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You are now listening to True Murder, the most shocking killers in True crime history and the authors that have written about them. Gasey, Bundy, Dahmer, The Nightstalker DTK. Every week another fascinating author talking about the most shocking and infamous killers in true crime history, True Murder with your host journalist and author Dan Zupansky. Good evening, you're listening to the program True Murder. The most shocking killers in true crime history and the authors that have written about
them with your host Dan Supanski. Thirty six year old Wayne adam Ford walked into the Humboldt County Sheriff's office in northern California with a woman severed breast in his pocket. He ended up convicted of the grizzly torture and murder of for women, confessing to police because he couldn't stop himself.
Based on previously sealed testimony and interviews about the key players in the case, Body Parts is a frighteningly intimate look into a twisted man, overcome by the horror of what he had, become powerless to resist that ever increasing perverse sexual and murderous desires within him. With unprecedented access, my guest author Caitlyn Rother reveals what exactly drove a troubled man to commit such unspeakable murders body parts with
author Caitlyn Rother. Welcome to the program, Caitlyn Rother, And I hope I'm pronouncing your last name properly.
Okay, Well, now I'll go on from that. Caitlyn Rother, Welcome to the program. Now, first off, what made you decide to write about this case? It is a particularly shocking case. What was it that compelled you decide to write this incredible story? And finally, what unprecedented access did you have? What information did you have that you were privy to?
Okay, let me start with the first question. You know, it's funny, but I've always been fascinated with serial killers. There's a program on MSNBC that features an interview between Jeffrey Dahmer's parents.
I've seen that.
I just get riveted when.
I watch that.
Even if I've already seen it, I'll watch it again. Yes, but I never really thought that I was going to necessarily write about this because to spend this much time in such a dark place, I knew it was going to be difficult, but sure, like watching an execution as a journalist, I thought it was something I wanted to do and should do. I'm going to write about this type of thing. So I actually decided, you know what,
I'm going to go ahead and do this one. But the specific reason I chose this case was that, you know, it was grizzly, but that he turned himself in and I think that's pretty It's not unprecedented, but it's pretty rare. And the fact that that he walked into the sheriff's office with this breast and a plastic bag, it's a pretty shocking detail that always makes people say, oh wow, I want to know more. So it wasn't that I wanted the gruesome and gory stuff. I'm not that type
of writer. I'm really more interested in the psychological.
Type of cases.
So this this book is really a psychological look at this guy and his life and how did he evolve and become this person who you know, did these horrible things and what did he end up doing about it to stop?
So, yes, and you did talk. They did talk about the unprecedented access. So I just wanted to know. I mean, the book is incredible and it's in its detail and covers every aspect of it. So you did have you were privy to information via that access. So tell us what specific people or players you had access to.
Okay, I went up.
I did not go to the entire trial because I didn't know about the case until the very end of the trial, and I learned that he had been convicted. So I thought, oh, okay, well, I'm going to go up for the death penalty trial because there's you know, in a death penalty trial, you have a guilt phase
and then you have the penalty phase. Right, So I went up for the penalty phase to San Bernardino County, which is a couple hours southeast of where I'm sorry, northeast of where I live here in San Diego, And I met all the players in court that day, and I went up to them and said, you know, I'm interested in writing a book. Would you be willing to
cooperate with me? And pretty much everybody in the courtroom that I talked to, you know, the attorneys on both side, and the judge, and I got to know the clerk and found out, you know that I could actually look at some of the interviews that had been done which became part of the evidence, and some of these interviews the judge would not admit, but they were still put into the evidence, so the jury weren't did not.
Get to hear these things or see these things.
But I got to see them, that makes sense. So there was an interview with his mother, for example, that ended up not being presented in court, which was fascinating and really telling. And there were other interviews with his family members that nobody.
Had ever heard from. But I built on that.
By gaining the trust of the defense investigator, who talked to the father and the brother of Wayne Adam Ford and told them they had never been interviewed by anybody other than police and by the attorneys, so they'd never talked to the media. Apparently, Dan rather approached Jane Ford, the father, and he said no. So somehow I managed to get.
Access exclusive access.
To family members, you know, both through my own interviews. And I spent two days with entire days in a hotel room talking with Jane Ford and Rodney Ford. So quite a lot of really interesting background information that was never revealed before.
Yes, I mean you really cover the subject of this book and really get to his background and really cover both sides, who I thought was very unusual for most books where they didn't have access to that kind of information, So you gave both sides, and rather than trying to make a decision based on your own opinion, you just presented both those sides. And that gets me to this next question. The subject of your book is Wayne Adam Ford,
and he goes by the name often Adam. So what was Wayne Adam Ford's childhood really?
Like?
I want to talk to this for a second about this middle name thing, which I've sort of gathered just.
You know, it ran in his family.
His mother and his brother and his father all went by their middle name. But I think in Wayne Ford's case, I think he really wanted to be somebody else. He didn't like who he was, just personal opinion, and I think he wanted to use this other name, not just because his other family members did that, but I think there's been other serial killers who has done that as well, including the one that I'm just writing finishing a book
up about now. He actually changed his name legally, So I don't know if that's something that many serial killers do or not, but I know at least too that I've written about who's done that. But anyway, Ford's childhood was pretty complicated.
His mother.
Had deep depression depending on whether you believe her, whether you believe Wayne's defense expert.
Psychological expert.
Two suicide attempts, one of which she did in the kitchen in front of Rodney by cutting her wrists with a can.
I get that.
A can lid, you know, when you open a can and you have the sharp I think that's what she used. And she denied it to him, But you know, he was eight, he could still tell.
