Killer Stories with Harvey Guillén - “The Long-Haul Killer” Wayne Adam Ford Pt. 2

Episode Date: September 1, 2022

Although he had developed a sense of discipline in the military, a traumatic brain injury and deep-rooted rage inched Wayne Adam Ford closer to losing control. In 1997, over a decade after he was honorably discharged, he killed his first victim. He would kill three more over the next year. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Due to the graphic nature of this episode, listener discretion is advised. This episode contains discussion of murder, rape, sexual assault, and bodily mutilation. Extreme caution is advised for listeners under 13. It was a quiet autumn night in October of 1998, but 36-year-old trucker Wayne Adam Ford wasn't enjoying the tranquility. Instead, he was driving California's expansive roads for work. At this point, he'd been driving for hours and was ready to take a break. When he spotted 29-year-old sex worker Patricia Ann Tamez on the side of the road,

he figured she'd be the perfect distraction. Something to help him unwind a little, maybe ease his loneliness. Wayne pulled over and invited Patricia up. They negotiated over her services, what she'd do for him and how much he'd pay. Then once they agreed, he led her to the sleeper cab in the back of his truck, and they got down to business. It's possible that things started out as planned. Wayne liked to get rough during sex, and maybe Patricia had been okay with that.

But even if that was the case, Wayne's sadistic streak ran deep. At some point during the date, Wayne decided that rough sex wasn't enough for him. He wanted more, more control, more violence. So he started throttling the 29-year-old, and he didn't stop until she was dead. With Patricia's now still body lying before him, Wayne considered his options. He had to get rid of her. That much was clear. But he wasn't quite ready to let go. He wanted something to remember her by. So after a little consideration, he pulled out a knife and made his choice. Hi, I'm Greg Paulson. This is Serial Killers, a Spotify original from Parcast. Every episode, we dive into the minds and madness of serial killers. Today, we're continuing the story of Wayne Adam Ford, a long-haul trucker with a violent hatred. for women. I'm here with my co-host, Vanessa Richardson.

Hi, everyone. You can find episodes of serial killers and all other Spotify originals from Parcast for free on Spotify. In our last episode, we explored Wayne's chaotic childhood, early adult life in the Marine Corps, and how small, overlooked acts of violence led to the start of his life as a murderer. Today, we'll look at Wayne's violent spree throughout the late 1990s, how he targeted women and sometimes even let them go. Others weren't as lucky. Then as we reached the end of the story, we'll see how it was a guilty conscience that brought this killer to justice. We've got all that and more coming up. Stay with us. This episode is brought to you by Shopify. Bonnie and Clyde, the lonely hearts killers,

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A day or so later, a group of kayakers found the woman's torso floating in freshwater creek. They immediately called the police, and the investigation began. But the lead investigator on the case, Detective Juan Freeman, didn't have much to work with. All they'd found was Jane's torso. Wayne had cut off her head, which eliminated almost all of her identifying features. He'd also cut off her limbs, so fingerprinting wasn't an option. He'd even removed her breasts. In short, there was nothing they could use to identify the victim, let alone figure out who killed her.

What's more, the autopsy proved to be a waste of time. The medical examiner couldn't even establish a convalued. of death. So from the outset, solving the crime seemed like an impossible task. Still, investigators got to work anyway. Hoping that the victim's identity would unlock the answers they needed, they had cadaver dogs searched the waters for more body parts. But they found none, so all Detective Freeman could do was search databases based on estimates of Jane's identifiers. In other words, he had to guess things like her height and weight, then hope he found a match for a missing person in the system.

He also submitted details of the murder to the FBI's violent crime database and asked profilers if they'd heard of any cases that sounded similar to this one. But nobody could come up with anything that reminded them of the murder they referred to as torso girl. Meanwhile, Wayne laid low and carried on with his everyday life. He'd never been great at keeping a job, but for the time being, he continued his work at a cement plant. It seems like the torso girl case got a fair bit of media attention.

