the best,
and that was always my attitude.
I was a 17, 18-year-old young punk.
John had access to the Marine Corps base
which had some of the best basketball courts.
John Kaopua was always at my house,
uh, or I was at his house.
He was my best friend.
John Bobbitt used to take us to play basketball
and, uh, you know, go fishing and stuff like that.
He was in shape, so,
17, 18, at that point you're like,
"Man, you know, this guy's cool."
We started out in the... On the weights
and stuff like that, and it was like
he got on the treadmill and it was like,
he started out slow but then we was like
trying to run as fast as he could on it,
and he was doing well, you know what I mean?
Like, it was like, "Damn, that's pretty good.
I'm not getting on there, going that damn fast."
He fancied himself like Jean-Claude Van Damme,
and he actually had these natural good looks
and this... this strong body.
He even signed into his pool as Van Damme.
Biggest misconception about me,
uh...
ah... that I'm a violent person.
Just because you're in that field
uh, where you use, uh, violence,
or, uh...
uh, your contact sports and stuff like that,
that you're, you know, violent toward another person,
or in a relationship with a woman.
When I met Lorena, she was, uh,
she was beautiful.
Met her at the Marine Corps ball,
was dressed up in a really nice outfit,
dress blues.
She was really wearing a pretty dress
and she had a very sweet smile,
and she had a cute accent.
And she could barely speak English,
but, you know, we exchanged numbers.
My parents told me not to marry her,
let her go back to her country,
and if she comes back,
then maybe it was meant to be,
but I didn't listen.
Settling down, getting married too young,
too fast was not a good thing for me
and it probably wasn't a good thing for her, either.
Lorena's lawyers called me up
and they said, "Look,
"the trial is being set for John and Lorena,
"and if you want Lorena's trial to go last,
"we have an opportunity to move it on the docket,
"so we know what's happened with John,
and then we know better how to defend Lorena."
The media in town that came in from that
came from all over the world,
as far away as Japan.
You sure about that? Yes.
Lorena Bobbitt sliced off
her husband John Wayne Bobbitt's penis.
You'd think a famous movie star, politician,
or member of the Kennedy family was on trial here.
Reporters from all over the country and the world
have focused on the case against John Wayne Bobbitt.
Manassas is basically a bedroom community
to Washington, D.C. We're a suburb.
We're the home to a lot of government workers
and military people. We're only 25 miles from D.C.
Why do you think so much attention
is being paid to this case?
'Cause it's a simple story of... of violence and denial,
and marriage gone amok.
You know, she said, he said, back and forth.
A little bit of Anita Hill or Clarence Thomas,
I think, filters through to here.
Some people had asked me before that
why we didn't move the trial out of Manassas,
and I just said, "Well, where am I gonna go?
I'm hearing from people in Bangkok to Berlin."
Does she still love him?
I don't know that. You'd have to ask her.
What a time to be in Manassas!
I'm like, "I gotta get a souvenir!"
10 bucks apiece.
All these local people started making t-shirts
and underwear to sell,
and other paraphernalia,
capitalizing on the notoriety Manassas was getting.
We're not doing anything more than the media's doing
by being here. We're just selling something
for them to take home.
I was in the shower one morning, and I thought,
"Manassas, Virginia... A cut above the rest."
Oh, I also did boxer shorts for his trial that said,
"Manassas, Virginia... Don't cut me short."
I wanted to be here to see what was gonna happen,
'cause nothing like this has ever been in Manassas before,
and I think it's very exciting.
Casco's ice was the cause of his penis being saved.
I haven't heard from John Bobbitt.
I haven't had a thank you from him.
I don't think it had as much notoriety
since, uh, probably the Civil War.
Up until now, Manassas,
a town of 30,000, has been known as the site
of several Civil War battles,
including the Battle of Bull Run.
Now one newspaper dubbed this "The Battle of the Bobbitts."
And this was all set against the backdrop...
of an evolving media landscape.
In 1993, there's so many cable channels.
That enables a kind of conduit to the public
that didn't exist in an era when there were,
like, three or four big broadcast networks.
CNN was kind of the dominant news broadcaster
at the time. For the first time,
I think CNN was feeling the pressure to compete
with these tabloid channels and tabloid programs.
These were not intricate matters
of foreign policy or health care.
They were tabloid stories.
The public obviously wants this crap, but in my view,
it's pornography. It's about arousal.
