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Good evening. When Wayne Adam Ford walked into the Humboldt County Sheriff's office in November nineteen ninety eight with a woman's body part in his jacket pocket, the thirty six year old truck driver wasn't a suspect in any crime. After a lengthy investigation spanning four California counties and a sensational trial, he was convicted of the torture and murder of four women. His first victim, whom he dismembered, would
remain unidentified for twenty five years. While serving honorably in the Marine Corps, Ford had learned life saving techniques that gave him structure and purpose, but a severe head injury worsened pre existing emotional problems, rendering him unable to suppress his dark sexual impulses. Knowing he would kill again, he
enlisted his brother's help to turn himself in. Award winning investigative journalist Caitlin Rother drew on previously sealed testimony and interviewed key players in the case, including Ford's brother and father, to write this intimate and psychologically resonant narrative, extensively updated with the inside details of how Ford's first victim, Carrie Ann Cummings, was recently identified through DNA testing and forensic genealogy.
This classic true crime story continues to haunt us. The book they were featuring this evening is Body Parts, a Serial Killer's Deadly Compulsions, Updated edition, with my special guest, journalist and best selling author, Caitlin Rother. Welcome back to the program, and thank you very much for this interview. Kitlyn Rother, good to be here. Thank you so much, and congratulations on this new updated edition of Body Parts.
Thank you. Now. First off, let's talk about what Body Parts is tell us when it was first published and why you wanted to write about this case.
Well, I don't know if I mentioned this last time we talked about this book since it's a re release, but I actually wanted to call this book killer with a Conscience and that's because this this killer weighne adam Ford. It was a long haul trucker who is on death row for raping, torturing, and killing troubled women, mostly prostitutes, drug addicts. He would pick up on the side of the road or in you know, at a truck stop,
places like that. And these were women who were you know, not quite right in the head sometimes also, so they were vulnerable. They were vulnerable women. Now, so that's not that unusual for a serial killer. But what's unusual, and the reason we decided to write about this story is that he turned himself in. So he killed four women. He dismembered two of them. He picked them up and
he would have sex with them in his truck. And you know, even though they're prostitutes, they did not sign up for the kind of sex that he proceeded to have with them. So I don't want to go too much into details because it's pretty gross and it's pretty graphic, and it's pretty violent.
But he would.
Torture them and he would choke them until they passed out. So he would press his fingers against their crotted artery and their neck, so cutting off the oxygen to their brain. And they would pass out and he would bring them back with CPR and he would do this repeatedly. So I can't even imagine how horrific that must have been for these women. And we know that this is what he did because he let one of them go and she testified against him at the trial, and she was
a prostitute. So you know, he's a pretty complicated guy. And I you know, he's got mental disorders, a number of them. He's just a he's a different kind of a different kind of a person that I normally would write about.
And I don't plan to write.
Another book like this because it was very difficult for me, very very dark. But I wrote about him because I don't know if any other serial killer who turned himself in because he knew he would kill again, and he knew it was wrong, and he was even disgusted by his own behavior. So that's that's basically why I wrote about it. But Body Parts was the title that my
publisher came up with. I thought it was insensitive to the victims' families, but they said, well, this is what we're going to call it, and our marketing people know best, and they even put on the very front cover years ago, and he kept them in his pocket, and I just that kind of horrified me.
So if anybody bought the book way back when and they saw that on the cover, that was not my idea he did.
He turned himself in with a woman's breast in his jacket pocket. But I I want to make light of that. You know, it's very serious, and it's he did that because he wanted them to believe him, apparently credibility purposes.
Now you talked about that he had obvious or diagnosed mental illness. Was that an issue at trial? And what was that eventual verdict at trial? And what was his disposition and status after that verdict?
Well, can we go back, because I think it's more pertinent to talk about what he was like when he turned himself in because the trial took something like ten years. So by the time he got to trial, he was you know, in prison, and he had been treated, you know, with medication and stuff. So he when he turned himself in,
he was a mess. And I have a booking video where he's basically just in tears and he's crying, and I have the audio interviews of him being interviewed by detectives four different counties where he dumped these women's bodies and.
Bodies of water.
And he doesn't remember things, he can't focus on details.
He gets women confused. So he's got a.
Number of victims, but he's had sex like this, he says, with at least fifty women, so he can't even keep the details straight. So, and he also did not have an attorney present while he was being interviewed, even though he asked for one.
So all of those.
Issues became issues, which made it take so long to get to trial. So I just want to point that out, so that by the time it got to trial, it had already been litigated. Some of these witness interviews, I'm sorry, some of these detective interviews with him had been thrown out already because the judge said, well, he asked for an attorney, and you didn't. You didn't give him one, and that gets an attorney even showed up at the jail and they said, oh, you can't go in there
because he's being interviewed by detectives. I mean, the whole thing was kind.
Of a mess.
So and it became clear, you know, just for me for reading through these interviews, which is really gross.
You know, It's basically, he would stick pins in his wife's breasts.
