Lorena Bobbitt: Hey John who’s got your penis? Artwork

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Lorena Bobbitt: Hey John who’s got your penis?

August 20, 2024 • Kyle Risi & Adam Cox • Episode 73

In this episode of The Compendium, we slice into the infamous 1993 case of Lorena Bobbitt, a story that shocked the world and redefined media coverage of domestic abuse and revenge. Lorena Bobbitt, after enduring years of abuse at the hands of her husband, made international headlines by doing what ever woman wished they could, cut of the guys junk!

We'll explore the details of their tumultuous relationship, the night of the incident, the frantic search for John’s missing todger, before recounting the subsequent trials that gripped the world. This episode uncovers the deeper layers of a sensational story, highlighting the serious issues of domestic violence and media sensationalism.

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Credits:

Hosts: Kyle Risi & Adam Cox
Intro and Outro Music: Alice in dark Wonderland by Aleksey Chistilin
All the Latest Things Intro: Clowns by Giulio Fazio

[EPISODE 72] Lorena Bobbitt: Hey John who’s got your penis?

Kyle Risi: When she gets there, Janna answers the door and Lorena is clearly in distress. She huddles into the corner of Janna's living room and starts screaming. Finally, she tells her what she thinks she has done. That she has cut off John's penis. She must have, because all she knows is that she woke up with it in her hand.

Kyle Risi: She also knows that she threw it out of the window near a 7 Eleven in front of a Paddy Cake daycare center in the early hours of a Wednesday morning.

Adam Cox: That is a lot to unpack there. I'm sorry, I'm just like, one, should we have done like a public service announcement to all the men listening to go like, this is going to be maybe a hard lesson.

Kyle Risi: Welcome to the compendium, an assembly of fascinating and intriguing things. We're a weekly variety podcast where each week I tell Adam Cox all about a topic I think you'll find both fascinating and intriguing.

Kyle Risi: We dive into stories pulled from the darker corners of true crime, the annuls of your old unread history books, and the who's who of extraordinary people. We give you just enough information to stand your ground at any social gathering. I'm of course your ringmaster this week, Kyle Recy.

Adam Cox: And I'm your, strong man this week, Adam Cox.

Kyle Risi: Aren't you the strong man every week?

Adam Cox: Um, but in this week in particular, really strong.

Kyle Risi: Actually, I've got a bone to pick with you. Okay. I changed your Instagram to Muscley Adam on the link tree profile, and then I clicked through it, and you're taking your Instagram down. I'm taking a leave of absence from Instagram. That is unacceptable, because I've literally been dangling a carrot over our listeners ears. I'll be like, come look at Adam's muscly arms, Boom, 404 page.

Adam Cox: Yeah, sorry. I'll probably be back. It's just, you know, with Instagram, it just gets on your nerves sometimes.

Kyle Risi: Do you know what? Like, I don't even think I look at that many naked people on Instagram, but that's all I see. Like the Instagram for the compendium. is just men. Just men with no clothes on. And I'm like, how did this happen?

Adam Cox: I don't know. You tell me. You're the one that looks after the

Kyle Risi: But the thing is though, every single account I've ever had always ends up like that.

Kyle Risi: Maybe it's because I linger a little bit too long, you know?

Adam Cox: Well, that's the thing. It knows when you zoom in, Kyle. It knows when you zoom in. Gotta check this bulge. Boop, boop, boop, boop.

Kyle Risi: So, Adam, in today's compendium, we are diving into an assembly. of the most shocking revenge story that's sliced through the media. On the 23rd of June, Lorena Bobbitt Lorena Bobbitt, after facing years of abuse and rape at the hands of her husband John Wayne Bobbitt, shocked the world when she shared her story. Cut off her husband's dick with a butcher's knife while he slept, passed out drunk, in his bed.

Adam Cox: Oh, yes, this, well, this woman, but I remember the story of the husband's penis being cut off.

Kyle Risi: Mm hmm. Yeah, how old were you when that happened? Do you roughly remember? I mean, when it's something as shocking as that, every man on this planet goes, I know exactly where I was.

Adam Cox: I was

Kyle Risi: eating

Adam Cox: a peanut butter sandwich.

Adam Cox: And then the news came through in the airwaves.

Adam Cox: Yeah, um, I can't remember. How old, was it like the noughties?

Kyle Risi: Uh, so this would have been 93,

Adam Cox: this happened. Oh, so even longer than that. Yeah, I was at school. So probably wasn't on my radar.

Kyle Risi: I, do you know what, I remember it really vividly.

Kyle Risi: I especially remember my mum and her friends talking about it and how scandalous it was. But the thing is though, once she cut off her husband's penis in a trance like state, she got into a car with her husband's severed dick and drove away! And at some point, the realisation of what she did set in at which point she just threw her husband's penis out the window near a 7 Eleven, sparking a mad rush to try and find the penis so it could be surgically reattached back on to her husband's body.

Kyle Risi: And while at the heart of the story is a really sad situation of prolonged domestic abuse, very quickly it became marred with ridicule and humor due to kind of the bizarre nature of the story.

Kyle Risi: And very soon, The world forgot that this was a domestic abuse story, that it culminated in this drastic, dare I say, climax, because the media only wanted to focus on the shocking details of this missing penis.

Adam Cox: And did, well, I guess we're going to get into it. Like, where is that penis now?

Kyle Risi: So today I'm going to tell you about this bizarre story and as we peel back the layers I'll tell you how John gambled with his dick and ended up losing it. I'll tell you about the frantic search for the said willy, the trials that followed, the media frenzy and the long term impact that this story had on both Lorena and John Wayne.

Kyle Risi: This, Adam, is the story of Lorena Bobbitt And her husband's severed penis.

Adam Cox: I don't know how I feel about the choice of words of Peel Back The Layers when we're talking about a severed penis.

Kyle Risi: I think that was genius for the writing for me. I'm, I'm concerned. But of course, before we dive into it, should we get on with all the latest things?

Adam Cox: Let's do it.

Kyle Risi: Step right up and welcome to this week's All The Latest Things, where we unveil the fascinating, the extraordinary, and the downright loopy stories, strange facts, and intriguing tidbits from the past week. So Adam, it's your turn to go first this week. So what have you got for us?

Adam Cox: Do you know what? This week I've, uh, I'm gonna have to pull a My Dog Ate My Homework Kind of story. I haven't got anything for this week

Kyle Risi: Are you joking? You have nothing? It's

Adam Cox: been busy. I was ill, then other things happened. I've had a lot on.

Kyle Risi: Adam, this is really disappointing! Well fine, I guess it's just my all the latest news then. So I was on TikTok the other day and I found out about this guy called Mike Edgett. Now you probably haven't heard of him but Mike Edgett discovered something really, really incredible. He discovered something really odd about KFC and their Twitter account and he noticed that they only follow a handful of people.

Kyle Risi: Do you want to have a wild guess as to who you think KFC might be interested in following on Twitter?

Adam Cox: Hang on. I think I know this. So how many did you say that they follow?

Kyle Risi: Well, I did say a handful because I don't want to give the clue away.

Kyle Risi: I think I know this. I think they follow around about five people.

