It’s been 30 years since Lorena Bobbitt sliced husband John Wayne Bobbitt’s penis off with a knife

It’s been 30 years since the fateful night Lorena ‘Bobbitt’ Gallo sliced off her husband John Wayne Bobbitt’s penis and threw it out of her car window in a desperate act of self-defense after her husband raped her. 

Thirty years later, Lorena stands by her decision and says she has no regrets. 

It was a crime that garnered global attention with ‘Lorena Bobbitt’ becoming a household name and the couple’s story becoming a cruel punchline. But Lorena, now 54, who goes by her maiden name Gallo, said her story was not a joke, it was her life. 

‘I believe people’s views on domestic violence have changed over the years,’ she told DailyMail.com. 

‘With the advancement in technology and how the news is relayed through many different sources, it’s helped people understand the seriousness of it and they don’t look at it as a punchline.’ 

On June 23, 1993, Lorena, then 24, cut off her husband’s penis as he slept after she said that he had abused and raped her.  She then drove off and threw the shaft into a field before calling police and confessing to what she had just done.

Authorities were able to locate John’s penis after Lorena described the exact location, and he was reunited with it after a 10-hour surgery.

Lorena Bobbitt garnered massive global attention after she cut off her husband John Wayne Bobbitt’s penis back in 1993 after saying he raped her

Lorena used this kitchen knife to severe her husband’s organ, after she claimed he raped her

Lorena’s ex-husband, John Wayne Bobbitt, meanwhile maintains he did not abuse or rape her that night when she cut off his penis 30 years ago

Lorena was charged with malicious wounding. At her trial, she took the stand and was later acquitted by reason of temporary insanity. She was instead sent to a mental hospital where she was discharged after a month.

John Wayne was charged with marital sexual assault. In a 1994 trial, he was acquitted and he continues to assert his innocence.

‘No one ever investigated my story property and got an accurate reporting. Pretty much everyone got it wrong,’ he told DailyMail.com this week. 

But a big question on many minds for years has been – does Lorena regret cutting off her husband’s penis? In 2019, in her first television interview in years, she gave her answer.

‘Oh my god, how could you regret something that was not planned?’ Lorena told the Today Show.

‘I mean, how could you? You have to understand, I wasn’t in my right mindset.’

Lorena and John Wayne – who went on to launch a porn career and starred in the film Frankenpenis – officially divorced in 1995, and Bobbitt moved to Las Vegas in 1997.  Lorena lives in Virginia, and has since remarried and has a daughter. 

Lorena said in a previous interview that even 20 years later, he continued to reach out to her and make advances, and even reach out to her through her charity, which provides emergency shelter and immediate assistance to survivors.

‘He tried to reach out to me through my foundation, and often posts rude comments and bad reviews on my foundation’s Facebook page—which is a sign of being controlling and mentally abusive, 20 years later,’ she told Oprah Daily in 2020. 

‘Basically, this man needs help.’

Lorena told Dailymail.com this week that her ex-husband hasn’t tried to reach out to her in years. 

Lorena Bobbitt during her 1994 trial for cutting off her husband John Wayne Bobbitt’s penis

John Wayne Bobbitt arriving at court

Dr. Jim Sehn was one of the surgeons who reattached John Wayne Bobbitt’s penis in 1993. He is shown testifying about the procedure at Lorena Bobbitt’s trial afterwards

In the years after the incident, John Wayne relished in his infamy and launched a porn career, starring in the film Frankenpenis. 

The surgeon who reattached it can be thanked for that – but 25 years after the incident, Dr Jim Sehn said he still hadn’t been paid for the procedure. It’s unclear whether he’s since been paid. 

Dr. Sehn said when Bobbitt was taken to the emergency room, he was holding a sheet over his groin and he expected to carry out a perineal urethrostomy, ‘in other words, converting to a female plumbing system, which is a pretty brief and quick operation’.

But, he then learned that the penis was still intact and had been found in the field where Lorena threw it. It has been ‘contaminated’ but was good enough to be reattached. 

It took longer than need be for the organ to be brought in because none of the cops who found it first wanted to touch it.

‘Whoever in law enforcement found it wouldn’t touch it. The law-enforcement people wouldn’t touch it.

‘They called an EMS squad because they knew those guys always had gloves, and they stood around staring at it, until the ambulance came up and gloves were obtained from the ambulance and they finally had the courage to pick it up, if you can imagine that, and carry it in with gloved hands into the 7-Eleven to put it in the hot dog bag on ice.

‘It came in, as they say on ice, and it was very recently amputated,’ he recalled.

After having his penis reattached, Bobbitt launched a porn career. He had a penis enhancement before filming his second movie, Frankenpenis 

Within a few hours, he and plastic surgeon Dave Berman were reattaching it in the operating room.

‘It took us about nine hours to do the case and it went really very nicely,’ he said, adding that by the end of the procedure, it was ‘pink and doing well.’

