Former Beauty Queen Stalked Her Mormon Crush For Years Before Justice Was Finally Served

Joyce McKinney had a knack for putting on an unforgettable show. She wowed the judges while competing for the crown in the Miss Wyoming World beauty pageant in 1973. Though she was never very successful at beauty pageants, she was still drawn to the glitz, glamour, and fame brought on by the competitions. Naturally, McKinney sought an MFA in theater from Brigham Young University. She was determined to hone her acting skills.

And it was at BYU that Joyce first met 19-year-old Mormon Kirk Anderson. From this point forward, there are a few different versions of events that detail McKinney's descent into crime, but most people agree that Anderson — who was six years younger than McKinney — eventually struck up a controversial relationship with her.

As one story goes, McKinney and Anderson carried on their love affair until Anderson's guilt about dating a non-Mormon got the best of him, resulting in their break up. Another story claims that it was Anderson's guilt over having premarital sex with McKinney that led to their separation.

McKinney herself claimed that it wasn't until Anderson expressed his desire to marry her that the problems started. Though some people believe that McKinney was a member of the Mormon church, McKinney said otherwise, and claimed that it was her distance from religion that made Anderson pack his bags... and we mean that literally.

McKinney claimed that Anderson immediately packed his bags and left on a mission to England; others claim that it was Anderson's bishop who encouraged him to embark on his mission to the U.K. in order to distance himself from McKinney. Either way, Anderson left, and it didn't take McKinney long to figure out where he'd gone — and how she could find him.

Apparently determined to re-devote himself to his faith, Anderson got to work as a missionary in Ewell, Surrey. McKinney — who claimed that she merely wanted to save Anderson from the "cult" of Mormonism — quickly packed her own bags and crossed the pond. Finding Kirk seemingly became her own rescue mission, one she'd allegedly go to any length to complete.

The story goes that when she finally located Anderson, McKinney came up with a plan to "save" him and needed the help of her friend Keith May. Together, the two allegedly gathered their supplies — a (possibly) fake handgun, chloroform, and handcuffs — and followed Anderson to the steps of a Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

At this point, McKinney and Anderson's versions of the story once again diverge. McKinney claims that Anderson willingly followed her to her car, where they tried to have sex. Anderson's conscience was then apparently so burdened by the idea of premarital sex, however, that he couldn't follow through. McKinney's solution? To tie him up, which she claimed Anderson consented to. Of course, Anderson told a much darker story.

According to Anderson, he was walking up the steps of the church when he was confronted by McKinney and May. They allegedly put a gun to his head and forced him to follow them to their car, where they knocked him out with chloroform. When he came to, he said, Anderson found himself chained to a bed in a strange cottage in Devon.

Anderson's upsetting story only got worse. He claimed that over the next three days, he was repeatedly sexually assaulted by McKinney. "I didn't wish it to happen," he later said in court. "I was extremely depressed and upset after being forced to have sex."

The abuse continued, he said, until a desperate Anderson finally agreed to marry McKinney. Anderson said she was overjoyed and set Anderson free from the chains — and he promptly fled the cottage and headed straight for the police. He told them all about the kidnapping and abuse, and they decided to set up a sting operation just a few days later, with Anderson as the bait.

Anderson asked McKinney and May to meet up with him so they could go over wedding plans. But a squad of police officers swarmed the venue instead, taking McKinney and May straight into custody. In jail, McKinney explained that she believed the Mormon church was after her, trying to frame her and tear her down. Not only that, but she said Anderson had been stringing her along with promises of a ring.

But by this point, no one wanted to hear McKinney's stories anymore — at least, no one who actually cared about finding out the truth. To the public, McKinney's story was nothing short of fascinating. She became the most polarizing woman in Britain, with the tabloids dubbing her "Madam Mayhem." Was she a wronged woman escaping an overbearing church? Was she a liar? A manipulator?

The nature of the alleged crime also made it a difficult one for people to believe, especially in the 1970s. Anderson was more than a hundred pounds heavier and a foot taller than McKinney; how could she have overpowered him, even with Mays' help? Back then, Anderson didn't fit the "standard" profile of a sexual assault victim.

In fact, the Sexual Offenses Act of 1956 posited that Anderson couldn't have been raped by McKinney because male rape didn't exist. Obviously, this is completely false. But back in the '70s, it was the law that kept McKinney out of prison. While she awaited the kidnapping trial, though, she didn't fade into the background.