He would cut out holes in a sheet while they were having sex so that her breasts poked out and were exposed. And so you know when he turned himself in and he had a breast in his pocket, you know, that was just a manifestation of that focus on his victims. He also you know, basic stuff like sexual sadism and masochism. He enjoyed hurting these women, and he also enjoyed hurting himself. So I mean, the guy was really had a lot
of issues. He also had a serious head injury, which we can talk about more in detail, but basically, when he was nineteen years old, he was dating this woman who later married and she's the one who he stuck pins in and you know, had to.
Do the sheet with the holes in the sheet and stuff.
Basically, his personality changed and became even more bizarre after that.
After that head.
Injury, so you know, and basic depression, alcoholism, you know, the basic stuff that a lot of people have. But all together, you know, he had a lot going on. He also had a genetic predisposition to some of this stuff. His mother was apparently bipolar. She tried to kill herself several times throughout her life with pills. She cut her wrist with a tunicn in front of her in front of Ford's brother in the kitchen at the Army barracks when they were growing up. And she also told him
that he was the product of rape. So, I mean all of those things combined. You have environmental factors, and you have genetic factors, you have this brain injury. I mean, he had so much going on that it's almost I'm not saying he's not.
Responsible, but I'm just saying he had a lot to deal with. And this is you.
Know, I wrote this book because I think it's important for people to understand, you know, what makes a sexual predator.
These are the these are the elements.
Let's get to what is new in this updated edition. How you say that it's in back in print as a trade paperback.
Yeah, it came out originally as a mass market paperback. In the old days, when these books went directly to mass market paperback, there was no hardcover, there was no trade paperback. So trade paperback is a bigger format paperback
that they have these days that costs more. Prints bigger, they're heavier, easier to read, nicer to read, nicer paper So yeah, it came out originally as a mass market paperback, and the first cover was his face, and it came from the booking photo the booking video actually, you know, where he was crying and just kind of a mess. And I was saying to the publisher, you know, I really feel like this title is insulting to the you know, an offensive to and insensitive, mostly to the victims' families.
And I also feel like it's probably off putting to women who are going to be a big portion of the audience here. So I wish we could you do something different. So in twenty thirteen they came out with a different cover which looked like a romance novel. It was just like, Okay, I don't know. I guess it's better, but I don't know what that it has to do with the book. So all these years later, here we are.
I got a tip from someone who was the significant other, a person I had interviewed for the original edition when for its first victim was found. She was this was the first victim was dismembered entirely. He cut her up in his bathtub, and he told detectives that he described it and he even told them where he put her parts, and he wanted to help identify her because she had never been identified. Her torso was what was found by
a kayaker. And so this kayaker has since died. In his significant other messaged me and said, did you hear that they identified that first victim whose torso my boyfriend found in the kayak? And so I went on to the Humbolt County Sheriff's Department website and found a news release. So the news release basically said that they'd identified his first victim as Carrie Anne Cummings through genetic genealogy, which
is the thing now for cold cases. It's happening all over the country in these small sheriff's departments and big sheriff's departments. Basic, you know, using these consumer websites where everybody's sending their DNA and that's how they're identifying missing people and you know human remains that you know, in this case, they never found her head. They found her arm and her torso and that's all they had. But they were able to through through genetic genealogy, find a cousin.
So basically the way this worked is Carrie Ann Cummings. She was a twenty five year old young woman. She was again troubled, which is basically you know, and was using drugs. And when Ford described her, and I don't remember, to be honest, if this wasn't a documentary that he was interviewed for, or if this was to the detectives, but he basically said, her brain wasn't focused, kind of like mine. So in other words, two birds of a feather, you know. He picked her up and they both, you know,
their brains were not working properly. So he dug around in her backpack, I guess found something he thought was heroin. He described that she had a can opener, which he didn't think was very useful, and that he didn't think she'd been out and about for very long on her own on the road, but he had picked her up hitchhiking. She said, Hey, I want to go. I want to
go to the beach. Are you going that way? And so he said he would take her, and according to her sister, she probably you know, voluntarily agreed to have sex with him. And then it took a turn, which is apparently just the way he was, you know, he would pick up these women, and there are prostitutes, and they thought they were just going to go have sex and no, instead he would do all these horrible things
to them. So anyway, so she disappeared, and years later Jeff Cummings her cousin, who was you know, much older. Obviously by then he and his sisters had been kind of experimenting, playing around with this genet genealogy already, and so he had already submitted his DNA to one of those basic sites. I can't remember which one. It was ancestry dot com or twenty three met it was one of those, and he then submitted it to ged match, which is a specific website that is geared towards helping
law enforcement solve crimes. So there was a big controversy when this first started happening, because, you know, the Golden State Killer, this is how they solved this murder. But they didn't have permission from people. They were basically these detectives were using these consumer websites without telling people that they were using in for law enforcement purposes.
And so to eat a Match.
Specifically instituted some policies and procedures where users would would basically agree to have their DNA used to help solve crimes. So he submitted his to that ged match, and when Humble County Sheriff's Department decided to open a cold case unit with a couple of part time detectives and a forensic technician who went and got some training. They picked this case because at the time had been very high profile because when he turned himself in with a breast
in his pocket, it made national news. And apparently his father was approached by Dan Rather and his producer and he turned him down and did not want to be interviewed.