What was going on. Sure, she she saw.
Things in a very different way when I you know, you may probably noticed in the first part of the book, I could not write it the way I normally did, where I could say authoritative, this is what happened. Sure, because the gene Fort had a very different version of events than she did, claimed that she was just living in this fantasy world. Anyway, she was very sexualized, she was having affairs. Her husband, Jean, who was in the criminal intelligence in the army, was a way a lot,
so she was, you know, lonely and whatever else. Had an affair even with her husband's fifteen year old brother while.
He was away.
And you know, it's there's some theories that you know, someone in Wayne's situation growing up around that sort of situation, doesn't know what to do with the anger and all this sexuality going on in his mother, and so he ends up acting out like this. The father was a pretty dominating character, big big, very big and tall man gruff, and I think inside he was probably nicer, but he comes off pretty pretty hard on the outside. And Wayne
was really scared of him. So her His father would with banks of the boys often, but more often apparently Rodney, because.
Rodney was the rambunctious one.
But Jeane was so scared of him that, you know, he was fighting with Rodney and the fight was broken up, and you know, he knew that when his father came home he was going to get in trouble for fighting again with his brother. So he went and hid in this car out in a field, and he was so scared of what his dad was going to do when he got home from work, he literally passed out in the car from fear. So when his father pulled him out,
you know, he basically was passed out. He had to put him over his shoulder, bring him inside, and tell his brother to go get him a drink of water.
So it was pretty strange.
So so Ford was a very sensitive and emotional child, really took things hard and held on to his emotions and always wanted to be around his mother and was clinging to her skirts a lot, but she did not show him any affection. She even admitted to this later on and said, you know, I should have told my two boys that I loved him.
I know that now, but I didn't at the time.
So he, you know, wanted affection, didn't get it from his mother and was very dependent on her. She did a lot of things for him. Even his teacher mentioned this to her. You know, you shouldn't be doing so much for him, tying his shoes for him, you know, who knows what else, because he's not able to do these things or feels like he should do these things for himself. So I think a combination of probably inheriting, you know, a genetic predisposition to the mental illness. He
had depression as well. At least the defense psychologists believed that, although the prosecution expert did not believe that, he also developed borderline personality disorder and antisocial personality disorder. And borderline personality disorder basically manifests itself.
Such that they these people.
Really take abandonment very hard. So they get very attached to people and then they see them in a very black and white terms. So they love them one minute and they hate them the next, And that pretty much
bears itself out. And I'm very familiar with this personality disorder because I was married to someone who had it, and I lived with someone who suffered from this, and it's you know, they could be the sweetest minute, one sweetest one minute, and then the next minute would change and very it could be really very emotional and took things, sometimes distorted things.
So anyway.
Says basically disorder. My personality disorders generally thought to develop in the first five years. So I think a lot of what was going on between you know, his mother and his father, they fought a lot, they weren't getting along. The sexualization of the mother and the aggressiveness and dominating character of his father really contributed to to Wayne turning out the way he did. So genetics, you know, nature, nurture.
I can't say which is really the cause. It's in an age old debate, but I think that we can see, we can see a combination of those factors in him.
Yeah, certainly, I mean, certainly, certainly, there's the argument because we we get to our next question about his older brother, Rodney, and you do talk about that for all intensive purposes, at least Rodney believes, and maybe you might even believe that Rodney turned out well, but you do go to great lengths to talk about that Wayne was just seemed
to be a fragile even at a young child. So let's talk about Wayne's relationship with his brother Rodney, because it is really important and very very significant later on. What was their relationship really like?
Well, they were very close growing up because they were moving around a lot, and you know, there was a period where they actually were in Okinawa together and living on a military base, and you know, with a depressed mother who didn't get along with other military wives, they must have been pretty miserable in that house, especially with the fighting going on with the parents, and as I detailed in the book, you know, whether or not there was a gun in the house and whether there were threats,
you know, whether she really did feel in danger or whether she was just you know, fantasizing and making this all up. It had to it sounded like a crazy place. So they even though they fought with each other and competed with each other as many brothers do. They grew
close and they stayed close throughout their life. But more than that, there was a special kind of twisted relationship that they had where Wayne would do something wrong and then confess to his brother because he knew that his brother would tell on him, or that he knew his brother would do the right.
Thing and make it right.
So when Wayne stole some items from a sporting goods store when he was a teenager, he showed the stash to his brother in a closet because he knew his he knew his brother would do the right thing and basically turn him in essentially. And you know, Wayne had this strange, this strange fear of punishment, and yet he felt like he should be punished. So there was also
an incident where he went off. Neither his mother or father ultimately could deal with him, and so he went to go live with a relative, one of his father's brothers, Jimmy, and he ran away from home and figured that he had broken the law and actually went to juvenile hall or started making his way towards juvenile hall to turn himself in because he knew he had done something wrong. I mean, and that really plays into what happened later.
But so when it.
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Women and you know, possibly more. We don't know the detectives. Some of the detectives on the case believe there are more victims out there, but after these four that we know about, he said he didn't He just didn't want to do this anymore, and he couldn't stop, and he was worried about killing his ex wife. So he called his brother and again said, you know, I need your help. I don't want to hurt people anymore. And Rodney didn't
know what the hell was going on. Actually he didn't tell him that initially, but he got him to come, I really need you, I really need you to come down here. So Rodney drove actually up there, up into northern California, and then once they got there, he told him he wanted to turn himself in. And you know, Rodney said, okay, so, but he wanted details, and he
couldn't get detailed. So but again, you know, they have that dynamic from from when they were younger and and then it you know, it's still played up until the very end.
