The secret life of the owner of the first cloned pet dog has started to emerge after she was unmasked as the “manacled Mormon” kidnapper Joyce McKinney.

The middle-aged blonde calling herself Bernann McKinney made headlines this week when five identical puppies were created using an ear from her dead pitbull.

Confronted with allegations yesterday, she denied being the woman who fled an Old Bailey trial in the 1970s accused of kidnapping her former lover at gunpoint, handcuffing him to a bed and forcing him to have sex.

However, a resident of Joyce McKinney’s home town of Newland, North Carolina, who saw footage of the woman with the cloning scientists in South Korea, told The Times: “That’s her. That is the woman I am familiar with.”

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Before her dog, Booger, was cloned, it was treated at a local veterinary clinic but Miss McKinney was so erratic as a client that she had been banned by at least two local vets. Police were also once called to treat her horse after a complaint of abuse but no charges were filed. A social worker, psychiatrist and others also mounted a “group intervention”.

A British newspaper that tracked her down to the town nine years ago found that the former model had become a heavily-built, plain-looking loner. The woman in Seoul looked more glamorous. “I recognise her,” the acquaintance said. “She looks a lot more tended to than when I have seen her in recent years. She has scars on her arm. She told me her arm was bitten off and surgically reattached.”

The sheriff of Avery County, North Carolina, said that Miss McKinney faced an outstanding arrest warrant for “communicating threats” in her former home town. Kevin Frye, the police chief, said that local people began e-mailing him about Miss McKinney as soon as the news of her cloned dogs was broadcast on televi-sion. “I guess I was surprised she was in South Korea,” he said.

Mr Frye said that Ms McKinney had not lived in the area since he became sheriff at the end of 2006. However, she had a record that included an arrest on July 14, 2004, for communicating threats and cruelty to animals and a traffic violation on August 9, 2002. She also has an outstanding arrest warrant for allegedly communicating threats in 2003.

The creation of puppies from a dead pet was hailed as a miracle this week, but the possible resurrection of Miss McKinney excited Fleet Street journalists of a certain age even more.

In 1977, the former Miss Wyoming stalked her lover, a Mormon missionary, to a tabernacle in East Ewell, Surrey, allegedly kidnapped him and held him in a cottage in Devon. There, the 17-stone Kirk Anderson claimed, his petite, busty admirer tied him to a bed using mink-trimmed handcuffs, slipped into a see-through nightie and forced him into sex. At a remand hearing she declared her love for the Mormon with the immortal line: “I’d ski naked down Mount Everest with a carnation up my nose if he asked me.”

Her counsel told magistrates: “Me-think the Mormon doth protest too much. You have seen the size of Mr Anderson and you have seen the size of my client.” To flee on bail, she donned a red wig and disguised herself as a member of a mime troupe, together with her alleged accomplice, Keith May. No extradition warrant was issued. William Hucklesby, the detective who led the inquiry, said: “My own view is that we were well rid of her.”

Bob Marshall-Andrews, now the Labour MP for Medway, was at the time a young barrister who appeared in court for Mr May. He remembers being perplexed by the suggestion that the 27-year-old beauty queen had forced herself upon 6ft 4in Mr Anderson. “My instinct is that the prosecuting authorities. . . were very pleased to see the back of them. I myself was rather sorry. She was a woman of considerable presence.”

Miss McKinney’s own lawyer, Stuart Elgrod, has been bombarded over the years by calls from his former client. Mr Elgrod is ill but his wife, Natalie, said: “Not again! She always was a nutter. Every so often she finds us and drives us mad. Last time she wanted to know what material Stuart had because they wanted to make a film about her. Anthony Hopkins was going to play the part of Stuart.”

After fleeing Britain in 1978, Miss McKinney spent five weeks in hiding then resurfaced at the Hilton Hotel in Atlanta, Georgia, dressed as a nun. In the 1980s, she was arrested near Salt Lake City airport, where Mr Anderson worked, for allegedly harassing him. A rope and handcuffs were in her car.

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