Wayne left high school before graduating, marrying a young woman and enlisting in the U.S. Marine Corps, working as a chemical and biologist specialist:I turned 17 and joined the Marine Corps, a good place to start my life in the right direction. And it worked out just fine until I had an accident. A girlfriend . . . her and I were driving down the freeway. Uh, I saw an accident and I told her to pull over. While I was helping the people in the accident who were hurt, a drunk ran over me. And when they finally found me, I was the other side of the fence, in a field. I was dead on arrival [at the hospital]. They apparently revived me after three days in a coma.
Due to the accident and the head trauma that I had, my head was swollen up like a watermelon and, eh, my jaw and one side of my body was pretty much non-functional. I was hit pretty hard by all of this, probably three weeks, maybe an entire month before I was able to, uh, function semi-normally.
I think the damage, which occurred to me at that time had changed my personality abruptly. I became very irritable afterwards, very, very quick-tempered, which I had before but nothing like it became after the accident.
—Wayne Adam Ford
Around this time following his accident, Wayne was psychologically evaluated at a mental health clinic. His work performance had suffered, and his attitude toward his superior officers worsened as the result of a sudden split with his wife. The physicians found that apart from depression and alcohol abuse, they also worried that he was a threat to himself because he exhibited suicidal tendencies. Consequently, he was transferred to the U.S. Naval Hospital in Long Beach, where he was confined to a psychiatric ward to undergo counseling and drug abuse rehabilitation. Of course, the doctors hoped that Wayne’s mental problems would be short-lived. They reasoned that he would soon get over the divorce and settle down. They would be proven wrong.
Wayne did indeed suffer a serious head injury. Most neuropsychiatrists will tell you that if you have suffered a very serious head injury it can affect your behavior. Your conscience and acquired behavior can be ripped out. There has been a substantial amount of research into people who have suffered similar trauma. In some cases a person can become mentally ill.
—CARLTON SMITH AUTHOR OF SHADOWS OF EVIL
Wayne did show a few signs of recovery, so he was discharged from hospital and reassigned to duty. In the summer of 1984, he was posted to Okinawa, Japan. About a month after he arrived in the Far East, his mental problems resurfaced, and this time the symptoms were far worse.
After being reprimanded by his commanding officer for failing an inspection, Wayne flipped out and became confrontational. The upshot was that he was diagnosed with “atypical psychosis due to his psychotic behavior.” He was also diagnosed with borderline personality disorder, which is marked by inappropriate bursts of anger, frequent suicidal thoughts, irritability, and depression.
In 1985, 24-year-old Wayne, still living in “Wayne’s world,” was honorably discharged from the Marine Corps:I had actually made Sergeant real quick and some of this can be attributed to the fact that I was hyperactive after the freeway accident, and really, really did well. But what happened was, I was put under stress, and I went overseas to Okinawa and I had an incident where I was found in a fetal position in my room. And they couldn’t get any response from me, so they took me to the hospital on the base and tried to see if I was on drugs or something. I wasn’t. Well, I became violent and injured a number of people, I guess, in the hospital, and they had to have MPs [military police] take me to the psychiatric ward. It was there that I was strapped down to a bed for a couple of weeks, spread-eagled and given massive doses of Haldol to keep me under control and finally they decided to quote from my medical records: “All attempts to take him off medication failed. He was a danger to personnel and equipment.” And, so then what they did was, they took me off medication and kicked me out of the Marine Corps. But they never gave me a medical discharge. I was given an honorable discharge because I hadn’t done anything wrong. It should have been a medical discharge, and I should have been taken care of medically from that point on with the medical issues until they were straightened out. They never were. So, I was finally released into the civilian world for about six to eight months without being able to do anything. I finally got to where I could do a menial labor-type job and this was probably good for me because it was extremely physical and this led ultimately to driving trucks and being on my own.
—Wayne Adam Ford
In January 1986, Garden Grove Police arrested Wayne for beating, raping, and robbing a prostitute. He was never prosecuted because the hooker refused to testify.