So he couldn't get any details from him. But he was convinced that there was something seriously wrong enough to him and his brother Wayne to go to the police in Humboldt County to the Shaff's office. Tell us what happens, give us. I mean, it's a fascinating story that he calls his brother and says, you know, I'm I've hurt some people something to that effect. Tell us a little bit more about that in the actual because it's very important.
It's very important to the trial, it's very important to anybody, even knowing this story. At least some people were to say that, I think you even say that in the book. Other people have said that tell us give us those details. It's a fascinating count of those of those very very important events that happened in the next few days, but especially from the time he calls his brother.
Okay, so he calls his brother's house, actually his brother's at work, talks to his brother's wife and he basically just says, you know, I'm and he gets Rodney to call I mean, really, I'll read you the quote. He says, I'm in some real bad trouble and I think the police are looking for me.
I need your help. I need you to come get me.
So it was already by the time that they finally connected. Rodney had actually quit his job that day and had already driven a really long way, commuting back and forth five hours, and he ended up having to drive yet another five hours to get to where his brother was at the Ocean Grove Lodge in the seaside town of Trinidad, California, with his Humboldt County So he drove and drove and drove.
He gets there at.
One in the morning, and this is off the Coastal Highway one on one for anybody who is living in northern California. And it's really beautiful area with a lot of really tall redwood, somewhere two hundred three hundred feet tall, and there's the lodge is like some cabins, and the cabin where Wayne was staying is actually called Room zero because it used to be a barber shop and something else and they ended up converting it, so it ended up becoming a new room, but they'd run out of numbers,
I guess how they called it room zero. So he shows up at one in the morning and Wayne just looks like, hell, he's all ragged and frazzled booking, hasn't showered, it looks like he hasn't really slept, and he's just crying and crying, and Rodney doesn't really understand.
He's like, well, what's going on? And Wayne's crying. He's like, I'm glad you're here. I really needed you to be here.
I really wanted your help. But he kept going off on these jags and Rodney kept trying to understand. You know, he's basically just rambling and babbling about all kinds of things about their childhood and about you know.
Why we're why was his dad so mean?
And why did our mom leave us? Because they both feel that their mom abandoned them, and the mother feels that it was more the other way around.
So you know, it's hard to know who to believe.
But essentially they both had to get out of her house.
So Peo look at it.
Either way and he says, well, I love you, I care about you. I mean, I'm here and you know, Rodney, Rodney knew that Wayne, you know, was emotional, but this was even more emotional for him than he'd ever seen. And he started talking about how he missed his boy, his boy Max, who is you know, a couple.
Of years old.
He had been divorced and there was a custody battle, but Wayne actually really didn't fight that hard. So Elizabeth the wife, kept the kid and Wayne was only allowed to see him every once in a while. But he really didn't even try that hard. But in his own mind, he felt like he wasn't being allowed to see his son, so he was complaining about that and he says, I miss my boy. I can't see my boy. And if you talk to you know, the wife, the wife doesn't
see it that way. It's like, well, why doesn't he ever try to come and see him, you know anyway? And then he says, I hurt some people. I don't want to hurt anybody anymore. Rodney says, you hurt some people and he says yeah. So Rodney's thinking, well, what do you mean you got in a bar fight or did you break someone's arm? And but Wayne wouldn't give him any details. So he says, I'm here to help. I want to help you, and Wayne says, well, I want to go to the sheriff. I want to turn
myself in. So, you know, Rodney didn't know. He was so tired at that point. He just felt like, well, something is weird, but let's just deal with it in the morning.
So they get up.
In the morning, Wayne goes and take you know, gets a shower, finally cleans up, seems more like himself. He's in a pretty good mood. He's like, well, you know, let's go to denny. So they go to Denny's and he still doesn't want to talk about this.
So Rodney's trying to bring it up. You know, who did you hurt? What what are you talking about?
Wayne does Wenn says, you know, I don't want to talk about that right now, but I just want to spend the day with you. He wants to go through memory lane, so they want to. He wants to go see the places where they grew up, where they used.
To hang out, that kind of thing.
And again, he's still doing fine one minute, doing the crying.
Jag the next minute.
Yes, so he's his moods hunting up and down.
And Ronnie tries again. He's like, how did you hurt some people?
He says, well, if I tell you won't love me, you'll hate me. And Ronnie says, well, I love you, I'm your brother, and he says, well, I hurt some people bad and they don't have to worry about anything anymore. So now that suddenly sounds really ominous. So Ronie hurts getting really worried. Now he's not only worried what Wayne has done, but now he's worried that Wayne has dragged him into something that is going to get him.
In trouble too.
Okay, so he's trying to figure out what to do next. They go to see a movie and ro it's getting late in the day and Ronnie's like, you know, let's just go.
Let's just go to the sheriff's office.
So on the way there, Wayne decides he doesn't want to go anymore. So that's probably why he called his brother, because it's hard to turn yourself in. You know, you're going to be put away for.
The rest of your life.
I have to say that's got to be hard for anybody. But anyway, Rodney's like, well, no, we've come this part. We're going so anyway, I'm going to leave some of this stuffut because we don't need to go into every single detail. But they get to the sheriff's office and Rodney goes to the woman behind the glass that's the reception center and basically says, my brother wants to turn himself in. You know, he's hurt people. He doesn't want to hurt anyone anymore. She's just like, what's what you know,
what's that about? Looks on the computer, he has no criminal record, wants to talk to Wayne. Wayne says the same thing, and so they're kind of confused because you know, he's not given anybody any details.
