The Unforgettable Ms. McKinney

THE UNFORGETTABLE MS. McKINNEY

© 2011 by Hugh Stevens

            To borrow a phrase from the Reader’s Digest, Joyce McKinney is “one of the most unforgettable characters I ever met,” but I had not thought about her in years until a couple of months ago, when I read The New York Times’ review of “Tabloid,” a new documentary film about her by Errol Morris.

If you have been fortunate enough to have had Ms. McKinney escape your notice until now, here’s a summary of her background by Washington Post writer Michael O’Sullivan:

Though McKinney is less than a household name in the United States, in 1977 the former beauty queen from small-town North Carolina made headlines in England when reports surfaced that she had abducted a 19-year-old Mormon missionary in London named Kirk Anderson, allegedly holing up with him in a remote cottage for several days of nearly nonstop sex. Handcuffs may or may not have been involved. And Anderson — with whom McKinney apparently shared a romantic history of some kind back in Utah — may or may not have been a willing participant. Once the British tabloids got hold of the story, it turned into a lurid tale of the “manacled Mormon,” as headlines at the time referred to Anderson.

            To me, Morris’ choice of Ms. McKinney as a documentary subject is unfathomable --especially now that I have seen a DVD version of “Tabloid”-- but many critics, including the legendary Roger Ebert and The New Yorker’s David Denby, have given the film high marks (though Denby did label it “strange”).   Ms. McKinney herself has stimulated interest in the film – and numerous postings on You Tube® -- by showing up at festival screenings and loudly denouncing both Morris and his movie.

            Although Morris’ film will tell most viewers much more about Ms. McKinney than they probably care to know, it does not mention the libel suit that she filed against The Avery Journal in the late 1980s.   Together with Kelly Johnson, a Newland attorney, I defended the suit, which is how I came to meet the eccentric, self-absorbed woman whom Morris inexplicably has rescued from the obscurity to which she is so richly entitled.

            Ms. McKinney’s lawsuit against her hometown’s weekly newspaper and its editor, Bertie Cantrell, arose out of an altercation in August, 1986 between her and her neighbor, Judy Benfield, over the incessant barking of Ms. Benfield’s hound dogs.   After exchanging threats and insults, the two women swore out criminal warrants charging each other with “communicating threats.”   The Journal’s first story about their dispute included the following paragraphs:

Miss McKinney made international headlines several years ago for allegedly kidnapping and raping a Mormon missionary in London, England.  Miss McKinney fled Europe before the trial was over and it still listed in INTERPOL although authorities in England have made no attempt to extradite her.

[Mrs. Benfield’s] warrant had not been served at press time as the Avery County Sheriff’s Department has been unable to locate Miss McKinney.

The Journal’s story the following week included these statements:

Sheriff Clinton Phillips said he notified both women to come to the jail and be served, as is often done in misdemeanor cases against county residents.  Judy Benfield came to the jail for her warrant to be served against her and signed a written promise pending court action.  Joy McKinney never came in to have the warrant served and make bond and has apparently left the county in an attempt to avoid arrest.

            A few weeks after the articles appeared Ms. McKinney sued the Journal, Ms. Cantrell and Mrs. Benfield for libel.   She voluntarily dismissed that suit in September, 1987.   In January 1988 she filed a similar suit in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of North Carolina, which swiftly dismissed it on jurisdictional grounds.   Undaunted, she re-instituted her state court action in July, 1988. 

            My first face-to-face encounter with Ms. McKinney was at her deposition, where she turned out to be one of the most combative, argumentative witnesses I have encountered in more than 40 years of law practice.  She was feisty, fidgety and frustrating.  She could have given Bill Clinton lessons in hair-splitting.   Two of her favorite techniques for evading or finessing a question were to pretend that she didn’t understand it, or to respond to it with a question of her own.  Another was to launch into a soliloquy about how she was a victim of “Mormon lies” or how Ms. Cantrell had conspired with Ms. Benfield to ruin her reputation. 

