All language subtitles for How It Really Happened s07e08 Lorena Bobbitt

I could have very easily said, I'm going
to die, just leave here and die.

But I knew I couldn't panic.

I had to react instantaneously.

I woke up my friend and got to the
hospital within 10 minutes.

I still lost almost half of my blood.

It was scary. It was a scary, scary
night.

Hello, and welcome.

I'm Jesse L. Martin.

When a marriage goes terribly wrong, it
often involves young people who started

out lovestruck and ended up fighting,
even hating.

During the dark hours of June 23, 1993,
while her husband John slept soundly by

her side, Lorena Bobbitt took a sharp
knife to his manhood. It was a savage

slash that went way beyond the ordinary
troubles between man and wife.

Shocked Americans everywhere were glued
to the story. Men cringed. Women wanted

to know, was it something he did to make
her snap?

Tonight, the case that went behind the
closed doors and bloody ruins of John

and Lorena Bobbitt's marriage to
litigate the facts of how it really

happened.

June 23, 1993, I was a police officer
with Prince William County Police

Department.

It was a real slow night that night.

And honestly, you drive around and you
get bored.

Then I remember that call came in well
after 2 o'clock.

Hey, this is what we have.

This is what's going on.

We didn't know what we were getting
into. We just knew that there was some

urgency.

The crime scene was the home of John
Wayne Bobbitt and Lorena Bobbitt, a

young married couple living in a
one-bedroom apartment in Manassas,

Virginia. Just went up there and just
opened the door, announced myself,

started looking in and around.

I don't see anything particularly.

I go into the bedroom, and that's when I
saw that pool of blood, a whole lot of

blood on the bed.

There was a blood trail all the way out
of the apartment down the stairs into

the parking lot. I'm surprised he didn't
bleed to death.

I took pictures of the bedroom and the
bed, collected the sheets, noticed that

there was a knife missing out of the
butcher block in the kitchen.

John Bobbitt was at the hospital with
this very serious injury.

You can imagine the officers standing in
the Bobbitt's empty home, wondering how

a marriage could have become this toxic.

One of the tragedies of this story is
that the way that Lorena described it,

it started as a little bit of a fairy
tale.

About an hour drive outside of Manassas
was Quantico, Virginia, where

there's a Marine Corps training camp,
and that's where John Bobbitt was based.

Lorena, she came here on a student visa.

It was from Venezuela that she
immigrated. She had dreamed about

America and wanted to come to America.

And they met. She was about 20 and he
was about 22.

They went on dates for ice cream and
pizza.

Her being from Latin America and a
conservative family, there would be a

chaperone that would be there with them.

Her relatives described it as love at
first sight.

They were married within 10 months of
having met one another.

It was only after they were married that
the volatility of the relationship began

to emerge.

And there's when you start hearing about
some of the darker side of the

relationship.

Lorraine was not perfect.

Lorraine's intensity was off the charts
on jealousy.

A small little thing would set her off,
and then she would just go on this

screaming rampage.

The problems would really start when he
had been drinking.

There's a look in John's eyes that was
very different.

The way Lorena described the
deterioration of their relationship that

began with hitting and then escalated
into much more egregious forms of

violence.

We did respond to the resident several
times prior to this incident for various

complaints.

John Bobbitt was arrested for assault
and battery in February of 1991.

According to the criminal complaint,
they had an argument and he choked her

with his hand.

John Wayne Bobbitt entered a plea of
guilty.

But Lorena wasn't the only one reporting
abuse in this relationship.

John had called the police on occasions
where there were altercations between

them, where he felt that she was being
abusive and violent toward him.

She had attacked him and scratched him
on his back and his face.

All of the back and forth about previous
fights that they had had, how many times

the police were there, I could easily
see this was a troubled relationship.

The question is, what happened on the
night of June 23rd?

They were already separated and agreed
to a divorce.

It wasn't working out.

But that night, she was staying in the
apartment temporarily for a few days,

and then she was going to move in with
somebody.