So one of the.
Officers comes out, and then a sergeant comes out, and you know, there's a couple of different versions of what happened next. Rodney has one version and the the sheriffs have another version. But one way or another, either either Wayne or the Sheriff's deputies pulled this baggie out of Wayne's jacket pocket and pulled it out and it's kind of leaking and it looks like a piece of raw chicken.
And he turns it over and it's got a nipple on it, and they suddenly realize what they're holding, and they just basically are like.
You know, wow, this is awful, and.
So you know, he wants to turn himself in, so they're going to take him back, and they arrest him on aggravated mayhem essentially, which is the involuntary removal of a body part, right and anyway, then he gets taken off and taken back until they're waiting for the homicide detective to come in so that he can start questioning him. That's pretty much what happened in the lobby.
Amazing. Now, what just for people that might be curious, and I would be if I was listening to this story so far, has there been a body found with its breast cut off? Is there a serial killer.
That's kind of confusing, I think for them at first, because there was a case about a year earlier that this detective that they called in from home to come. They said, hey, you know, this might be a lead on your torso case, because they had found a torso. Not they, but of some boaters had found a torso in an area called Ryan Flew, which is a tributary on the way to the ocean, and the breasts were cut off, but you could still tell, you know, that
it was a woman's torso. And then about I don't remember the exact timeline now, but actually I did write it down. Here we go two months three months later on the beach, an arm was found and they did a DNA test and found that it was the same person. So we don't have a head, and we don't have any we have a torso and we have an arm. So clearly this body has been cut up in there,
you know, being found in different places. But so this detective has been basically looking for the past year for you know, contacting other authorities all over the country, looking for missing people who would fit some sort of distinct sort of tell I think the basic age of this girl, right, And so they they called this detective to come in and he started asking him about these things. So he kind of had a feeling that this breast might be from that victim, but it turned out not to be.
Now, the thing is, when they went into the courthouse or pardon me, the sheriff's office, it later becomes an issue because obviously there's an issue of miranda rights, which is basically, if people want to know it's does the client or the defendant basically ask for a lawyer and then all of the normal questioning of that defendant of this accused would end. So they really wouldn't be able to interview him about almost anything at all because a
lawyer would rightly that that person should say nothing. So tell us, really what the bone of contention was without going into the trial, but tell us what you know you have found. I mean, there was always It's very complicated and.
I could probably talk about an hour on this, so I'll try to keep it short.
But Okay, basically he did ask for a lawyer. Okay, he's in the lobby. He asked for a lawyer.
During the interview with Van Freeman, he asked for a lawyer. So the detective basically said, you know, are you sure and he said yeah, So they have to stop the interview, right So anyway, the detective went to Rodney, who was still waiting in the station to find out, you know, what's going on and talk to Rodney. And I had the transcript which I put in the book, but essentially he said, you know, we're not going to be able
to help these families get closure. We were not going to be able to know if there's any victims, you know, who are in danger right now that he might have taken him put somewhere. And these are some of the things going through Rodney's head also, and there's this weird conversation, so so Wan basically asks Rodney Wan Freeman's the detective asks Rodney to talk to Wayne and say, you know, would you, you know, can you talk without a lawyer to help the police, you know, and help these families.
So there's this weird I have this transcript where Rodney and Wayne are having this conversation and it's like it doesn't really make a lot of sense, but apparently they seem to understand each other. It's kind of they're talking back and forth in these very short, clipped, partial sentences, and I don't know whether Rodney and Wayne were actually communicating, or maybe Wayne's didn't understand what Wayne Rodney was saying.
But since Rodney didn't know the whole story, you know, he's trying to advise Wayne to.
Do the right thing and see.
What God would want you to do, and this and that. But I know from talking to Rodney that he did want Wayne to be protected, you know, under the law. So I don't really know exactly, but the bottom line is Wayne, from that conversation, thought that Rodney was telling him to talk without a lawyer, so he did. But Wayne had the idea that he was going to get a lawyer, so he was clearly confused. And the defense argued that that, you know, he thought he was going
to be getting an attorney. So but however, the fact that he had asked for an attorney at first, and they had stopped the interview when he had asked for an attorney again, right, he then started walking without an attorney. He agreed to talk without an attorney, and he continued to talk for the next few days and so over the years they wrangled over this in court. Because you know, you can see if you see the booking video, he's crying, he's upset, he's not he's clearly.
Not in a rational state.
And right, you know, I I and the defense when they had these here, you know, they called the psychologist who said, look, he's clearly confused. He doesn't seem to understand what's going on. And later on, you know, when he kept saying, where's my attorney, where's my attorney, it's clear that he thought one was coming, that he was going to tell them some things, but he was still going to get help and be protected and get an attorney.
So he didn't.
He clearly did not understand what was going on, because otherwise he wouldn't keep asking for the attorney. And so eventually, when this got to the judge at the end, they did end up throwing out some of the interviews towards the end where he kept asking for the attorney, because it was clear that he was confused. However, the early ones where he talked with detectives from these various counties
where these victims were from, they left those in. So there are some people who've heard this story and read this book who think that that was not fair, you know, And there are some people who say, well, you know, what he waived is right. He kept talking and it does seem that he does want to help the authorities.
So that's the thing.
It's hard to tell how much he did he understand, how much did he really want to confess, And you know, it's just hard to tell, and I can't really make a judgment on that, but it is clear that he's confused.
