Getting a divorce can be a pretty nasty business. But not many wives tie their estranged husband to a bed, cut off his penis and put it in the garbage disposal.When paramedics arrived at Catherine Kieu Becker's house in Garden Grove near Los Angeles, they found her husband still tied up and bleeding profusely from his groin.
They retrieved parts of his severed penis from the garbage disposal but it's not known if surgeons were able to reattach it.
Why Ms Becker resorted to such a horrific measure is anyone's guess (she is reported to have said only "he deserved it"). The couple were married in December 2009 and had recently sought a divorce.
Her husband has vigorously denied he was bedding other women but all sorts of rumours are flying.
I can't imagine how any woman could do something so drastic (and probably irreversible), something that presumably will ruin the man's life, however badly he had mistreated her or impugned her sexuality.
What can she possibly gain from it except his burning hatred and the sort of media notoriety most of us would run a mile from?
Was she for some reason trying to render him incapable of seducing or bedding another woman because of some appalling experience he had put her through (or supposedly put her through)?
Ironically, if she is found guilty of the six charges against her and jailed indefinitely, she also will never again have a normal sex life. Nor will she be able to hack off any more penises.
Penectomy note: She isn't the first of course. Lorena Bobbit sliced off her husband John's penis in 1993, and a Bangladeshi woman, Monju Begum, cut off a neighbour's penis because of persistent harassment in May this year.
Pic: an unflattering police mugshot of Catherine Kieu Becker