So we probably heard people discussing his handiwork here and there. But as far as we can tell, he avoided joining in those chats himself, at least until a few weeks later. On Halloween night, Wayne was having a family dinner at his Aunt Doris's house when the torso girl came up in conversation. Doris wondered out loud who could commit such a heinous act. Wayne kept his mouth shut, but there's a chance that the question and ensuing discussion got him thinking and planning. At this point, Wayne had only killed once, and although there's no concrete evidence to support the theory, some believe he claimed his next victim soon after his first, because only two months later, on November 25th, 16-year-old Karen Mitchell went missing.

Detective Freeman and other authorities believed her case was related to the torso they had found in the river, but they had no way to know for sure. What we know is that around this period, Wayne was having trouble sleeping at night and was crying all the time, and he didn't know why. However, he'd hurt his back at the cement plant recently, and his medical leave gave him plenty of time to reflect on his unhappiness. Maybe too much time. Or perhaps guilt was unconsciously seeping in.

He might not have known exactly what was going on, but he did seem to realize these symptoms might have signed the start of a depressive state. On December 5th, Wayne checked into a mental health clinic in Eureka. In the intake interview, Wayne confided that he had dealt with severe depression, almost his entire life. He admitted to experiencing insomnia, nagging feelings of hopelessness, and thoughts of suicide.

We don't know if he revealed how violent he'd been with his partners in the past, though we did say that bounce of depression caused him to act more impulsively. But from what we can tell, Wayne never mentioned his homicidal thoughts. No one knew that he wanted to hurt people. At the end of the session,

Wayne was diagnosed with dysthymia, which is a low-grade depression that has the potential to grow more serious. Vanessa is going to take over in the psychology here and throughout the episode. As a reminder, she is not a licensed psychologist or psychiatrist, but we have done a lot of research for this show. Thanks, Greg. According to a paper published in the psychiatry journal in May of 2009, dysthymic disorder is characterized by both low-grade depressive symptoms and a long duration. In fact, its diagnosis requires a depressed mood for at least two years,

though it does usually entail brief moments of normal mood. Two other symptoms, Wayne mentioned, feelings of hopelessness and bouts of insomnia are also markers of dysthymia. There isn't too much known about the cause of the disorder, but genetic susceptibility does play a role. For example, dysthymia can be exacerbated by unhealthy reactions to stress,

and we know that many of the ways people cope with or react to stressful situations are inherited. Wayne's mother reportedly didn't deal with, with stress, so it's possible she passed that trait onto her son, setting him up for an unhealthy spiral later in life. Dysthymic disorder also tends to go unnoticed, as it isn't as easily recognized as other mental disorders. In comparison to generalized depression, dysthymia is more subtle, so it's often overlooked. But because it can linger for so long, the condition requires long-term treatment. If left untreated, dysthymia can grow into intense emotional responses.

big swings into anger, fear, or sometimes joy. It can also result in increased dependency on others, narcissism, or using people as objects for your own pleasure and needs. After the diagnosis, the social worker referred Wayne to the staff psychiatrist for a more in-depth evaluation, and he told Wayne he should try counseling. If that didn't work, he said, they could discuss medication. Surprisingly, Wayne took him up on the suggestion and made an appointment for that December. Despite that, he never showed up. Perhaps he was fearful of what the counseling would reveal about himself, or maybe he'd lost interest in treating his mental illness. Meanwhile, Detective Freeman met with two profilers in Eureka to discuss the case of the missing

teenager. Like the local cops, the profilers also suspected that Karen Mitchell's disappearance was connected to the torso girl murder. But that wasn't all. They also offered some basic suggestions about who the killer might be. They suspected he was a white man in his 40s and that he was a seasoned killer. What they based those guesses on is unclear, but it at least gave Freeman a place to start. The profilers also thought the killer was strangely proud of the murder of Jane Doe because he dumped her body in a place where she would be easily found, even if no one went looking for her. They also believed the killer lived close to the freshwater creek or knew the waterways very well and probably worked a regular 9-to-5 job because he dumped the body on a weekend.