            We based the Journal’s opposition to Ms. McKinney’s libel suit on the “wire service” defense, a legal doctrine which provides that a writer is entitled to rely on and repeat factual statements published by reputable news organizations such as the Associated Press so long as he or she has no reason to believe that the statements are untrue.   At the time, the defense had not been recognized in any North Carolina case, but Ms. Cantrell’s files were replete with stories about Ms. McKinney’s U. K. escapades clipped from The Charlotte Observer and other newspapers from around the country.   When we confronted Ms. McKinney with the clippings she didn’t deny that the stories had been published, but dismissed their contents as lies planted by the Mormons to discredit her. 

We also asked Ms. McKinney about stories published in two British tabloid papers, The Daily Express and The Daily Mirror, including an article in the latter that was illustrated by a nude photo of her sitting on a horse (which also was bare-back).   Ms. McKinney testified that “to the best of my memory” she had never posed for such a photograph.  She theorized that the photo was created either by superimposing her face on another woman’s body or by stealing and “retouching” an actual photo of her in which she had been clothed.

            The Avery County sheriff provided us with an affidavit confirming the Journal’s statements that Ms. McKinney was still listed in INTERPOL and had avoided his attempts to serve her with Ms. Benfield’s warrant.

            Armed with Ms. McKinney’s deposition transcript and the sheriff’s affidavit, we moved for summary judgment on behalf of the newspaper.  Judge Robert W. Kirby, a seasoned and phlegmatic superior court judge from Gaston County, heard arguments on our motion in Newland in October, 1988.    Terms of civil superior court didn’t happen very often in Avery County in 1988 (they still don’t), so the courtroom was packed with parties, witnesses and potential jurors.  The jury box was occupied by out-of-town lawyers who had come to argue other cases.  One of them was John Edwards, who was then an associate in a Raleigh law firm and whose own tabloid notoriety lay far in the future.

            As Ms. McKinney’s lawyer and I made our presentations to Judge Kirby,  she grew more and more agitated.  She began to squirm in her chair, and both her facial expressions and her body language conveyed her rising annoyance.  Finally she began interjecting increasingly loud vocal comments, saying “Your Honor, I have to live here!” and (referring to me) “I’m tired of hearing him lie over there!” and “I just can’t stand these lies anymore!”    When she refused the admonitions of both Judge Kirby and her own lawyer to sit down and be quiet, the judge suggested that she go outside, saying “it’s not necessary for her to be here.”  Her father, who was among the startled spectators, came up out of the audience and led her up the aisle to the back of the courtroom.  As the door closed behind her she was still protesting.

            Judge Kirby granted our motion for summary judgment.  Ms. McKinney appealed.  In July, 1990 the North Carolina Court of Appeals affirmed Judge Kirby’s ruling.   The court’s opinion recognized the “wire service” defense, saying that most of the information at issue

 . . . was taken from wire service stories published in such newspapers as The Charlotte Observer, The Winston-Salem Journal, The Asheville Citizen, The Greensboro Daily News, and The News and Observer. One of these articles was an Associated Press dispatch published in the Charlotte Observer on 24 November 1977 which reported the sworn courtroom testimony of Kirk Anderson, the Mormon missionary plaintiff was charged in England with kidnapping. The graphic testimony charges that plaintiff and an accomplice abducted Anderson and chained him to a bed, at which time, plaintiff performed oral sex upon him and, having stimulated him against his will, proceeded to have sexual intercourse with Anderson against his will.

Defendant Cantrell relied on reputable wire services and daily newspapers in writing the first part of her summary quoted above. The articles in the Avery Journal also were substantially in accord with the contents of the stories relied upon. As a matter of law, we do not think that Cantrell’s reliance on the articles could constitute negligence on her part. . . . There was nothing inconsistent or improbable in the articles upon which Cantrell relied which should have prompted her to investigate the reliability of the stories. This is a case in which application of what has been termed the “wire service” defense in other jurisdictions is appropriate. The sources relied upon by defendant Cantrell are known for their accuracy and are regularly relied upon by local newspapers without independent verification.