Adam Cox: Or roughly that. And isn't it all related to the seasoning? of their ingredients or secret ingredients of their batter. Well, what's

Kyle Risi: the secret

Adam Cox: ingredients? Salt.

Kyle Risi: They follow salt.

Adam Cox: Yeah,

Adam Cox: Yeah, isn't it like something or is it like the Spice Girls or something like that?

Kyle Risi: So, they follow seven random people called Herb.

Adam Cox: Oh, this is

Kyle Risi: it. Which in America they call them herb. Yeah. And all four of the spice girls, all four spice girls. So essentially 11 herbs and spices. That's it. So I knew it had something to do with this. How clever is that? So after Mike discovered this he just tweeted it and just went absolutely viral and KFC had been sitting there for ages Just waiting for someone, anyone, just to discover this or just to notice it.

Kyle Risi: So when Mike finally discovered it, they sent him the most kitsch painting of him and Colonel Sanders walking through the forest. Colonel Sanders has given him a piggyback and they're eating a drumstick. And they got this painted for him. It's an actual painting.

Kyle Risi: That's a really nice gift, but where would you hang that? Well apparently he hangs it in his living room and he is so proud of it that every time he walks through the living room and sees it he sheds a little tear of pride. that he discovered it.

Adam Cox: But that's the painting. That's hilarious.

Adam Cox: That is actually Colonel Sanders.

Kyle Risi: Isn't that the kitschest thing you've ever seen in the

Adam Cox: guys on it, getting a piggyback with a drumstick. And in the

Kyle Risi: background? There's all like, all the fauna and the deers and stuff.

Adam Cox: Yeah, it's like this really beautiful landscape. It's almost like, um, Was it Snow White when she like goes out and all the birds are singing and everything like that?

Kyle Risi: Was he real? Was he a real person? did he not create KFC himself? I just don't know if he was like just a mascot.

Adam Cox: Oh, I don't know. I thought he was real. I just figured he was mythical. It feels like it should be like an Apple movie on this or something.

Kyle Risi: Oh, just like with a McDonald's kind of movie? Yeah, they should do that. I'd watch that. And so what they also did, they also sent him 55 KFC gift cards, which I guess, well, like, one KFC a week, I guess, for a whole year. But that brings me to my next, or the latest things.

Kyle Risi: Okay. Because a family bought 10, 000 in gift cards for Disneyland, only to realize that they were for Disney Plus.

Adam Cox: No! I

Kyle Risi: know! How many subscriptions do you need? I know! Why did no one say anything? How long would 10, 000 get you off streaming? How many years?

Adam Cox: Uh, it's got to be like, what is it? Disney worth like 12

Kyle Risi: quid a month or something? I think it's like 7. 99, according to this article anyway.

Adam Cox: Okay, fine. a hundred years.

Kyle Risi: Yeah, exactly. 104 years worth of Disney Plus subscription. I doubt even Disney Plus will be even around in a hundred

Adam Cox: and four years.

Adam Cox: Probably not, but that's a real nice, I don't know, legacy to leave your children. You will have Disney Plus until you're 50.

Kyle Risi: And you, and you lord it over them as well. Oh yeah, do you know, Kevin hasn't visited me in a while. I think I might have to rewrite my will. Take out the Disney

Adam Cox: Plus. I have to give that to Stephanie. Not Stephanie! But the thing is though, they'll probably put up their price increase. That'll probably all come down.

Kyle Risi: So the story goes that in 2020 they planned a trip to Disneyland, but of course the pandemic happened so they had to reschedule.

Kyle Risi: And they rescheduled it for this year, so the whole family were going to go, 16 of them. So of course, Paramount, they needed to save as much money as possible. So they decided that they would load up on gift vouchers, which they would then issue to everyone going in their group. And yeah, when they purchased them, they just didn't realize that it was Disney Plus vouchers.

Adam Cox: And when did they find out? Was it when they actually got to Disneyland? They were like, I will exchange one of these for a pass for today. I

Kyle Risi: think it was before they left, actually. So they were trying to redeem some of the vouchers online for some of the amenities around Disneyland when they realized, oh, well, there's a bit of a problem.

Kyle Risi: And then they called customer support. They found out that it was actually for Disney Plus vouchers. And luckily, they did get them transferred over into. Actual Disney World vouchers or Disney Now vouchers.

Adam Cox: Yeah, I guess like, oh you spent with us ten thousand pounds or dollars, whatever.

Kyle Risi: Yeah, but the thing is though, there is a moment where you don't know if they're going to be able to transfer or willing to transfer them across.

Kyle Risi: So can you imagine the panic? That you must have gone through in that moment when you realised.

Adam Cox: Yeah, otherwise they are giving them out as like Christmas presents for the next 10 years.

Adam Cox: Do you

Kyle Risi: want So, that's all my latest things for this week. Should we get on with the show? Let's do it. That was okay.

Kyle Risi: So Adam, Lorena's story goes like this. On the 23rd of June 1993, Lorena's 26 year old husband, John Wade Bobbitt, comes home after a heavy night of drinking. When he arrives home drunk, she says that John violently rapes her, afterwards, John just passes out on the bed.

Kyle Risi: Lorena says that she then went downstairs to get a glass of water and while she was in the kitchen, she sees an eight inch butcher knife on the counter and she just snaps. At this point, Lorena blacks out and she says she doesn't remember what happened next, but what we must ascertain is that, of course, she picks up the knife, she goes upstairs, she pulls down covering John, and she cuts off his dick.

Kyle Risi: The next memory Lorena has is driving in her car, one hand on the steering wheel, and another holding John's severed penis, realising that she was holding a bleeding dick. Lorena freaks out, immediately rolls down the window and throws the penis out onto a grass verge.

Kyle Risi: She then speeds off to the nail salon where she worked as a manicurist hoping that her boss, Jana, will still be there. When she arrives, the door is locked and she sees a bin outside the salon where she discards the knife that she used to cut off John's dick.

Kyle Risi: She then gets back into the car and speeds off towards Jana's house. Now Jana was not just her boss, They were extremely close with Lorena looking up to her as a mother figure.

Kyle Risi: She also knows that she threw it out of the window near a 7 Eleven in front of a Paddy Cake daycare center in the early hours of a Wednesday morning.

Kyle Risi: There's a lot of men just kind of like cringing and like, clutching. Why is that how you feel? A little

Adam Cox: bit, yeah. Like I was, I was kind of grimacing through that. Uh, okay. And so it sounds like. That she has zoned out or gone some sort of trance day or I don't know like sleepwalking almost Yeah And the fact that she's just she's come round while she's holding Almost like a sausage like a hot dog in the car.

Adam Cox: She's holding that and thinking. Oh, I can't remember getting a hot dog Why is it like ketchup all over me? Looks to her left hand and then goes That's not a hot dog.

Kyle Risi: Yeah.

Adam Cox: Oh my god. It's bleeding dick. Lugs that out the window. Uh huh And then just drives to work. So why did she get, because she was going to go to work anyway.

Kyle Risi: No, she, so this was in the middle of the night, I think she just knew that she just needed to go to someone that she could confide in, or kind of like, to find comfort, like, Janet was the only person that she could think of to go to because they were so close. Uh huh.

