Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, October 31, 1993 TAG: 9310310074
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: D2 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: CARLOS SANCHEZ THE WASHINGTON POST
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
The folks who operate the Prince William County Courthouse in the city of 28,000 are bracing for a tidal wave of attention - laying in extra phone lines for the media, workers for crowd control and provisions for the cafeteria.
John and Lorena Bobbitt's domestic violence - she cut off his penis because he raped her, she said - has made them the most famous couple in Manassas, and both will be in court next month. He goes on trial Nov. 8 on marital sexual assault charges; she faces trial on malicious wounding three weeks later.
"It's sort of an irresistible story," said Martin Fletcher, U.S. editor for the Times of London, which may send one of its four U.S.-based correspondents to cover the trial. "It's a story that carries across the Atlantic, the universality of it."
Journalists from Spain, Germany and Japan also have called about the trial.
Best-selling author Gay Talese, who is writing about the case for the New Yorker magazine and has been visiting Prince William periodically since July, calls the case "sensational."
"The press represents the nation, and successful media give the readers what they want," he said in a telephone interview. "What readers want today, what the American public wants, is action, violence and sensationalism."
The domestic interest, court administrator Robert L. Marsh says, is typified by a call he received from a New Yorker who was planning his vacation around the trial dates so he could drive down and witness the spectacle.
Marsh has sought advice from court officials in Indianapolis who handled the rape trial of boxer Mike Tyson, as well as those in Simi Valley, Calif., who dealt with the Rodney King beating trial.
To accommodate an estimated daily crowd of up to 400 for each of the Bobbitt trials, officials at the cramped courthouse - which has a total of seven pay phones and seats 150 people in its largest courtroom - have engaged the local telephone company to bring in dozens of extra phone lines. Where they'll put them, nobody has yet figured out, according to Marsh - maybe in the parking lot, or at the nearby firehouse meeting hall being eyed as a media center.
The Bobbitts, who each could serve up to 20 years in jail if convicted, have attained instant celebrity. Both have professional media consultants, and Lorena Bobbitt already has been interviewed on network TV and by a national magazine.
by CNB