Warning: “Horrifying” is not hyperbole. Read with caution.
Last week, the concerning but still pretty funny relationship between former UFC and Bellator fighter Jon ‘War Machine’ Koppenhaver and porn star Christy Mack took a turn for the reprehensible. War Machine tortured and brutally beat her, putting her in the hospital, then fled police for a week. It became a circus of a story when Dog The Bounty Hunter threw in to find him, but by Friday cooler heads prevailed and War Machine peacefully surrendered.
Today, we have a full police report filed by the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department, and it is a shocking reminder of the sadistic, cruel violence that occurred between the couple. The official list of crimes being investigated reads like this:
– 1 count battery with substantial bodily harm
– 1 count strangulation
– 2 counts battery with substantial bodily harm (domestic violence related)
– 1 count kidnapping (domestic violence related)
– 1 count open and gross lewdness (domestic violence related)
– 1 count attempted murder (domestic violence related)
You can read the entire report in a PDF file here.
Some of the details are chilling. The detailed description of the attempted rape is the kind of thing that stays with you forever (“that’s my pussy and I’m going to take it back now”), and the image of War Machine going through Mack’s Instagram and Twitter accounts and hitting her every time he found something he “did not like” is a true image of mental illness. If the report is accurate, there is no question that he’d gone off the deep end and that Mack would be dead right now if she hadn’t escaped.
Another detail that stands out:
He drives a 2010 Toyota Prius with California license plates and a bumper sticker which reads “I heart Christy Mack.”
There are some inconsistencies in this version of Mack’s story and the one she shared on Twitter after it happened — she originally said she and her guest were fully clothed in the kitchen, this time they’re asleep in the same bed — but that’s what investigations are for. No amount of inconsistencies warrants the absurd rage of MMA fans and Internet commenters who’ve spent all week barking about how porn stars are somehow subhuman and “deserve” this for making bad decisions, but God knows that’ll end up in the comments section of anything about this incident. I shouldn’t have to type it and don’t consider it climbing onto any kind of “soapbox” to say nobody deserves a systematic, sustained, cruel battering and attempted murder, especially over relationship problems. If you think they do, you’re part of the f*cking problem.
The crowdfunding effort to raise money to help cover Mack’s medical expenses has reached almost $75,000 with 86 days remaining.