Later that year, Wayne was working as a mechanic and starting a relationship with another young woman. Sharing an apartment in San Clemente, California, Wayne and his partner had a turbulent affair, one marked with frequent arguments and breakups. According to one of Rick Halperin’s Death Penalty News—California articles, shortly after the split Wayne was “arrested for animal cruelty after he shot a dog to death in his backyard.” He pled guilty to the offense and received a brief jail sentence, but this punishment did little to deter his violent behavior, and his blatant disregard for life steadily grew more intense.
In 1994, Wayne was living in Orange County. There he shared a place with a man named Dave Hoover, who enjoyed the company of a succession of late-night female visitors whom he chose from his list of “Booty Calls.” Without belaboring the point, Hoover had a list of ten women, and if he wanted sex, he would telephone each girl in order of their appeal to him, running through the list until he scored.
At the very bottom of Hoover’s list was a somewhat plain and unattractive, though ample-bosomed, 19-year-old named Elizabeth. She frequented a karaoke bar where Wayne sang. There is no record of how many times Elizabeth “entertained” Hoover during the late hours, but it would be fair to say that on occasion he “treated her like shit,” which Wayne thought was “kinda funny,” but said that he felt “kinda sorry for her, too.” For her part, Elizabeth started to wash and iron Wayne’s clothes and, in return, he says, “I screwed her out of boredom and because she had big tits.”
Elizabeth, who lacked any moral realism whatsoever, told Wayne that she wanted to have kids and be a stay-at-home mother. To his own warped way of thinking, and with his self-esteem at an all-time low because he felt that no one wanted him, Wayne thought that she could be a “good mother, cleaner of his clothes, and keeper of the house.” He married Elizabeth in Las Vegas and slipped a bun in the oven almost immediately. Cracks appeared in the relationship shortly thereafter.
Wayne is adamant that he never loved Elizabeth. He allowed her to have sex with other men, as he didn’t want her for himself. Indeed, he says that he was “truly sickened by her,” and although she would later claim that he demanded to watch her have sex with other men, he argues, “I didn’t give a damn about her and who she screwed.”
Of course, there are two sides to any story. Elizabeth later explained that from the start of the marriage Wayne had suffered from severe bouts of depression, that he also became extremely controlling and aggressive toward her. This was a pattern that seemed to repeat itself in every one of his relationships, and even though Elizabeth desperately tried to please him, there was little she could do to make him happy, as Ford explains:I had gotten into a new relationship . . . the person I had my son, Max, with, and ultimately revisiting of the old wounds and mental problems that, uh, came back.
Max was on his way, my little baby . . . I really wanted a family of my own and so did she. And, I was really, really looking forward to the birth of my first and only child, Max. And, I was overwhelmed when he was born.
During Elizabeth’s fifth month of pregnancy, the couple had an argument after she refused him sex, so he raped her, or so she claims. The incident terrified her, she says, and what made it worse was his indifference about what he had done. She packed her bags and moved in with her mother, who lived in Nevada. Eventually, however, the ill-suited couple moved back in
together only to split up again. Their on-again, off-again relationship continued throughout the remainder of her pregnancy, even after Max was born in December 1995.
According to Carlton Smith, author of Shadows of Evil, Wayne frequently demanded that his wife participate in acting out his sexual fantasies, including sleeping with strange men while he watched and stuck needles into Elizabeth’s breasts—the latter a trait also enjoyed by Robin Gecht.
One would expect Wayne to deny this allegation if the question was ever put to him, but his record does prove that he exhibited a less than healthy interest in this part of a female’s body. Actually, he did cut two breasts off one of his victims. He cooked them, then buried them in the woods. He kept the rendered fat from the breasts in an empty coffee jar for some undetermined purpose. And he kept another breast in his truck’s freezer, boldly handing it over to the police when he turned himself in.