The partial profile was useful, but didn't seem to lead investigators anywhere, which was a frustrating pattern of the whole case. Then, at the beginning of 1998, that pattern continued. On January 29th, two people pulled an arm out of the surf in a McKinleyville beach just north of Eureka. The limb was dried out and sunburnt, but investigators were still able to extract a usable DNA sample from it. Sure enough, it matched their Jane Doe from freshwater. Unfortunately, they still couldn't identify who the woman had been when she was alive. It seems she wasn't in any existing

database. For the investigation, it was one step forward, one step back. Oblivious to the detectives chasing their tails, Wayne continued as if nothing was amiss. He never rescheduled his counseling session and instead focused on trying to forget about what he had done. Hoping to distract himself, he turned his attention to his love life. In early 1997, Wayne was working for a karaoke company in Vallejo. That's where he started seeing a woman named Beth, who worked at the nearby Blue Rock Inn. After a few months of dating, they moved into her trailer together, and eventually their red flag started going up. Once he felt comfortable, Wayne told Beth just how much he despised his ex-wife, Elizabeth,

and one night in early 1998, Wayne got drunk with Beth's nephew and told him how much he hated all women. He revealed some deep violent impulses he hadn't spoken about before, and they weren't abstract thoughts. They were chillingly specific. He said he wanted to cut up women's body parts and hide them away, making sure no one could ever identify them, just like he'd done with Jane Doe. This obviously terrified Beth's nephew. As soon as he said, he could, he told his aunt all about what Wayne had said. She quickly ended things with Wayne, but as far as we know, neither of them said anything to the authorities. Perhaps they were afraid about what he might do. And while cutting ties with him was definitely the right thing to do,

Beth might have reinforced Wayne's twisted beliefs about women. He'd finally trusted one again, opened up to her about his feelings, only for her to leave him. He likely clung to that resentment. to his anger towards Beth and every other woman who'd rejected him, it was an extreme reaction to the situation, just like his earlier diagnosis predicted. And because he'd skipped out on his psychiatry appointment, he had no healthy way of coping with these feelings. So he just held on to them.

Unchecked and untethered, Wayne was only set to claim more lives. Coming up, a new job gives Wayne plenty of opportunities to find new victims. What could be more shocking than uncovering the dark secrets behind history's biggest stories, realizing that everything you thought was true was a lie? Hi, it's Molly from the Parkhouse series Conspiracy theories. Each week, we take a closer look at the blurred line between fact and fiction, revealing that there may be more to the so-called truth than you think.

The rise and fall of J. Edgar Hoover. Seventy-five years of Roswell, the tragic death of Princess Diana. On conspiracy theories, we leave no stone unturned and no skeptic unheard. Some may be just outlandish claims. Others may make you rethink everything. Follow the Spotify Original from Parkast conspiracy theories. Listen free, only on Spotify. Are you looking for support?

in your weight management journey? Zepbound, Terseptitide, may be able to help. Zepbound is a prescription medicine used with a reduced calorie diet and increased physical activity to help adults with obesity, or some adults with overweight who also have weight-related medical problems to lose excess body weight and keep the weight off. Zepbound is approved as a 2.5, 5, 7.5, 10, 12.5, or 15 milligram injection. Zep bound contains terseptide and should not be used with other terseptide containing products or any GLP1 receptor agonist medicines. It is not known if Zepound is safe and effective for use in children. Don't share needles or pens or reuse needles.

Don't take up allergic to it. Or if you or someone in your family had medullary thyroid cancer, or if you've had multiple endocrine neoplasia syndrome type 2. Tell your doctor if you get a lump or swelling in your neck. Stop Zepbound and call your doctor if you have severe stomach pain or a serious allergic reaction. Severe side effects may include inflamed pancreas or gallbladder problems. Tell your doctor if you experience vision changes before scheduled procedures with anesthesia if you're nursing, pregnant, plan to be, or taking birth control pills. Taking Zepbound with a sulfonal urea or insulin may cause

low blood sugar. Side effects include nausea, diarrhea, and vomiting, which can cause dehydration and worsen kidney problems. Talk to your doctor. Call 1-800-545-997-9 or visit Zepbounds.com. Now back to the story. In February of 1998, Wayne took another new job, this time with Eteline trucking, a freight shipping company. He held lumber and freight through the Pacific Coast, including Nevada, California, Oregon, Washington, and Arizona. He went back and forth between driving his routes at night and his trailer home, where he did