And so I felt very privileged to.
Have the Ford's family agree to be interviewed by me because it was the first time they talked to any media or author or anything. So Jeff Cummins turns in his DNA and so when they go in and they tried to solve this case, they found the cousin and they're like, oh, look, we found somebody who's pretty close. So they called him up and they said, hey, do you have a missing relative and he said, yes, cousin.
She went missing, you know, twenty five years ago. And so they said, well, does she have any closer relatives? You know, a mother, father, sister, you know sibling, and he said, yes, Kathy Cummings. So then the detective called and left a message on Kathy Cummings voicemail. Now this is something I'm really I really found rewarding about this project. He left a message on her voicemail basically saying he
was calling from the Sheriff's department in Eureka. And so before she called him back, she started googling, because she said, I bet this is about my sister. And so she started googling Eureka and missing people and blah blah blah, and the next thing, you know, she found my book.
She found a bunch of news stories and she found my book, and she read my book three times before she called the detective back, and she said she knew by reading my book that that was her sister based on just the few details that for had told the detectives.
So to me, that made me feel good because it gave her closure and she knew finally, after all these years, what had happened to her sister because she had been missing and they tried to report her missing to the police, and the police wouldn't allow it because they said, well, she was taking drugs and so we consider her to be voluntarily missing and she's so she's not really a missing person, and unfortunately nobody looked for her, and so
she wasn't in the database as a missing person. And so you know, normally when you report somebody missing, it's easier to identify them later when you do find DNA or something like that, because it's it's I had to have another book where this is how they were identified as well, my next book that's coming out of the summer. They had their DNA and they had it in a database, and so when they found these skeletal remains, they.
Knew immediately who it was.
So it's a shame that the police department in Tucson, Arizona wouldn't take the missing person's report.
Because she could have been identified much sooner than this.
But anyway, so Jeff Cummings, without him purposely submitting his DNA hoping that it would result in his missing cousin being identified, we wouldn't be here today.
Let's Jesus as an opportunity to stop to hear these messages now in the writing of this book, especially this updated edition. Who did you get to speak to that was involved with Carrie on Cummings other than Jeff Cummings.
Well, I interviewed Jeff and then I also interviewed Kathy Cummings, who was her sister, and that's who she was closest to.
So their parents are dead.
By now, but Kathy had been almost kind of like a parent to her.
Carrie didn't really get along.
With her parents because they just didn't understand her lifestyle. She she left home, she didn't go to college. I'm going to go back a little bit. She actually was. She was kind of an odd bird, you know, she didn't fit in. She had a speech impediment, so she had a difficult time in school getting along with other kids. They made fun of her, and she just didn't test well. She didn't do well in a regular school. So but when she was tested for intelligence, she was found to
be pretty intelligent. It's just that there's some people who need a different type of education, you know. I don't know if she was dyslexic or something, and maybe she wasn't diagnosed properly, but she just had a hard time in regular school. So she was an artist and she enjoyed and was talented in art and ended up going to art school and did well in that, but she was just kind of a different person and she wanted to go off, you know, and she hooked up with
the Rainbow Gatherings. I don't know if you know anything about the Rainbow Gatherings, but there it's just kind of like a hippie group of people that they all live in this giant communal kind of situation. And I'm not sure how long they go, maybe a week or something, but they get naked and they sit around in the stream and they do hallucinogenic drugs and they all, you know,
probably sing and it's all kumbay a, you know. So she basically got into psychedelics and recreational drugs, and I don't think that helped her brain a whole lot, because there was depression. The mom and the sister had experienced, you know, depression, and so they were they took drugs for that, but pharmaceutical drugs. But Carrie Anne did not want to take pharmaceutical drugs only she said she was just going to continue taking the street.
Drugs that she was already taking.
So she would come, she would go to these gatherings, she would come back home and she would stay with her sister Kathy for part of the year and then she'd pick up and leave again. So basically, she came back one year close to the time to when she disappeared, and she had her mental state had disintegrated even more so it was nineteen ninety five that she had a mental breakdown. She shaved her head, she cut herself on
her forearms. She stuck her hand I guess behind the refrigerator or something and cut herself that way as well. But she also cut herself like with a razor, and she reported hearing voices, and so they, you know, her mom and her sister tried to get her to go see somebody, and like I said, she just refused to take pharmaceutical drugs. So she left again, and you know, they were worried about her, but she just wouldn't come home.
And her parents, you know, a year or two later, said, you know, why don't you come travel with us with us?
Because they sold.
Their house and they were, you know, traveling around, and she just didn't want to be with her parents because they didn't understand her lifestyle. So her sister Kathy was trying to get her to come back. She talked to her on the phone and at one point, you know, she was sober, but when she talked to her on the phone again, she was clearly on something again. And so
that was the last time she talked to her. And they think she was on her way to state with some friends of the family in northern California, and so they think that she got into Ford's truck, you know, in Eureka, Humboldt County, which is in northern California, on her way to go see these people. Anyway, Cathy told me about all of that, and so it's all in the book.
