The Voices of Serial Killers

by Christopher Berry-Dee

  Max and I were crawling through this little maze, and Max started to panic in the middle of the hay bales, and he started yelling: “Mommy, Mommy,” and I couldn’t comfort him.

  Max and I didn’t have that kind of relationship at that time that he wouldn’t be completely traumatized if I took him away because his mother was the only thing stable he had at that point, no matter how shitty she was, and I couldn’t take him.

  So, I took off in the morning and didn’t get to where I met this first victim until midnight. Everything was so surreal to me. There was something wrong with me at this point, ah! And, anyways, I just of ambled there knowing that I had to go to work the next day. And then I meet up with this girl. I really just meant to give her a ride and get a few hours of sleep and go to work. But that’s not what happened . . . I’m so sorry for crying right now.

  When asked again if he regretted turning himself in, Ford said:I absolutely do not! It was what had to be done! There’s just right and wrong! There’s no gray lines there. When you think about it, I do not have the right to put anyone else in danger just for my own sake. I didn’t know whether I could maintain . . . I thought what was happening to me might end up happening to me, not just little small amounts, but more and more. I was afraid I would lose all control of, eh, conscious thought of what I was doing. So, eh, what choice did I really have? I mean what kind of person could endanger somebody else’s life for their own benefit? It’s just completely against all of human nature to me.

  I don’t regret turning myself in . . . even after the conclusion of the trial. I do not!

  Coroner Glen Sipma: “Identifying any one of our cases, our clients, has been one of our main objectives because we feel that there has to be a closure. We’d like to be able to go to somebody and say we are going to be able to close this case. Actually, the coroner, because a deceased person has nobody else to act for them, we are absolutely the only person required to be the advocate of a deceased person. I am still am very hopeful that someday the head [of Jane Doe] will be found because that will help us tremendously in identifying who the victim was.” Deputy Coroner Charles Van Buskirk: “I have admiration that Mr. Ford would turn himself in . . . to stop from continuing doing such heinous things and that he would want to subject himself to the legal system. I am sure that it was a very difficult thing to do, and it is wonderful that he did that to stop himself from killing again, even perhaps again and again.”

  Pastor James Ray: “Wayne Ford asked me a question: ‘Do you think God would forgive me?’ And, I asked him, ‘Do you feel any remorse?’ He said: ‘All the time, all the time,’ and I said, ‘Forgiveness is possible.’ You know, the scriptures say, ‘Who the Lord makes free, is free,’ and even if you are in prison you don’t have to be bound. You know there are people outside who are bound more than many in prison. To really know that Christ is a forgiving God, you will know that some of the greatest men in the Bible were murderers. I wouldn’t recommend it. I would not advocate that to anyone, but, eh, Moses was a murderer. David was a murderer. Paul was a murderer . . . he was on his way to Damascus with papers to kill Christians, yet he still wrote over two-thirds of the New Testament.”

  Dr. Paul Berg: “If he were to be released, I am sure that he would kill again.”

  Bill White, father of 25-year-old victim Lanette Deyon White: “Wayne Ford? I would like to see the bastard hang. Let him see how it feels like not breathing air.”

  We find, in Wayne Adam Ford, a rather unusual, if not unique serial killer. He is a man who metamorphosed from an innocent child to serve, though for a very short period, as a United States Marine; a man who suffered a traumatic head injury—an accident that undoubtedly changed his mental faculties and personality for the worse—and an individual who ultimately destroyed the lives of four women, leaving a trail of irreversible heartbreak in his wake.

  For my part, I have no sympathy for Wayne Adam Ford at all. Without being presumptuous, I would hazard a guess that not too many readers of this chapter would have any sympathy, either. We have seen the mitigation cards, so often played by these predators who deal them out time and time again before sentencing. It just doesn’t wash.

  That Wayne committed his first murder because he felt that his son should not be brought up like he allegedly had, and that he had been deprived of access to his son, does not pass muster. Perhaps, if Wayne had truly wanted his son to be with him someday, he should have pulled his socks up and started acting like a responsible father. Abducting, raping, torturing, and killing four women was not, at least in my mind, the way to go about it.