While awaiting trial, she seemingly made the most of her newfound notoriety. In between photographs at night clubs with the likes of John Travolta and the Rolling Stones, McKinney tearfully held up a sign — written on the pages of a Bible — while in the back seat of an escort to court.

It read: "Kirk left with me willingly." Yes, she and May maintained their innocence while the kidnapping trial loomed ever closer. But it's possible that the threat of being imprisoned overpowered McKinney's love of the spotlight, because just one month before the trial, she and May suddenly disappeared.

The pair jumped bail and absconded from the U.K. Stories diverge as to what happened to them next. Some people claim that McKinney and May disguised themselves as nuns in order to get into Canada. It was there, it's believed, that they created false passports and escaped to the U.S.

One thing is known for sure: McKinney and May were never extradited. Instead, the case came to a shuddering halt. Although McKinney and May were later arrested by the FBI for falsifying their passports, they received suspended sentences. So after everything Anderson had allegedly been through, he was forced to move on with his life... until 1984.

By the mid-1980s, Anderson was married with children and had moved back to the U.S. to work at an airport in Utah. And in 1984 McKinney was found living out of her car not far from the airport. She had a notebook full of Anderson's day-to-day activities. And in the back of her car, there were chains and handcuffs.

Anderson eventually noticed and the police intervened at his behest. Astoundingly, while awaiting trial, Joyce disappeared once again — this time for decades. It wasn't until 2008 that she resurfaced in the public eye. How'd she get caught up? Well, she'd attempted to go to South Korea to have her dead dog cloned... and she'd seemingly succeeded.

One bizarre story after another has followed McKinney throughout her life, but it wasn't until 2019 that McKinney found herself behind bars again. She was charged for her involvement in a deadly hit and run, and when she was officially arrested, police discovered multiple outstanding warrants for her arrest. But when McKinney was sent for a psychological evaluation, it was clear that her time behind bars was numbered.

She was ruled mentally unfit to stand trial and was hospitalized at Metropolitan State Hospital in Norwalk. Since then, people have continued to question McKinney's innocence — and the antiquated law that kept McKinney out of prison in the first place. Most of the Sexual Offenses Act 1956 was repealed in 2003, and a new film might only bring a bigger spotlight onto the case.

Whether she intended to or not, former beauty queen Joyce McKinney has put on the show of a lifetime — one that Hollywood hopes it can soon reproduce. Variety reported that a new movie centered on the alleged crime, "Sinner V. Saints," began filming in early 2023. Freddie Highmore and Maisie Williams were cast as Kirk Anderson and Joyce McKinney, respectively.

One of the film's producers, Andriana Williams, said that "it's rare to find an over-the-top true story with compelling characters and zany twists and turns." We bet a man named Steve Carter would beg to differ. While Joyce McKinney was allegedly stalking Kirk Anderson in the early '80s, a young Steve was safe and sound in his childhood home... or so he thought.

Up until that point, Steve only knew the following things about his upbringing. Back in 1980, Steve Carter Sr. was a U.S. Army officer stationed on the island of Oahu, Hawaii. Then he and his teacher wife, Pat, decided to adopt a child. And when they encountered a three-and-a-half-year-old boy living in foster care, they knew that they just had to bring him home. “It was love at first sight,” Pat explained to People in 2012.

On September 23, 1980, Steve and Pat brought the boy home to live with them full time. According to Hawaii records, the little guy’s name was Tenzin Amea, and he had been in the state’s care for the past three years. His file stated that the fair-haired infant’s anonymous father was a native Hawaiian. The boy’s mother was down as Jane Amea, and she had been arrested when Tenzin was just five months old.

Now, however, it seemed as if the little boy’s luck had changed. Renamed William Steven Tenzin Carter — but known as Steve Jr. — the boy began a new life with the Carters in a wealthy area of southern New Jersey. Throughout the 1980s and ’90s, he enjoyed a happy and normal childhood, playing sports and enjoying parties with the neighborhood kids.

As an adult, though, Steve began to wonder just who his birth parents might have been. By now, his purported Hawaiian heritage had become something of a family joke. “With his blonde hair, blue eyes, and light complexion,” Steve Sr. told South Jersey Local News, “[He] does not strike one as being of Polynesian extraction.”

In fact, Steve Jr. had his curiosity well and truly tweaked when he received a DNA testing kit as a Christmas gift. The results he got back were very surprising. Apparently, he was actually of Scandinavian descent. Yet although the mystery had deepened, it seemed as if Steve’s beginnings were destined to remain unclear. But then one day, he stumbled across an interesting news story that reignited his appetite to uncover his origin story.

