Synopsis
The film, narrated primarily by McKinney herself and supplemented by other interviews with primary characters and experts, is presented by animated headlines, newspaper photos, and brief televised news reports from the time of the case. McKinney details her upbringing as a charismatic young beauty queen with a self-reported IQ of 168. In search of a "clean-cut, all-American boy" for a potential husband, McKinney is introduced to Kirk Anderson, a young Mormon man on the eve of his religious mission. McKinney states that she and Anderson fell madly in love and were engaged to be married, but that she mistrusted the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and its hold over Anderson, declaring the church to be a "cult" that "brainwashed" him. Former-Mormon-turned-activist Troy Williams offers insight into Mormon practices, beliefs, and attitudes to explain how Mormonism might seem cult-like to one not raised in the religion.
When Anderson was sent to England on his mission, McKinney, believing the church elders deliberately separated them, recruited a pilot (Jackson Shaw, who appears in interviews) to fly her, her friend Keith "K.J." May, and a hired bodyguard named Gil Parker to England on a "rescue mission" McKinney framed in terms of a romantic caper. Upon arriving in England, McKinney allegedly revealed items such as handcuffs, chloroform, and a fake handgun, causing Shaw and Parker to fear they were participating in a crime and immediately return to America, leaving McKinney and May to continue alone.
McKinney secretly contacted Anderson and persuaded him to meet with her. On 14 September 1977, Anderson was officially reported missing. At this point, the accounts begin to differ, with McKinney claiming Anderson willingly went with her and May to a cottage in Devon, where she and he had voluntary sex for several days. Anderson, however, claimed in police reports that he was forced into a car at gunpoint, driven into the countryside, and chained to a bed by May and McKinney, at which point McKinney raped him, telling him she would continue to do so until she became pregnant. McKinney admits Anderson was chained to the bed, but states he consented to the bondage in an effort to overcome his intense guilt regarding premarital sex. Williams suggests the truth perhaps lies somewhere between Anderson's and McKinney's differing accounts, and that Anderson may have initially gone willingly, and even engaged in consensual sex, but McKinney may have ignored his later objections.
After three days in Devon, Anderson proposed marriage to McKinney (later telling police he did so in hopes of tricking McKinney into freeing him), and McKinney, Anderson, and May returned to London on 17 September. Upon discovering Anderson's disappearance was being investigated as a kidnapping, Anderson persuaded McKinney to allow him to go to police to assure them he was safe, and he did not return. McKinney speculates the Mormons threatened him with excommunication if he refused to go along with the false kidnapping narrative, but, according to police records, Anderson reported he had been abducted and sexually assaulted. Two days later, on 19 September, McKinney and May agreed to meet with Anderson in what turned out to be a police sting, and the pair were arrested and charged with kidnapping, possession of a replica firearm, and sexual indecency (as there were no laws regarding the sexual assault of a man by a woman at the time).
At a pre-trial hearing, McKinney delivered a colorful statement professing her love for Anderson and detailing their sexual escapades, insisting he had come with her willingly and their sex had been consensual. The newspapers, particularly the tabloids, were charmed by McKinney and the scandalous case, and they printed every detail. McKinney was released on bail after spending three months in Holloway Prison, and she lived the life of a celebrity for a time, including attending the premiers of Saturday Night Fever and The Stud . A few weeks before their trial for kidnapping was scheduled to begin, McKinney and May fled the UK, traveling incognito in a variety of outlandish disguises, and McKinney was found guilty in absentia of skipping bail, as the authorities declined to pursue extradition.
Back in the United States, McKinney spoke exclusively with journalist Peter Tory of the Daily Express , painting herself as an ordinary young woman in extraordinary circumstances. Meanwhile, photographer Kent Gavin of the rival British tabloid the Daily Mirror obtained evidence that McKinney had funded her trip to England by working as a call girl in California, collecting a dossier of hundreds of photos of a nude McKinney performing BDSM acts, some of which were subsequently published in the Mirror.
In 1984, seven years after her escape, McKinney returned to the spotlight when she was arrested in Utah for stalking Anderson, who was married to another woman, at his workplace.
In August 2008, McKinney again made international headlines after becoming the first private individual to have an animal commercially cloned. McKinney initially denied she was the same woman involved in the "Manacled Mormon" case thirty years prior, but she eventually released a statement admitting her real identity. South Korean biologist Jin Han Hong, who participated in cloning McKinney's deceased pet pit bull, gives a brief overview of the process, stressing that their work cannot "create life" from nothing.
McKinney claims she has spent the last thirty years writing a book about her life and the kidnapping case (to be titled A Very Special Love Story), but that her efforts have been hindered by documents being stolen from her home and vehicle, including evidence proving the nude photographs published by the Mirror were doctored (Gavin counters that the Mirror possessed the original negatives of all the nude photos, but says they were lost when the Mirror changed ownership). She says she never married, as Anderson is the only man she will ever love, so she lives alone with her five cloned pit bulls in rural North Carolina, where she is still occasionally bothered by journalists and the curious.
End text reveals that May died in 2004 and Anderson did not wish to be interviewed for the film.