Wayne also demanded that Elizabeth clean the house, cook three times a day for him, and care for the baby while he skipped from job to job between California and Las Vegas. No matter how hard she worked, she says, Wayne criticized her. Again, as might be expected, Wayne Ford denies all this.
It wasn’t long before Elizabeth realized that her world would be better—a heck of a lot better and much easier for her—outside of Wayne’s world. In the summer of 1996 she moved out with baby Max and commenced divorce proceedings. Wayne temporarily went to live with his grandmother before moving into a trailer home in Arcata, California.
Following the breakup, Elizabeth says that she encouraged him to visit their son, and according to her he made only a few attempts to see the boy. “It seems that he was too busy wallowing in his own self-pity and growing hatred,” she said.
As one might expect, Wayne Ford tells a different story. He argues that he wanted to make the relationship work, but only because he wanted to be close to his son—a child he says he adored. He also claims that when he tried to arrange visits, Elizabeth refused to answer the phone. When she did agree to his request, he would drive long distances to see his son, only to find mother and son away from their home when he arrived. Elizabeth says this is completely untrue.
Wayne then slipped deeper and deeper into psychosis, further facilitated by alcohol abuse, and his ire soon turned deadly.
Broadcaster and documentary filmmaker Victoria Redstall sums it all up, saying:According to Wayne, his childhood was cold, callous and loveless. He was emotionally abused by both parents; physically abused by his father and abandoned by his mother. He had suffered a very serious head injury in his late teens and was suffering personality changed and psychotic breaks. But now he had a son to love and the child’s mother snatched the child away from him. His disrespect toward women, combined with his mental problems, turned into a rage which he transferred onto prostitutes.
Forensic psychologist Dr. Paul Berg is inclined to agree with Redstall:In my mind, the killing of the hookers was clearly related to the rage he felt toward his second wife. The fact that his wife ran away to Las Vegas, that he was powerless to care for his own child, and Wayne, being the injured child himself, would have been a totally out-of-control feeling for him.
Indeed, when Victoria Redstall asked Wayne Ford, “Do you believe that you were killing your wife when you were killing prostitutes?” his answer was: I believe that might have been a lot to do with the fugue state7 . . . that I put myself in Max’s shoes . . . a little boy’s shoes, and I protect myself and that’s what I think was going on.
Dr. Berg believes that Wayne Ford was not aware of what he was doing when he was killing. “He was on automatic pilot,” Berg says, “but he certainly became aware after the crimes had been committed.” However, this author believes that Mr. Ford knew exactly what he was doing when he committed murder.
Sonoma County Jane 194-97 Doe
My feeling was that it [the body] was some sort of plastic man . . . that’s what I wanted to think.
—Robert Pottberg at Wayne Ford’s trial
On Sunday, October 26, 1997, Robert Pottberg’s kayak glided through the peaceful waters of Ryan Slough, near Humboldt Bay, shrouded by an overcast sky. Accompanied by two friends and a young lad, Robert blissfully paddled along, taking in his surroundings. They were hunting ducks.
Humboldt Bay and its tidal sloughs are open to fishing year-round. The bay is home to a national wildlife refuge complex for the protection of wetlands and habitat for migratory birds, and on this occasion Ryan Slough was the final resting place of a dead body—well, that is to say, just the torso.
At first, Robert thought he had found a tailor’s mannequin on the muddy bank. He paddled closer and stopped about five feet away, “close enough to reach out a paddle and touch the body,” he says. Almost at once Robert realized that the object was the butchered remains of a woman. “It was skillfully dismembered,” Mr. Pottberg recalls. “There were no legs. There were no arms. There was no head.” So, having a cell phone at hand, he did what any self-respecting duck hunter would do under these circumstances—he immediately dialed 911 and was put through to the Humboldt County Police Department.
When investigators arrived at the scene, they saw that the victim’s torso had been sliced down the middle and gutted. Moreover, the woman’s breasts had been cut off, and they noted approximately 30 stab wounds to the body. But because there were no fingers to fingerprint, no head to photograph, no tattoos or unusual features on the torso, the police were literally up the creek without a paddle in any attempt to identify the woman.
