♪♪
For the first at least couple weeks,
the story was everywhere.
It was in the L.A. Times, it was in,
you know, every newspaper that you would read.
It's been 20 years since any of these
stories were in the newspaper or anything like that.
So I thought this whole thing was behind me.
But 18 months ago, I was
diagnosed with an aggressive form of cancer.
And ultimately, I'm looking at not too much longer,
you know, to live.
And if I want to say something, the time is now.
I thought I might as well leave a voice for people
to hear, and this is my voice
that I wanted to add to the conversation.
♪♪
Yeah, it's okay. It's okay, buddy.
You know, it's hard to
call someone you married evil, because you don't
ever really want to say that,
but I think I always saw the potential for evil in him.
Maybe it wasn't a fully formed evil at the time,
but it was definitely simmering in there.
It's a scary thought that there are people that
are just walking around out there pretending to be...
human beings.
[The Paper Chase's "What's So Amazing About Grace?" plays]
[strings continue playing sinister tune]
[static crackling]
[knock at door] [creaking]
[banging on door]
[creaking]
[water dripping]
[banging on door] [creaking]
[sinister chord strikes]
♪♪
This is the only existing photo from any time that
we, you know, had together.
This is a photo of Wayne and I at our wedding reception.
We had eloped.
We were married at 19 years old.
I took a lot of pride in dating a Marine.
It all falls into that romantic mystique of
the tall, dark stranger.
You know, handsome, doesn't say much,
that whole package deal... It just didn't
turn out the way that I had hoped.
He always had all of these dark fantasies in his head.
I'm not proud
that my first husband was a serial killer.
♪♪
We hadn't lived together before we got married.
So now, all of a sudden, we're in each other's space.
And there was a distinct change in how he treated me.
It became obvious that he wanted a trophy wife.
One day, he brought me a gift, and I was surprised.
Hey, what's this?
A little something for you.
He didn't really give gifts, celebrate anything,
even birthdays or anything like that.
And when I opened it up, it was a bikini.
- Very skimpy. - Ohhh.
I could tell immediately what it was for.
It was for show.
♪♪
Wow.
What happened that weekend was we had
a pool party with, you know, his friends.
He wanted everybody to see how sexy his wife is.
He reveled in the other Marines being jealous of him.
I mean,
don't you think I should wear something a little less...
I don't know, revealing? - No.
KELLY: I was definitely an introvert.
I had a tendency normally to,
like, stay inside when they would have the parties.
But he wouldn't let me.
He wanted me out there wearing that bikini.
What, you don't like it?
No, it's great. Thank you.
I felt humiliated.
I felt cheap.
I felt used.
Well, hurry up. Put it on. They'll be here soon.
KELLY: I felt objectified, and he didn't care.
It didn't matter how I felt.
It was what he wanted.
I was a possession.
I was an object, the shiny object
that... that he wanted to show off,
but I got a gift,
and I certainly wasn't going to tell him
that I wasn't gonna wear it
or that I didn't like it, because that would result
in him getting mad
because I rejected a present that he finally gave me.
So that was when he started objectifying me,
and then I just became...
disposable.
♪♪
Every once in a while, Wayne and I would get together
with his friends and go over to their house and play cards.
This one night, I...
didn't throw down the card he wanted.
- We're leaving. - Why are we leaving?
Because, you screwed everything up.
KELLY: Wayne grabs me and says,
"We're going home," and I get in the car.
He was driving, and all of a sudden, it's like all his rage
started to come out, and he started driving,
like, really fast.
[engine revving]
Wayne, slow down!
I screamed at the beginning
to, you know, stop, stop, stop, slow down.
But me screaming at him was just making him drive faster.
Please, Wayne, slow down. I don't understand.
KELLY: I was petrified.
I was terrified of what he was doing and had
no control over it and basically was at his mercy.
Just slow down.
I'm sorry. I'm sorry.
