The woman who had her pet dog cloned by South Korean scientists flatly denied early today that she was a bail abscondee accused of sexually assaulting and kidnapping a male Mormon missionary more than 30 years ago in Surrey.

Rumours have been circulating about the true identity of Bernann McKinney, who this week appeared in Seoul with her five cloned pit bull puppies. She and her dogs have featured in publications around the world since the ground-breaking procedure.

Ms McKinney, who said that she lived in Hollywood, California, denied to The Times this morning that she was actually Joyce McKinney, who was charged at Epsom Magistrates’ Court in 1977 with false imprisonment.

The story of Joyce McKinney is nothing if it is not larger than life. She was accused of kidnapping and sexually assaulting the 17-stone Kirk Anderson, a Mormon missionary, who had become the object of her passionate affections.

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After a brief affair in the United States, Joyce McKinney, then 28, seems to have tracked Mr Anderson, then 19, to Ewell in Surrey, where he had been posted for two years as a door-to-door Mormon missionary.

With the help of a friend she is alleged to have kidnapped him and chained him to a bed in a remote cottage. After apparently failing to persuade him to marry her and father her children she then seems to have forced him to have sex with her. He finally escaped and she was arrested.

During a subsequent court appearance Joyce McKinney, is reputed to have said: “I loved him so much that I would ski naked down Mount Everest with a carnation up my nose if he asked me to.”

During another court hearing her counsel said of Mr Anderson: “Methinks the Mormon doth protest too much . . . you have seen the size of Mr Anderson and you have seen the size of my client.”

After three months on remand in Holloway Prison she was released on bail because of failing mental health. She then fled the country using a false passport. True to fashion or the hyperbole of a remarkable story She seems to have disguised herself as a nun for several months and disappeared into the Appalachian Mountains.

She was tracked down and appeared topless in glamour magazines before the authorities caught up with her. Britain never attempted to extradite her to stand trial.

This morning from Seoul as she prepared for a television interview Bernann McKinney flatly denied that she was the mysterious Joyce McKinney. “That’s garbage, that’s rot,” she said. “If that is what you want to talk about then I don’t want to talk to you. If you print that rot I will sue you.”

During the 1977-78 court case it was claimed that Joyce McKinney had, with the help of her friend, confronted Mr Anderson on the steps of Ewell’s Church of the Latter Day Saints and frogmarched him to a car where he was subdued with chloroform. They then appear to have driven him 200 miles to a rented 17th century cottage in Okehampton, Devon.

To add further mystery and zing to the whole story, Mr Anderson was said to have been wearing a Mormon chastity belt at the time. Joyce McKinney is also said to have read him religious texts and played him romantic tapes before sexually stimulating him. In her defence, she claimed that it was a bondage game played with his full consent. Legend has it that after he eventually promised to marry her she loosened his chains and he then escaped.

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