So what I was surprised with, and maybe you can tell me, did the defense is it permissible what the police did in their conversation with Rodney Ford and then getting Rodney Ford to talk to the brother you say, there was some talk and they did talk about the vulnerability or the mental state unstable mental state while they were questioning him. Not too much avail obviously, but I thought it would be interesting. Is it permissible what they really did?
It's been adjudicated in court, and they had a number of hearings on this, I'm sure over the years. I mean, I know they did.
But here's something that I thought was really.
I'll use the word curious. The defense attorney, one of the public defenders up in Humboldt County actually tried to go did go to the jail to see Wayne, so that he, you know, and they wouldn't let him in the And I'm not sure.
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Details didn't ever go anywhere, but he claims that he went to the jail and said I'm here to see Wayne and they said he's not available.
So I don't understand.
How that was allowed, frankly, because you know, apparently he was being interrogated, that's why he was available. Sure, so this guy ended up you know, I think it was, you know, a weekend or something, and he wasn't able to get to a judge in time.
But by the time he did get.
To see you know, his client, it was too late. He'd already you know, given several days of these confessions. Sure, so I don't understand why that didn't get anywhere in court, but they did adjudicate this, and like I said, the judge did end up throwing some of them out, but not the early ones.
So right there, you now you talked about the confession per se. What exactly did the police get from him? Obviously, the they had a breast, they had this body that they were trying to link to him, but they got much more detail from way out. Adam Ford eventually tell us what they did get from him. Eventually, it's actually.
Almost easier to tell you what they didn't get. But okay, what they didn't get was exactly how he killed them, because he wouldn't admit to that, But you got to everything else. So he said, I picked up this woman, you know, at this place. Here's what she was wearing, Here's what I did. You know, Basically, it was a pretty common things, you know, set of of activities, if you want to call it, that he generally picked up prostitutes. Not all of these women were prostitutes, but most of
them were. One of them, who was not ever arrested for prostitution was certainly seemed to be moving in that direction, although they didn't categorize her that way. She was letting men, you know, touch her breasts for money, and so, you know, right,
it seemed to be going in that direction anyway. But she basically he basically would pick up women, whether they were prostitutes or just vulnerable women who were on drugs or drinking, but vulnerable, and get them in his truck and you know, ask them, you know, do you date or you know how much to charge or whatever. So they would you tell them how much they charged, or maybe they just wanted to ride. I'm not the first
victim that they never identified. He didn't say she was a prostitute, so she I think she was just a trouble soul, wandering, probably hitchhiking. So he would put hitchhikers to women. He would get a rope or a tie, a man's dress tie and choke them with it and make them pass out. Now, I don't know if any of these women or some of these women agreed to this or not, but the one who survived and testified claims she did not.
Agree to that type of activity.
Things weren't going well, he would start doing things to them, torturing them. He burned their genitals with a cigarette lighter, nasty stuff, hit them with a belt buckle down there. And yet later, you know, when when he was in these quote unquote confessions, he would leave some of that nasty stuff out. So he would tell them, yes, we were having sex, but it was consensual. You know, I
was strangling He didn't say strangle them. I was cutting off their you know, basically their air and their crowded ugery because they had a more intense orgasm that way, and so this was for their pleasure. So, you know, it's unclear was he lying, Did he really believe this? You know, I don't know, but clearly it's an aggrant behavior.
He's hurting them, he's causing them to pass out, he's bringing them back with CPR three or four times, and they're you know, frightened out of their minds and crying and scared obviously, and so he won't say exactly that he killed them, but he just says, well, I couldn't bring them back or she stopped breathing, and I, you know, I tried to give her CPR, but she couldn't break her back. And that's kind of how that's his confession. So but he claimed essentially that it was an accident.
You know, this was sex they were having. He paid them, and you know this was for their pleasure, and then.
You know, I tried to bring them back but I just couldn't.
Yeah, I had the sorry, he had the convenient amnesia just for the for the specific details of the actual murder and the like you say, the torture, right.
And his attorneys claimed that he couldn't remember it, And of course the prosecutor was saying, well, of course he remembered it, but he didn't want to admit that he remembered it. So it's unclear did he remember did he not remembered? I don't know, but he didn't admit to remembering it.
So now was there you you talk about a well known FBI Behavioral Science Unit criminal profiler named park Deats. Was he consulted in this case? Was the FBI consulted in this case for what they could find out about the serial killer profile and the behavior of serial killers?
You know that I don't.
I think they were The FBI was brought in I believe, or at least they were consulted early on. And I've written three books since since I wrote this, and I can't remember every single detail, but I do seem to remember that they were consulted about on that Courso case before they before uh Wayne was arrested. I don't believe they were consulted after he was arrested.
That's my memory serves. So.
So park Deep was consult you know, consulted by the prosecution, and since this took such a long time to get to court, they ended up paying him quite a bit of money over.
The years.
To get ready for trial. So, and he doesn't actually work for the FBI. He is a consultant and he's a one of those guys that goes around and testify that try and he actually also testified in the in the trial of the serial killer that I ended up writing about that I'm still finishing a book on now that she's coming out next year called Dead Reckoning.
Oh great, And when's that open again? Did you say it's coming out.
Of February twenty eleven, same publisher.
But anyway, he was also brought in on that case as well.
So this is something that he does on a regular that's what he us for living.
You know, right now, you said that Wayne Ford was seen by psychologists, and obviously at the trial there was the defense is one of the only things they can use in the defense would be his mental state. And tell us a little bit about that. When the psychologists did see Wayne adam Ford, what was their diagnosis?
