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Archived coverage from 1994: Lorena Bobbitt's trial
Lorena Bobbitt was found not guilty by reason of temporary insanity after cutting off her husband's penis. She testified that John Wayne Bobbitt had assaulted and raped her, though he had been acquitted at an earlier trial. Originally reported by Patrick McGrath on January 21, 1994.
John Wayne Bobbitt, the Virginia man whose wife Lorena Bobbitt infamously chopped off his penis with a kitchen knife in 1993, has lost all of his toes due to side effects from an illness he claims he sustained while based at Camp Lejeune in the 1980s.
Lorena Bobbitt attacked her then-husband in his sleep and tossed his severed manhood outside a car window as she fled the scene. Doctors were miraculously able to reattach it.
But now, due to a condition called toxic peripheral polyneuropathy, he's lost all 10 toes and walks with the help of prosthetics, the former construction worker tells Fox News Digital.
"I'd get wounds, they wouldn't heal and lead to osteomyelitis, a bone infection and amputation," the 57-year-old Marine Corps veteran said Monday. "They didn't know what the underlying condition was back in 2013 when I first got wounded."
Mindy Robinson (L) takes a selfie with John Wayne Bobbitt at the Nevada Republican Party's election results watch party at the South Point Hotel & Casino on Nov. 6, 2018 in Las Vegas, Nevada. (David Becker/Getty Images)
Bobbitt was stationed at Camp Lejeune in the 1980s, when the base had a water supply badly contaminated with industrial chemicals.
He revealed his graphic injuries to The Sun over the weekend and told Fox News Digital Monday that due to the illness, a minor injury suffered at a construction site led to infections that spread into his bones and forced him to lose all 10 toes over a span of the past decade.
"I stepped on a nail, and I didn't realize it, punctured my toe, and it got infected," he told Fox News Digital. "I had nerve damage, severe nerve damage, in my hands and feet from the chemicals that I drank down there."
Bobbitt said he has civil claims pending against the federal government as well as a disability claim pending stemming from the initial workplace injury.
Ecuadorian-born Lorena Bobbitt listens to a lawyer during her trial in Manassas, Virginia, January 1994. Bobbitt was on trial for cutting off her husband's penis; she was acquitted by reason of temporary insanity. (Consolidated News/Getty Images)
Jurors found Lorena Bobbitt not guilty by reason of temporary insanity after her defense attorneys argued that she'd been driven mad by physical and sexual abuse at the hands of her then-husband.
The court had her committed to a phychiatric institution after the trial.
The couple divorced in 1995, and John Bobbitt was acquitted of sexual assault charges in his own criminal trial.
John Bobbitt told Fox News Digital Monday that his ex was the abusive one, a narcissist who grew jealous when he told her he planned to separate for the third time and attacked him in his sleep.
"I never abused her," he said. "That was all a smear campaign."
Robin Byrd (left) and John Wayne Bobbitt, March 11, 1994. (Photo by Steve Eichner/WireImage via Getty Images)
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He also claimed that toxic chemicals from Camp Lejeune were impairing his ability to think clearly during his rocky marriage.
He planned on leaving her, he said, accusing her of being the abuser in their relationship, but she took the news poorly.
"I ripped her heart out, and she cut off my penis," he said. "She was narcissistic, but she wanted the dream, the American Dream…but she was just abusive."
He conceded, however, that he did things "she didn't like," including bouncing at a nightclub, where she may have seen him flirting with women.
One year, on the day of their wedding anniversary, a woman struck him with her car while he was riding a bicycle. He ended up at her house to clean his wounds, he said, and she later arrived at his apartment with a replacement bicycle.
Lorena Bobbitt attends the Film Independent Presents "Lorena" at ArcLight Hollywood on Feb. 6, 2019 in Hollywood, California. (Tommaso Boddi/Getty Images)
She began giving him the silent treatment, he said, and after a couple of months of that, he decided to leave her.
It didn't work, and she attacked him with a kitchen knife in his sleep before fleeing the scene and tossing his severed appendage, which police later recovered.
After doctors managed to re-attach it, Bobbitt briefly became an adult actor before returning to construction work. One day, he stepped on a nail at a job site, and, according to his claim against Camp Lejeune, the injury festered due to what at the time was an undiagnosed illness.
It led to him losing all 10 toes in seven surgeries over the course of a decade.
According to federal health officials, military personnel and civilians at Camp Lejeune between 1975 and 1985 have a 20% higher risk of cancer than their counterparts based in other parts of the country.
Bobbitt said his family is genetically resistant to cancers but that the chemicals inflicted him with toxic peripheral polyneuropathy, a type of nerve damage that viciously attacked his sense of touch as well as the bones in his toes.
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Fox News' Ashley Papa and The Associated Press contributed to this report.