SALT LAKE CITY - A woman who made news around the world this week when she had five puppies cloned from her beloved pit bull in South Korea looked very familiar to several people.
The woman, 57-year-old dog-lover Bernann McKinney, appeared to be Joyce McKinney -- a woman who in 1977 was accused of abducting a Mormon missionary in England, handcuffing him to a bed and making him her sex slave.
At first, Bernann McKinney flatly denied any connections to Joyce McKinney, but in an interview with the Associated Press Saturday, McKinney admitted she is the same woman.
McKinney says that she went public with her efforts to replicate her dog, Booger, who died two years ago, hoping people would be able to focus on that story rather than the "garbage" of the past.
McKinney became a British tabloid sensation after she and an accomplice spent three months in a London jail back in 1977 before being released on bail.
Press reports at the time that said the pair then jumped bail, posing as deaf-mute actors in Ireland to board an Air Canada flight to Toronto and eventually a bus to Cleveland, where investigators lost their trail.
She maintains her innocence.
Police in London say they've consigned the case to the history books because of its age and won't seek McKinney's extradition.