Adam Cox: And so she discards the knife at work, or just outside work, and then finds Janet. and then just breaks down and goes I think I've just cut off my husband's penis.

Kyle Risi: But let's unpack the other thing now, the thing that you missed, because all the reporting talks about how she discarded the penis outside a 7 Eleven, but actually When I looked at this, it was closer to a paddy cake daycare centre and this happened in the early hours of the morning knowing that in just a few hours some little kid was going to come along and go, Mummy! I found a worm! I found a worm! My God! Why is that not reported on more?

Adam Cox: Did that actually happen? Was it kids that found? No. Oh god, thank

Kyle Risi: god, no. But can you imagine? That's the risk. But then, if the media was so intense on diving into the weird details of the story, that would be one thing I would absolutely. Capitalise on, like, outside a daycare centre, here, in Virginia , and, we're on the ground, and, Timmy, what did you find this morning?

Adam Cox: Do you know what I

Kyle Risi: mean? Looks like

Adam Cox: my dad.

Adam Cox: Um, Yeah, I'm not quite sure. Maybe they took some sympathy because, I don't know, maybe it sounds worse by leaving this outside of a daycare center and they were like, let's just not even go down that road.

Kyle Risi: Sure. No kids can't go. I guess it's the 90s. Yeah. And actually, what's really interesting about the story is that because it was a story about a dick, in the 90s, It was just not a word that you could use on television or in the media.

Kyle Risi: Same with vagina, like you just couldn't really use those words. You could use penis though, right? Um, not really. It was kind of like considered a highbrow. But they had to really consider like Changing the rules so they could report on it properly.

Kyle Risi: No way, because I remember

Adam Cox: in Austin Powers There's that scene whereby they don't refer to it, that rocket that's going into space which is shaped like, but they'd never say what it's shaped like, they go Johnson

Kyle Risi: They had to kind of discuss The rules, essentially, around what was allowed, what wasn't. And this case pretty much kind of spearheaded that forward.

Adam Cox: Spearheaded penis news coverage.

Kyle Risi: Are we going to have a lot of penis innuendo about this? I think so.

Adam Cox: This is serious, Kyle.

Kyle Risi: It is. We need to treat this as such.

Kyle Risi: So Lorena is freaking out in Jana's living room and Jana says, Okay, we need to go to the police. We need to tell them what happened. But we also need to tell them that he raped you. So they go to the police station, and even though they lead with saying that John raped her, the police are not interested, all they seem to care about is that a dude turned up at the emergency room, missing a penis, and now this random woman was in their station saying that she had took it

Kyle Risi: so the police are like. Well, where's his penis if you stole it? Like, and of course, she's not sure. She just remembers throwing it out the window near a 7 Eleven. So at 4. 30am, a bunch of police officers head to the location and they conduct a full blown search. They look everywhere. And eventually, Adam They find it just sitting there in the grass verge 7 Eleven and, someone, has the sense to know that they should probably put it on ice.

Kyle Risi: So someone picks up the penis, they run over to the 7 Eleven, they grab a big bite hot dog box. Oh God. They fill it with ice and they pop the penis into it and from there the police rush it to the hospital where John undergoes nine and a half hours of surgery to reattach it. And Adam. It's successful! They reattach his dick!

Adam Cox: So how long was he missing that? Because it sounds like he woke up quite suddenly or not long after. And the fact that he didn't wake up whilst it was being cut off is one question. Well, that's not

Kyle Risi: what he says.

Adam Cox: Oh. Yeah.

Kyle Risi: Okay. Do you want to hear his side of the story? What did he say? So. Let's see what John's version of the events are. So he says that he came home really late one night with his friend and they were indeed both very drunk. He says that when he got home, he and Lorena got into an argument that culminated in John Wayne asking Lorena for a divorce.

Kyle Risi: From there, the argument erupted into a lot of screaming and a lot of shouting, where he says that Lorena became psychotic and jealous, saying that if she couldn't have him, then nobody else would.

Kyle Risi: Eventually, their emotions died down, john Wayne started drifting off to sleep, when he was then stirred by Lorena climbing onto him trying to arouse him, Then he says all he remembers is a tug and a pull and then she was gone.

Kyle Risi: He then looked down and realized what had happened and immediately he put pressure on it and then went downstairs to where his friend was sleeping to ask for help getting to the emergency room.

Kyle Risi: But. Forensic experts who analysed the scene said it was very, very clear from the way that the blood had pulled on the bed and the imprint that the blood had left around his body that he didn't act with any urgency as per his statement.

Kyle Risi: And that it was actually evident that he was so drunk that he likely didn't know what had happened and just went back to sleep for a considerable amount of time.

Adam Cox: That is Shocking. I can't, yeah, I can't. Shocking. So he's, he's in a pool of blood when he wakes up then. Can you imagine? At the moment, obviously, we don't know if he's guilty of doing what she says or whatever at this stage.

Adam Cox: So if we just treated it based on the fact that a man has woken up without a penis, can you imagine that turmoil? I can't imagine,

Kyle Risi: I can't, I can't imagine it.

Adam Cox: He must first wake up thinking that you perhaps wet the bed, right?

Kyle Risi: I don't know, would you not be stinging?

Adam Cox: Yeah, that's a good point. So he must eventually have been woken up by the pain.

Kyle Risi: He just denies that he did fall back to sleep. He's saying that he immediately acted, but he didn't.

Adam Cox: Right, so, but yeah, forensics says otherwise, so it sounds like you're lying.

Adam Cox: Absolutely.

Kyle Risi: But anyway, let's go with his version of what happened, right? Just for a second. Because he's saying that he then went downstairs, uh, immediately after she'd cut off his dick, to where his mate is, who is also drunk and couldn't understand just how serious the situation was.

Kyle Risi: So he insists that before they go to the hospital that he brushes his teeth. Which again, man, like, this is your mate, your mate's just had his dick chopped off, you act, you act fast. You are like, don't you worry buddy, I'm gonna, I'm, we're gonna get that dick back on your body. True. But he was so drunk that he didn't understand. What had happened? So he starts brushing his teeth, and John Bobbitt is just standing there in the living room, apparently applying pressure to his groin probably wobbling from side to side going

Adam Cox: Friends like, I need to brush my teeth. Gum disease is a thing.

Kyle Risi: It's a,

Adam Cox: it's a big problem. Yeah, I am not leaving the house without cleaning my teeth. I'm sorry.

Kyle Risi: There might be girls there.

Adam Cox: Um, but it sounds like they're obviously going to start, uh, to drive and probably be under the influence. So he's trying to disguise his breath if he does clean his dick. Oh yeah, it

Kyle Risi: could be, it could be a good point.

Kyle Risi: Yeah, that's right.

Adam Cox: I mean, swearing and probably side to side on the road, that might be a bit of a giveaway. But no, just yeah, brush your teeth. That's fine. No one can smell the booze. Do you know what?

Kyle Risi: Let's put it like this. If you are going to the hospital drunk because your buddy's just had his dick chopped off, And you get stopped by the police?

Kyle Risi: Do you think that police officer's gonna be like, Get out the car, you're getting arrested. He's gonna be like, No, go! Go!