John and Lorena weren't the only ones in
the apartment.

He had a childhood friend who was
staying the night.

Robbie and John went out to dinner, had
several drinks.

He had four or five beers and two B-52s.

He comes home drunk. He had his friend
sleep on the sofa.

John goes and gets in bed with her.

And then allegedly goes in and forces
himself on his wife who was sound

asleep.

Forcefully has sex with her.

Having been violated in a sexual way,
there's a sense of shock, disbelief,

embarrassment, confusion.

I remember her telling me that she went
to the kitchen to get a glass of water,

and she just made it sound very much as
though she sort of sees a knife, and

this impulse seizes her, and into the
bedroom she goes.

Lorena Bobbitt cut her husband's penis
off.

I mean, that's a profound act.

You can't get much more personal than
going down to somebody's province.

My wife said, I just kind of like...
Caught her out in the corner of my eye

with peripheral vision. There was blood
everywhere, all over the floor, the

walls.

She left.

She fled with the penis in one hand, the
knife in the other, went into the other

room where John's childhood friend,
Robbie, was asleep, and stole $100 out

of his wallet and his Game Boy.

The fact that she may have taken a Game
Boy, hell, she wasn't thinking clearly.

She wasn't thinking rationally.

This woman...

literally cut her husband's penis off,
drove off into the night.

She drove to her place of employment and
dumped the knife into the trash can.

I don't hold her accountable.

John, according to Lorena, not only
slapped her around, but he also raped

her. You don't take things into your own
hands and castrate someone.

The doctors need to find his penis so
that he has a chance to reattach it.

There's a window for success.

So we were working with time constraint.

I pulled my eyes and I couldn't feel it
because I had to stay away.

The next thing I remember is she pulled
on my groin area twice and

I felt a couple jerks. And then after
that, she just cut it off.

Once he realized what had been done, his
friend walked him down the stairs to the

parking lot and drove him to the
hospital.

He came to the emergency room with kind
of a towel wrapped around his hand, and

he was kind of holding it down in his
crotch area, so everybody just assumed

he had done something with his hand.

And the male orally nurse moved his
sheet back from John Wayne Bobbitt.

Yeah, I said, God damn.

It was shocking.

It was just a clot in his groin from
where his penis should have been.

You'd like to walk away into another
metaverse, if you could, when you see

something so horrifying.

He appeared to be somewhat in and out,
but he said, you have to be careful who

you date.

At that time, I was told that the organ
had been amputated and lost.

The doctor spoke to him and said, you
know, if we get the penis, we'll try to

reattach him. If not, we'll do the best
we can and we'll think about prosthesis

afterwards.

The call came from the hospital.

I heard a squad mate of mine, he said, I
need somebody to go look for the

appendage. And I was just thinking, why
is he saying appendage?

My squad mate was laughing in tears.

He said, hey, you've got to go look for
somebody's penis.

Cops being cops have a very thick, dark
sense of humor.

We do that as a protective mechanism,
but you can imagine that was in high

gear.

The doctors need to find his penis so
that he has a chance to reattach it.

As ridiculous as it might seem, you
know, I've got to go look for this

appendix.

Well, I started the shift about 8
o'clock, maybe 10, 15 minutes later.

I saw on our cameras that a female was
walking into our lobby.

And at that time, she just made a
statement. I threw it out the window.

And I didn't put two and two together
immediately.

And then that's when I threw his penis
and his game system out the window.

And that's when I realized who it was.

And you could tell she was distraught.

She just had her head in her hand.

And then she said, I threw it out on
Centerville Road.

We sent.

Some officers out to check the area.

She had thrown her husband's penis on
the corner into a field that was near

their apartment complex.

Sergeant Hurley, he was the one that
found it. Sergeant Hurley actually

stepped on it. That's how he located it.
I think we were all shocked that they

actually found it.

Now I'm just at the hospital waiting for
what's the next step.