In 2011 Steve came across an article about Carlina White, who had been kidnapped as a baby from a hospital in Harlem, New York City. Oblivious to her past, she had grown up in Connecticut believing that her abductor was her mother. But her real mom and dad were less than 45-minutes away. And it was only by researching missing people online that Carlina had finally discovered the truth. It was this aspect of the story that spurred Steve into action.

Genealogy and tracking down long-lost relatives had become much easier and quicker since the advent of the internet. And so Steve visited one of the websites mentioned by the abducted Carlina — missingkids.com. This online resource is operated by the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, and once there, Steve got scrolling for suitable subjects. Under an entry for a missing boy, he saw something that would turn his world upside down.

The listing for the lost lad called him Marx Panama Moriarty Barnes and reported that he had been missing since June 1977. And accompanying the entry was an artist’s impression of what Marx may have looked like as a mature man. And to Steve, it was like looking in a mirror. “I got chills,” he told People in 2012. “I was like, ‘It’s me.’”

Utterly shocked, Steve contacted the authorities and volunteered to have his DNA tested. Eventually, after eight long months, the results arrived. They proved that Steve and Marx were indeed the same people. Steve’s wife, Tracey, encouraged him to begin delving into his past — only for a heartbreaking story to emerge.

On June 21, 1977, journalist and Vietnam vet Mark Barnes had been working in the garden of his home in Hau’ula. And while he was busy planting, his girlfriend, Charlotte Moriarty, took their six-month-old son out for a stroll. Charlotte announced her intention to travel just a few blocks to pay a visit to a grocery store with little Marx.

Charlotte did not return, but — at first — Mark was not overly concerned. According to reports, Charlotte was something of a “free spirit” who had been known to take extended flights of fancy before. But when three weeks had passed with no sign of his girlfriend or their infant son, Mark contacted the police. Yet even though the authorities began searching for Marx, they were unable to turn up any clues.

For more than a year, a heartbroken Mark continued to scour the streets of Hawaii, hoping to stumble upon his missing family. And no matter how much time passed, he apparently never gave up hope that one day he would be reunited with his son. Little did he know that Marx was living a new life, with a new name and a different family, thousands of miles away.

Reportedly, the day after Charlotte and Marx had disappeared in the summer of ’77, a woman on the other side of Oahu returned home to unexpected guests. Somehow, she said, Charlotte had gained access to the property and was loitering inside with the infant Marx. Concerned, the homeowner had contacted the police.

When the authorities arrived, Charlotte gave them false names for herself and the baby: Jane and Tenzin Amea. That's partly why Hawaii police were unable to connect the dots when Marx was reported missing some three weeks later. Heartbreakingly, before Mark had even begun searching for his son, the boy now known as Tenzin had slipped through the net.

Apparently, the troubled Charlotte was soon taken to a psychiatric facility, while Marx was entrusted to the care of the state. In a cruel twist of fate, the boy ended up living in an orphanage just 30 miles from his biological father’s home. And, a few days after she was admitted, Charlotte checked herself out of the hospital. She then disappeared completely, and so the truth about her son vanished with her.

But Mark had not been the only person left wondering about Marx’s fate. Jennifer, his half-sister who was eight years older than him, was also desperate to find out the truth. In fact, in 2001, the determined woman persuaded the Hawaiian authorities to reopen the case. Duly, they commissioned an artist to make a sketch of what Marx might look like as of then. And this was the very composite image that led Steve to discover his secret past.

When the truth was finally uncovered after more than 30 years, Steve did not hurry to reconnect with his relatives. He admitted to People that he was “terrified.” After months of waiting, though, he finally reached out to Jennifer on the telephone. And eventually, he spoke with his biological dad, who by this time was back living in his native California. As Mark recalled, “All I could say was, ‘Wow. Oh wow. Wow.’”

For Ma and Pa Carter back in New Jersey, it had been a difficult journey after Steve Jr. informed them about Marx, Tenzin, and himself. “On an emotional level, I felt like we’d taken someone else’s child,” Pat confessed to People. But over time, the couple appeared to have come to terms with the situation. As Steve’s mom told the TV talk show The View in 2012, “It’s taken a while for us to get used to the idea that we have to share him. But I’m sure it’s going to be wonderful.”

Mark, Jennifer, and the Carter clan had yet to meet in person in 2012, and there has been no further news coverage of the story since then. But while the experience had been an emotional one for all concerned, the Carters are no doubt thankful that their story had a pleasant ending.