You talk about Wayne at that same time meeting this woman and him having his own mental problems, right, and you talk about that these problems were not just diagnosed by doctors, that he had a history of being restrained in a hospital while he was in the military and then discharge greatly because of that mental illness, didn't he Yeah.
He Okay, So let's go back. So when he was he was nineteen years old, he was in the Marines in Orange County, California. So I live in San Diego County, so that's one county to the north on the way to LA For those of you who don't live in California, and who think that La and San diego all next to each other.
They're not.
So anyway, he's in Orange County. He's dating this woman named Kelly, who eventually married, and they're on a date and he sees a car crash at the side of the road, and he has been taking first aid classes in the military, so he says, I want to go over there and see if I can help.
So he goes over there and he basically tries to save this person's life.
Is bleeding at the neck and he puts his hand to stop the bleeding on the artery in the guy's neck that's bleeding. And while he's doing at a drink driver hits them and knocks for forty feet down an embankment. And so that's how he got that head injury. And he was in the ICU for nine days.
Apparently.
You know, he was bizarre, a little bizarre before that, but after that his personality changed and he was having serious problems. And again I don't know if this was related to the head injury or if it was just you know, predispositive predisposed. He was just predisposed to it
because his mom had issues. But he would just act out and get really violent, and they had to give him heald all and restrain him, and they would keep him in the hospital in the military for you know, days or week at a time, and he just he just reacted really strongly to things and and was you know,
really jealous and possessive. And he drove that poor woman away and you know, to some other guy, and then he'd get upset that she was with the other guy and would stalk them and anyway, so that all happened, and it continued, you know, So he got out of a military I know, he drove a school bus while he was in Orange County. He also would sing karaoke apparently had a really good voice and apparently still sings to this day. But his family never knew that he had all these problems.
I just thought he was a.
Handsome, polite young man and had no idea that he was so sexually kinkyar so bizarre.
But he didn't start getting.
Really violent with people and with women in particular, you know, until later. He was you know, he was volatile, I think, but I don't remember him, you know, being arrested. I might be wrong, but it's been a while, but he killed a dog. He got really upset with one of his neighbor's dogs. I remember that, but I don't think he actually hurt people until later.
Kelly's information, though, talks about those paraphilias that you mentioned, and also this is insatiable, deviant sexual desires that couldn't be satisfied.
I don't, to be honest, The thing that I remember the most about Kelly is this thing with the breasts. So yeah, I mean there were a lot of things that he wanted her to do that she didn't want to do.
I remember that.
Like I said, it's I'm thinking more about what came out at the trial, which was a lifelong situation because Kelly, you know, he was nineteen and that was a long time before he was finally put into prison and arrested and then put into prison. So yeah, I mean, he had exhibitionism, voyeurism, and he was doing this erotic asphyxia, which is basically when you choke someone and cut off the oxygen to their brain, so supposedly they have a
more intense orgasm. And he was trying to say that this was for their ben and I think, no, I don't think this was for beaar benefit. I don't think they wanted to be choked four times until they passed out and brought back for CPR. I don't think they enjoyed that, but he did apparently.
Left Jesus as an opportunity to stop to hear these messages. Now you got to talk to Wayne's father and Wayne's brother, Rodney, And Rodney is a very very important character in this because that's the person that Wayne confided in and did a confession of sorts to him, and Rodney was compelled to bring him to that sheriff's office to turn him in.
Yeah, so this is kind of interesting.
So when I interviewed Rodney many years ago, this book originally came out in two thousand and nine, he told me that his brother didn't tell him anything specific, that he just said he'd hurt some people and that, you want, he needed to turn himself in, and he called his brother because he kind of knew that he was going to probably not be able to do it on his own, which is true because he you know, tried to get out of it after calling his brother, and his brother
had had a really long day and ended up, you know, losing his job that same day and gets a call from his brother, I need you to come up here to this motel room way up in you know, Eureka. So he had to drive I can't remember how many hours all the way up there. And he gets there and he's in this this motel room in the middle of the redwood forest, which is pretty beautiful but kind
of creepy, weird little motel. But when I was talking to Rodney recently, when I was doing the update, he told me that he didn't tell me the truth, that in fact, his brother did tell him some details that night. So it's funny you asked me that, because he did not tell me originally that he had confessed anything, but then eventually he told me that he did confess things.
So he wanted to to make sure that his brother turned himself in because he didn't want to be held accountable because he or be you know, considered complicit in any of this stuff, because he didn't know anything about it until his brother told him. And even though he pretended that he didn't know these things, he was worried that somehow he'd get hauled in, you know, become part of this whole mess.
So are you writing this book too? That he had a constant failure in relationships, which led to him being married various times. And one of the events seemed to precipitate, or at least some people thought that it precipitated these murders or some of his murders, in that he had a son with a woman named Elizabeth, and again rejection and failure in that relationship.