There was an urgency to get it on ice
and get it to where it had to be so they

could perform surgery on the victim.

It wasn't until we were on the way
really to the operating room that I got

the word the organ was found.

It came to the OR and I had to wash it
and put it in a Ziploc bag of ice and

had its own little separate table.

No one on John Wayne Bobbitt's medical
team had ever attached a severed penis

before. Urologists typically aren't
trained to do replantation surgery.

It would be a radical first-time surgery
for everyone.

When you've got an amputated organ,
there's a window for success.

It might be 10, 12, 17 hours.

So we were working with time
constraints.

Ironically, the same hospital that John
Bobbitt was getting surgery done to

reattach his penis, they did a rape kit
on her.

They brought in Lorena Bobbitt.

and went past me, past the room where
John Wayne was in.

Lorena was meeting with a detective to
talk about what she was reporting as a

rape.

The surgeons were doing their thing, and
we were all waiting to hear how that

went. There had been attempts over the
past century to replant the amputated

penis. Not many of those cases went very
well.

John's penis was severed very close to
the body wall.

The cut was almost textbook.

I remember I had to wheel John up to the
operating room, and I made a stop at the

library on the way to grab an anatomy
text to have a look at where we were

going that morning and the roadmap.

So it was a challenge, but an exciting
one.

We had two surgeons.

You needed a urologist to put the
plumbing back together, but you really

needed to have a microvascular surgeon.

someone who would be able to put the
blood vessels back together and the

nerves.

It was a nine-and-a-half-hour surgery.

When we took the tourniquet off in the
recovery room, the penis brightened up

immediately. There was no leakage, so it
was very apparent very quickly that we

were going to get a good success and did
so.

In 1993, I was a reporter with the
Manassas Journal-Messenger.

covering the police and court beats.

I would get to work at 7 in the morning
and do my police call rounds to find out

what happened overnight.

This day was different.

The routine from the dispatcher was
typically to say not much going on, but

in this case, there was almost a titter.

And they mentioned that overnight they
had this incident in which a man had

been injured.

His penis had been severed.

Instantly, it was just starting to
capture people's attention.

I left the hospital that day, and within
hours, the world knew about it.

All I knew was I had a hell of a story
on my head.

It's a crazy story. This young,
seemingly central casting, beautiful

couple getting into this unbelievable
mess. The whole story, it just exploded.

The name Lorena Bobbitt took over the
world.

Next thing you know, this paper is being
handed person by person by person down

the bus of everybody just engrossed
reading about the latest details on this

story. Thinking about all the abuse that
she's been through and everything in the

middle of the night. I'd like to see
Lorena get 20 years, throw away the key,

and then deport her. What generated
worldwide attention, I believe, is that

Lorena Bobbitt attacked the concept of
masculinity and exposed to the world

how fragile masculinity really is.

It's simply one slice.

The big question is why.

We begin with John Bobbitt's parents,
Marilyn and Bill Biro. They're with us

at our studios in Washington. First
reaction, Mary.

My first reaction, I was very upset and
very angry to think that anybody could

do something like that.

and then leave them there to die.

Legal consequences were now taking
shape.

She was arrested that night.

I needed to head straight to the
courthouse on the off chance that she

might be making an initial court
appearance.

And indeed, that is what happened.

Lorena faced up to 20 years.

What struck me about her initially when
I saw it was how young she looked.

She looked to be kind of in a state of
shock. And I slowly approached her.

I told her I was a reporter for the
Washington Post.

And she wasn't really looking at me, but
she was talking to me.

And all she said was, he raped me. He
raped me.

It is a criminal case that has resonated
with men and women.

Raina Bobbitt cut off her husband's
penis with a kitchen knife.

Retaliation, she says, for his abusive
treatment of her.

So this was a situation where the
offender was also claiming to be a

victim. The Commonwealth attorney, Paul
Lieber, got pushback from women's groups

saying, but she claimed rape. Why are
you not addressing that?

So much so.