Adam Cox: I'll escort you! Yeah, don't they make them get out the car and then they have to walk in a single, like, or a straight line along the lines of the road? Whilst he's clutching his But that's

Kyle Risi: clearly not gonna happen, is it?

Kyle Risi: He's like, uh, okay, there's clearly something wrong. I think other men will just have an instinct for what's happened, and they'll be like, don't worry, we're all gonna band together, let's get you to hospital.

Adam Cox: Yeah, fair point.

Kyle Risi: However, they don't know that he's a rapist at this point, so they just think he's an unfortunate victim of Yeah, his dick lopped off. But I think they knew he was a rapist. I think they would probably arrest him. Oh, oh, you're going to just bleed out? Sorry. No. Oh, you're dying? Um, sorry. Yeah. Donut?

Kyle Risi: So eventually they stumble into the hospital and they go up to the lady, and they're like, My mate's dick's been chopped off, and she's like, what?

Kyle Risi: Like, I guess it's not something that you're gonna see every day, right? Hear every day.

Adam Cox: She's probably gonna roll her eyes. Oh, this again. Yeah, join the line. All these men. Holding their groin.

Kyle Risi: Oh my god. So that was also around about the same time that Lorena was turning up at the police station with a friend to tell them that she, what she thinks that she has done to her husband.

Kyle Risi: So the hospital actually ended up contacting the police. The police are then coordinating the recovery of the severed penis. Meanwhile, across the police dispatch radio waves, the media actually catch wind of the story. Because usually you have these hobbyists that are like, listening to the radio broadcast between the police.

Adam Cox: Yeah, yeah, you see that in TV shows, but I didn't know how true that actually could happen. Yeah,

Kyle Risi: that's how the Charles story leaked as well, wasn't it? The Camilla tampon kind of kabaka where they were having like a little, little romantic moment where they were talking about how he wanted to be her tampon so he could live inside her vagina.

Kyle Risi: He's our king. He's our king. I forgot about that. I think the same kind of similar thing happened there but basically these hobbyists would listen in and but so would also TV and radio stations.

Kyle Risi: They would also pretty much have access to these these bandwidths and the hope was that they would be able to land a big story by kind of listening into these radio waves. And so this became a story almost immediately.

Kyle Risi: And remember, the thing is, though, during the 1980s and the early 1990s, this is when kind of cable television was first taking off. And news was going through that transition of kind of adopting like a 24 hour a day format And since the news of course can be pretty damn boring You oh you need as much news as possible.

Kyle Risi: And also you need to learn how to start to sensationalize it

Adam Cox: Yeah, this was this sounds like just the right thing they needed

Kyle Risi: Exactly. You needed it to be more entertaining So prior to this, of course, as you know, the news was just typically limited to specific time slots like 10 p. m Or the 6 p. m news and then again in the morning, etc.

Kyle Risi: So like when they moved obviously over to the this 24 hour format like they just needed more entertaining news And this as you said was the story.

Kyle Risi: So eventually the penis makes it back to the hospital in this big bite hot dog box and John is prepped for surgery to get it reattached. Now, while all this is going on, Lorena is on the other side of the hospital getting a rape kit done. Because, of course, in her statement, she says that John had raped her.

Kyle Risi: So, the operation ends up taking nine and a half hours. And the surgical team consists of a urologist, Dr. James Sen, a plastic surgeon, Dr. David Berman, along with several other experts. Now Dr. Berman, the plastic surgeon was the leading expert in the country for mi. For microsurgery.

Adam Cox: Microsurgery. Yeah. Oh, hang on. Is this MicroPen surgery? No,

Kyle Risi: it's not for MicroPen, but that's the first thing that I thought of. So it's basically surgeries that include maybe reattaching a finger. Ah, so more digits, but. That's the last thing that John wants to kind of spout about.

Kyle Risi: It's like, yeah, I had a microsurgeon reattach my penis. Uh, just so you know, microsurgeon is for reattaching digits. I'm actually really well endowed.

Adam Cox: They did think it was actually too big for him to look after.

Kyle Risi: Are you sure? I think we should make this a bit smaller. I don't think you can manage it, John.

Kyle Risi: So like Dr. Berman, he had of course never performed a penile reattachment surgery before, but apparently the process is largely the same as reconnecting kind of a finger. It's just a couple arteries, a vein, and of course you have to reattach the urethra.

Kyle Risi: But they had all the best people in that room to reattach that dick. And what amazes me is that they managed to get all of them in that room. at such short notice. And it goes to show, if this was a woman, that had a boob chopped off, they'd be like, oh yeah, we'll just have to stitch it up.

Kyle Risi: But as soon as a man loses his dick, then every other male comes together to kind of band around him to kind of like, do you think, let's get this done.

Adam Cox: I don't know what the time is between getting to the hospital and them starting surgery, but it doesn't sound like these are your typical doctors that would just be on call just in case something happened at 3 a. m. or whatever. Well, clearly

Kyle Risi: that's what happened, right? Yeah. Because he was prepped for surgery just in a few hours. Wow. How did they orchestrate that? I

Adam Cox: guess they just had to, one of those things, maybe you just have to act fast. And maybe you are on call and they're like, you've got to come to the hospital, a man's lost his penis.

Kyle Risi: And also, like, when they were in surgery, they had no idea whether or not the penis would even function properly. So all of this was just a massive gamble. But they had to give it a try because how else was he going to assault other women? I guess

Adam Cox: that's a horrible thing to say,

Kyle Risi: but it's true. Anyway, following the operation, the police charged both Lorena and John Wayne. John is charged with rape and Lorena is charged with malicious wounding, and they both have to stand trial. And that's what a lot of people don't realize about the story is that there were actually two trials. They both had to stand trial. It wasn't just a trial for Lorena.

Kyle Risi: In November 1993 John Wayne stood trial for rape and Lorena's trial was scheduled for January of 1994, so a few months after. Now because of how sensational the early reporting of this story was, the trial was just a complete circus.

Kyle Risi: So of course you can imagine, media outside every day. People were wearing t shirts, you had the women cheering on, uh, Lorena. You had the men cheering on, obviously, John Bobbitt. It just became an absolute circus. And very quickly, like I said, they forgot that this was a domestic violence case, essentially.

Adam Cox: Like, we're obviously sort of joking about a man losing his penis just because it's so far fetched and just horrible. But actually, at the moment, we don't really know what's going on in their private lives, what's true at this stage, and yeah, it's wrong to make assumptions,

Kyle Risi: that's it, and it will take forever for us to actually get Lorena's side of the story, because they just, weren't interested really. It was also covered loads on like the morning shows, the news ran regular updates throughout the kind of daily news cycle. Uh, there were talk shows like David Letterman and SNL did countless sketches. It was just part of pretty much the entire stand up routine circuit for everyone.

Kyle Risi: Robin Williams did a skit on it. Whippy Goldberg did a skit on it. And what's crazy is that because of the way the media spun the story, John was seen as the victim and all the jokes were made at Marina's expense. She was just seen as a psychotic jealous, fem fatal rather than that victim of domestic violence, abuse, and rape.

