INTERVIEW WITH THE AUTHOR OF BODY PARTS

INTERVIEW WITH "BODY PARTS" AUTHOR CAITLIN ROTHER
ABOUT CALIFORNIA SERIAL-KILLER WAYNE ADAM FORD
 
On November 3, 1998, 36 year old truck driver Wayne Adam Ford walked into the Humboldt County Sheriff's Department in Eureka, California with a plastic bag in his pocket that contained the severed breast of a woman he had murdered the previous week. Ford immediately shocked the authorities as he tearfully confessed to murdering four women.

Pulitzer Prize nominated investigative journalist Catlin Rother found herself drawn to the unusual scenario of a serial-killer willingly surrendering and confessing. After spending months researching the case, Rother pieced together her true crime book "Body Parts" which includes some of the killer's gruesome confession.

I recently had the pleasure of doing an interview with Caitlin Rother to discuss details about the shocking story of Wayne Ford and her journey into the darkness of writing about the killer and his gruesome deeds.
 
Q: Wayne Ford has been referred to as the "killer with a conscience" due to the fact that he turned himself in to the police and tearfully confessed to the serial murders of 4 women. Through the comprehensive research you did on Ford to write your book "Body Parts", would you conclude this quote to be true or do you feel he had no remorse? Did he truly feel shame for his crimes?
 
That was actually my original title, but my publisher changed it to "Body Parts." Some of the detectives said they believed that Ford had no remorse, that his tears were a sign of sadness that his life was over as he'd known it. The defense team and Ford's brother, Rodney, thought he did have remorse or he wouldn't have turned himself in. I can't truly know because I never spoke to him personally, but I lean toward his brother's belief, based on the fact that Ford cried throughout his statements to the detectives and that he called his brother to help him turn himself in. Ford said he didn't remember how these women died, and he also claimed that their deaths were accidental. At times, his thinking appeared to be addled (he kept thinking that he was going to get an attorney and asked for one repeatedly, even though he'd waived his right to have one present), but he also could have been too ashamed to admit how he'd killed them. He admitted that he needed to be locked up so he couldn't "hurt anyone anymore," and that tells me he either felt too ashamed to say he'd "killed" these women, or he was trying to minimize his responsibility, or both.
 
JH: Ford told his brother, Rodney, that he did some bad things before going to the police to break the news of his crimes. Why do you feel Ford decided to confide in Rodney with such a dark gruesome secret? What do you personally feel was the motive for turning himself in?
 
CR: First, he didn't confide in his brother. He told Rodney he'd "hurt some people," but he never told him specifically what he'd done or how many people he'd hurt, let alone kill. By saying, "I don't want to hurt anyone anymore," Ford showed that he knew what he'd done was wrong and that he also couldn't stop himself from doing it again -- let alone force himself to turn himself in -- without his brother's help. I don't think Ford wanted to break the news of his crimes, I just think he knew he couldn't control his compulsions and needed his brother's help to make him stop killing.
 
JH: Research has shown us that sexual fantasy plays a large part in the lives of many serial killers. Although most killers like to keep this a secretive part of their lives, Ford’s case seems different at times. It has been said that he demanded his second wife to act out his fantasies with him which included watching her sleep with other men and sticking needles into her breasts. Did Ford ever talk about the role sexual fantasy played in his crimes?
 
CR: No, not that I'm aware of.
 
JH: Some believe that Ford's killing rampage was sparked by anger at his ex-wife, whom he believed withheld their son (born 1995) from him. At one point, he stated that he turned himself in because, "he was afraid he would kill his ex-wife and he didn't want his son to be an orphan."
Is it your opinion that the anger he had towards his ex-wife for keeping their son away was the main catalyst for the murder rampage he would embark on? (ie. Did this event finally break his last mental barrier holding him back from murder?)
 
CR: His anger at his wife was one contributing factor, but his psyche was far more complicated and complex than that, and his mental state evolved and deteriorated into this lethal state over the duration of his life. He clearly had issues with alcohol addiction, depression, paranoia, and a damaged brain -- potentially from the alcohol and probably also from his severe head injury -- not to mention genetic and environmental precursors from his mother, who tried twice to commit suicide and told Ford that he was the product of rape by his own father. Along the way, he also developed a host of sexual paraphilias, which ran the gamut from torture to poking women with needles and erotic asphyxia (choking during sex). Defense psychological expert Reid Meloy said Ford was a sexual predator looking for women who would have rough sex with him and because of his sexual proclivities for torture and choking he killed them during sex, but Meloy believed that Ford did not go out looking for women to kill per se.
 
JH: In his confessions to the police, what did Ford offer as his motivation for committing these gruesome crimes?
 
CR: He didn't. As I mentioned before, he claimed the deaths were accidental and in fact, he claimed he was choking them to enhance their orgasmic experiences. Whether he was delusional and truly believed this or was again trying to minimize his responsibility we'll never know. He would only confess to what he did before and after they died, but said he couldn't remember how they actually "stopped breathing." He also admitted to where he placed their bodies, and tried to help authorities identify the woman he dismembered.
 
JH: What was Ford's typical m.o.?
 
CR: His pattern was to pick up a prostitute, drug addict and/or troubled woman for sex or a ride in his truck, then he surprised her with his gruesome MOI combo of torture, choking and CPR during sex. He claimed to have done this with as many as 50 women, saying that these four were the only ones he couldn't "bring back."
 