At this time, it was kind of the era of Court TV.
That was broadcasting things all the time.
Only Court TV takes you inside
America's most dramatic trials.
There's nothing more dramatic than something that's real.
Trials are great. You have a protagonist.
You have an antagonist. You have a referee.
It's the dramatist's dream.
This case, it,
it took on a life of its own
and it was hard for me to understand.
It was a circus, um,
that I... I'll never forget.
It was out of control.
You know, going past all these satellite trucks
and cameras and people wanting to talk to you,
and this is crazy.
Is he a drunk, a brute, a batterer,
who forced sex on a young and fearful wife
so many times she finally went over the edge?
Or is she a calculating, jealous woman
enraged over unsatisfying sex,
alleged infidelity and threats of divorce,
who fabricated rape to justify it?
Both sides agree, guilt or innocence
for John Bobbitt will simply come down
to whom the jurors believe.
I'd gotten a notice to serve for jury duty
with Prince William County.
And it never dawned on me that the jury for his trial
was starting the day that I was supposed
to show up for jury duty.
So, I said, you know, "Put your big boy panties on,
and get in there and just deal with life."
Someone said, "Oh, it'd be really funny
if you ended up on that jury."
I was like, "No, never."
Then sure enough, yep.
John's trial was obviously
a sexual crime, because he was accused of rape and abuse.
So they had to have our permission, and I said, "No.
We're not going to allow them to put this on TV."
A courtroom artist is there
because the camera can't be there.
It's not just about drawing a picture.
It's to assist in telling the story.
It was clear as part of our strategy,
I was definitely going to put John on the stand,
and this first picture here
is of my direct examination of John,
giving him the opportunity to tell his story
as to what occurred during that fateful night.
We hung out, went to a few clubs,
and had a few, uh, beers, Budweisers,
and we had what's called a B-52.
People think that's a strong drink, but it's not.
It's a candy drink, It's, uh,
Bailey's, Kahlua, and Grand Marnier.
It's a three-layered shot. It's a candy drink.
It's not... not a lot of alcohol.
So we had two... two of those.
And two beers all night long, that's it.
I don't know if anybody understands
being exhausted... Uh, dead tired,
where, like, an earthquake couldn't wake you up, you know?
I even folded up my clothes.
A drunk person don't fold up their clothes.
My clothes were neatly folded.
You know?
Mr. John Wayne Bobbitt seemed like a, um...
a very likable kind of guy.
He was kind of deceptive the way he looked.
He looked straight as a ramrod.
Very attractive,
typical,
poster-boy marine, I thought.
It's been a day of graphic and dramatic testimony
in the trial of John Bobbitt.
Jurors had a chance to hear Bobbitt
give his own version of events
on the night his penis was severed
by his estranged wife, Lorena.
John Bobbitt's attorney argued today,
Bobbitt's a nice guy but not the most sensitive lover,
that he did not force his wife to have sex,
and that she attacked him
because she was unsatisfied sexually.
In court, Lorena Bobbitt tearfully told her story
to a jury of nine women and three men.
We could only consider, um,
the night in question, I guess, about the rape.
We could not consider, um, her actions after,
or all the things that he had done before.
The judge ruled that
only incidents within five days
of Lorena's acts would be admissible.
If he was to be convicted, it would have to be
on what he allegedly did on June 23rd,
not for prior bad things that he did.
Because of laws in Virginia,
I wasn't able to talk about the whole history of abuse.
We only go from the date that this happened
up until five days before.
Five days only.
In my mind, I just remember
his voice saying that
"I will follow you, no matter where you are,"
and he can have any kind of sex he wanted with me.
Once Mrs. Bobbitt took the witness stand,
she described the incident in detail,
breaking into tears at times...
How her husband pinned her down,
stifled her screams, tore off her clothes.
Afterwards, she said she pushed him away,
saying, "How could you do this to me?"
again and again and again.
When I first had my initial vision of her,
she seemed very frail.
I got this dual, conflicting personality thing from her.
She wanted to be the victim, but at the same time,
she wanted to be a strong woman.
She would go from these very simple little housewife dresses
and then there were other days when she would come in
and she would have hair and makeup
and everything else going on.
It was crazy that she would kind of flip-flop,
back and forth. If you're gonna try to get your case won,
you should stick to a theme and stay with it,
because this way, everybody's confused about
what is she really looking for here?
There's a lot of interest in this particular case.