Deputy Coroner Charles Van Buskirk remembers being called out to the slough, an area inaccessible by foot: I called for a boat. I hiked over some rough terrain and then laid out old boards and driftwood so I wouldn’t sink in the mud surrounding the torso. It was face down on a mud flat, in an area that would be underwater at high tide.
Having determined that the object was indeed a human body—and he says he “recognized it as such before he even stepped off the boat”—Van Buskirk added:I turned the torso over and found that it had been cut lengthwise and that both breasts had been removed. The pubic mound had been removed. On the lower back I found 27 small stab wounds, similar to what would have been caused by a penknife, and fingertip bruises on the upper back. I estimated that the body had been in the water only a few hours.
The unidentified body was officially toe-tagged as “Sonoma County Jane 194-97 Doe” and further studied by medical examiner Glen Sipma, who determined that she was likely between the ages of 18 and 25 and had a dark complexion. The woman had been dead for at least three or four days before she was discovered. “I would say that the corpse was in one of the worst states I’ve seen. The head, arms and legs were gone,” recalled Sipma.
Ford later explained to Victoria Redstall how he picked this hooker up:It was like midnight. She’s sitting there shivering on the side of a building. I don’t remember that I had a very long conversation with her . . . I think that it was just that: “It is going to get colder where you’re at, and I’ll give you a ride wherever you want to go, but sitting around here is probably the worst place to sit.”
Sadly, this woman is still known as “Sonoma County Jane 194-97 Doe” today. We have Mr. Ford to thank for that. What the coroner and police didn’t know was that Ford had baked the breasts in his oven before burying them in the woods. Perhaps even more revolting was the fact that he’d stored the rendered breast fat in an empty coffee jar. Mr. Ford was a “trophy-taker,” in that he took mementos of his crimes away with him so he could relive his murderous fantasies another day. Of course, Wayne is not unique in this respect, as any law enforcement officer or student of criminology will understand. Some killers take away the victim’s jewelry, as did Kenneth Alessio Bianchi, aka, “The Hillside Strangler,” who somewhat perversely gave the stuff to his common-law wife, Kellie Boyd.
As did Joel Rifkin, the New York slayer of prostitutes; he kept the items to furiously masturbate over until he could barely stand up.
Another exam
ple is British serial murderer Dr. Harold Shipman, who is thought to have murdered some 250 elderly patients; he also retained much of his victims’ jewelry for purposes known only to him.
And John Reginald Christie, a British serial killer of six women at his home at 10 Rillington Place, London, kept cuttings of his victims’ hair as trophies. They were found on premises formerly rented by him. Christie was hanged on July 15, 1953.
So in this respect, Wayne Adam Ford was not exceptional. Like Robin Gecht, he had a fetish for women’s breasts, the larger the better as far as he was concerned. Of course, the principal resident of Wayne’s world will deny this, but it seems clear that one doesn’t hack off a woman’s breasts, bag them up, and take them home for any other reason than to use them for some perverse, post-homicide sexual purpose.
More than a year after the torso was found, and after Wayne had confessed this murder, police searched the site in the woods where he lived rough for a short while. Deputy Coroner Van Buskirk found, in a shallow hole at the base of a tree, “two human thighs and portions of white, human flesh, in plastic bags.” Perhaps Mr. Ford was burying human flesh to later dig the items up again for some form of sexual gratification.
Tina Renee Gibbs
In June 1998, the body of a white female was found floating in the California Aqueduct near the small, pleasantly named town of Buttonwillow (pop. 1,300), some 27 miles west of Bakersfield. The human remains were taken for examination to the Kern County Coroner’s Office, where it was discovered that the woman had most probably died as the result of strangulation. It was also suggested that she’d had sex and then been murdered several days before her corpse was found.
The Voices of Serial Killers Page 6