Mystery pageant contestant’s talent scores low marks

Tuesday, July 17, 2007 | 7:16 a.m.

The Mrs. United States Pageant is a contest for married women, with an emphasis on wholesome mothers who support noble causes (and look good in bikinis).

So why, at this most maternal of beauty pageants, did two contestants discover their stagewear had been smeared with brown ink when they weren't looking?

Simple - sabotage.

While Mrs. New Hampshire, Oneta Bobbett, was strolling the stage during pageant preliminaries at the Silverton on Thursday, someone was in the dressing room, she says, scratching a brown pen across her $3,000 silk gown, in a spot only the tiara-savvy would strike: the orange lining of her high-slit dress, which scissored open and shut at judges' eye level, revealing brown streaks at every step.

Whoever did it, Bobbett, 42, said, "truly needs some therapy."

But it's a backhanded compliment to be sandbagged at a beauty pageant; it means you're a threat. Bobbett placed in the top 10 contestants. So did the only other victim: Mrs. Wyoming, Wendy Knapp.

The saboteur struck Knapp's white bathing suit - a spare two-piece she was forced to wash in the sink and warm with a blow drier before wearing on stage.

Her dress might have been too dark to deface; the twiggy mother of six wore a sea blue and green gown with a plunging neckline that made her breastplate look like rack of ribs.

(Knapp is familiar with adversity - she has been called the Susan Lucci of pageants ; always placing, never winning. She could not be reached Monday.)

Pageant Director Isabella Ilaqua couldn't muster much comment.

"I have never," she said, stammering, "never, never heard of anything like this. Never us."

Bobbett wouldn't name names, but says the woman she suspects cried her way off the stage a loser.

For now, Bobbett's dress is at the cleaners, prognosis unknown.

"If the ink doesn't come out, it's ruined," she said, "But there are more important things in life than a gown, and I'm not letting it mess with my head."