One Trial Sought for Suspect in 4 Slayings

When Wayne Adam Ford walked into a Humboldt County sheriff’s station with a severed breast and tales of death and mutilation, his case appeared straightforward enough.

But two years later, the Arcata truck driver is still far from trial on four counts of murder that could send him to the execution chamber.

To date, Ford’s legal file contains about 6,000 pages of transcripts, police reports and other records. Nearly 100 motions have been filed, including one by the defense to throw out his confessions to the killings of four women up and down the state.

Recently released grand jury transcripts portray a man who, over the years, engaged in abusive sexual behavior with his two wives and a girlfriend and then pushed the activity to a fatal level with three prostitutes and a hitchhiker in 1997 and 1998.

Quoting one of Ford’s former wives, an investigator told a San Bernardino County grand jury that Ford was narcissistic and did not comprehend moral rights and wrongs. “It only mattered that it felt good to him,” said Sgt. John Yarbrough, a criminal profiler.

The grand jury last July indicted Ford on the murder charges and found that, because the case involved multiple homicides, he should face the death penalty. Using a new state law, prosecutors hope to consolidate all four cases in San Bernardino County, although only one killing occurred there.

Ford, who is being held without bail in the West Valley Detention Center in Rancho Cucamonga, has in the past told authorities that he did not intend to kill the women and that they died accidentally during rough sex.

In an interview with a Times reporter last year he suggested that his actions were linked to a brain injury he sustained years ago when he was hit by a car. No defense motions have been made in that regard.

During his grand jury presentation, San Bernardino County Deputy Dist. Atty. David Whitney argued that the severe mutilation of some victims disproves Ford’s claims of accidental death.

The body of the first woman, discovered in October 1997, had been so thoroughly dismembered that her identity remains unknown.

Believed to have been a hitchhiker whom Ford picked up, her mutilated torso was found in a marsh near Eureka. One of her arms was later found on a beach. Her head, other arm and parts of her legs are still missing.

Ford stored other body parts in the freezer of his Arcata trailer for a year, and according to laboratory analysis, apparently tried to cook some of them.

On June 2, 1998, the nude body of a Las Vegas prostitute, Tina Renee Gibbs, 26, was found in a Kern County aqueduct. She had been strangled. Four months later, the nude body of Lanett Deyon White, a 25-year-old prostitute from Fontana, was found floating in a San Joaquin County irrigation canal. The precise cause of death remains undetermined.

Patricia Ann Tamez’s nude body was found floating in the California Aqueduct in San Bernardino County in October 1998. She had been strangled and one of her breasts removed--the one Ford carried in his coat pocket more than a week later when he and his brother walked into a sheriff’s station in Humboldt County.

Ford, 39, has made numerous statements to authorities about the case. Although presented to the grand jury, they remain sealed by court order at the request of attorneys concerned about pretrial publicity. Ford’s San Bernardino County attorney, Deputy Public Defender Joe Canty, contends that they are not admissible as evidence because they were made after Ford--during initial questioning in Humboldt County--asked to see an attorney.

Whitney agrees that Ford at first requested an attorney. But the prosecutor said investigators stopped their interrogation and resumed it only after Ford spoke to his brother and agreed to be further questioned without a lawyer.

The case is one of the first that authorities are attempting to consolidate under a new state law. Rather than try Ford separately in each county in which the killings occurred, they hope to prosecute him on all four counts in San Bernardino County. A hearing on the consolidation is scheduled for early next month.

Criminal profilers told the grand jury that the killings followed years of abusive behavior by Ford with sexual partners. He had put his hands around one wife’s neck on several occasions during sex, as well as cinching a belt around her neck. He purchased pornography of women in bondage and made another wife remain nude at all times when she was at home. The grand jury additionally heard that a 22-year-old Sonoma County prostitute was sexually assaulted by Ford in his truck cab. He repeatedly strangled her with a necktie, only to revive her several times.

He finally tied her up and dumped her by the side of a highway, where she was able to free herself.

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Times staff writer John Johnson contributed to this story.