Well, okay, so it's it's hard to say how many psychologists he was seen by, but it was, it was it was a number of them. He was represented by a different attorney than the one who actually saw him through trial. So it started off in Hobolk County with that public defender that I mentioned to tried to go see him in the jail. They actually were moving in a different direction for a different defense, which was more of an adult brain defense, that there was something structurally wrong,
you know, admimalities in his brain. Right, so they had and I don't know a lot about that because I wasn't able to get that information, but I do know that they he was seen by other psychologists.
Then he got.
New attorneys when they brought the case down to San Bernardino and consolidated all four of these murders, into you know, from different counties. There were two from San Bernardino County, one from Kern County, one from San Joaquin County where these bodies were found and where the victims were from. They ended up consolidating the prosecution under a new law
called the Reigny law in San Bernardino County. So he was then set down and he got a new public defender who then did had him see some new psychologists. So I'm going to tell you what the what that one, doctor Reid.
Malloy, what he found.
Sure, it's pretty complicated, but there's a lot of stuff here. He found that he, you know, has had depression, that he had that he was an alcoholic except and that he was you know, using you know.
Beer to escape essentially.
He was that he had an anti social and borderline personality disorder with impulsive and explosive features. That he was a sexual uh sadist and a masochist. Uh and I had a number of what we call paraphilias, which sexual sadism and masochism fits under. But periphilia is such as pikerism, which is poking body parts with that needle.
Which in his case was the breast. He was fixt stated on the breast.
Also, which was I think it's called I'm trying to find the PA sure because I.
Have them all listed.
Partialism, I believe, where you focused on one body part. Yeah, partialism. I was an intense focus on one.
Body part for sexual arousal.
And then isolated incidents of pseudo necrophilias or sex with a corpse, so you know, pretty some pretty gross stuff. Also, periods of acute psychosis when he was in the military. He decompensated a couple times. They had to use restraints and give him held all and he was just going nuts, I mean, just really aggressive. And they actually put in his medical records, which I also.
Was able to get.
Those were that was another set of documents that I was able to get from the evidence of his marine medical records because he was in the Marine Corps that he had actual've been described as catatonic, so so periods of acute psychosis where he would just kind of disintegrate.
And then they also did some brain scans and found some brain abnormalities with some atrophy and the cerebellum which is the part of the brain that does coordination and that sort of thing, and that that his brain was kind of if you have to use a metaphor, kind of running on fewer cylinders than it's supposed to. Now, this could be a genetic this could be from the alcohol. They just they just weren't sure, but there was definitely
something structurally wrong with his brain. And in addition to that, he was in this severe accident, I guess you could call it. He was on the freeway with his then girlfriend who became his wife, and they saw a car accident on the side of the road on the freeway and he said, you know, after being in the Marines, he had had learned to be and learned some other first aid techniques, and curiously, he was taught essentially about the you know, crodd argory.
He's in the various parts of.
The neck where he so all this information he later used to kill people.
At this point, he actually used the same knowledge.
To try to save somebody. So there was somebody the passenger in this car accident was bleeding profusely from the neck. So he's actually holding this artery and he later used to kill these women. He's holding this guy his neck to stop it from bleeding to death. When a drunk driver comes and hit them and knocks them forty feet down an embankment, so half his jaw and his face were kind of torn off, severe head injury.
He also had a head injury.
When he was a little boy. So anyway, clearly some head trauma. And you know they've they've done studies and found it.
Many of the people on.
Death row have had serious head trauma, so it can change you. So all those things were found either you know, mental or emotional problems or structural problems in Wayne's brain.
So despite all this well documented evidence of mental illness, how did it fare at the trial? What happened at the trial? In the end, we.
Basically, and this is pretty common for, you know, for a defense of prosecution to.
Take these sides.
Essentially, what it breaks down to is the defense says, he didn't have a choice. You know, he had these these problems, you know, part some of the most genetic, environmental, structural problems, and the prosecution says, no, he did have a choice, even though you know, his they were brought up in the same home. You know, his brother didn't end up killing anybody.
He was fine.
The depression that was in the military documented in the military records Seets was saying, well, I think he could have been faking some of those symptoms and basically that prompted a false diagnosis of psychosis. Yes, he was a sexual statist, but just because he has these urgentes doesn't mean he has to satisfy them by hurting anybody. He could have fantasized or stimulated these acts with a consenting partner, so he did have a choice. He didn't have to
do this. And you know he was seeking out people to kill.
Now, the main.
Point of contention was that the defense expert psychologists said, you know, he wasn't looking for people to kill. He was looking for people to have these aberrant sexual activities with and in the process they ended up dying, whereas the prosecution expert was saying he was a predator going
out looking for these people to kill. Hill or even short of that, if he knows after you know, the first time or the second time, that these people women are dying, when he's giving them CPR and they don't come back, he has to know the ramifications of his actions.
Why does he keep doing it?
He clearly knew the consequences of his act.
Yeah, it's it's clear that even though he exhibits all kinds of things that people would consider insane by the strict definition by law. Because he covers up elements of his crime and evades capture, then he is technically not insane.
Well he and they didn't even they didn't actually try for an insanity defense.
They just said, try to put yourself in his brain. You know, it doesn't work properly. He isn't seeing things right. Think about if you went.
To a party and drank a whole lot.
And tried to make decisions. You know that his brain is not working properly, so his decision making, you know, he's distorting things, seeing things that.
Are his perceptions are off.
You know, he's got these borderline personality disorder and he just twists things in his own mind. He's paranoid, he feels you know, he's very defense dependent on these women, and he loves them one minute and you know, detaches from them the next, and this.
Is all part of his.