He got, like, a sick glee
out of me cowering.
- Stop, okay? - You want me to stop? Fine.
KELLY: He was getting pleasure out of scaring me.
He was happy that his intimidation was working.
He didn't care if he killed himself, too.
You could have killed us!
It was more important to him that I was scared
and that I... He was making his point.
All of it was an intimidation thing,
to let me know he was angry.
And I also honestly believe that he was angry that
he had to control himself in front of his friends.
♪♪
AS WAYNE: You are such an idiot!
Can't you do anything right?
KELLY: In his mind,
I think I wasn't living up to quite
the expectations that he had been hoping for.
And those started being reflected
in how he treated me.
AS WAYNE: What was I thinking,
marrying a stupid bitch like you?
KELLY: The criticisms began at that point in time,
little put-downs, the micro-aggressions.
AS WAYNE: You know, you're not as hot as you think you are!
It would be nice if you put in a little effort.
I could never make a correct decision.
There was always something wrong, so I worked all day.
Then I had to come home and create these,
you know, three-course meals.
AS WAYNE: I work all day, and this is what I come home to?!
Nothing was ever good enough.
♪♪
It wasn't immediately a nightmare.
That developed over a period of time.
It creeps in slowly.
There was one time early in the marriage where Wayne and I
were sitting down watching TV,
having a glass of wine.
And we started to talk about his father,
and he didn't want to.
How come I've never met your father?
KELLY: He really didn't talk a lot about his childhood.
It was not a conversation that he wanted to have.
Don't you think I should know my father-in-law?
No, you don't need to meet him.
KELLY: But I had only met his mother,
so I kind of pressed the situation.
Why don't you ever want to talk about him?
Because I don't, okay? Can you just drop it?
Every time I said another word,
it just got him angrier and angrier and angrier.
What's the big deal anyway?
You've met my parents a thousand times.
All of a sudden, he exploded.
Just shut up! What is the matter with you?!
KELLY: I got up off the couch to get away from him,
and he got up after me.
I said stay out of my business.
[quietly] I'm sorry.
And punched the wall next to my head.
When he put his fist through the wall, I mean,
it was just close enough to my head to where it was a threat,
but far enough from my head to where
I knew he wasn't actually trying to hit me.
When I say you stop talking, you're gonna do it.
KELLY: I came from a household that didn't have that type of
violence and anger, and it made me very fearful.
One way or another,
you are gonna learn to listen to me.
KELLY: Then he started manipulating me with
the intimidation of what he could do.
All of my confidence in myself was gone.
You end up at that point where you just start agreeing with
everything and you just, "Yes, it's my fault.
I'm sorry." You start apologizing
for things that aren't your fault.
So I think there was already some warning signals.
But I didn't want to communicate that to my parents,
because that would show that I had made a bad decision.
And I wanted them to believe that,
you know, everything was going great.
So I lost that line of communication with people
who love me, because I never told them the truth.
I kept
what was starting to happen to myself.
And that's when he started to become more and more extreme.
The pause...
right when he said, "Do you realize that what you did"
"was wrong?" And there was that
seconds long pause there?
I think that's very telling.
Even though he turned himself in, I don't believe that Wayne
ever did really understand that it was wrong
and it was something that he shouldn't be doing.
It took him a while to... To give that answer.
♪♪
Wayne's whole goal in life was to have sex
and to have it every single day at least once.
- Hey. - Hey.
KELLY: Wayne wouldn't take no for an answer,
so if I didn't feel like it, if I didn't feel good,
I was sick, none of that mattered.
He would keep me up all night long.
Wayne, I'm tired. I just want to get some sleep.
Won't take long.
I learned fairly quickly that it was easier
to just say yes as soon as possible,
get it over with, and then be done.
I didn't even think about it as making love anymore.
It was just like a chore that I had to do.
So it ended up that
virtually every single day
I felt like I was being raped.
And he never considered it
to be sexual assault or rape.