Yeah. So the thing about this relationship, you know, he's a difficult person, and he.
Can act like a child, and he can act.
Very petulant and spoiled and way too emotional, and.
So basically he saw himself as a victim.
And that seems pretty common with murders that I've written about. They you know, they they somehow see their lives as you know, it's not their fault and this happened to them. And you know, so he's basically blaming his ex wife for keeping him from his son, which was not exactly the case. I mean, there was you know, he moved away.
I mean I don't think I don't think there was ever going to be anything like you know, fifty to fifty custody because of his mental you know, short falls to put it mildly, But it's not like she wouldn't let him see the kid.
But in for it's mind, it became that way.
And so when he was talking to people, you know in his life, you know, some women at the bar or his relatives or whatever, he would just complain about how this woman was keeping him from his son and you know, woe is me, and I'm such a victim, And that really wasn't the situation. You know, he could have tried harder to see his son. He really didn't see him that often because he didn't go visit him.
And you know, they lived, he moved away. He was living in a different state because his wife was in Las Vegas. So you know, that was a whole messed up perspective thing. But that's that's how he claimed it, and that's and he did it in the detective interviews as well. He was blaming you know, his ex wife and how he didn't get to see his son and was crying about it.
And like I said, the guy, the guy was a mess.
You got to talk to people that were responsible for this DNA testing. This wasn't an easy endeavor to get this DNA testing to find out the remains of care and Cummings, and so you introduce a character that you spoke to Sheriff Billy Hansel, I'll tell us about this initiative to get this testing done.
Okay, So the sheriff basically came into office, and Humboldt County in twenty eighteen, that's about around when he came into office, had more than sixty five unsolved homicides and missing persons cases and nearly twenty unidentified remains cases, including this one, dating back to nineteen fifty. So when he was elected, he launched this cold case unit to investigate them.
It only had two part time detectives though, so these were not detectives that were full time or even you know, normally employed by this department, but they were, you know, I think one of them was retired. One of them I think may have worked for another agency, but you know, so they worked part time.
And so it had been the case previously.
This is a small department that all the working detectives also had to deal with cold cases, which of course they didn't have time to do because they were constantly dealing.
With new cases.
So he decided that he wanted to make a special initiative to try to solve these cold cases because there were so many of them. And what's interesting about this area is this is known as the the Green I think it's called the Green Triangle, their Emerald Triangle because
parly were all the pot had grown in California. So and it's you know, and there's a lot of there's a lot of crime up there, and you know, get people showing up who are involved in this whole underworld of selling pot, you know, and so you know, recreational pot is a relatively new.
Thing, you know.
So up in humbold County there was always this tradition of people who grew pot illegally in the forests and in you know, sometimes on their own land. And so a lot of these you know, people just like ended up going missing and they'd find these bodies, you know,
in bodies of water or in the forest. And so, you know, this woman, they didn't know who she was, and they didn't they did this one in particular because it was a woman, I think, and because it was a young woman, and they knew that because her pelvic area was still part of the torso and they could tell that she'd actually had had a baby before as well.
I don't know how they did that but they could tell that from what was left of her remains, which was a surprise to her sister because she never knew that her sister had been pregnant, and she thought, oh god, what happened to that baby? I wonder the same thing. Did she have the baby, did she lose the baby? Is that person alive today? I mean, I'm still wondering that, and there's no way to know.
So basically, the.
Sheriff put together this cold case unit, and then the forensic technician I think was already working for the sheriff's department, so he went.
And got the train name.
His name is Andy Campbell, and so he's the guy that does most of the work. So you have to go in and build a family tree essentially and try to figure out, you know, who might be related to who. So they use public databases they use. They didn't know who she was. So what all they could do at the time was take tissue samples from the body parts that they had and they sent them to the FBI. The FBI sent them back and so they had those frozen,
those little tissue samples. So now after all these years, you know, and the technology had advanced, they were able to, you know, try to do a match. So they submitted that DNA to ged match, and that's how they matched up with a cousin.
You chronicle the contact of the family members to give them this very very interesting news. They talked to Jeff, but then they talked to Kathy as well.
Right like I said, they left a message on her voicemail saying that they were calling from Eureka, And so in the meantime, she read my book three times figured out it was her sister, and so by the time she called them back, she's.
Basically like, you know, I think I know why you're calling.
So then they had to get her DNA and do a real match because she's you know, they need to get closer than a cousin to make sure they have the right person.
So they did that, and then they knew it was her.
That Jesus has an opportunity to stop to hear these messages. Who did you talk to for the updated edition that you didn't speak to in two thousand and nine, and again somewhat of the surprise of the information that you did receive.
Well, I interviewed her cousin and the sister and the sheriff and the detective that was working on the case, and Andy Campbell, the genealogist. I talked also with a guy who had worked on the original case, and they had one of the staff members in the medical examiners or coroner's office or whatever.
Had done something.
He buried these remains when he wasn't supposed to, and oh it was a mess. So I feel bad for Kathy because these parts were you know, they were buried part some of them were buried in a pauper's grave. They didn't know she was, so they had to dig those up and send them to her. Plus these tissue samples, I mean, there were just pieces of her. You know.