Neither he nor the hospital received any payment from Bobbitt for the lengthy procedure, despite him going on to profit from the crime, because he declared bankruptcy afterwards.

‘The other thing that was really disappointing for me was that as soon as John signed up with the media attorneys, there was an attorney that was hired who immediately took John to federal district court in Alexandria and Chapter 11’ed all of his debts.

‘That meant all the care he got at our hospital — and we’re not a wealthy hospital, we’re a suburban hospital — all of his debts went into bankruptcy, so even though $6 million was made on the porn films, none of those bills for John’s medical care were ever paid.

‘The hospital and all of the other doctors and nurses were given nothing,’ he said.

In his porn film, Frankenpenis, Bobbitt’s scars are on display. Dr. Sehn said that while he has not seen he film, he was ‘disappointed’ in it and Bobbitt’s decision to alter the corrected penis.

‘I was disappointed in, I think it was the second porn film, Frankenpenis, that the surgical result was seriously damaged by liposuction and some kind of an enhancement procedure.

‘I’ve never seen that film, but apparently it led to a lot of scar tissue. So it was a mixed progression,’ he said.

In another interview, Bobbitt said he would have killed himself if he had been left alone in the first few hours after his penis was severed.

‘I’m kind of mutilated in the most worst way a man can be mutilated and I was self-terminated, and I was looking for something that can end it with looking around.’

In 2019, Lorena Bobbitt asked The Today Show how she can regret ‘something that was not planned’ as she reflected on cutting off her husband’s penis years earlier

In the decades after the event, both Lorena and John Wayne have spoken out in TV interviews and two documentaries. In ‘Lorena’, a 2019 four-part documentary directed directed by Joshua Rofe and produced by Oscar-winning film-maker Jordan Peele, both of them told their sides of the story. 

She said  at the time she  initially didn’t want to do the film because everything else about her case had always focused on her husband.

Less frequently did people talk of the case in terms of the domestic violence that led Lorena to cut off her husband’s penis.

‘I was dubious because until now, (other productions) had always focused on John, on the act itself, in a very sensationalist manner which overlooked what I had been through, and that really displeased me,’ she said at the time of the film’s release.

‘I never, ever thought I would repeat my story. That’s why I took the stand. I thought it was my chance to say what this person did to me—what this monster did to me.’

But Lorena said she had hoped to turn the story away from the past obsession over her ex-husband’s penis onto the abuse she said led her to cut it off in the first place. 

‘I knew the scars would be opened up again, that I would feel anguish reliving these painful memories that I had practically buried,’ she told AFP at the time.

‘But I did it because I think that as a woman, as a mother, as a survivor, it is my duty to use my voice, which many victims of domestic violence don’t have.’

Lorena pictured executive producer Jordan Peele, just ahead of the release of the Amazon doc

Lorena, who runs an NGO for victims of domestic abuse in Virginia where she lives, initially didn’t want to do the film because everything about her case always focused on her husband

A practicing Catholic, Lorena has since founded an NGO for victims of domestic abuse, and told her daughter – now 18 – her story when she was still very young.

‘She’s a very strong child, very mature,’ she said.

She hesitated to show the girl the movie, which has some very explicit content. But her daughter ended up seeing it anyway.

‘She said, ‘Mom, I didn’t know you were so strong,’ and gave me a hug,” she said.

And because all that she went through made her the person she is today, Lorena says she has no regrets.

‘How can you regret something you had no control over? I didn’t want to be in that situation. It’s not something I went looking for,’ she said.

In November 2020, it was revealed that Lorena and Amanda Knox had bonded together over how they were ‘shamed and vilified’ in relation to their criminal cases and how they were turned into punchlines for entertainment.

The two women were among those headlining a true crime festival, Death Becomes Us, in Washington D.C. that year. 

They each opened up about their individual criminal cases and how their trauma has been exploited for entertainment profits.

Knox, who was an American exchange student at the time, spent four years in an Italian prison before she was acquitted of murdering roommate.

She became a global tabloid sensation and was dubbed ‘Foxy Knoxy’ after her sexuality came under heavy scrutiny during her 2009 trial.

Amanda Knox (left) and Lorena Bobbitt (right) were among those headlining a true crime festival, Death Becomes Us, in Washington D.C.

In an interview with Fox 5 prior to their appearance at the true crime festival over the weekend, Knox and Bobbitt spoke of how their different experiences had brought them together.

‘Lorena and I have a lot in common,’ Knox said, adding that their joint appearance at the festival was a ‘historic moment for shamed and vilified women’.

‘You don’t see shamed and vilified women coming forward supporting each other,’ she said.

Knox added that they were reclaiming their narratives and calling out the forces that turned them into characters by ‘exploiting our trauma for the sake of profits and entertainment’.

Lorena has said that people now knew the truth because they have reclaimed their stories and spoken out first hand about their experiences. 

‘People expect people like us to crawl under a rock of our shame. We are showing that not only are we the characters you thought we were,’ Knox said. 

The duo are seen at the Death Becomes Us true crime festival in Washington D.C.