It’s been 20 years since Lorena Bobbitt lopped off her husband John Wayne Bobbitt’s business in a fit of rage and then drove off and chucked it in a field. At the time the media was obsessed with this story, and the “Bobbitt” jokes flowed incessantly. How are Lorena and John Wayne doing now?
Lorena Bobbitt says that the night before she assaulted her husband he came home drunk and raped her, a claim he denies. Later that night she went into the kitchen to drink water, and says the first thing she saw was the knife. In 2008 she told Oprah that she still has a hard time remembering exactly what happened that night after seeing the knife.
“I remember I was sleeping, and definitely, he jumped onto me,” she says. “After that, it was just like a tunnel going through my mind.” She does remember being in her car on her regular route to work, and not knowing what was going on. “I saw the knife with me in one hand, and then I realized, ‘I guess I killed somebody,'” she says. “My mind wasn’t there. I was definitely insane.”
As for throwing her husband’s penis out the window, Lorena recalls “I threw whatever was the most convenient I think for turning the wheel.”
She soon called 911 and told the police to search the field where she threw it, and amazingly, surgeons were able to reattach John Wayne’s penis during a 10-hour surgery. John hasn’t had any problems with his penis since, telling The Sun that he’s used it bed over 70 women since.
John Wayne was acquitted of raping her, but she was also acquitted of chopping of his penis by reason of temporary insanity. The jury ruled that because of herdepression and post traumatic stress disorder from her alleged abuse, she acted on an “irresistible impulse to sexually wound her husband.”
Lorena, who was born in Ecuador and raised in Venezuela, changed her last name to her maiden name Gallo after the trial. As part of the judgement, Lorena was asked to spend 45 days at the Central State Hospital in Petersburg, Virginia. In 1997 Lorena was charged, and then found not guilty, of punching her mother while they watched television.
She has a seven-year-old daughter named Olivia with longtime partner Dave Bellinger, who she’s been with for about 18 years. In 2009 Lorena had nothing but wonderful things to say about Dave. “He’s my best friend and he is a good father. Before, when I was young, when I was married, I was really naive and young, I didn’t know what I wanted.” Even though she’s happy with her relationship, she’s not keen on marrying anyone
In 2007 Lorena started a charity called Lorena’s Red Wagon to help women of domestic violence. She’s a licensed real estate agent, and works as a hairdresser.
As for John Wayne Bobbitt, he told Katie that not only was he not abusive to Lorena, but that she was abusive to him. He explained The Sun how dire his medical situation was that night, “People think it’s all a big joke but I almost bled to death. Can you imagine something like that happening to you? I was in shock. After the knife sliced through, I lost a huge amount of blood. At some point I passed out cold. When I came round I was being prepared for surgery.
The operation lasted ten hours. My wife had sliced off the top two-and-a-half inches and the doctors had to re-attach all the nerve endings and tissue. It was a very delicate operation.”
Even though doctors told him he would never have sex again, he was able to have sex with a girl he picked up at a bar three months later. Since then he’s been quite the ladies’ man. He started a band called The Severed Parts, and shot a couple of porn movies, including Frankenpenis and Bobbitt Uncut.
Despite the fact that he claims he was not abusive to Lorena, in the years since the incident, he hasn’t had a good track record. In 1994 went to jail for 15 days for domestic violence against fiancée Kristina Elliott. They didn’t marry, but in 2011 he had a 23-day second marriage. During his two-year third marriage he was arrested again for domestic violence.
He now says he’s an avid churchgoer who has changed his ways, and plans to marry a fourth wife, his childhood sweetheart Marie Basile. He’s also writing a book, explaining “For my book I’ve done a lot of research on men who had their penises cut off by women. From 1836 until my case in 1993, records show 19 men had their penises cut off. After my case to the present there have been another 121. A lot of them were copycat attacks.”
All-in-all, John Wayne Bobbitt’s pretty satisfied with how everything turned out. How else would he have been able to achieve fame through his penis? Obviously, I would have preferred not to go through all that pain and suffering,” he now says. “But being famous for my penis has given me opportunities I could not have ever imagined.”