The prosecutor went and charged John
Bobbitt.

Lorena Bobbitt charges her husband with
marital sexual assault.

Which carried a 20-year sentence.

I believe she was in a psychotic state,
and all she did was try to remove

something so he could never do that to
her again.

I was real scared, like frantic, you
know. There's blood everywhere on the

floor, the walls.

Did you think that you might die?

Yeah.

Scary.

Scary feeling.

She hit him with her.

She's sick. No excuse for that. There
was a gender war going on. It's just

kind of this men are from Mars, women
are from Venus.

The visceral reaction on the one hand is
horror, on the other hand is

celebration. I think that's a plot about
society.

It's like, whoop.

Mother... Are panicking across the
country.

Men don't know what to do.

I think a lot of people thought almost
as a sort of cartoonish story of

revenge. Women are pissed.

That's why they're going.

It was a story driven by humor.

The whole country making jokes about me.

Number four, Lorena Bob an excuse was
good practice for carving Thanksgiving

turkey.

Am I wrong here, or was your wife a
crazy bitch?

I think everybody's slowly figuring that
out.

Howard Stern had John Wayne on his show,
and Howard Stern just ran

with it from there.

I don't even buy this whole thing that
he was raping her and stuff.

She's not that great looking.

She's got a lot of pimples here,
ex-wife.

That captures perfectly one of the
enduring misconceptions about rape,

where it is not at all about what a man
finds attractive. It's about power, and

it's a very common idea that I think
Howard Stern was teeing up for John

Wayne Bobbitt.

If you only listen to bits and pieces,
flip through the channels, you're not

going to get the whole story.

Ultimately, both John and Lorena gave
exclusive interviews.

I think every journalist in the country
wanted that interview with Lorena

Bobbitt. Hers was to Vanity Fair.

People wanted to know who she was and
what happened. There was just this

effort to present her as the canary with
the broken wing.

The story was Chana, her boss, said the
last thing I need is for you to ask

Lorena to get in the swimsuit and get in
the pool.

And it sounded like that was the first
thing the photographer asked for. And

Lorena dutifully complied.

Her Vanity Fair photos were sexy.

Here she was being charged with a
serious crime that could have put her in

jail for a long time, and yet she did a
photo spread coming out of a swimming

pool and before John's trial and before
her own trial. It just astounded me.

Totally anathema to profile someone
who's an abused person.

Everybody I spoke to was like, he's a
horrible guy.

He didn't have a single advocate in all
the interviews. It's rare.

Usually someone.

Play something nice about you.

But John Bobbitt is the exception that
proves the rule.

What was your reaction when you found
out what happened to your brother?

If I had seen her, I would have killed
him.

You think she tried to kill him?

She tried to hurt him in the worst way
possible for any man.

She did worse than kill him. She took
away the thing that means most to a man,

you know?

So why do you think she did this to you?

Less than two months before John Bobbitt
was going to face trial for marital

sexual assault, 2020 and ABC News gave
Lorena a platform to talk about her

charges against him.

Four sets excited him, and I would just
cry.

Like so many of the accusations that fly
back and forth between John and Lorena,

this one is hard to reconcile.

John denies that he was ever excited by
a violent death.

John Wayne Bobbitt's trial went up first
in November.

What really transpired? What really went
on?

Why did it get to this point?

Welcome back to How It Really Happened.

The horror story of John and Lorena
Bobbitt had its proper end as a justice

story, a courtroom drama to be
prosecuted in two separate trials.

John faced 20 years for marital sexual
assault, and Lorena was looking at 20

years for malicious wounding.

As they geared up to take each other
down in a fierce he said, she said

swearing match, an electrified nation
looked on spellbound.

How would the jurors decide?

It is a criminal case that has resonated
with men and women.

It's certainly the most celebrated trial
in Manassas, Virginia, in decades.

And there's a buzz with media.

Everybody was waiting for the big show.