JH: Ford extensively mutilated one of his victims and even stored some body parts in a refrigerator. What do you feel was his specific motivation for mutilation? (Part of his Fantasy? Making the bodies harder to identify?)
 
CR: What is interesting about Ford is that his methods did not escalate in the typical serial-killer fashion, they actually de-escalated. He cut his first victim into pieces and repeatedly stabbed her torso post-mortem, however, he didn't dismember his second or third victim, and he simply cut one breast off his final victim (that we know of). He cut up the first one in his bathtub, saying he "had to make her small," apparently meaning that it would be easier to get rid of her body this way, by distributing the head and some of the other limbs into Ryan Slough, where the currents carried one of the arms miles away to the beach. He put her thighs and parts of her genitals in his freezer until he buried them at a campsite, and he stored in a coffee can the fat he'd rendered from her breasts by baking them. Don't ask me what he was doing all of that for. I can't even imagine, nor do I want to. Curiosity? Part of his fixation on breasts, one of his paraphilias? Trophies?
 
JH: Was it ever determined why Ford kept some of the body parts? Did he use them to relive fantasies or for further sexual gratification purposes?
 
CR: We don't know for sure whether he used them for further sexual gratification purposes, but he must have had some reason for keeping them in his freezer.
 
JH: After his conviction, A report quotes Ford as saying: "There was no struggling and no pain inflicted on the victims. All acts and activities were consensual. Anything that might have appeared to be painful or torturous was done postmortem." Do you believe there was any torture involved or do you believe his word that the mutilation aspects were committed after he killed them?
 
CR: Based on the autopsy results, it appears that the stabbing and cutting were done post-mortem. However, the rape victim who testified in court said that being tied up, tortured with a burning cigarette and being hit with a belt on her genitals, repeatedly choked until unconscious and brought back with CPR certainly was NOT consensual.
 
JH: Was he believed to have engaged in postmortem sex after the murders?
 
CR: In at least one case, yes, based on a veiled statement he made to police.
 
JH: In your opinion, were his murders an act of achieving power and control or were they about something else?
 
CR: I have no idea, but based on what the expert, Reid Meloy, said, it was to satisfy his many sexual paraphilias. Take your pick.
 
JH: How long have you been interested in True Crime stories and how long have you researched them?
 
CR: I was a psychology major at the University of California, Berkeley, where I studied abnormal behavior and psychology of the brain, so I've been interested in this subject for much of my life. Although I covered quite a bit of government and politics during my 20-year career in newspapers, I've always been interested in true crime and psychologically-driven stories. I also wrote stories about mental illness, addiction, suicide, bizarre deaths, prisons/jails, mental hospitals and political crimes as an investigative reporter, so writing books about murder seemed like a natural progression. The first book I wrote was a thriller (NAKED ADDICTION), but it took me 17 years to get it published -- two years after I published my first true crime (POISONED LOVE). Today, as a full-time author, I usually choose to write about bloodless psychosexual crimes such as murder by poison, mental manipulation or financial greed. Ford's case is definitely the most gruesome one I've written about, and to be honest, it even makes me sick to answer some of these questions. I chose to write about Ford because he was such a complex psychological study, a perfect subject for the nature-nurture debate. I was also most intrigued by the fact that he turned himself in, a rare deed indeed for a serial killer.
 
JH: In doing research for "Body Parts" what were some of the things that surprised you most? How long did you spend researching Ford’s story before putting it to paper?
 
CR: I was surprised how much the darkness of this story pervaded my life for the nine months I was researching and writing the book full-time, although I was attending the trial and doing research for some time before that. I was still working at The San Diego Union-Tribune when I attended Ford's death penalty trial (I took a couple days off), and as I have to juggle multiple projects at once, I was working on this book for a couple of years in total.
 
JH: Can you recall any particularly memorable moments/findings in your investigative journey while writing this book?

CR: As gruesome as they were, it was interesting to learn about these paraphilias, some of which I'd never even heard of before, and to study how many different sides there were to Ford. I found Reid Meloy's testimony about all the factors that contributed to Ford's mental state to be quite educational for someone like me who tries to answer the reader's primary question WHY. Why do these people kill? How did they get that way? And why do some people commit murder while their siblings -- who have the same parents and upbringing -- don't?

JH: You just recently completed a new book in the True Crime genre, please tell us about what drew you to this specific story... and what's it about?
 
CR: Simply put, DEAD RECKONING is the story of how Skylar Deleon and his clan of outlaws tied Tom and Jackie Hawks to the anchor of their yacht and throw them overboard -- alive -- near Newport Beach, California, to steal their boat and pillage their bank accounts. I was drawn to this case because it is the quintessential story of good vs. evil -- a law-enforcement family vs. a law-breaking family. Tom Hawks and his brother Jim were former military; Tom became a firefighter and probation officer, Jim a police officer who worked his way up to Carlsbad's chief of police. Skylar was groomed for a life of crime by a drug-dealing violent and abusive ex-con father who taught him how to lie. A former child actor, Skylar used his charms for evil: he robbed a co-worker, killed a former cellmate, then killed the Hawkses in such a brutal and callous way, all by manipulating them into trusting him. In my view, he did all this because he wanted to hold on to his wife Jennifer, who wanted nice things and a big house, and who helped him carry out his plans as Bonnie and Clyde of Orange County, CA. But this story also has a number of other compelling and unique psychological angles. Deeply in debt, Skylar had a whole other motive as well -- he wanted a sex change operation so badly he was willing to kill to pay for one. You just can't make this stuff up, because life is stranger than fiction.