He was just trying to get what was due him.
But for me, it was degrading.
I felt like... I didn't know this person.
I didn't wanna be with this person.
[grunts]
But it's not as simple
as people think to just walk out the door.
That's always the first gut reaction.
Well, just leave.
He's got the checking account.
Wayne had constantly threatened me that he would come find me.
Emotionally abusive people cut you off from everyone,
and they make sure that you have no avenue to leave.
My parents had initially been angry that I had eloped,
so I felt like I burned my bridges with my parents,
and I didn't have any friends of my own.
So I was all by myself, and...
in my mind, I could not see a way out.
♪♪
When I told Wayne I was pregnant,
Wayne's initial reaction was definitely, um,
"You're getting rid of it. We're not having a baby."
So Wayne put me in the car and forced me
to go to the clinic to get an abortion.
Before they take you in to have any kind of procedure,
they do an interview with you.
Take your time to answer these next few questions, okay?
KELLY: Are you sure this is what you want?
Is anyone forcing you to do this?
And I actually turned to the girl, and I asked her,
I said, "What if I said yes?"
And she said we wouldn't do it.
I just need to be sure that this is something you really want.
And at that point, they kind of ended the interview.
They told me to go think about it, and I came back out into
the waiting room where he was waiting, and, um,
I told him what I had said.
And at that point, he dragged me
out of the office into the hallway
and pushed me up against the wall.
And told me in no uncertain terms that if I didn't walk out
of there with an abortion today,
that I shouldn't bother coming home.
You are getting it done today, got it?
KELLY: I still felt helpless.
I still felt like I had no place to go.
I was trapped. Then he said, "Go tell her
that you're ready."
The decision was plain.
I didn't wanna have a child with him.
There was no way that I really
wanted to bring his baby into the world.
I went and spoke to the nurse again,
and I ended up going through with the abortion.
♪♪
It did begin to escalate to a point where it was not
only sex, but fairly severe bondage.
He found a deck of playing cards that
the back of each card had
a woman in some kind of rope bondage.
And so he wanted to try those
types of rope bondage things on me.
This is when his obsession
with breasts became even more pronounced.
Wayne had decided that he wanted to
make molds of my boobs out of wax.
So he melted down a whole bunch of wax and then made me
dip my breasts into the bowl until they were covered with
the hot wax.
And then I had to sit there and let them cool.
It was all about the objectification.
It was all about what he wanted.
He made a comment that
if he could just take a sheet and cut out the holes around
my boobs, he could just put the sheet over me,
he would be just as satisfied.
♪♪
He decided that when I came home and I was at home,
I shouldn't wear any clothes.
So I had to come home, take off all my clothes,
cook naked,
walk around, and he could touch anywhere on my body
he wanted any time.
And I was just like a... Almost like a mannequin doll.
You just learn to just keep quiet
and to let him play with his toy.
Every time he dehumanized me, every time he... he fetishized
a piece or a part of me was humiliating and degrading.
He had always made it clear
that women were objects and disposable.
He cared about my pieces and parts, but not me.
KELLY: The Marine Corps had a bunch of, um,
cabins that they kept up in Big Bear.
So Wayne and a bunch of his friends had decided to
go up there for the weekend, and I get a phone call.
Hello?
Oh, hey. Hi, Bill. How are you?
And the phone call is from one of
the guys that he's with up in Big Bear.
And they asked me, Kelly, have you heard from Wayne?
No, I haven't seen him.
And I said, "No,
why would I hear from Wayne?"
"Well, if he calls, tell him to come back.
It's not as bad as he thinks."
Yeah, sure, I'll tell him.
And now I'm sitting there all alone waiting, waiting, waiting.
[phone ringing]
Probably a couple hours passed,
and Wayne calls,
and he says, "I need your help.
I need you to come pick me up."
What happened?
KELLY: "I'm in trouble, and the police are looking
for me," and I go, "Well, what did you do?"