  To her credit, we have not heard a word from the former Mrs. Elizabeth Ford. Maybe she simply does not want her boy to learn of the atrocities carried out by his dad. However, Elizabeth is on record with Social Services as showing a great interest in having Max relate and visit with his father. According to the documents, Wayne Ford was “not that interested . . . he was a non-existent father.” That Elizabeth wanted to be in attendance on visitations, she argues, was perfectly acceptable, considering the violence and control heaped upon her by her estranged husband. But with her track record, are we able to believe anything this woman says?

  According to Wayne Ford, he idolized his son. According to him, he desperately wanted to see his boy as much as possible. “I loved that boy with all my heart,” says Ford, “and that woman—cunt took the one thing I loved from me, my son!”

  However, what we can determine, with 100 percent accuracy, is that Wayne Ford targeted hookers. Killing is one thing, hacking up their bodies is another. But to take parts of their bodies away with him . . . in two instances, a breast or two, is something else entirely. And we would be right to ask, “Why?”

  Conveniently for Wayne Ford, he gives us no explanation; for he has no explanation that would satisfy even the most empathetic psychologist, psychiatrist, or any interested party, aside from the likes of the late Jeffrey Dahmer and his ilk. No one has ever asked him: “Why did you store the rendered fat from two breasts in a coffee jar?”

  Pastor James Ray has a few thoughts of his own:Why do they [serial killers] choose prostitutes to be their victims? In my mind they see these women as probably someone that has belittled motherhood and the marriage relationship and possibly they are a little angry because of that.

  Of course, not all serial killers “get a little angry” and target prostitutes, as the yellowing pages of criminal history will testify. Some kill little boys, others little girls, or boys and girls. Some target the elderly, some murder young men, while others, like Ted Bundy, set their sights on dark-haired, coed look-alikes. Many serial killers wipe out complete families in their homes.

  Female hitchhikers and street prostitutes, by the very nature of their work, simply make convenient and easy pickings for a subgroup of killers; Michael Bruce Ross, Arthur Shawcross, Gary Leon Ridgway, Joel Rifkin, and Peter Sutcliffe, like Wayne Ford, are in this group. Yet while these men may have a common target type, their motives for killing are often vastly different, and not all of them zero in on hookers or lonely hitchhikers because they harbor an underlying hatred for their mother or because they enjoyed a less than perfect marriage. Indeed, I will go a step further by referring to the serial murderer Keith Hunter Jesperson, who says, without any frills or shiny bells, “I killed eight women simply because they were disposable and they pissed me off.” No bullshit from Keith. No namby-pamby excuses at all. Not a hint of remorse from Keith, who adds, “And I don’t give a flying fuck.”

  Common among serial killers, however, is a psychopathic denial of guilt. On the face of it, Wayne becomes the exception because he turned himself in and confessed all. He seems remorseful. He comes across as feeling sorry for what he has done. How perversely contrite! Yet, in the same breath, he transfers all the blame for his antisocial behavior onto his upbringing—his parents, his road accident, his relationships with women, and finally Elizabeth, the mother of his only son. Wayne actually believes that everyone else is at fault, a
nd being the “martyr to moral values” that he now professes to be from behind grim prison walls, he gave himself up because he didn’t want to “hurt” anyone else again.

  “Hurt”? This man Ford took young, defenseless women off the streets, used them, abused them, terrified them, and subjected them to a ride of terror that not even Stephen King could invent. He raped them and beat them. He strangled them to death, after which he methodically cut their bodies into pieces, selecting the choicest cuts to take away with him. Two of the breasts he cooked . . . another he placed in his freezer, probably to masturbate over later. And God only knows what he kept the rendered breast fat for . . .

  What human artifacts Wayne did keep he buried in damp holes in the ground or dumped in slow-moving water like so much trash, to float away—the result being to scare the living daylights out of a couple of duck hunters and a security guard whose main job had simply been to stroll along a peaceful river bank.