Kyle Risi: And life was tough for her man, she was constantly hounded by the media looking for just any kind of comment. They would stalk her, they would camp out her house, they would loiter outside for literally Adam.

Kyle Risi: Weeks and weeks at a time there were one group of journalists that were so intent on trying to get anything out of her They stalked her for literally months So everywhere she went she was just hounded. She couldn't even leave her house. She wasn't even able to go to work. It got so bad that her only option was under the instruction of her lawyer was to recruit a publicist to try and kind of quell what the public was saying about her because it was just fueling more and more interest in her because of the lies that were circulating around her.

Kyle Risi: That

Adam Cox: seems so bizarre for a domestic case to get a publicist. Exactly,

Kyle Risi: But of course the second she gets a publicist, this just provides the press with even more fodder to feed off. Branding her as someone looking to capitalize on what she had done? Or that she was trying to cover something up it's one of

Adam Cox: those damned if you do, damned if you don't. Exactly.

Kyle Risi: And we see this time and time again, especially when it's a woman. Like what we saw with Lindy Chamberlain, what we saw with Amanda Knox, what we're seeing now here with Lorena Bobbitt is that If they don't act properly, then they're guilty. If they do act properly, then they're putting on a show. Do you know what I mean? It's like, oh, they cannot win.

Kyle Risi: So the fact that of course she got a publicist She was just seen as fair game by the press and anything released about her under her publicist was just Seen by the media as spin to make her look good So everything that was released about her was just scrutinized or deemed as a lie or deemed as an attempt to kind of make herself Look good, and therefore it was less credible Hmm

Kyle Risi: She did do one print interview, and that was with Vanity Fair, and this is where the world finally found out something about her. In it, she described her marriage and how it was just filled with the most horrific, unimaginable abuse.

Kyle Risi: And the world only found out during this interview that she was actually from Ecuador, that she wasn't an American. Uh, she was raised in Venezuela, she came to the U. S. on a student visa when she was just 18 years old after finishing high school.

Kyle Risi: And her graduation present was actually a one way ticket to the U. S. A. And apparently, she learned how to speak English just by watching American soap operas.

Adam Cox: I feel like I need to watch a soap opera to learn another language.

Kyle Risi: Is that really how you want to learn to speak another language? Because especially a soap opera, it's all really over the top. It's exactly how I want to learn. You're a bitch! No, you're a bitch! I'm

Adam Cox: gonna kill you. As I'm paying for my groceries at an Italian store or something.

Kyle Risi: So, of course, once she learns a bit of English, she's able to then secure a job as a manicurist and she says that she met John a couple months after arriving in the U. S. at a Marine Corps training ball because he was training to become a Marine, right? And so one thing led to another and they started dating and essentially, he was her first boyfriend ever.

Kyle Risi: So it was like, wow. Proper, like, young love, but because she was a devout catholic, they were never allowed to be kind of alone, unshaperoned at any moment, which of course meant that they were not allowed to have sex. Who was shaperoning them? That would have probably been her family members that she was staying with.

Kyle Risi: Right, got you.

Kyle Risi: But eventually, her visa was then due to expire and because John didn't want her to leave and risk her not being allowed to come back he asked her to marry her and when he proposed he did it with a shitty ring that he had found at the bottom of the training pool that he was kind of training in

Adam Cox: um so there's two ways you could look at this okay one is his shitpack And he wasn't making an effort, which, sounds likely.

Adam Cox: Or two, he did something so spontaneous that, I don't know, you could be like swimming in a pool and you find that and you go like, Oh, do you know what? Will you marry me? And you put it on. That's something that would be acceptable.

Kyle Risi: No, do you know what? The thing is though, the ring was probably worthless.

Kyle Risi: Because what a normal person would do is they would take the ring to a pawn shop, get the money for it, and then buy a brand new ring. But he clearly went to a pawn shop, realized it was worth nothing. Kept it and used it to propose to her. I reckon that's what happened.

Kyle Risi: Do you reckon? Because you would, you would sell it, right? If it was worth anything.

Adam Cox: Yeah, otherwise, yeah, okay. I don't know why I was giving him the benefit of the doubt. He's a rapist Adam! I always try and see the best in people. But I don't feel like we're gonna get that.

Kyle Risi: No, no, he's a, he is a shitbag.

Kyle Risi: So according to the Vanity Fair article, they get married and not long after everything just goes to shit. He becomes really violent and he starts raping her pretty much immediately and when his time in the Marine Corps ended, they didn't offer him a job.

Kyle Risi: So he just ended up living off of her and her manicurist job essentially at the salon. Which just wasn't enough to support them, and it became really stressful for her. So she had to resort to stealing just to pay the bills, and eventually the house gets foreclosed, but he just doesn't seem to care.

Kyle Risi: Like, they are penniless, they're almost going to be made homeless, and he just doesn't give a shit.

Adam Cox: She chose the wrong man to get with, which maybe it's one of those things he perhaps didn't reveal his true colors until too far down the line.

Kyle Risi: She pretty much attests that her life with John Wayne was pretty much a living hell from the very start, she just had no idea how to leave. And if she did leave, like, where the hell was she gonna go, right? What was she gonna do? So It was just years and years of bullshit that she has to live through and at the point that she cuts off his penis she's only 23 years old so she's really young as it is and as we know, one night, he came home, he raped her, she snapped, and this is her story as told in Vanity Fair. Up until this point, Adam, no one knew anything about her. It

Adam Cox: seems bizarre no one's tried to even understand her.

Adam Cox: The media just

Kyle Risi: weren't printing anything. About her life story. John Wayne doesn't do any press during this time, but he has some of the biggest celebrities backing him in particular Howard Stern who is a huge radio personality in the US and he becomes John's a biggest financial supporter and his trial is pretty much paid for by Howard Stern or from the deals that John signs off the back of Stern's endorsements You And during the 1990s, Howard Stern constantly made numerous derogatory statements and comments about Lorena Bobbitt on his show, mocking her.

Kyle Risi: He even questioned the allegations of abuse. He said that there's no way that John Wayne would have raped her because she's too ugly to be raped.

Adam Cox: That is, this is a media personality. And he's

Kyle Risi: massive today. Howard Stern is huge, even today. That's disgusting. It's awful. Over that year, a narrative emerged that Lorena is a lunatic and John is just a loving, unassuming man who wanted to take care of her.

Kyle Risi: They say that because he went out for a few drinks with his buddies, she was just overcome with jealousy and couldn't handle it, so she snuck in while he was asleep and cut off his dick. So he was completely the victim and she was branded as a complete lunatic.

Adam Cox: Yeah, at the moment, he hasn't really lost out on anything in the sense that he went through some trauma, but he's had his penis reattached and now he's got all this fame and backing from celebrities.

Adam Cox: Yeah, and

Kyle Risi: her life is essentially ruined.

Adam Cox: Yeah.

Kyle Risi: And what's crazy is that for a while there was a real, real unconscious fear amongst men that women might start cutting off men's penises when they least expected it. But here's the thing, men finally understood how women have felt walking home alone for centuries.