And he said, "They think I raped somebody."
Wayne.
Him and a friend of his hooked up with these two girls,
and I think they were maybe, like,
14 and 15 or something like that.
He's being accused of statutory rape.
He obviously knew that the girls were underage,
but he did not accept any responsibility at all.
He did not feel like he had done anything wrong.
- AS WAYNE: Just come get me. - Okay.
In his view, the only issue was getting caught.
He just didn't have empathy.
The whole process went on for over a year.
And then all of a sudden, the charges were just dropped.
Once the entire issue with
the statutory rape charge was resolved,
I had gotten a new job,
and I was starting to make friends.
And I was starting to make male friends.
While Wayne was staying on base,
I took the opportunity to go out to dinner,
to socialize, to feel free, and it felt good.
Hey, thanks for driving me home.
BOB: Are you kidding me? Don't mention it.
KELLY: But this one night, I went to dinner with Bob
after work, he drove me home, and as we were driving up to
the house, I realized that Wayne's car was parked there.
- Oh, no. - KELLY: And I was terrified.
- Don't stop, go. Go! - MAN: Why? What's wrong?
That's Wayne's car... he's home.
KELLY: Just drive right past. Don't slow down.
I didn't know exactly what was happening,
but I knew he was home.
Later on, he told me the story of what
had happened that night.
He had got it in his head that I was cheating on him.
And he had taken his compound bow
and hid in the bushes
outside of the house,
waiting for me to come home.
He waited out there like three hours hunkered down
in his cammies... I definitely believe
that if I'd gotten out of the car, and Bob had got...
Gotten out of the car even to just walk me to the door,
that he would have shot him.
Luckily, we didn't stop, because he was
a pretty darn good shot with a bow and arrow.
[crickets chirping]
♪♪
I remember the morning vividly.
He was watching TV, and I was ironing his cammies,
and I just said, "I can't do this anymore."
- Wayne, I can't take it anymore. - Excuse me?
I can't live like this.
I've seen what other people are like.
And I know that I don't have to live like this anymore.
I want a divorce.
- I was expecting this. - KELLY: At first,
Wayne came across, um, like, fairly casual about it.
Like talking about divvying up our stuff.
And he said he was gonna take my motorcycle,
and I just went, "No, I want it."
Wayne, you can't take the bike.
I had friends that ride,
and so I wanted to have a motorcycle to ride with them.
And I think it clicked in his head
at that point that Bob rode motorcycles, as well.
And then he just lost it.
[grunts]
And he grabbed me and drug me across the house.
You really are a piece of garbage.
Shoved the phone in my hand and said, "You call him
right now. I want to talk to him."
Call him!
Call him now!
KELLY: So I called Bob up, Wayne got on the phone,
and instead of yelling or cussing at him,
he was very pleasant.
He said, "Why don't you come,
and we can all go out to breakfast?"
He was so calm
and so, you know, matter-of-fact.
It did frighten me, because I didn't know
what he was planning.
That was a behavior that wasn't normal for him,
and it was very scary.
See you soon.
KELLY: When Wayne hung up the phone,
he reverted back to his normal angry self
and said that he might as well use me one more time.
And then he raped me.
No! No! Get off!
And then, you know, when he was done,
he told me to get dressed,
and then we drove to the restaurant.
When we were in the restaurant,
I was pretty much an emotional wreck.
I didn't know what he would do.
I was scared for Bob.
I was scared for myself.
Great, Bob, you made it.
I think Bob knew when he saw me
and the look on my face and in my eyes,
something had happened.
I just wanted to tell you,
we've decided to split up.
KELLY: Wayne was very cordial with Bob.
He reverted to that personality that
he had with Bob on the phone.
He was just chatting with Bob like he was a new friend.
It was just, um, bizarre.
You know, now that I'm on the market,
maybe you can help me out.