            The court also ruled that Ms. Cantrell was justified in relying on the sheriff as the source of information about Ms. McKinney’s being listed in INTERPOL and as to the status of the warrant sworn out against her by Ms. Benfield.  “In fact,” the court said, “consulting a law enforcement agency may have been the only avenue for obtaining this information.”

            As far as I was concerned, the Court of Appeals’ opinion closed the book on Joyce McKinney, but the release of “Tabloid” re-opened it.  The movie has not reached any North Carolina theaters yet, and it’s not up to me to tell you whether to go see it when it does.  All I will say is that for me it proved something that I have long suspected: that to Joyce McKinney, embarrassing publicity is infinitely preferable to no publicity at all.

Saturday Mornings at the Town Theater

This photo by Don Bolden, which must have been taken just about the year we moved to Burlington, shows the Town Theater’s enticing “It’s COOL Inside” banner. The building on the next corner is the old City Hall, which has been demolished. In the distance is Front Street Methodist Church.

My family moved to Burlington from Galax, Virginia in 1954. We were very familiar with Burlington because my mother’s family had moved there from Caswell County during the Depression and my parents had met there. My father, who was a native of Randolph County, was an office manager for Burlington Mills -- his only employer from the time he graduated from high school in 1930 until he retired 47 years later – which had transferred him to Galax in the late 1930s. He quickly decided that Galax was no place for a bachelor.

After my parents were married in the First Baptist Church in Burlington just before Christmas, 1939, they set up housekeeping in Galax. At first they lived in a series of basement and garage apartments, all of which my mother would later describe as very Spartan. By the time my mother was pregnant with me in 1944, however, they were living in a house rented from a couple named Moore with whom they had become friends. Mr. Moore, who also worked for Burlington Mills, had been drafted and his wife had gone back to her hometown in another state to wait out the duration of the war, so they turned their house over to my parents. Given the acute shortage of housing in Galax during World War II this was a great stroke of luck. Because Galax had no hospital, my father sent my mother back to Burlington to await my arrival, which is why I am “a Tar Heel born” rather than a native Virginian. I was born at the old Alamance Memorial Hospital on Rainey Street on August 29, 1944, but spent my first ten years in Galax.

My mother’s parents, both of her brothers, and one of her sisters lived in or near Burlington, so we made regular visits when I was a youngster. I sometimes spent a week or two in the summer visiting with my first cousin Lynn Smith, whose family lived on St. John Street a few doors from my grandparents.[1] Consequently, when my parents moved back to the city in the spring of 1954 I came to a place that was not completely strange to me. My parents rented a little house at 318 Highland Avenue where we were to live while they built a new house across town.

One thing that I expected I would not like about Burlington was the summer heat, which I had experienced during my visits. Galax sits at about 2500 feet above sea level, in a valley of the Blue Ridge Mountains. Although it certainly experienced hot summer days, they were relatively few and infrequent, and the nights generally were cool and pleasant. Burlington seemed sultry by comparison. Whereas I usually slept under a light blanket at home, I had vivid memories of sleeping, or trying to sleep, at my cousin’s house while lying on top of the bed clothes in my underwear with an oscillating electric fan blowing on my sweaty body. My expectations and fears were borne out soon after we moved; in June of 1954 the thermometer hit 100 degrees several days in a row. My mother repeatedly said of our little rental house, “This place is like an oven.” (Actually, “sauna” would have been a better metaphor, but at that point in our lives none of us had ever heard of such a thing.)