little else except laundry and catch up on sleep. This isolated lifestyle likely exacerbated any feelings of loneliness he was experiencing at the time, and those would have only gotten worse on April 15, 1998. That's when his divorce from Elizabeth Alt was finalized. If you recall from our previous episode, Wayne was an abusive partner in all of his romantic relationships. Things always started off calm enough, but as soon as Wayne got comfortable, his darkest impulses came to the surface, and he made no effort to control them. His marriage to Elizabeth had been no different. And now that his divorce was official, it seemed to

ignited him a familiar craving for control. More specifically, he wanted to find someone over whom he could exert his power. As a long-haul truck driver, most of his deliveries were done during the day and the driving done at night. That's when he was alone, free of supervision. One evening in May 1998, Wayne was traveling across California when he saw 26-year-old Tina Renee Gibbs. Tina was a sex worker, and while there isn't much information about what happened between them, we can hazard a guess based on what we know about Wayne. He likely pulled over to the side of the road, rolled down his window, and made Tina an offer. Maybe they haggled over what the date would include and how much Wayne was willing to pay. Maybe he suggested rough sex, wondering how far she'd let him go.

Eventually, the two of them came to an agreement, and Tina got into the truck. Then, once they had climbed into the sleeper cabin, Wayne got rough, possibly beyond anything they agreed to. He reached out, wrapped his hands around her throat and squeezed. At first, it might have been the kind of breathplay he proposed, but he took it much further than anything consensual. He strangled her until she stopped breathing. Once Tina was dead, Wayne had to figure out what to do with her body. Unlike his first victim, he didn't cut her up.

Maybe a small part of him felt he'd gone too far, that the act of murder was enough this time. So he dumped her entire body in the nearby California, Aqueduct and continued on his route. Wayne's life was quiet for the next few weeks. Then in June, he was passing through Anaheim, California, and picked up another young sex worker whom will call Amy. He allegedly agreed to pay her to sit in his truck while he pleasureed himself.

He just wanted her to watch, at first. As she later told authorities, Wayne made Amy get in the sleeper cab in the back of his truck. There, he tied her up with rope and raped her. her. At some stage during the evening, Wayne choked Amy until she lost consciousness. Then when she stopped breathing, he resuscitated her with CPR, not just once, but four times. If nothing else, this perverse behavior suggests that Wayne enjoyed the act of strangulation, as much as, if not more than, the death of his victims. According to a 2008 case series published in Forensic

Science International, there could be a relationship between serial sexual murders, that is, killers who have sex with their victims and strangulation. The limited study suggests that the way a serial sexual murderer behaves when killing is a reflection of their unusual sexual interests, ones they know they can't do with traditional partners. For example, Wayne's fixation on strangulation tells us a lot about his psyche. Research suggests that for people with an unhealthy interest in it, strangulation could be another form of holding power over someone, particularly an intimate, sexual or romantic relationships. There was even a study in 1990 that might explain the strangle and resuscitation cycle Wayne subjected Amy to. Researchers later said that resuscitating near-dead victims

reflected, quote, the ultimate control of life and death, and was a core element of sexual sadism. Wayne's need to have both power and control, things he didn't have in his early life, might have fueled this violent behavior. It didn't matter to him if his victim, was dead or alive. To him, the main objective was just feeling totally in control. That even extended to the idea of mercy, because on that night, he didn't kill Amy. He took her purse and stole her money, but then he let her go. Before she scrambled out of the truck, he muttered that she was lucky, since other women had not survived their nights with him. She should feel special, he said, grateful even.

After his attack on Amy, it's hard to track Wayne's movements. From what we know, he wasn't actively killing during the next few months, but he was violent with many women, and his interactions with those victims are what give us some insight into his behavior in cases where details are scarce. For example, take his interaction with a 22-year-old sex worker who will call Renee. On the night of August 23rd, Wayne picked Renee up and offered her $100 for a date. Once she hopped in the truck, Wayne drove around.

looking for a quiet, secluded spot where nobody could see them. He wanted somewhere almost hidden. Renee suggested the parking lot of a nearby hardware store. It was late, so the place would most likely be empty, she reasoned. Wayne headed for the store, and as Renee predicted, they were the only two people there. After they both got undressed, they started to have sex. But Wayne was having trouble performing. It seemed like he was nervous.

