The world moves on but continues to snicker from time to time.
On June 23, 1993, 24-year-old Lorena Bobbitt took a 12-inch kitchen knife and sliced off her 26-year-old husband John Wayne Bobbitt's penis while he was asleep in the bedroom of their apartment in Manassas, Va.
Then she got in her car and drove off, throwing the detached member into a nearby field before driving to her boss Janna Bisutti's house, where they called police.
Lorena told authorities and later testified in court that her husband of four years had come home that night, drunk, and proceeded to rape her.
But first, people—the law, the media, the public—tried to process what had happened. It didn't go great.
John and Lorena Bobbitt became household names, their story leading every newscast and covering all the tabloids. The puns ran wild in late-night talk show monologues and in a Saturday Night Live sketch featuring Mike Myers and Rosie O'Donnell. The New Yorker sent Gay Talese to cover the proceedings but ultimately didn't print what he came up with, while Lorena actually posed in a bathing suit for Vanity Fair. Howard Stern, who said on the air he doubted whether John had raped his wife because "she's not that great looking," helped raise money—a reported $260,000—for John's medical and legal expenses. A Howard Stern Show New Year's Eve special implored listeners to make John "whole again" (alas, they didn't sell hats).
"I do remember my Vanity Fair editor saying, 'If these people were not attractive, nobody would be this amped up about the case,'" Kim Masters, who was covering the case for VF, remembered to the Washingtonian last year. "But because they were pretty attractive, it had this allure. I was surprised when he said that, but looking back, I think it's true."
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