In John Wayne Bobbitt's trial, cameras
were not allowed because he was charged

with marital sexual assault. In
Virginia, to protect the victim, the

cameras were not allowed.

It really would come down to
believability.

He simply had to deny things.

She had to prove that things were
happening.

A tearful Lorena Bobbitt testified that
John came home drunk and forced her to

have sex.

She says he then told her that her
objections didn't matter to him. So we

knew that they were going to have to
show that John forcibly raped her. One

of the key pieces of evidence that the
prosecution was relying on was her torn

underwear.

What she showed for force was that she
claimed he ripped her panties off of her

while he was raping her. Her testimony
was she was asleep the night of the

incident.

John Bobbitt came home around 3 a.m.,
quite intoxicated, and

he woke her up in an amorous mood.

I said, I don't want to have sex.

And then he wouldn't listen to me. He
wouldn't let me go.

And he started to pull down my
underwears with his foot.

And ripped them off of her and then
raped her.

She says afterwards she spotted a
red-handled fillet knife in their

apartment kitchen when she went to get a
drink of water and said that after John

fell asleep, quote, I lifted the sheet
and I cut it.

John Bobbitt denies he ever had forced
sex with his wife.

They had a forensic from the FBI
testify.

that the underwear were ripped off of
her, and that would be the sign of force

used by John.

We hired the former head of the FBI
forensics to look at it.

He did several tests with the cloth and
discovered that the way to

tear the panties the way she described
they were torn, he could not replicate

that. Our response to that was they were
cut by scissors.

At the trial, they had experts who had
examined her for signs of whether she'd

been raped or not, looking at hospital
records for bruises or broken arms or

legs. A doctor who testified at John's
trial saw no evidence

that she'd been raped.

He also testified that her demeanor was
not consistent with someone who had just

been raped.

And when the jury was out, I said, John,
you're standing here really calm.

You're acting like it's no big deal. He
said, Greg, the truth will come out.

After I think about four hours of
deliberation, the jury acquitted John

Bobbitt.

I'm thankful for the jury.

They believe me. And I just want to get
on with my life. And, you know, I got a

lot of healing to do and start my life
over again.

is up next.

Lorena Bobbitt looks like a woman in
trouble, and she is.

The 24-year-old manicurist is charged
with malicious wounding for emasculating

her husband with a kitchen knife.

It was, in fact, a tawdry story, but it
plays in people's minds like a battle of

the sector.

The woman is an absolute liar, and I
think all these women are demented,

mentally ill, to think that any woman
has the right to.

You later, man!

Howard Stern's New Year's Eve show, they
were going to use it as a fundraiser for

John. John, seriously, what happened to
you is horrible, and that's why we're

raising money for you tonight.

Thank you, everyone, for the support.

It was all kind of a farce, but I think
the idea at play with it was that, you

know, he was a victim of this, you know,
terrible, heinous... crime and deserve

somehow to be compensated for that.

That is beautiful.

$190,000. Congratulations, John Wayne
Bobbitt.

Lorena Bobbitt goes on trial for
maliciously wounding her husband, and a

lot of people are watching.

What made you pop, snap, to get to that
point that that's what you did?

Was no justification or excuse.

Taking.

law in her own hand, for maiming her
husband, and that she acted in anger

or out of rebellion.

And as a result, she has violated the
laws of this commonwealth.

Her words in being interviewed by the
Sheriff's Department twice over a 24 or

48-hour period was, why did you do it?

He always has orgasm, and he doesn't
wait for me to have orgasm. He's

selfish. I don't think it's fair.

She effectively told law enforcement, my
husband is selfish in bed. As a juror,

that was one of the things that stayed
with me.

Far from being in this emotional state,
the DA said that Lorena knew exactly

what she was doing.

I went on, and I took it, and I went to
the bedroom, and I told back the sheets,

then I did it.

And the prosecution was using that as
evidence of...

Her intent to actually injure him. You
were pretty angry with him, weren't you?

It was everything, Nick. It was
everything.