Perhaps he was on edge, thinking that this would be the time he would get cold. However, he kept going, determined to finish what he started. He tied Renee's hands with his rope without her consent in an effort to arouse himself, but it didn't work, even when he tried a few different positions for the rope. Eventually, he decided to change locations and drove his truck down the highway. When he found their necks tied out, he forced Renee to perform a series of sexual acts, becoming more violent as they went on. He gagged her with a necktie and strangled her, stopping to wake her up.

up each of the four or five times that she lost consciousness. Like with his previous victims, Wayne's sexual acts escalated to a point that Renee didn't consent to. But Wayne eventually felt satisfied, and the date came to an end. But Renee didn't immediately leave after they finished. Curious about her John, she actually stopped to ask why he was like this. In response, Wayne took out a photo of his ex-wife, Elizabeth, and their son. He said he wanted to get revenge on her. He wanted to hurt someone as bad as she hurt him. As he spoke, he broke down, pulled Renee into his arms, and sobbed. Then he let her go, apparently not paying attention to what she took with her. Almost immediately, after Wayne freed Renee, though, she made her way

to a pay phone in Cloverdale. First, she called her pimp, then she dialed 911. When the police arrived at the scene, she still had the rope and necktie gripped tight in her hands. After taking her statement and looking at the evidence, a Sonoma County sheriff took Renee to a nearby hospital. The nurse there performed a four-hour-long examination, and Renee told her all about what had happened to her. A week later, she gave a description of Wayne to a sketch artist. Presumably, the police went out looking for the person who matched the sketch, and might have even tried to find clues on the rope and necktie. But as far as we can tell, the investigation didn't get very far.

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Now back to the story. By early September of 1998, 36-year-old Wayne Adam Ford had killed two women and had just gotten away with sexually assaulting a sex worker, and he had no intention of stopping. Not yet anyway. That month he saw Valerie Rondy hitchhiking by the side of the road. He picked her up and brought her back to his grandmother's house.

Based on what we know, they had sex. Afterwards, Wayne asked Valerie to stay and talk for a bit. It seems likely that he was feeling lonely, and maybe, after the way Renee reacted when he was honest with her, he felt like it was safe to share his feelings with someone. So he told Valerie about how he grew up with neglectful parents, how he practically had to raise himself, how his ex-wife was keeping his son away from him.

In short, he blamed all of his life's problems on anyone but himself. As he talked, Valerie listened attentively and offered a small comment here and there. Wayne liked that and wanted to keep her around. As author Caitlin Rother writes in her book, Body Parts, he proposed that she come with him on the road. But Valerie had a dependency on heroin and was concerned a trip like that would make it hard for her to get her first. fix. Undeterred, Wayne promised to get her back the next day, so Valerie agreed to go with him.

While this might have all seemed fairly normal to Valerie so far, she had no idea what was coming. Just a few hours into the trip, Wayne let his true intentions peek through. Valerie was sleeping in the cab's bottom bunk when they parked at a truck stop. That's when Wayne slipped in beside her and told her he wanted sex. She told him it would cost him, but he argued that he wanted it for free. Wayne wasn't the kind of man who liked hearing no, but Valerie didn't back down. Frustrated, he kept asking until he got tired and gave up. After that, he climbed onto the top bunk and started masturbating, being sure to make enough noise for Valerie to hear.

Maybe he hoped she would feel bad and give into his demands, but she didn't. The next morning, Wayne had to make a stop to drop his cargo off in Escondido, a little south of Los Angeles. When he told Valerie this, she asked him to take her back. home like he promised he would. She didn't have any of her drugs and she was already going through withdrawals. But Wayne refused to take her back to Eureka. He had a job to finish. Instead, he drove for a few more hours before stopping again. Again, he asked for sex, and when Valerie kept refusing, he lost his temper. He yelled that she should be grateful that he was driving her around California.