In those days almost no homes, and few businesses, had air conditioning. May Memorial Library, which did, quickly became one of my favorite places, and would have even had I not been a voracious reader. Like most major churches, First Baptist, which we attended, was air conditioned, as was Sellars’ department store and Burlington’s two movie theaters – the Paramount and the Town. The Paramount was the classier of the two, but the Town, on Front Street, was where Lynn, our neighborhood friends and I went on Saturday mornings to cool off and enjoy the weekly “kiddie show,” which usually included several cartoons, a western (Lash LaRue, the “King of the Bullwhip,” was a favorite), a comedy featuring Abbott and Costello or Huntz Hall and the Bowery Boys, and one or two serials, each episode of which had a cliffhanger ending.

Admission to the kiddie show was nine cents. Our mothers would give each of us a quarter, which would allow us to buy a box of popcorn for a dime and a Coke or a candy bar, which were a nickel each. In retrospect, our parents must have considered it astonishingly cheap and effective babysitting.

In early afternoon we would emerge blinking into the heat and head straight for Zack’s, a hot dog stand steps from the theater. Zack’s, the official name of which was the Alamance Hot Wiener Lunch, is still in existence. Having been run by the Touloupas family since 1928, it was and is a classic example of the Greek-owned hot dog stands and short-order restaurants that you could find in any North Carolina town of any size in the 1950s. Several, including Dick’s Hot Dogs in Wilson and the Roast Grill in Raleigh, are still in operation. (You can read a history of Zack’s, and see historic photographs, here: http://www.zackshotdogs.com/portal/History.aspx .)

What we went to Zack’s for in 1954 are what you go there for today: traditional Southern style hot dogs featuring a grilled wiener in a steamed bun topped with mustard, chili and either slaw or onions (or both). If Lynn and I were together, as we usually were, one of us would have a dollar for our lunch. The hot dogs were 15 cents each, so we would order six. The ritual involved in dispensing them was endlessly fascinating. The counter man, who in those days usually was John Touloupas, would pull six warm buns from the steamer, put a grilled hot dog in each, and line them up from on his left arm from hand to elbow. Mustard was swiftly applied with a wooden stick and chili with a wooden spoon, followed by your choice of slaw and/or onions. Then, in a feat of legerdemain at which I still marvel, he would deftly remove each “dog” from his arm and, using only his right hand, wrap it in onionskin paper and put it into a paper bag.

We paid and left the store, each carrying a bag (or, to use our terminology, a “paper sack”) containing three extraordinarily odorous and greasy hot dogs. Our destination was a little grocery and service station that our grandfather, W. L. Smith, operated on the corner of Holt and North Main streets; our goal was to get there before the grease from the hot dogs ate the bottoms out of the paper sacks.

Our “Paw-Paw,” who was known as “Smitty” to his friends and patrons like Paul “Hardrock” Simpson, Burlington’s legendary “running postman,” had been a merchant his entire adult life. My mother said he kept his little corner store primarily “to have something to do” after my grandmother died in 1950. His store had a single Sinclair gas pump, the access to which had been created by “cutting off the corner” of the building’s first floor to create a triangular overhang. Patrons drove their cars into the space from one street and exited into the other. As a consequence of this arrangement, the tiny store itself also was triangular. Its interior was dominated by a glass-fronted case displaying “Mary Janes,” “Bit O’ Honeys,” “Bulls Eyes,” “Fireballs” and other kinds of penny candy. The case also held “Tootsie Rolls,” “Baby Ruths” and many other kinds of candy bars, as well as chewing gum, “Bazooka” bubblegum, and candy cigarettes (which our parents forbade us to buy). In summer there was a box of bubblegum pieces, each of which was enclosed in a wrapper that also contained a baseball player’s card. The store also offered an eclectic array of useful everyday items ranging from cigarettes and matches to bread and Vienna Sausage.

Outside the store, under the overhang, were an ice cream box and two large “chill boxes,” or refrigerated chests, of soft drinks – one red, for the drinks delivered by the Coca-Cola route man, and the other blue, for Pepsi products. Lifting the four lids on the ice cream box revealed an array of frozen treasures. Beneath one were popsicles in various colors and flavors and other concoctions on wooded sticks, including “Brown Mules,” “Fudgsicles,” and “Dreamsicles.” Another compartment contained “Dixie cups” in various flavors, while a third was the place to look for an ice cream sandwich, a “Nutty Buddy,” or a “Push-Up.” The fourth held pints and half gallons.