It's so sad.
But she got I think she got everything that they could get to her.
And so she said, she told me she was.
Going to bury them on her land where she's living now, so she'll be close to her. Other than that, I think that I talked to Rodney again, and.
I think that was about it.
You tried to speak to Wayne tell us about this attempt to get him to add her some questions.
So what's funny is, after all these years, you know, I had tried to speak with him for the first edition, and he didn't want to. He never answered me, and that I attributed to There was this woman, This is very ironic. She was a breast enhancement herbal supplement spokes model, a mouthful.
He was this blonde english woman.
She was young, she was pretty. She was in the courtroom for the sentencing and she kind of latched onto me and she had basically started visiting him in jail and decided she woke up one day and she said, I'm going to do a documentary on a serial killer. It's just like, okay, you're just a journalist overnight. Okay, great. Anyways, she was not a journalist. She was turned out to
be this huge faker. And there's a whole backstory which I can't get into for legal reasons, but she was a conn woman essentially, and she pretended to be something that she wasn't to numerous people. But she latched on him and she did in fact work with a producer and they did in fact produce a documentary.
So she was interviewing him in.
Jail and the defense found out about it and they got really upset because she was you know, they were worried that she was getting information out of him. And they could really script the trial, so they put a stop to that. But then she continued to call him, or he would call her collect or whatever. They were still speaking, and she was sending him pictures of herself, you know, washing the car and these little tiny shorts
and you know, just kind of gross. He decided to make her his media liaison, which go figure, you know, And so of course she doesn't want to let me speak to him because she wants him all to herself for her silly documentary.
How was she depicted in all of this?
Later?
Like I said, she was a calm woman.
She Rodnie never trusted her, you know, he had a lot of choice things to say about her. She showed up at the dad's house at one point trying to get money. I mean, she's just I don't want to say anything more, just because I don't want to get in trouble. But she's not in the picture anymore. From what I can tell. There was a whole bunch of other stuff that happened with her that had nothing to do with Ford that I found out that she was, you know, using other people to get what she wanted,
and it was just not good. So I never let her use me because I could tell she was She was just not so I was like, I don't want to get thrown out of the courtroom. She was like trying to take pictures so when she wasn't supposed to. You know, you're not allowed to take pictures at certain times during the court proceedings. And she was sitting next to me, and I was just like, I'll sit next to me, and I don't want to get thrown out or some kind of lunatic.
You know.
I didn't say that, I'm.
Kidding, but and she was reprimanded for deceptive practices in trying to visit Wayne and also just not using her her actual name.
Yeah, she was, like I said, she was a connwoman. She would like ride in her car next to the bus when he was being transported, and I'm just all kinds of stuff. She was just really out there. But he liked her, you know, he likes blondes.
When you spoke to Rodney, the person closest to his brother Wayne and who professes love for him, even though they didn't he and Jean didn't visit him in San Quentin, what did he What was his only conclusion as to the reason why Wayne became what he became.
I don't really know the answer to that.
I do know that he blamed the time when he got hit by the drunk driver. Know that he said that he really his personality really did change after that. But other than that, I mean, they're not on good terms anymore, if they don't really speak anymore, because you know, this really affected Rodney in a pretty dramatic way as well. I mean, he was constantly getting hounded. He's like, I can't go to a family you know, get together without
somebody bringing it up. And no, he just felt like he was being hounded and he just you know, he didn't approve of anything that his brother did and didn't like it, and it didn't like how it affected you know him, and like reporters hounding him, and he just wanted it. He just didn't want any part of it. And to this day he just seems pretty bitter about
the whole thing. He really blamed his mother a lot too, because his mother was just not a good influence and she always wanted something from them.
You know, years later she would you know, she would've off to India. This happened.
I got in the middle of this somehow, this doesn't have anything to do with the case. But because of my book, and because I quoted the mother in the book, even though I didn't actually interview her, I had access to the defense investigator's an eight hour interview with her. I had excerpts of that, so I used it, and I used that to also interview the father, because she was accusing the father of all kinds of things, and Jane, the father was like, that didn't happen. So I actually
had to write the book. There are parts of the book where I have he said, she said in completely different sections. Because their recollections and their versions of what happened were so different, I can't say which is true, you know, because I wasn't there. But Rodney really, I think, cided more with the father and really really did not like the mother. And so I got this email from somebody who was taking care of the mom and I think she she got COVID and she had some other issues.
And I got put in the middle of this, and they said, well, can you please contact Rodney. She really needs help. She's trying to, you know, reach out to him, and either he was ignoring her or she didn't know where he was. And so I, you know, passed on the messages. So your mom's really sick. She's trying to
get a hold of you. So it's just, you know, this case has gone on for a really long time, and I kind of got in the middle of that, and in ways, you know, they had nothing to do with the case, but you know, to deal with this blonde woman and then again now that later with the mom being sick, and so it's funny how these cases end up, you know, going on and on and evolving in ways that you never imagined.