Kyle Risi: Whoopi Goldberg captures this brilliantly in her standup skit, saying that Lorena Bobbitt made men realise what it feels like to be a woman. All. the time, constantly feeling that level of fear and kind of danger. So while these men are kind of worried that women are going to go around and kind of chop off their knobs, Well, that's how women feel about constantly fearing that they're going to get attacked just walking home at night. It's the same thing.

Adam Cox: Did, um, sales of like chastity belts go up? Oh my god, you wait. Really? You

Kyle Risi: wait!

Adam Cox: Okay.

Kyle Risi: So, Lorena did have some supporters, particularly from obviously feminist groups, who said that she only did what a lot of women have thought about doing for hundreds of years, and that she stood up for herself after being constantly raped and abused for like six years. Men didn't like it. They didn't like feeling that sense of vulnerability and fear. Not knowing when, if they'd be attacked at any moment.

Adam Cox: Poor men. This is such a rare instance. Of course. They really think that all housewives are going to be like putting a knife in their purse now.

Kyle Risi: Well, I mean, following these big kind of profile cases, there's often Copycats. Yeah, so I guess that's what men are in fear of. Yes, it's rare, but It could still happen. Just don't be a shitbag.

Adam Cox: That's the rule.

Kyle Risi: I think that's a rule that

Adam Cox: John Wayne should have adopted, because this wouldn't have happened then.

Adam Cox: Yeah, if you're not a shitbag, then chances are you're probably not going to get attacked by someone.

Kyle Risi: So men didn't like it. They didn't like feeling that sense of vulnerability and fear, not knowing if they would just be attacked randomly. But as we said earlier on, like if you're not going out raping women, then you wouldn't need to worry about getting your penis chopped off. But even those who believe that he raped her said that that wasn't really justification for what she did.

Kyle Risi: I don't know.

Adam Cox: Well, as I say, two wrongs don't necessarily equal a right. So, but if she had just been attacked at that point, and maybe that was like the hundredth time or whatever it was that she's faced this kind of trauma, then why? I don't know. She wasn't obviously in sound mind potentially and thinking rationally.

Adam Cox: Sure.

Adam Cox: We don't know how we would all behave in a certain situation under that kind of pressure. We all think we'd go, Oh, I wouldn't do that. I'll take the high ground. I'll just go to the police. But she could have done that before, but she didn't feel like she could for whatever reason. And it just got to a point where it built up too much. So no, she shouldn't have done that. But equally, I don't know, she, I don't blame her for, acting out in a way when she perhaps didn't know what she was doing.

Kyle Risi: I see it as a form of self defense, why would you not have the right? To protect herself in any way that you deem appropriate. Yeah. He

Adam Cox: raped her! So, like And if that happened that evening, if it was, if it was something like, um, I don't know, maybe he did it a week ago, I'm not saying that's better, but then that's premeditated, I'm gonna do this.

Adam Cox: Yeah, that's true. To get one back. That's not necessarily right. But if it had just happened, and she's in that kind of state, then I feel like there is some sympathy there.

Kyle Risi: Yeah, don't go around raping women and you won't have anything to worry about.

Kyle Risi: So his trial for rape takes place in November 1993 over the course of two days. Now due to Virginia's law on Marital rape, he can't actually be tried for rape because they are essentially married So his charges are downgraded to marital sexual assault. But even though those charges are downgraded to marital sexual assault, they still find him not guilty

Adam Cox: I wonder what his team must have done to kind of get him off the hook because you would think that there must have been enough evidence For the jury to sympathize or the media storm just presented him in the positive light that maybe that swayed it possibly

Kyle Risi: like the media can have such a major impact on the outcome of a trial And I wonder if that was what was happening here So it's just disgusting and all his legal fees are paid for by all of his adoring fans including, of course, as I said, Howard Stern.

Kyle Risi: What is worse is that the state prosecutor on his trial and the judge who tried the case are going to be the same people who will be trying her for cutting off his penis.

Adam Cox: That doesn't feel like fair whatsoever.

Adam Cox: No,

Kyle Risi: So they've just found him not guilty and now they're going to go and trial her for cutting off his penis

Adam Cox: Well, you're gonna go into that thinking well, she's guilty. I don't know why we're bothering with this Yeah, that's crazy.

Adam Cox: Usually, what is it like if you're a policeman, you can't work on that case, isn't it? That's like a general rule. Yeah. So anything, if you're too close to something, you shouldn't be involved.

Kyle Risi: Especially if you've presided over the other case and you've heard all the evidence and stuff and they get found not guilty. And knowing that the next trial completely conflicts with

Adam Cox: the next one.

Adam Cox: This one. Yeah. So I'm guessing it's not a spoiler to say it doesn't go away.

Kyle Risi: Well, Lorena's trial is set for after Christmas in January 1994. Now unlike John's legal fees, Lorena has to front her own costs which she pays for from the help of a friend the salon owner and obviously she gets a little bit of money from Vanity Fair. At one point, Playboy, however, they did offer her a million dollars to pose, but of course, she refuses because, of course, good Catholic girl. Good for her.

Kyle Risi: And the thing is that once he was found not guilty of raping her, it was going to make her trial very difficult because her case was based on the claim that she acted in self defense after he raped her. And if it's the same judge and the prosecutor who just finished a trial where he was found not guilty how is she going to explain what she did and why she did it .

Kyle Risi: So her trial is televised because of course it's one of the biggest stories in the world at the time and just to illustrate how big This trial was at the same time, there was a major arms deal being signed between the Clinton administration and another country and the news would take breaks to cover obviously the other story, but because the only thing anyone cared about was, of course, the penis trial.

Kyle Risi: CNN just kept getting loads and loads of complaints, so much so that they had to just go back to the trial before the arms deal was even complete. Like, this is some serious big political news, and the only thing anyone cares about is dick news.

Adam Cox: Well, do you know what? This always happens, isn't it?

Adam Cox: Like, there's something that comes up in the story or the press that's just way more entertaining than actual politics or whatever it is.

Kyle Risi: I guess so. So on the stand, Lorena talks extensively about her abuse. And when you watch clips of her talking, which of course we'll include in the show notes and also on our Facebook page, there's just no doubt that she's telling the truth. And she's visibly traumatized by everything that he had done to her.

Kyle Risi: So because of the fact that John Wayne was found not guilty, there is a worry that the jury just are not going to believe her. So, the defense strategy has to kind of pivot, and they try to plead temporary insanity. And remarkably Adam, this works because temporary insanity hardly ever works the stats are like less than 1 percent of people who claim temporary insanity in crimes end up getting acquitted.

Kyle Risi: So the fact that the jury believed her, I think, is pretty vindicating.

Adam Cox: So it seems like a risky strategy to Uh, go down this route of temporary insanity, knowing that it doesn't normally work, but they think this is, because she's pleading her case, and it is believable, they think maybe this might just swing it, because they can't, I guess, uh.

Adam Cox: They can't change the outcome of the previous, um, Trial. So from this, they're saying, well, there's justification why she did what she did, and this is it.

Kyle Risi: And it works. She's one of the very few people that get found not guilty because of it. But because, of course, she has pleaded , temporary insanity, She has to spend 45 days in a mental institution just for evaluation, but they do release her early, like declaring like nothing's wrong with her, like we've checked her out, she's fine, she's not a threat to herself or anyone else.