In addition to Cokes and Pepsis, the drink boxes dispensed Orange Crush (my personal favorite), Nu-Grape soda, Seven-Up, Cheerwine, ginger ale, two or three brands of root beer, and Yoo-Hoo, a chocolate drink for which I could never acquire a taste despite its being endorsed by Yogi Berra, one of my baseball heroes. In the chill boxes, which were also known as “sliders” because of the way they operated, the bottles sat in cold water in rows with their necks protruding up through metal guides. A coin-operated mechanism allowed patrons to slide the soft drink of their choice along the guides and lift it out through a kind of gate, which promptly closed. Paw-Paw sometimes allowed us to fill the drink boxes and empty the “cap catchers” attached to the bottle openers.

Alongside the soft drink chillers and the ice cream chest were two or three slightly dilapidated wooden chairs. Our grandfather, who always wore a sweat-stained grey fedora, often sat in one chatting with men from the neighborhood while he waited for the next customer. If all the chairs were occupied a patron could join the conversation by turning a wooden soft drink crate up onto its end and sitting on it.

I guess “Smitty’s” was a good place for old men to sit and swap yarns; for sure it was an especially good place for a young boy to sit and eat hot dogs and drink an Orange Crush on a hot summer afternoon.

---

[1] Lynn, who was a year younger than me, became an excellent baseball player. He played third base for WHS and for East Carolina University in the 1960s.

Blue Bags

Blue Bags

The conversation took place early one morning about five years ago while I was walking my dog, who had just made her daily deposit on a neighbor’s lawn. As usual, I inserted my right hand into a plastic newspaper bag, pulled the bag up over my arm, and bent down to retrieve the poop with my now shrouded hand. As I carefully picked up the offensive material I heard a woman’s voice from behind me.

“Pardon me,” the voice said, “but do you mind telling me where you got that cute blue bag?”

I straightened up and carefully reversed the plastic bag down over my hand, which now held Millie’s droppings, and tied a knot in the end.

“Certainly,” I said, “I got it from The New York Times.”

The woman, whose own dog was tugging at his leash, looked puzzled.

“We get the Times delivered to our office,” I explained, “so I collect the blue bags in which it comes and bring them home to use for picking up after my dog.”

“Oh,” she said. “I thought maybe you could buy them at a pet store or somewhere.”

“Not that I know of,” I replied, “but of course you can use the bags the local paper comes in, too. I just think the blue ones are a bit more esthetically pleasing.”

* * * * * *

That conversation, which occurred before the Times began offering home delivery in my neighborhood, probably wouldn’t happen today. As The News & Observer’s circulation has dwindled in my section of town in recent years, the Times’ presence has become increasingly apparent. When I walk Millie these days, blue newspaper bags outnumber translucent ones on some streets in my neighborhood.

In my perambulations I often find myself wondering why so many of my neighbors now get the Times delivered. It’s not as if a glib salesman showed up at our doors and we subscribed just to get him to move on; to the contrary, signing up requires a conscious effort – not to mention a financial commitment. (Ours is the sort of neighborhood where almost everyone has a high-speed internet connection, so they could read the newspaper on line for free if they wished.) I doubt that even the most status-conscious residents in our area have subscribed solely because of whatever cachet is attached to being identifiable as a Times reader, and most don’t even own a dog.

At the end of the day I’m left to assume that most the blue bags that appear each morning in my neighbors’ yards and driveways are there for the same reason as mine: i.e., that there are still a lot of people who will pay for the opportunity to hold an honest-to-God printed newspaper in their hands – provided, of course, that it provides them with deep, literate and intellectually stimulating information they want to know.