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It’s been more than 30 years since Lorena Bobbitt became a household name after she infamously cut off her husband’s penis with a knife while he slept. Now, she is opening up about her motivation behind the act in a new documentary airing tonight.
I Cut Off His Penis: The Truth Behind The Headlines, which premieres on October 15 at 9pm BST, is an ITV documentary that explores cases of “penicide.” The film takes viewers through the personal testimonies of both women and men across the world who have witnessed and felt the impact of such cases while asking why they happen in the first place.
Lorena was just 24 years old when she sliced off her husband John Wayne Bobbitt’s penis with a butcher’s knife on June 23, 1993.
“The whole world knows I cut his penis off,” Lorena, now 55, says in the documentary, per the Daily Mail. “There’s no way to candy-coat it; that’s what happened.”
Three decades later, Lorena maintains that the many salacious headlines and true crime documentaries about the incident “miss the essence of what this whole story was about.”
Her attorneys argued she was driven temporarily insane by physical and sexual abuse from John; though, he has denied these allegations. He was later acquitted on charges of marital sexual assault in a related trial.
Police had searched and retrieved John’s severed penis from a field after Lorena through it out of a moving car window, and it was successfully reattached following a nine-and-a-half-hour surgery. Lorena admitted there are still some moments after the act that remain fuzzy.
“The next thing I do remember was that I was driving in the car and I had the penis in one hand, and the knife in the other hand,” she recalls in the documentary. “I couldn’t drive straight, I have no idea how I got into the car. I got scared and I threw it out of the window, his organ. I was not in my right frame of mind. There was no way I could plan this; I mean who would plan this?”
The former couple met when Lorena was working as a nail technician in a beauty salon while John was a bar bouncer and ex-US Marine. They were married in 1989, shortly after Lorena’s 20th birthday, though she claims the “red flags” came soon after.
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“The escalation of abuse was not only physical – there were bruises on my arms, on my legs, shoulders, on my face – and it escalated to the point that I was raped,” she says in the documentary.
She claimed that she had fallen asleep after a long day at work when she woke to find John on top of her. “I was half asleep, half awake. I was like, ‘What’s going on here?’ That’s all I remember,” Lorena says. “I know that I went to get a glass of water, I don’t remember seeing the knife; I don’t remember any of that.”
Lorena was later arrested and charged with malicious wounding, but was found not guilty in 1994 by reason of temporary insanity. She was committed to a mental hospital for a maximum of 45 days, and Lorena and John were divorced in 1995.
“There was no element of revenge in my case,” she says. “I didn’t want anyone to suffer. That’s not who I am, so it’s not why I did it. It’s about what put me in that position.”
These days, Lorena still lives in Virginia, where she now goes by Lorena Gallo. She met her current partner, David Bellinger, at community college more than 20 years ago. The couple share a teenage daughter.
Meanwhile, John now lives in Sarasota, Florida. Following the trial and the couple’s divorce, he appeared in the adult films John Wayne Bobbitt Uncut and Frankenpenis. In April 2024, he revealed that he lost all 10 of his toes due to toxic peripheral polyneuropathy.
In 2018, Lorena established The Lorena Gallo Foundation to provide domestic violence and sexual assault prevention, intervention, and awareness services for domestic abuse survivors and their children.
“Sometimes I wish it didn’t happen to me, but my life is not a tape that I can rewind,” she says. “I became a mother, I have a relationship with this wonderful man, I’m not only a survivor, but I have a new life.”
I Cut Off His Penis: The Truth Behind The Headlines airs on ITV1 and ITVX at 9pm GMT on Tuesday, October 15.
The national domestic abuse helpline offers support for women on 0808 2000 247, or you can visit the Refuge website. There is a dedicated men’s advice line on 0808 8010 327. Those in the US can call the domestic violence hotline on 1-800-799-SAFE (7233)
Other international helplines can be found via www.befrienders.org.