Adam Cox: She ain't gonna cut off any more penises. Yeah,

Kyle Risi: it was definitely just temporary. So after she is released she retreats into privacy. She doesn't do any interviews or deals. She doesn't accept any money She just goes back to being a manicurist and she tries to rebuild her life John Wayne on the other hand Well, that's a whole different story.

Kyle Risi: He dives headfirst into trying to be famous. It's like every reality TV star who gets kicked off their show, like they try to do just everything that they possibly can to try and keep the fame ball rolling He's milking his 15 minutes. Exactly. That's exactly what he's doing.

Kyle Risi: So the first thing that he does is he goes on a 40 city tour, going on every TV and radio show doing as many interviews as he possibly can.

Kyle Risi: He then starts a band called Severed Parts. Oh god. Selling whatever merchandise he possibly can. including a patented penis protector.

Adam Cox: Um, he came up with this or?

Kyle Risi: I still can't work out exactly what this is. And how it's going to protect. And how it's going to work. But the packaging, Adam, is just brilliant. I, I did realise, eventually, after scrutinising the packaging, that, oh, it's a joke product. Oh, okay.

Adam Cox: This is, this is flimsy. This is gonna do nothing.

Kyle Risi: So, let me show you a picture of it,

Adam Cox: the Bobbit penis protector. Wow, it is named after him. Yeah. For a safe night's sleep.

Kyle Risi: That's horrendous. So, the thing is,

Kyle Risi: The tagline is, as you said, for a safe night's sleep, it's, of course, signed and endorsed by John Wayne Bobbitt.

Kyle Risi: Its highlights state that the device conforms to the penal code in all states. Okay. One size fits all, apparently, and is brought to you by Climax Corporations for your piece of meat. Thanks.

Adam Cox: And what actually is it? Like, what's actually made of it? I

Kyle Risi: don't know, that's the thing, Adam. It like, it just looks like a surgical rubber glove.

Kyle Risi: I don't get it. It's almost like a scrunched up rubber tube. It's not anything.

Adam Cox: Is it like, you know, you get those like willy warmers, um, which are always, they're like, Too small and you're supposed to like use them, but they're joke president presents. Yeah So I think so this just the equivalent of that I guess

Kyle Risi: I think so.

Kyle Risi: I don't think it's anything I think it's just like a memorabilia product that doesn't do anything it's just a surgical glove, on the box there is just a, a sketch of this man just casually laying in bed nonchalantly with a woman sneaking into the bed with a big giant sword.

Kyle Risi: Like what's she going to do with that?

Adam Cox: I don't think that's going to protect him from a sword.

Kyle Risi: You need some chain mail.

Kyle Risi: So here are the reasons why you need this.

Kyle Risi: Because revenge can be painful. Because one circumcision is enough. Right. Because the bigger you are, the more you have to lose.

Adam Cox: Jeez, this, this feels like this belongs in like, mankind or men kind world. Exactly, this is

Kyle Risi: when I realised that actually, ah, this is a joke.

Adam Cox: Yeah.

Kyle Risi: There's also a section titled, Who needs the Bobbit penis protector?

Adam Cox: I mean, do you get this on Father's Day? I don't, I don't know when you would buy this.

Kyle Risi: Well, I'm going to tell you, if you tick any of these boxes, then you need the penis protector. So anyone who is a bad liar, anyone who is a bad lover,

Kyle Risi: anyone who has something to hide, Anyone who has a lover with oh my fuck, this one's awful. Anyone who has a lover who has a bad sense of humor. Like, you raped her, you piece of shit. That's

Adam Cox: horrendous. That's awful. And also, if you were gifted this, you'd be like, uh oh, should I be wearing this? Yeah,

Kyle Risi: should I?

Kyle Risi: And then who's gifting it

Adam Cox: to you? Like, your girlfriend's gifting this. I think you need this, just in case. Do Anyone who's got any common sense, just throw this thing away.

Kyle Risi: Anyway, So he also starts selling autographed butcher knives, he sells t shirts with slogans on it like John Bobbitt, a cut above the rest, he's just capitalizing on everything and it's really just quite grotesque.

Adam Cox: Yeah. Please tell me he, I don't know, he fades into obscurity or he does get his comeuppance.

Kyle Risi: Well, his old mate Howard Stern steps in to help him out at a New Year's Eve telethon to try and raise money. On the show they have this giant penis o meter that just slowly rises as the donations flood in and they raise over 200, 000. So he gets quite a bit of money from all of this which obviously helps pay his legal fees Sets him up after the court case and things like that But then the thing is that the money starts to run out and John Wayne Bobbitt stars in two porn films. He's now a porn star. He is a porn star.

Kyle Risi: The first one is called John Wayne Bobbitt Uncut. Okay. Which is very much the opposite.

Kyle Risi: Okay. It's absolutely cut . And the other one is, uh, Franken penis. Franken Penis . Oh my God. I wish I could say that the cover of Franken penis was as imaginative as it sounds, but sadly it's just quite lame. It's just him holding another woman dressing in a white bikini. I want him to have a bolt through it.

Kyle Risi: That's what I thought! Hahaha That's the first thing I thought, is will it be some kind of weird cosplay thing? But no,

Adam Cox: it's just And there's like lightning in the background and it makes that weird kind of grumbly sound, isn't that what Frankenstein does? Hahaha please tell me you haven't seen this thing.

Kyle Risi: I've seen both. I've seen the severed dick and I've seen the dick in the pornos and I can tell you they do a really good job at putting it back together.

Adam Cox: Oh god. Do you want to see it? I don't think I want to see it. Okay, maybe just a little bit.

Kyle Risi: Okay, so this is the penis that they found on the side of the road. This is currently on a surgical kind of tray in the hospital. Kidney dish type thing.

Adam Cox: This is it. Uh, what is it? Oh, I don't know what that is. Ew. Oh God. That's gross. So it wasn't like the whole thing.

Kyle Risi: Yeah, exactly. I thought it would be much bigger.

Kyle Risi: It's rank, isn't it? And it looks like a dick. But it's very small. It's tiny.

Adam Cox: I mean, it's been cut up and it's shriveled up a bit. But either way, I don't think that's like, it doesn't look like there's the full amount. No. Even still, that's gross.

Kyle Risi: And here is a picture of it being sewn on.

Adam Cox: Uh, oh god, no, I don't want to see that either. That's gross, isn't it?

Kyle Risi: And then that is his dick in the porno.

Adam Cox: Well, it looks back to normal.

Kyle Risi: Yeah, they've done a really bloody good job.

Adam Cox: But hang on, I feel a little bit strange. We're talking about a rapist here.

Kyle Risi: That is true.

Adam Cox: So, I want him to like, please tell me he, so he doesn't get his comeuppance?

Adam Cox: No, he does. He does? Good. Yes,

Kyle Risi: you're going to find out in just a second. Bought it. There was a guy who worked at a brothel and he said that there were a bunch of girls that saw his dick up close And they said that it looked like a dented red bull can

Adam Cox: that's it Okay. All right. Fine. Yeah

Kyle Risi: And apparently since obviously all this kicked off He's had cosmetic surgery to make his dick bigger and I think this is great Pretty much more because he was now a porn star. Not just a porn star that earned the role due to his size of the penis, but more for how freaky it looked.