It was like he was taking her on a trip, he shouted. Feeling like he wasn't getting what he needed out of Valerie. He decided that alcohol was the next best thing. The next morning, he bought two 12 packs of beer. As he drove the two of them through the state, he drank 18 of the beers. All the while, Valerie begged him to take her home, but he wasn't interested in what she wanted. He just kept driving and drinking. After another night passed, Wayne was done asking. He ordered Valerie to take off her shirt. It's possible that she was scared of what he might do to her if she said no again, so she did as she was told. After that, she let him have sex with her, though she didn't want to. By this point, Wayne might have finally felt like he won. He'd gotten

what he wanted out of Valerie, or maybe he was just sick of her company. Either way, he gave in the next day. He convinced another driver from his company to take Valerie to Fortuna, the next major city by Eureka. However, even after he let her go, Wayne was still thinking about Valerie. A few days after she left, Wayne called her to ask if she got home okay. She just hung up. As far as we know, Valerie was the third woman that Wayne had abused and set free. It's unclear exactly why he was less forceful with her than some other women. But like a pendulum, Valerie's departure might have made him swing the other way, because just a few weeks later, he killed again. It was late September of 1998 when he picked up 25-year-old sex worker Lynette White. We don't know much about the

circumstances of her death, but we know that he dumped her body into an irrigation ditch beside Interstate 5, then drove away. Three men in a pickup truck found Lynette in the ditch. Her body was discolored and swollen, which made it almost impossible to identify her at first. But unlike the first two murders, there were several items scattered at the scene, possibly from Wayne. There was a brown glove, a blue tarp, and a plastic bag with the logo for a Flying J, a chain of truck stops. getting messy, letting small things, things that pointed in his direction, slipped through the cracks. He was also speeding up. In late October of the same year, he picked up 29-year-old Patricia Anne Tamesz. At some stage, while they had sex in his truck, he strangled her to death. Then he

decided he wanted something to remember her by. He took out a knife and sliced off her left breast. After that, he drove to the California aqueduct in Hesperia, the same waterway Wayne had dumped Tina Gibbs' body in a month earlier, this time further south, he rolled Patricia into the water and returned to his route. At this point in Wayne's life, his psychological state was especially fragile. A week or so after he killed Patricia, he called, of all people, his mother, reaching out as if he had no other option. He talked to her about wanting to hide in the woods. He said that he felt guilty about something, but wouldn't tell her what it was. Wayne also told his mother, he was having suicidal thoughts. He didn't want to be alive anymore, he said. We don't know too much about

his mother's reaction, but it seems likely that Wayne was desperate to get help, because next, he turned to something totally new for him, faith. Wayne started going to a Christian bookstore in a McKinleyville strip mall. He prayed with the store's owner, attended a Bible study group, and bought Bible cassettes to listen to while he drove. He told the bookstore owner he'd done bad things, but that it didn't bother him. If he ever had a conscience, he said, it was long gone. That last part is striking, because it sounds like Wayne couldn't make up his mind. One moment he was complaining to his mother about how guilty he felt, and the next, he practically boasted that he didn't have a conscience.

It was clear that Wayne was very conflicted, and it was only a matter of time before one side of him won out. That conflict came to an end on November 3rd. That night, Wayne called his older brother Rodney. He cried into the phone, apparently distraught about how much he'd hurt people. Someone had to know, he said. He couldn't keep it to himself anymore. After years of violence, it seems that his guilty conscience finally got the better of him.

He didn't give his brother many details, but Rodney knew what to do all the same. He took Wayne to the Eureka police station, where a pair of officers greeted the brothers. Only now that he was there, Wayne was nervous or embarrassed. All he said was that he'd hurt people. perhaps hoping the cops would just know what he meant. But they didn't. They were just confused. Still, Wayne was desperate to unburden himself, and he brought proof of his crimes with him.

