Man recalls ‘nightmare’ moment he realised wife had cut off his penis
Sara Keenan
Featured Image Credit: John Bobbitt (ABC News)
John Wayne Bobbitt went through every man's worst nightmare in the early morning hours on June 23, 1993 - his wife cut off his penis.
Lorena Bobbitt, an Ecuadorian immigrant who was 24-years-old at the time, had fled the couple's Virginia apartment with her husband's penis in one hand and a knife in the other.
The former US Marine, 57, who lives in Las Vegas, had been married to his wife for four years when the horrific incident occurred.
The case is featured in a new ITV Documentary I Cut Off His Penis: The Truth Behind The Headlines, while Bobbitt has separately spoken of the nightmare moment he realised his wife had cut his penis off.
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In an interview with ABC News, Bobbitt said when he woke up to discover that his wife had cut off his penis with a kitchen knife, he tried to remain calm and stop the bleeding.
"It was a nightmare," Bobbitt said in an exclusive new interview.
"I cleared my thoughts, applied pressure. I went to wake my friend up to tell him to get me to the hospital."
His friend, who had been staying over, started screaming "as soon as he saw the blood everywhere," Bobbitt said. "He was going crazy."
Bobbitt, 26 at the time, said his friend got him to Prince William Hospital within 10 minutes.
"Walking into the hospital, the [emergency room] doctor is - you know - looking at me [and says] 'show me your wrist," thinking at first all the blood had been from a wound to his arm, Bobbitt told ABC News.
"The emergency room physician comes in and looks at John's hands and wrists and says ' there's no cut there,' and of course John knew there was no cut there," Bobbitt's plastic surgeon Dr. David Berman told ABC News. "And he [the doctor] goes 'where's all the blood coming from?' and John points down below."
When the sheet covering him fell away, Bobbitt said the emergency doctor's jaw dropped.
"Really all I knew about this on the way into the hospital was that a penis had been amputated and the organ was missing," Dr. James Sehn, Bobbitt's urologist, told ABC News.
After a nine-hour surgery, Bobbitt's penis was reattached.
During the trial, wife Lorena's lawyers argued that she was driven by temporary insanity following years of physical and sexual abuse at the hands of her husband; however, he had always denied these allegations.
In 1994, she was found not guilty of malicious wounding and the couple's divorce was finalised the following year.