You spoke to Kathy about the last phone call she had with her sister.
As I was mentioning before, she was sounding like she was on drugs and she hadn't. She had been sober the last time that she'd seen her, and so she could tell that she wasn't doing well, and she kind of begged her to come back. She said, I'll send you a plane, I'll send you a bus ticket, and she just didn't want to come back. So that's why she thought that maybe she was on her way to go see these family friends in northern California.
In this updated addition and taking into consideration the first edition, what is your conclusion as to this formation of this Wayne adam Ford, what can you attribute it to? What do you attribute his murderous behavior to?
Basically, I think what happened to him is his brain started deteriorating. I think they actually did a brain scan and showed that part of his brain had atrophied, which is something that happens to people who are alcoholics. So that's one thing that happened. The brain injury that he had from being knocked down, the clip down, the embankment.
He was in the ICU for nine days.
They got in touch with his mother to come and see him, and she came briefly and then just said, oh, you know, I'm going to leave. Your girlfriend can take care of you.
So she is a real piece of work too, so you know, neglected by the mom.
The father was very intimidating and aggressive and kind of a gruff guy. There's a story that he would you know, the mom told that he grabbed her breast at the dinner table, which of course he denies. She claims that he raped her, which he denies, but you know, whether it's true or not. He was definitely a force that board was scared of that he was going to get punished.
So he had this whole thing.
When he was young about being scared that he was going to be get in trouble for things, and sometimes he would confess things.
So I don't know how much of this evolved and how much was just in his makeup.
But over time, you know, he was picking up these women and maybe he just figured he was getting away with it and he just kept doing it. I don't know, but I mean, I think it started getting worse when he started, you know, the behavior started escalating. And you know, his first victim carry in Cummings, he dismembered entirely. And what's weird to me is that did not escalate, Like he didn't do that again. That was the first time
he did it, and he didn't do it again. The woman whose breast he cut off when he turned himself in, he had it in his pocket. He claims that he cut that off only because he was having trouble getting her into the aqueduct or something, and like the way that he had the rope and the tarp or whatever, the breast was in the way, so he cut it off, you know, if that's true. But I don't really know, to be honest, what happened to him other than you know,
he just knew he couldn't stop doing it. But he said he did it to fifty women, and if there were just four that he killed, he says, oll, what was an accident? I gave them CPR and these ones just didn't make it back. And I say, well, okay, maybe that's an excuse for the first time, maybe for the second time. But if you know that you do that kind of behavior and these women are dying, you stop doing it, right, I mean, you know that's you know, what you're doing is going to cause that That's not
an excuse. So apparently he admitted all that, and then years later, now according to his brother, he's starting to kind of backtrack and claim that he's innocent and that he's going to get out of prison.
And I don't know what's going on with him.
I mean, the guy's got a lot, a lot of mental issues, so you know, take it with a grain of salt. But I think you asked me, you know, I try to get in touch with him, So yes, I did try to get in touch with him. What's funny these days is you can actually talk to inmates. Now there's no longer a death row. They have dismantled it and they've moved these prisoners now into other regular prisons.
I have two people in following or three people in following still because we're talking about doing TV and movie deals here and there. I'll lett you know if they ever come through, but I got to keep track of where these people are. So Board is now in San Luis Obispo in another prison. And the guy that I'm following for my next book that's coming out in June, Charles Chase Merritt, he is now down San Diego County
at the prison here. But you can talk to them by phone if you want, and you can email them and they can email you back, which they've given these prisoners somehow access which they never used to. So I emailed. It's through some kind of third party provider, but so it's like blind. They don't have your actual email or phone number unless you give it to them.
And I ended up.
Getting a burner phone a burner app which I could forward to my cell phone, but it costs money and I didn't want to keep doing it, so I emailed forward and I just said, Hey, I'm doing an update.
I'd really like.
To talk to you, you know, and he basically wrote back he didn't see any point and he said he never read the first book, and he didn't plan on it, and he just didn't see any point in talking to me. So I don't know what that's about or why, but we've never never talked.
But then he sent me.
Until forrest he's wished me a happy Fourth of July with a bunch of exclamation points.
I just thought that was really bizarre. That very so, and that's the last I heard of him.
That's incredible. It's very interesting too that the brother talks just a little bit about his Wayne's attitude towards what he said, wanting women or slots or prostitutes. So he had said that the only kind of conclusion he might come to is that he had this real bad attitude towards women in the first place.
Yeah, that does seem to be true.
I mean, he never really seemed to respect them all that much. I mean when you hear him talk about them, you know, in the way he treated them, even before he was killing women, he didn't treat them.
He never really treated him very well.
But then again, this brain injury that's well documented, that seems definitely attributable to the murders that he committed and the kinds of murders he committed. You just chronicle. I don't want to get into too many details, but twenty seven stab wounds that were post murder.
Well, he dismembered her, and I think he also had sex with the body after she was dead. I mean, you know, like I said, the guy's out there and I can't understand that you asked me how to get like that. I have no idea, you know, but he's he's definitely got some problems in his brain. He's definitely got some problem and more than a lot of killers, you know, very complicated guy.
