Sometimes a post just lands on your lap and when it does I’m more than happy to milk it for all it’s worth. Just over two years ago on the 20 December 2005 I posted one of my most subversive(wrong) posts; a scanned picture of a girl being rescued from the boot of a car. I’d spotted it in the London Lite a free paper that is distributed around London and had thought to myself, wow she looks really hot.

Thinking that what I was seeing was the victim of a terrifying ordeal I feesed up to the world asking the question “Is it wrong if I find this picture of a girl being rescued by Mexican police arousing?” and following it up with the comment “If you look closely you can see the genuine fear in her eyes.”

Not surprisingly several comments were left along the lines of: yes it is wrong, you worry me and I’m putting you on a government database. I didn’t think much more about it other than the occasional pang of shame until today. An anonymous commenter wrote:

LMAO You jackases that ain't and unidentified woman, that's Joy Giovanni who use to be in WWE, this is from an angle in 2005 where she was kidnapped and put into the back of JBL's limo by Kurt Angle

A quick search of the internet proved him correct.

Oh, sigh of relief; I knew it was mock fear, professional make up and coiffure that gets me off, not genuine terror. When my relief had subsided I realised I needed to let the press know about the error. At first I wanted to send a letter to The London Lite, but following a bit of web based research I discovered the same picture on the msnbc website accompanied by a full story attributed to the Associated Press, so I sent an email to their images headquarters in New York.

To: The Associated Press Images Services

Dear Sirs

I feel it my duty to inform you that on the 20 December 2005 the news website msnbc ran an article entitled ‘Mexico kidnappings deadliest in Latin America’. The article, which is still available on the website, is copyrighted by and attributed to the Associated Press and ran with a picture of a girl bound and gagged in the back of a truck with the caption:

“An unidentified woman is seen being liberated from the trunk of a car in this photo released by the Mexican non governmental agency, Citizen Council for Public Safety. The group said that kidnappers in Mexico are increasingly killing or torturing their victims, making kidnappings more deadly than in Colombia, long considered the country with the worst problem.“

I am able to identify the woman. It appears to be Joy Giovanni a WWE wrestler and the person releasing the woman is the wrestler Kurt Angle. The picture seems to have been taken during the January 13 edition of the wrestling show ‘Smackdown’, (though the colour of her tank top has changed from pink to white.)

I’m not sure why the Citizen Council for Public Safety decided to release this picture to accompany their announcement that kidnappers in Mexico are increasingly killing or torturing their victims, perhaps they found such acts to be synonymous with ‘Pro Wrestling’.

I’d like to say it all ended happily for Joy, but as I understand it despite her kidnap sending The Big Show (Joy’s true defender) into a rampage, Kurt Angle, Joy’s rescuer, who it later transpired was the mastermind behind the kidnapping, was still able to DESTROY The Big Show in the ring the following week. Never the less we can gain solace from the fact that Joy was not actually harmed during her ordeal, I am reliably informed that Pro Wrestling isn’t real.

Kindest regards

mjohnson