He reached into his front shirt pocket and pulled out a baggie. The trio around him squinted, trying to work out what was inside of the crumpled plastic. Then, Wayne turned it around. It was a breast cut from one of his victims. Finally, it was clear. Wayne Ford was there to confess to murder. Seeking out the authorities to confess is a big departure from the usual fate of a serial killer. In 2019, forensic psychologist Dr. Catherine Ramsland wrote about the notion of a serial killer with a conscience, citing Wayne as an example.

She explained that in a way, even this leads back to control. In a study of over 300 serial killers, 2.3% of them had turned themselves in. Why that is varies among the group. Some wanted to stop and genuinely be better people, while others just didn't know what else to do. So while it's possible that Wayne's crisis of conscience was real, it's just as likely his reasons behind confessing were more complicated than guilt.

According to Ramsland, many men who confess to their crimes do so because they're scared of losing control. They develop a fear of their own anger and compulsions, so they need an external source of crime. control. For example, choosing to get arrested. They reveal information they can't take back, knowing that doing so will bring them to heal. After Wayne handed over the baggie, the officers handcuffed him and walked him to a jail cell. During his first interviews with detectives, Wayne seemed to walk back his confession a little. He claimed that he didn't mean to kill the four

women. He explained that they had just died during rough sex. Hoping to prove his point, Wayne pointed to his encounters with women like Amy, Renee, and Valerie, all of whom had lived to tell the tale. While waiting for trial, Wayne was interviewed by James Rainey at the Los Angeles Times and pushed more of the blame for his actions away. He claimed he committed the murders because of his brain injury from a highway accident 15 years earlier. He said it left him with a psychological disability, but refused to elaborate any further. After hearing the flimsy excuse, the deputy district attorney dismissed it out of hand. He said he believed Wayne knew what he was doing the whole time and was skeptical of the link between his brain injury and his actions, that he intended to murder

the four women to satiate his sexual sadism. There would be no plea bargain. The state was seeking the death penalty. At trial, Wayne continued to try to mitigate his responsibility. Next, he claimed he started killing because the Marine Corps had mishandled his case. Instead of finding, improper treatment for his condition, they had demoted him. It was their fault, he suggested. In contrast to his tearful, seemingly sincere confession at the police station, Wayne's demeanor was much more stoic at trial. Grief was replaced by indifference, which suggested that there was an element of performance to his guilt. Criminology professor Michael Rustigan explained to the Los Angeles Times that it's difficult to know exactly what was going on here. Did Wayne actually

have a troubled conscience, or was it all an act, one more way to gain control? He explains, quote, there is a huge inconsistency between Wayne's savage attacks on women, the mutilation, the dismemberment, the strangling while having sex, all of which suggests a sexual psychopath in the extreme and his seeming remorse and sensitivity. Despite the existential questions about a state of mind, the question of his legal guilt was easy to answer. On July 26, 2007, 2006, a jury found Wayne guilty of four counts of first-degree murder, and he was sentenced to death. As of this recording, California's moratorium on execution stands, so Wayne remains on death row, alone again, and in control of no one.

Thanks again for tuning in to serial killers. We'll be back soon with a new episode. For more information on Wayne Adam Ford, amongst the many sources we used, we found body parts by Caitlin Rother, extremely helpful to our research. You can find more episodes of serial killers and all other Spotify originals from Parcast for free on Spotify. We'll see you next time. Have a killer week. Serial Killers is a Spotify original from Parcast. Executive producers include Max and Ron Cutler, sound design by Juan Borda, with production assistance by Ron Shapiro, Trent Williamson, and Carly Madden. This episode of serial killers was written by

by Arohi Chef, edited by Stacey Nemick and Joel Callan, fact-checked by Kevin Johnson, researched by Brian Petrus and Chelsea Wood, and produced by Bruce Kitovich. Serial killers stars Greg Poulson and Vanessa Richardson. A beloved 75-year-old man washing up getting ready for bed is brutally beaten and killed. Despite an exhaustive investigation, the killer avoids arrest and then strikes again. I'm Global News crime reporter Nancy Hicks. You might listen to a lot of true crime podcasts this year, but they're not crime beat. Search for and follow the award-winning podcast Crime Beat on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music, and wherever you find your favorite podcasts.

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