Psychosis and psychopathy, you know. So yeah, I mean there's definitely he could argue both ways, but you know, the prosecution always argues, no, he had a choice.
So that's pretty much the deal.
Now the trial, it's the the complexion of the trial changes just because there is a death penalty available. So so basically the lawyers have to go and defend against that inevitability rather than anything anything else. There is no ability to have much of a plea bargain. But this is a this is a death penalty case. Tell us a little bit more about what happened at that death penalty case and what was the result. And I know that you talk a little bit about that it took
a considerable time to get the trial. Seven years is quite a quite a length of time to get the trial.
I thought that was wrangling over these confessions and whether they should be offended or not, and all kinds of other things. Basically, you know, the trial went on for months, and part of the reason it went on for so long is because the defense kept trying to put on family members and various other people, and then you know, the judge kept saying no, so it kind of just delayed things longer than it might have otherwise. But by the time they you know, so they found him guilty.
And then what they do in the death penalty portion is they the jury is asked to weigh mitigating circumstances against aggravating circumstances. The mitigating circumstances would be, well, he turned himself in, he had this head injury, he had these issues when he was growing up. One thing I do want to mention, which I think.
Is a really big contributor.
I don't know exactly when this happened, but his mother basically told him that he was a product of rape, so that his own father had raped his mother to produce him. Oh, that's right, and I think that that's that's a pretty important fact as well. So you know, that gets all that gets considered by the jury.
But this jury did not.
Did not take into well they took into account, but I'm just saying that they were not persuaded or convinced that they should show him, you know, any less punishment because he actually, even though he turned himself in and tried to help authorities identify his victims and showed them on maps where he picked up the boy, you know, the women, and where he'd put their bodies and confess to all that and helped them identify these people and
get their families closure, the jury was not convinced about that. And I've talked to some people leaders who actually feel that, you know, that's a shame that, you know, why do we have a system like this where there's a positive Why turn yourself in then, you know, and try to help people if you're not going to get anything for it.
But this particular jury, they're in a very conservative county and that they weren't swayed by that, so and it didn't take that long for them to come around to their decision, so I think, and basically what the judge said when he confirmed their findings at the sentence thing is, you know, maybe the first one was an accident, maybe even the second one was an accident, but by the time you get to the third and the fourth time that you're bringing these women back with DPR and they you know.
They don't come back.
You know what you're doing, so you know, nobody's buying this accident defense anymore.
Here there were, if I'm not incorrect, a couple of women that almost were killed by Wayne Ford. And in your book you talk about when these people came forward. Can you tell us a little bit about that or at least one of the victims and what she had to say.
Yeah, Rachel Holt, who I actually got permission from directly to use her name, because you know, generally we don't as journalists, don't identify names of rape victims if certainly they don't want that.
But she agreed to let me use her.
Picture and identify her in the book. But she was a prostitute and to this days, to my knowledge, is still working as a prostitute. And she got picked up by him and like I said, you know, got tied up and he hit her with the belt buckle.
That's how we know this in the genitals while he was driving.
Kept telling her to shut up, but she was crying. And anyway, she when he let her go, though, he let her out of the truck and tied her actually loosely, so she was able as soon as the.
Truck drove away.
He tied her up so that it would take her a while to get loose, so that she couldn't you know, report him or whatever. While she did, she got loose, and she crawled up the ravine and you know, had someone pick her up and she went and she you know, called and reported it and she was you know, take it to a hospital so they could do a rape
kid and look at her injuries. And she was still really upset, and she ultimately Drew did a sketch for the sketch artist, and then after Wayne turned himself in, she identified him from a photo lineup.
There was another prostitute who he picked up and.
Did some similar things to down in Orange County, which is the other end.
Of the state.
So he's a truckery just driving up and down. She was not ultimately able to testify at trial, even though she had a similar story, because she was too strung out on meth and she just wasn't a good witness. So those two, you know, they both reported it, and they were both telling similar stories.
So so Rachel holds testimony with signifying some of the well inevitable signatures of this serial killer right exactly. That must have been important to the trial itself.
Yeah, and the defense actually though, was pretty brutal to her. She told me that it was the most horrible experience, you know, because basically she she gets raped, and that she gets on on the stand, and the defenses, you know, yeah, especially emotionally raping her again by making her you know, calling her a liar and taking her through a bunch of other you know, more minor infractions, you know, lying to the police about this or that, and so why isn't she lying now?
And you know that kind of thing.
But the thing is that her story was pretty consistent with the injuries of these that were found on the bodies of these other victims. So in the end, you know, the jury believed her.
I think, did she did you have any impression or did you find out as evidence that she thought it was an a favorable experience overall favorable?
What do you mean?
Well, I mean it was worthwhile for her to do this despite all.
The horrible being on trial.
And you know, the only other way that I you know, I talked to her and I just said, you know, you were really important in this trial in helping getting get him convicted, so you know, I'd really like to use your your story in here.
And so she agreed.
So but she she she claimed, you know, it really wasn't that bad. It was actually worse to be on trial, because she said she had put it behind her and she had moved on, but that it was more it was actually almost worse to be on trial than it was to be raped, which I don't.
Personally believe, but.
Well, certainly, sometimes what I found is from my personal experience and from just looking at these stories for a few years is at the media is not very fair to a person that's brave enough to come forward, especially like a woman in this kind of case has been raped, to come forward, They're they're risking a certain amount of the inevitable cross examination. The media adds insult injuries, sometimes by taking too much of what the defense has to say as gospel.
I mean, yeah, you know, well, I basically just used the court transcript, and you know, I just told the story of what happened in court.