  Mr. Ford really does have a lot more explaining to do, and perhaps his second wife does, too! But what are the chances that Wayne Adam Ford will be executed?

  A 2008 report by the 22-member California Commission on the Fair Administration of Justice said that the state’s death row population of 670 inmates—the largest in the nation—will continue to swell unless the state nearly doubles what it now spends on attorneys for inmates. The system is “dysfunctional and close to collapse,” the report argued. “It is plagued by delays of nearly twice the national average from sentencing to execution, and drowning under a backlog of cases.”

  While the commission did not advocate abolishing the death penalty, it did note that California could save $100 million a year if the state replaced the punishment with sentences of life without the possibility of parole. “Death row prisoners cost more to confine, are granted more resources for appeals, have more expensive trials, and usually die in prison,” the report claimed.

  Thirty inmates have been on California’s death row more than 25 years, 119 for more than 20 years, and 240 for more than 15 years; therefore, Wayne Adam Ford has a long wait before he meets his maker. Indeed, the California Supreme Court has such a backlog of appeals that only one appeal from a conviction after 1997 has been resolved. In point of fact, it takes an average of 12 years to obtain a state high court ruling on their first trials.

  Death sentence appeals in California are mandatory, and Mr. Ford is appealing his sentence; upon what grounds is unknown at the present time. However, 14 people convicted in the state between 1989 through 2003 were later exonerated. Six death row inmates who won new trials were acquitted or had their charges dismissed for lack of evidence.

  Since 1978, only 13 individuals have been executed in California—averaging around two a year. The most recent occurred at 12:38 a.m., Tuesday, January 17, 2006 (under former Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger’s watch), when Clarence Ray Allen was put to death for the murders of Byron Schletewitz, Josephine Rocha, and Douglas White. Allen spent a staggering 28 years behind bars before he received a lethal injection, while running up a tab for the taxpayer of millions of dollars in appeals and upkeep.

  And, for the benefit of my death row train spotters, Mr. Allen was 76 years old when he was executed, earning him the meritorious distinction of becoming the second-oldest inmate to be put to death in the U.S. since 2005. First prize goes to hired hit man John B. Nixon from Tennessee, who shot to death Virginia Tucker on January 2, 1985. Nixon spent 19 years on death row. Gray-haired, he was strapped to the gurney at age 77.

  Since the reinstatement of the death penalty in California, at the time of writing 38 condemned inmates have died of natural causes. Not surprisingly, 14 have committed suicide. Ninety-eight have left death row because their convictions or sentences were overturned. So even if some miracle did occur, Wayne Ford is going to have to wait at least 16 years for a reprieve, or commutation of sentence, while using up a hefty million of the taxpayers’ hard-earned dollars. Furthermore, this vast sum does not include the cost of keeping Ford incarcerated—a tidy $35,587 per annum. But at least the California citizens who do support the death penalty will be relieved to learn that it costs a mere $87 for the drugs that might one day kill him. Chances are, he will probably outlive most of us.

  CHAPTER 4

  ROBERT “BOBBY” JOE LONG—THE BABY-FACED KILLER

  Once I’ve done a crime, I just forget it. I go from crime to crime.

  —HENRY LEE LUCAS

  IF ANYONE IS A TEXTBOOK SEXUAL PSYCHOPATH, it has to be Bobby Joe Long. Indeed, it is as if serial killing is in his blood, for he is a distant cousin of the notorious serial killer, the late Henry Lee Lucas,9 who confessed and then recanted, to committing hundreds of murders. And just like Lucas, Bobby Joe had also suffered numerous blows to the head: a fall from a swing; a fall from his bicycle; a fall from a pony; and he only barely survived a serious motorcycle crash.