Yes, you mentioned that you have a project this summer, another book project. Can you tell us about that book project and just a little bit about it?
Sure?
Okay, So it's called Down to the Bone, A Missing Famili's Murder and the Elusive Quest for Justice. So hopefully you'll have me to have me on to talk about this in full. But it comes out on June twenty fourth, so you can pre order it now, would.
Love it if you did, because it.
Has been delayed three times. Really kind of mess with my momentum and sales and promoting this book and talking about this book, because every time I'd start talking about it again, my publisher would delay the publication date. So this is a tricky book, and this is partly the reason. But there were other reasons that I can't really go into that had nothing to do with me. But it's about the mcday family. So this is a family of four.
Joseph and Summer McStay where the parents and then there were two little boys, ages three and four, Jeohnny and Joey Junior. And they lived in San New York County here where I live, in Fallbrook, which is way north and east of me, and they had just moved into this house and they were renovating it. They had previously lived on the coast because Joseph was a surfer and he and Summer loved being at the beach. But they wanted to buy house and they just couldn't afford coastal
property because it is really expensive here. So they bought this place that was in foreclosure, so that's how they got a good deal on it. And they basically were redoing it and so they were, you know, painting the kitchen, they were putting a new flooring, they're putting a new countertop, so the house was kind of a mess and hadn't really moved in, so there was you know, it was it was difficult for the for the police when they got the sheriff's department, when they got involved, to kind
of tell what was going on. But basically, there's one day they just kind of disappeared and the last person who they knew they had seen was a business associate. So he'd spent most of his time working with two
business associates. And basically the gist of the book is that they arrested one business associate when the other one had just the same motive and in fact, much more of the same behavior wasn't even considered as a suspect, and yet the other one is now on death row because the defense claims, you know, confirmation bias that the
sheriff's department basically you know, mishandled. The first shriff's department in the San Diego Sheriff's department investigated this as a missing person's case when clearly there were red flags all over that something bad had happened to these people, But the detective, in his wisdom, had determined long before you know, the end of this case, when he gave up basically
that they had gone voluntarily to Mexico. That's what he decided, when in fact, eight months after he dropped the case and said I'm going to hand this over to the FBI, which he actually never did because they never got a single file. I don't know what that means. Maybe maybe it was in process that All I know is they never got anything. Their skeletal remains were found one hundred miles away from the house in the high desert in
San Bernardino County. And coincidentally, the same judge from Wayne adam Ford's trial is the same judge that handled the mix Stay case, which I thought.
Was really interesting, yes many years later too.
So basically, they found these bodies in two shallow graves in the middle of the desert. A micro motorcyclist found a bone and it was it turned out to be a piece of one of the little boy's skull skulls, And so when they dug they found this two areas where they were shallow graves where there was one adult and one child buried in this one area. So they uncovered all that, took all the bones out and they basically found that they were all hit in the back
of the head with a blunt instrument. So it's sad, you know, they did not go to Mexico. They were brutally bludgeoned and left in the desert. The defense said, confirmation bias. You never even looked at anybody else. You just decided it was this guy, and then no matter what you found or didn't find to support it, this is your guy. And so a lot of the trial was basically them trying to blame the other business associate.
So so the book basically goes into, you know, the flaws in both investigations and the holes in the prosecution's case, and goes into the background of you know, who this family was and what they were doing at the time they disappeared, and what are you know. There was a lot of pretty unanswered questions too. So the prosecution never was able to prove where they were killed. They kept saying it was in the house, but they never found a single drop of blood.
In the house.
And if you're bludgeoned in the back of the head like that, there's a lot of blood in the head when you hit somebody and it splatters, it would go everywhere, and they didn't find a single drop of blood in the house, and they didn't were not able to link the guy who's on death.
Row by blood or by DNA to the house at all or to the gravesite.
And in fact, the defense claims that there's some untested DNA that they found that did not belong to the guy who's in prison or to the family that they say, if you could just test this, maybe you'd find the people who really kill these people. So that's kind of a snapshot.
Well, you made me very anxious to read this book and to obviously interview you about that book when it is published in the summer. Thank you so much. That will be Down to the Bone and coming out this summer twenty twenty five. I want to thank you very much for coming on and talking about the new updated edition of Body Parts, Serial Killer's Deadly Compulsions. For those people that might want to look at this case further. Can you tell us about your website or any social media you do.
Sure, it's Kaitlin Roth dot com. I am on every social media platform I think there is pretty much. I'm on Facebook and blue Sky and threads and even Twitter, even though it's like yelling into a forest and people if they want to email me or buy a book sign they're.
Welcome to contact me.
But this Body Parts comes out on Tuesday February twenty fifth, and Down to the Bone comes out on Tuesday, June twenty fourth.
Sounds fantastic. Thank you so much, Caitlin Rother. Body Parts, The Serial Killers, Deadly Compulsion the newest, latest edition, updated.
Thanks for having me back, Dan, I appreciate it.
Thank you so much, and you have a great evening, and good night, good night.