Kyle Risi: And of course compared to the other actors, he just didn't match up in terms of size. So of course he felt the pressure to get a penis enlargement. But apparently in 2016, he had surgery to reverse it because he didn't like how it felt. How do you reverse a penis enlargement? Uh, well it depends on how it's enlarged,

Adam Cox: doesn't

Kyle Risi: it?

Kyle Risi: So what they did, this is gonna be gross for some of our freaks out there, so you have like a good two or three inches of penis inside your body, so they cut the ligaments to that and that lets the penis or the shaft kind of come down a bit more giving you a couple more inches, but the problem with that is that your penis no longer Up straight.

Kyle Risi: Erect. It's still erect, but it kind of points down. So how do you have that reversed?

Adam Cox: Do you then cut the bit back and then stitch that together so it's then tight? Oh, maybe,

Kyle Risi: yeah. I guess

Adam Cox: you just stitch it back together. I don't know. I don't think you should just mess around with these things.

Adam Cox: No,

Kyle Risi: you shouldn't. Don't mess around with penises. Like,

Adam Cox: he's, he's already had one knife to it. And

Kyle Risi: he went under, he had a lect of surgery to go under it again. Mm. Oh,

Kyle Risi: what I really love about the story is that in the documentary, which actually is directed by Jordan Peele Do you know the guy who did Get Out? The film Get Out?

Adam Cox: It's directed by him, aren't you? Yeah.

Kyle Risi: So yeah, the documentary is called Lorena and they do a really great job of telling the story. But in the documentary, what I really loved is that they interview one of the dispatchers who received one of the original calls that, of course, there was a woman that had chopped off her husband's dick and that they were looking for it.

Kyle Risi: And they said that they because they knew that they couldn't really say anything over the radio because the media were listening in on all the radio calls, looking for stories.

Kyle Risi: So they would just be really careful to not say things like severed penis. And they would like kind of swap things out for like, Oh, we need to get it to the hospital quickly to preserve the man's dignity and things like that. So coded language, rather than saying the word dick. And that's the thing, as we said earlier on, there was a time in the media where you couldn't really say words like vagina or penis.

Kyle Risi: But after this story broke, they realized that they need to start changing the rules so that they could effectively report on stories like this. So most days the word penis was printed in the tabloids. I guess

Adam Cox: people were just like, so like, well it's penis every day. Yeah. People didn't, I don't know, they got used to it?

Adam Cox: They just got desensitized, it just became the norm I guess. What were they using before? Like, winkies?

Kyle Risi: I don't know, like willies, knobs, I don't know. I can't imagine using Genitalia? Even though that sounds Ah, probably genitalia. Just a general word for both. It's privates. I just can't imagine that. I'm not even sure if that's even true.

Kyle Risi: Kids must have found it amusing though. Yeah. They said penis. Finally all of these money, but finally all of John Wayne Bobbitt's money runs out and he just ends up becoming a bouncer at a brothel. Eventually he gets fired for being drunk and being really rough with the girls and since then he has been married several times and within each one of those relationships has at some stage been convicted of domestic battery stalking or harassing or even rape. One of his wives said he handcuffed her to the bed and he raped her for four days, which he ends up spending time in jail for.

Adam Cox: Good. Please tell me he's still in jail, because he feels like you should be locked up, he's not safe around people.

Kyle Risi: He only spends a year in jail.

Kyle Risi: So he now lives on disability after breaking his neck in a car accident in 2014. But get this, to pass the time, he actually became a Fenhead and he's actually out searching for Forest Fen's buried treasure somewhere in the Rocky Mountains. Which is obviously what we covered in episode 15 back in July of 2023.

Adam Cox: That's a weird tie in. You almost think that you're trying to plug a previous episode there.

Adam Cox: It's true though, he actually did it. We didn't even have to force that one in this week.

Kyle Risi: He did say in an interview that when he was asked about obviously how he was progressing with his search that he believed wholeheartedly that he knew where the treasure was and that he believed that when he finds it he'll be invited to the White House to meet President Trump, who will then express his thanks and support to him.

Kyle Risi: But like, he's just such a loser. He's just all really fame hungry.

Adam Cox: Yeah, I really don't like this guy.

Kyle Risi: No. As for Lorena, she went back to college, she met a new guy, they've been married for almost 20 years now, and together they have a young daughter. And she spends, and what's really lovely is that she spends most of her time now working for a domestic violence non profit that she'd actually set up, it's called the Lorena Gallo Foundation.

Kyle Risi: Which, as you can probably guess, helps women escaping domestic violence relationships. What is gross though, is that even after all these years, John Wayne Bobbitt still tries to contact her. He sends her Valentine's Day cards every year. And he keeps reminding her that if she apologizes, he will take her back.

Kyle Risi: I'm like, bitch, she's not, she's not interested.

Adam Cox: Yeah, this

Kyle Risi: is rank

Adam Cox: like good for her for just like getting on with her life and you know doing what she's done Mmm, you can like clearly see who's telling the truth in all this. That's

Kyle Risi: it Yeah, and Adam that is the story of Lorena Bobbitt and John Wayne Bobbitt's severed penis.

Adam Cox: Yeah What are your thoughts? Franken penis.

Kyle Risi: Franken penis.

Adam Cox: I don't know. I feel if anything I feel a little nauseous After everything we've talked about

Kyle Risi: Especially seeing that pork lard on

Adam Cox: yeah,

Kyle Risi: I can't believe how small it was you know, I thought like it would have been cut more at the base rather than That's clearly cut through the middle, right?

Kyle Risi: I think so, yeah. And it was small, I guess because all the blood's been lost out of it.

Adam Cox: I mean, I don't know if we should like, you shouldn't assume, I don't know. Yeah, it's not in its best state, but either way, this guy is a dick. He's had all this fame and notoriety. When he's a rapist, he's attacked multiple women since then.

Adam Cox: And she became the villain as well, that's just tragic. So, it's actually pretty sick, and I think, okay, I feel better about laughing at his incident.

Kyle Risi: Yeah, that's true, exactly, and we should laugh because he's a monster. And it's just such a shame that he was never fully held accountable for what he did to her.

Kyle Risi: And even when he was Found guilty of rape. He only served one year in jail. What a piece of shit. Yeah.

Adam Cox: That was a, a, I want to say a good story. It is a good story. It's an odd story in terms of, I just didn't know where it was heading. It definitely intrigued me and it was fascinating. I'm glad you enjoyed it. Um, yeah, well done.

Kyle Risi: Shall we run the outro?

Adam Cox: Let's do it.

Kyle Risi: And so that's it for another episode of the Compendium Podcast. If you enjoyed today's episode, please follow us on your favorite podcasting app. It really helps us when you do. Next week's episode is now available seven days early on our free access Patreon.

Kyle Risi: For more content, subscribe to our Certified Freaks tier for access to our entire backlog, exclusive posts and sneak peeks. We'd love you to come and join and have a chat. We release episodes

Kyle Risi: every Tuesday and until then, remember, sometimes cutting ties just isn't enough.

Kyle Risi: See you next time.