  In addition, Bobby was gene-damaged. He was found to have an extra X chromosome that had produced abnormal amounts of estrogen—which enlarged his breasts—during puberty. To make matters worse, he had slept in his mother’s bed until he was 13, and when he finally married, his wife nagged and dominated him, which, as one might appreciate, caused him to suffer blinding headaches and earaches. All of this was topped by a driving obsession for kinky sex, as well as the ability to have sex repeatedly with any woman he came across. He was, and still is, priapic.

  At age 19, Bobby Joe Long sported a mop of brown hair; today, gray-haired at 55, he remains strikingly hazel-eyed. Six feet tall in his socks, he tips the scales at 202 pounds. He still wears an easy, open smile. He has mischievous twinkle in his eye. Indeed, at first glance he looks the epitome of the all-American boy, the guy living next door to you. Yet he is a “dead man walking,” just waiting to meet his executioner. Until that day comes, his earthly address is inmate # 494041, Death Row, Union Correctional Institute, 7819 N.W. 228th Street, Raiford, FL 32026-4000.

  Long is always wondering what you are thinking about him and trying, with varying degrees of subtlety but almost unerring effectiveness, to nudge your thoughts in other particular, self-serving directions. If you are a guy asking him a question, he will usually tell you to “Fuck off!” But if you happen to be female, things can go two ways. To some women, Bobby quickly steers his subject matter toward perverted sado-sex, as this chapter proves through his correspondence with small-town Kentuckian murder groupie Annabel Leigh.10 However, with British-born-and-bred Victoria Redstall he kept things on an even keel—a gentleman, no less—all of which leaves us with a puzzle to solve with this Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde character. Which side of Mr. Long is the real person—the sexual pervert or the charming gent?

  So, to help us decide, we now put this killer under the glass, perhaps to analyze him with the fascination of a botanist studying a blowfly preserved in amber.

  Nineteen-year-old self-proclaimed murder groupie Annabel Leigh wrote to Bobby Joe, and from the outset she was deluged with some of the worst filth and perverted writing imaginable. Of course, she encouraged the man, there is no doubt about that, and a sample of the shockingly disturbing letters sent to her by this killer are published in this book.

  But as mentioned previously, Bobby Joe Long has also corresponded with true crime writer Victoria Redstall, and his letters to her show a completely different Bobby Long.

  On the face of it, Annabel Leigh seems to fit this psychopath’s victim type. With a hard-on most of the time, he constantly trolled for “dates” with hookers (although there is no suggestion whatsoever that Annabel Leigh is or has ever been a prostitute), and he frequented strip clubs. In addition to beating them, strangling them, mutilating, and killing them, he also treated these women like dirt. He would use them and abuse them as he wished. There was never any respect. To him they were street trash, enabling him, in his own mind, to justifiably satisfy his darkest fantasies, and this is proven in his correspondence with Annabel Leigh.

  The flip side of the coin, the other side of Bobby Joe
Long, manifests itself in his dealings with the completely respectable Victoria Redstall. To Bobby Joe Long, here was a woman whom he could respect. He recognized “class” in Victoria while perceiving Annabel Leigh as “trash.” Harsh labels, indeed, but if we are to try to understand what makes serial killers tick, we need to get inside their heads and find out exactly what’s going on there.

  But there is another dimension to consider as well, for late one night Bobby Joe Long also abducted a thoroughly decent young woman cycling home from work. He kept Lisa McVey prisoner in his home for several days. He raped her, subjected her to a terrifying ordeal, told her he loved her, then he set her free, probably knowing that doing so would end his killing spree. It seems that he brutally murdered prostitutes, but the one non-hooker he snatched from the streets, he released to live another day. Yet that’s not even it, because there were two non-hookers, the second being Elizabeth Loudenback, whom he killed.

  So, here is the enigma. Did Annabel Leigh bring out the real sicko in Bobby Joe Long? In considering this man’s history, I believe she accomplished it in spades.

  Did Victoria expose the false mask Bobby Joe Long wears—the facade of “apparent normalcy” that allowed him to convince hookers that he was no threat; that it was safe for them to get into his car? Did this mask allow him, under the pretense of buying furniture, to enter housewives’ homes when they were vulnerable and alone?