The courtroom is small... Only 150 people allowed in.
Give us an idea of how the testimony went today.
Give us some examples of the testimony today.
Well, I think probably the most damaging testimony
to the prosecution's side was when the doctor
that examined Lorena Bobbitt got on the stand
and said that when he examined her,
he saw no outward physical signs of rape,
and that her mental state didn't fit that of a victim.
Another scientist... Another forensics expert
got on the stand and said the panties that she wore
in his opinion had been cut and not torn,
as a prosecution witness had said.
I just remember so vividly the 12 of us just talking
about if someone was raped, what should happen?
What would they find?
To show that you are, um...
Well, that it's rape, you have to show some force,
use of force.
I said, "I don't want to have sex,"
and I was trying to push him, but I couldn't.
And I, uh, kinda like, um,
slid her panties off with my foot,
and, um... um...
And I remember being on top of her.
He forced me into it and I heard my, um,
underwear was ripping off, and, uh,
I was just fighting it.
I hired the former head of forensics in the FBI,
and he reviewed the forensic evidence for us.
Our expert said that there's a discrete scissors cut
in the crotch of those panties,
and then somebody tore it.
The testing came back to show that they were...
It... more likely cut by a pair of scissors
than they were torn.
I didn't believe someone would take scissors, because...
with all the other details of the abuse...
I remember thinking, "Why would she lie?"
I said to the jury,
"Where's the first place she went
after she left the apartment?"
With her hands full of everything.
She went directly to where she worked, the nail cuttery.
What's the most prevalent instrument there? Scissors.
So, you know, we don't have scissors out,
you know, in the middle of an assault
trying to cut garments, so we...
So...
Today the end of round one in a family feud
that has become the talk of this country, the Bobbitts.
After two days of emotional testimony,
it took a jury just a few hours to reach its verdict.
I do remember just sitting at that table
and everybody is talking about it around me,
and I remember just looking at all of them
and they were all so very, um,
set on how they believed on how it should be.
One of the women that was sitting next to me
kept saying in her heart, "I just know in my heart
that, you know, that he did it."
You know, you can't...
...make a vote from your heart.
You gotta vote with your head, and you gotta vote
with what's on the table in front of you.
We got pictures of where she... You know,
where she threw it, what she used.
That was a big sidetrack moment for us.
We weren't allowed to discuss anything
before or after, really.
Um, and then you kinda get hung up on the knife,
and the what and the everything,
and I think that maybe we lost sight of
what he truly was on trial for.
Everybody ready?
The jury of nine women and only three men
did not buy the prosecution's argument,
and they reached a verdict
after four hours of deliberation.
When the words "not guilty" were read in court,
Bobbitt leaped to his feet and hugged his attorney.
The state did not have any proof,
any substantial proof that anything occurred that night.
As you know, the jury has rendered their verdict.
The commonwealth, of course, is not happy about that verdict.
Marital sexual abuse cases
are always difficult cases to prosecute.
I think that became clear in the evidence
as it was presented to the jury.
John's testimony yesterday was very persuasive.
Anybody who's met John, spent time around John,
the one thing that everybody has told me consistently
is that he's incapable of telling the truth.
Even when it hurts him,
he's incapable of telling the truth.
I mean, I mean,
telling a I... aah! Strike that!
Thank God I didn't say that upstairs.
I just want to say, um,
I'm relieved that this is all over.
Uh, I'm thankful that... Uh, I'm thankful for
the jury, and they believed me and, uh,
now I just want to get on with my life,
and, you know, 'cause I got a lot of healing to do
and start my life over again.
It was very difficult to send a man to jail for 20 years
for having marital relations with his wife.
I think that she is crazy for cutting it off.
She, um... she did what I would've done, probably.
She just obviously was not able to prove her case
and so it was a good thing that he was acquitted
for obviously what he did not do to her.
There really wasn't any attention from the media
on the extraordinary amount of abuse that occurred to her
before she did this.
The public really only heard one side.
You know, my sense is that in many respects,
John's trial was a dress rehearsal for Lorena's trial.
His was like a little, you know, little playoff game.
Hers was like the Super Bowl of the whole thing.
This is not the last we'll see of the Bobbitts.
They are scheduled to return to court later this month
for her trial on malicious wounding charges.
Television cameras would be allowed
in the courtroom for that trial.
And there's anticipation as the world awaits her explanation
of why she took a 7-inch knife
and cut off her husband's penis.