Featured Image Credit: Ron Galella, Ltd./Ron Galella Collection via Getty Images/POOL/AFP via Getty Images
Topics: True crime, US News, Crime, Virginia
William Morgan
Topics: True crime, US News, Crime, Virginia
Warning: This article contains discussion of sexual assault which some readers may find distressing.
Waking up to find that your penis has been chopped off might seem like most men's worst nightmare, but for one guy this bad dream not only turned into reality - it became news around the world.
That's what happened to John Wayne Bobbitt in 1993 when his wife walked into the bedroom while he was sleeping, stripped back the covers, and chopped his manhood off with an eight-inch kitchen knife.
His wife, Lorena Bobbitt, walked out of the house in the middle of the night with a knife in one hand and his penis in the other. She then sped away, keeping only one hand on the wheel as she was still gripping her husband's manhood.
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After chucking the former Marine's member out of the car, Lorena decided to call 911 and tell them what happened, as well as where to find her husband's penis. But although their story has been repeated often, only in recent years did we find out what John did when he woke up without a penis.
Over 25 years after the notorious incident took place, John spoke to ABC News to finally detail what happened in the moment after he opened his eyes and saw a stump where his penis had once been.
"I sprung up and I was bleeding, I was applying pressure, then immediately I thought it was something out of a horror movie. A nightmare… turned into reality," he shared.
The incident had unfolded after a night of heavy drinking with a friend who was staying at their home in Manassas, Virginia, which Bobbitt claimed ended in an argument with his wife.
Lorena, however, has asserted from the start that she had taken the knife to her husband's genitals because he had raped her that night, after years of sexual and physical abuse.
But as his wife was speeding away from the house, manhood in hand, John's friend was the one who rushed him to hospital where, surprisingly, they were able to save the appendage. After it had been found by police, sterilized, put on ice, surgeons reattached it through nine hours of surgery.
John and Lorena's shocking story of amateur castration was printed in newspapers around the world and became a cause célèbre of the early 1990s, causing John to attempt to capitalize on the notoriety - and pay off the medical bills from his expensive phalloplasty.
That included starring in two pornographic films, 1994's John Wayne Bobbitt Uncut and 1996's Frankenpenis. He also formed a band called The Severed Parts, which reportedly failed to make any money.
Meanwhile, both he and his wife stood trial for their alleged parts in the bloody de-membering. John faced charges of marital sexual assault, which he was acquitted of.
In his wife's case, a jury agreed that Lorena's actions had been the result of 'temporary insanity', brought on by her husband's alleged sexual attack and a variety of mental illnesses.
Lorena was found not guilty after more than six hours of deliberation, divorcing John in 1995 and later going on to found a charity that helped survivors of sexual assault.