I read that you forgive her. Do you
actually forgive her?

Yes, because what she did was so
terrible.

But she didn't do it because, you know,
I was mean to her. I just

wanted a divorce, and she didn't want
it.

She didn't want the divorce.

The evidence will show that Lorena
Bobbitt believed that she had no real

means of escape.

John Bobbitt had threatened her that if
she tried to leave, if she tried to

divorce him, it wouldn't matter. He'd
follow her. He'd find her.

I was very afraid.

I was very afraid.

I feel trapped.

I don't know where to go.

I didn't know what to do.

I was very scared.

After the prosecution rested its case,
it was Lorena Bobbitt's defense team's

turn. And they turned the tables on John
Bobbitt by bringing up his history of

violent abuse.

You can't disregard all the abuse
witnessed by so many different people.

Lorena's lawyers presented this profile
of a woman.

who got married and was just hoping for
the best.

But shortly after they were married,
this marriage went sour, and it went

sour really fast.

And that's when Lorena says that John
turned on her.

They talked about the first incident of
abuse.

John was driving home. Lorena felt he
was driving impaired.

He was zigzagging back and forth.

The speed limit, it was only 55 miles
per hour.

He was going like around 85 or 90.

I was scared, and I told him to stop.

He would not listen to me, so I grabbed
the steering wheel, and then he punched

me. They talked about subsequent
incidents of abuse.

He would put his hands around my neck,
and he would chuck this part of my neck.

Lorena didn't only testify about spousal
abuse, but she also said that she was

the victim of marital rape.

Lorena's defense called some damaging
witnesses to testify against John Wayne

Bobbitt, including two of his friends.

Lorraine's testimony in terms of her
being raped by John.

John Bobbitt comes in the room and he
said that he liked to have, that the way

he liked to have sex was for sex because
that turned him on and that he liked to

have him scream.

He said that he liked to make girls
leave and yell for help.

Mr. Bobbitt, did you ever forcibly have
sex with your wife?

No, I didn't.

I never forced my wife to have sex,
ever.

Cases ultimately come down to who you're
going to bully.

Her defense was called irresistible
impulse.

It's more commonly known as temporary
insanity.

And a survivor of an abusive
relationship comes to learn, if I'm

going to fight back and try to protect
myself, I need to do it to the extent

where I am the only one that can walk
away from the situation.

It is the notion that...

You are worked up into such an emotional
state that you cannot control what you

are doing.

The issue becomes whether you had the
capacity to control

your impulses. That's what she had to
demonstrate to the jury. It's difficult

to prove.

I still cannot fathom that she could not
stop what she was doing.

Do you remember saying that to him?

I remember, yes.

The prosecution grilled Lorena about her
frame of mind during the attack.

Was this premeditated?

He said, Then I was angry already, and I
turned my back, and the first thing

I saw was the knife.

The only light that was on was the
refrigerator light, and I

saw the knife.

What the prosecution needed to prove to
the jury was intent.

You remember telling Dr.

Waltney that you walked in the bedroom,
you pulled the sheet back, you looked at

his whole body, and then you did it,
then you caught him? Maybe I did say

that. And the next thing she remembers
is he's driving in her car.

And you realized that there was
something in your left hand. Yes.

And you realized it was your husband's
penis. Yes.

And you were just horrified, isn't that
right? Yes. So you went and got rid of

it just like that, right? Yes.

And you're in that jury room and they're
passing around photographs of a severed

penis.

Regardless of the reason, that gets your
attention.

When we're in that survival mode.

but not completely in control of
ourselves, it's a powder keg for

disaster. And we see situations like
this where survivors eventually end up

killing their abusers.

And this is not necessarily a chronic
state, but something that happens in

some immediate acute moment.

One of the most powerful elements, I
thought, of the defense was...

their ability to bring several witnesses
to the stand on behalf of Lorena.

I would observe her at work the next day
and I saw bruises on her wrist, behind

her ear.