So I don't make any judgment. I just put it out there, you know, what she claimed happened.
So right, So where is where is Wayne Ford? Right now? He's awaiting.
He is on death row at San Quentin Prison in northern California, and he's something like I don't know, number six hundred.
And eighty in line, and.
You know, there's I think seven hundred in it's on death row and nobody's been executed in California since two thousand and six, so it's it's pretty likely unless they start doing it like Texas start up again and start doing it at a fast clip, he could easily just die in prison.
So right, right, one or the other right, So.
Yeah, and and that's they're they're studying the death the methods of carrying out the death penalty, and also how much it costs in California because it's it's just too expensive for some of these counties to prosecute people. And some of the families really want that and voters have passed that, but it's just extremely costly and there a lot of them are just going to die in prison anyway. But it's it just as a taxpayer, it's just if the system is broken, at least in California, so it's
just not working. If you know, they want fast action, but these these inmates don't even get to see their lawyer for at least five years.
So I mean, the clock is just ticking and we're.
Having to pay to house these people and seven the clothe them, and it's just it takes longer to try them. It's but you know, there's so much more involved in a death penalty trial because the judges and the attorneys are so much they're not they're.
Not careful usually, but they dot every eye and.
Cross every two like three times, and they're so scared there's going to be an appeal, and you know it's just it's just so much more costly.
It just really is.
Yeah, well you've written a great book. It's called Body Parts. Uh, thank you, Caitlin Rother. Maybe you can tell us a little bit about your background. I know that you're a career journalist and author, and you have quite a few true crime books and non fiction books under your belt as well, So maybe tell us about some of those books and a little bit about your background.
Please sure.
I was a daily newspaper reporter h mostly major metropolitan dailies for nineteen years before I quit to write books full time in two thousand and six. While I was a a reporter, I was covering actually a lot of government of politics, so that's a lot of what I did. But I was interested in writing human interest stories, and I kind of just slowly got more and more into
covering bizarre crimes and bizarre deaths essentially. So sometimes I would write about suicide, I was writing about mental illness. I was writing about prisons. I was writing about the mentally ill in prisons. So I actually got quite a bit of background while I was a reporter at the newspaper, not as a crime reporter, but more as an issue
oriented reporter. I was covering social services and mental health and the justice system, but not as a court reporter, not as a police reporter, although on Saturdays oftentimes I would start doing more and more of these crimes, and I just sort of moved in that direction, and I kind of got tired of writing about politicians who lied to me, so I almost felt like this was cleaner
in a way. Anyway, I got more and more into it, and my first entire criminal trial was the Kristin Rossam case in San Diego, a toxicologist for the Medical Examiner's Office who poisoned her husband and with drugs she stole from the lab and then staged a suicide scene and made it look like he had committed suicide because she was leaving him. So I covered that for the paper and then I wrote a book about it, and that's
Poisonous Love. That's my first book. Meanwhile, I had been working on a novel which has pretty similar themes.
That's called Naked Addiction.
Also said in San Diego, with a surfing detective investigating a series of beauty school murders. Again, mental illness and you know, crimes and drugs, and that's sort of thing similar.
To poison Love.
And then my third book is called Twisted Triangle, which is an account of the two married FBI agents, Margo and Jean Bennett, and a lesbian love affair with Patricia Cornwell, the same as crime novelist. Jean Bennett got upset about this, ended up kidnapping his wife right before she was going to testify against him for fraud. He ends up going to prison, is very angry, and ends up trying to kill Margot and her minister in a church.
That's all true.
And my next book was this one, Body Parts, and then the fifth one I co authored.
It's called Where Hope.
Begins and it's actually been featured on Doctor Phil several times.
It's kind of a complicated story and I'm not gonna be.
Able to tell it too much details the amount of time we have. But a TV reporter takes in the surviving female members of the Marcus Wesson Math murder. So nine dead children ranging in age from babies to a twenty five year old, found dead in a pile in the back bedroom of a house while the police were
in the front yard. They were shot somehow didn't hear any shots, and she basically helped these women recover from this horrible experience and living under the this in a cult life, cult like atmosphere of incest and polygamy and abuse with this guy Marcus Weston who basically ordered the murder of his own children because he wanted to keep the family together. And he said, well, I'll join you in heaven, but you guys stay together.
I'm going to stay here. I've got some more work to do.
But he had the oldest daughter shoot all the smaller children.
It's horrible anyway. And then my last.
One, which is coming out in February, which i'm just finishing up now. It's going to it's called Dead Reckoning, and it's the story of Skyler de leone Another, as it turns out, turns up to be a serial killer, even though he's not a sexual serial killer. He's in it for the money and for greed and to make
his wife happy essentially because she wants things. So they're like the Bonnie and Clyde of Orange County, California, and they end up planning this whole thing and Skuyler and a couple other guys go out on this yacht and take these the yacht owners out and tell them, you know, that they want to buy the boat, when in fact they just want to steal the boat.
So they tie these two people to an anchor, throw them overboard alive, and come back in.
And try to basically take these people's bank accounts and.
All their money, and it ends up not working.
So he and then he tries to kill his father and his cousin by hiring inmates and their friends to kill them because he thinks they're going to testify against them against incredible So that's a pretty gruesome story too.
Well.
Caitlin, thank you very much for this incredible interview, and yes, thank you, it was my pleasure. You've been listening to the program True Murder with my special guest Kaitlyn Rother, and we've been discussing her book Body Parts. You have yourself a good evening, Caitlin, to thank you.
Good night,