I again witnessed extensive bruising
over the top and sides of Ms. Bobbitt's

skull, into her hairline and face line
and down her neck and shoulders.

She said she made a complaint while he
was still in the Marines and they

referred him.

for counseling.

I remember that, but not the way you're
putting it.

Then, the defense put on a mental health
expert.

She became psychotic. She said, This
woman was clearly abused, and it was

repetitive. It feels completely
hopeless, and we're driven to the point

of doing things that we would never
think that we would need to do.

And at that point in time, she attacked
the instrument of her torture.

That is her husband's penis.

Somebody who's in an abusive
relationship is exposed to constant

trauma. it's more difficult for the
brain to shut it off because we're

always anticipating some sort of violent
or explosive episode.

I believe the turning point in Lorena's
trial came with one of the final

witnesses.

Her name was Regina Keegan, and she
testified

that she went to get her nails done and
ended up getting it done by Lorena

Bobbitt. I observed her. She was
shaking.

Her hands were trembling, and she had
tears in her eyes.

So we sat down, and she pulled up her
sleeves, and

she was black and blue from here to
here, like bruises.

And it wasn't like just a hit.

They went around.

I said, how did you get those bruises on
your arms?

And she looked at me and she said, my
husband hurt me.

And I think that was the turning point.

Ladies and gentlemen, what she did
cannot be excused. It cannot be

condemned. And it cannot be justified.

I ask you to find her guilty of
malicious wounding. This lady has been

stripped of all dignity, of all
self-confidence.

She needs a lot of help.

She needs your help.

If convicted of malicious wounding,
Lorena Bobbitt faces up to 20 years in

prison and possible deportation to her
homeland of Ecuador.

We, the jury, find the defendant, Lorena
Lenore Bobbitt, not guilty of malicious

wounding as charged in the indictment by
reason of insanity.

It was a trial that captivated the
nation and a verdict that split the

nation. Women and feminist groups
cheered today as Lorena Bobbitt was

found innocent by reason of insanity in
the mutilation of her husband, John.

She avoided a potential 20-year jail
sentence.

Because she was held criminally insane
at the moment,

state law mandated...

that she go to a mental institution.

Maybe that was the silver lining in it
all.

Maybe she found the help that she
needed.

She was evaluated and deemed not a
threat to herself.

About a month and a half later, she was
released.

I really learned a lot about this,
especially the way how women and men

treat each other. Men have to have a
little bit more consideration and

respect a woman.

She went on about her life after that.

It took a lot of years, and thanks to
the doctors, I'll be able to now

basically start all over again and start
a new relationship and have

a family, and I can laugh now.

But it's not a subject of laughing
matter when we talk about domestic

violence, though. It's a serious
problem.

Shortly after the trial, We heard that
John was trying to woo Lorena again,

trying to get her back. But then we
learned decades later that apparently

that hasn't stopped, that he is still
apparently trying to reconcile with her.

These are letters that John has sent to
me.

Some of them I haven't opened.

So it says, Dear Lorena, I miss you very
much.

And if...

There was a choice to have any woman in
the world.

It will be you.

Me and Lorena getting back together,
that would be the ultimate love.

He's living in some sort of fantasy
world.

And if you're living in that kind of
world, then love letters to the woman

who severed your penis doesn't seem out
of bounds.

After the trials, John Wayne Bobbitt
added to his fame. He embarked on a

national tour dubbed The Severed Parts,
starred in two pornographic films,

performed as a knife thrower in a circus
sideshow, and worked as a guest greeter

at Nevada's infamous Moonlight Bunny
Ranch.

And between 1994 and 2003, Bobbitt added
four convictions to his record of crimes

against women.

In his troubled life after Lorena, he
also pled guilty to attempted grand

larceny. But finally, not long ago...

Bobbitt said in an interview that if
Lorena had just taken a seat and talked

instead of pulling a knife, quote, we'd
probably still be married with a family.

I'm Jesse L. Martin.

Thanks for watching.

Good night.