And then he actually asked Bob if, um,
he knew any girls with big boobs
that he could introduce him to.
You know the type I'm talking about.
He was kind of belittling me in front of Bob
and, you know, feeling like
any big boob girl could replace me.
It was said in such a friendly manner that it was bizarre.
Bob was, like, taken aback.
And Bob just said, "Go home, pack a bag.
I'll be there to pick you up."
Don't worry.
I'll come for you.
I left the restaurant in our car.
I went home and packed stuff to leave.
Wayne walked, and Bob got in his car
and came and picked me up, and we were gone
by the time that Wayne got home.
Shortly after that, Bob and I were living together.
A relationship was blossoming between the two of us,
and I felt safe for the first time in a long time.
It was just like a release of tension
that I could finally breathe again.
But I knew in my heart and in my brain
that this wasn't the end of it.
♪♪
[phone ringing]
I started to get phone calls at work
from Wayne.
[phone ringing]
And he would tell me
everything I had done from the moment
that I left work the day before.
[phone ringing]
Every turn I made, every, you know, grocery store
I stopped at... It was very specific.
You kissed at a parking lot. You had dinner at this place.
And he would do this daily
just to... to let me know that he was watching me.
[phone ringing]
And then that kind of escalated into
me coming out to my car.
He had written on the dust in my car,
"I see you."
[suspenseful chord strike]
I knew that he was angry.
He hadn't gotten the opportunity
to properly punish me.
My stomach was in knots, waiting, wondering.
I was constantly on my guard.
It was like he was a shadow that was there,
constantly, just continuing to terrorize me.
I still felt like something could happen at any moment,
and I ended up being right.
♪♪
When I was finally able to get the money to file
for divorce, I needed to get
out of there, because something was going
to happen if I didn't protect myself.
I quit my job, and we moved down to Palm Springs.
We didn't really tell anybody.
My family knew where we were, but they also knew that they
weren't gonna go tell Wayne,
so we were kind of trying to hide.
But somehow Wayne had found out.
I looked across the street, and I saw Wayne,
and I just, I said, "We gotta get out of here now.
We've gotta go home."
This is how scary it was because of how determined
he was... During the period of time
when Wayne was stalking me,
there really were no stalking laws.
You can't go to the police and say someone's being mean to me.
They're not gonna do anything.
So Bob and I actually moved even further out of the city.
We were hiding. We spent two years hiding,
just in case he would find us.
I knew that he was always lurking out there.
I never...
never...
felt safe.
♪♪
KELLY: He dropped off my radar.
There was no further contacts.
Life had moved on. Bob and I had gotten married.
I had my first child.
Um, so life was happening.
[phone ringing]
In November of '97,
I get a phone call, and my sister is on the phone,
and she said,
"Turn on your TV, and turn to Channel Four."
And she's on the phone going,
"Is that Wayne? Is that him?"
And then they started telling the story about that
he had turned himself in.
REPORTER: Investigators say that 36-year-old Wayne Ford
handed them a plastic bag containing
a severed breast and then confessed to murdering
four women over the last 14 months.
KELLY: When I heard about the... the severed breast,
obviously, there was flashbacks to the breast bondage
and the wax molds, and it made perfect sense.
It was what he wanted.
It was what he was after,
and it was what he would want to keep.
It was his trophy.
REPORTER: Ford has so far admitted to killing
an unidentified woman whose torso was found
in this slough in Eureka,
Patricia Ann Tamez in Southern California,
and Lanett White near Stockton.
The minute that you hear something like that,
you immediately think, "Oh, my God, that could've been me."
♪♪
I actually contacted the Humboldt sheriff's department,
and I really started to get the details.
He ended up being a truck driver.
He was, you know, traveling around in his truck,
and he'd go to one county,
pick up a girl here.
Leave her body some place, go over to another county,
stop at another truck stop.
In his trailer, where he had been living,
they had found rendered fat in, like, a coffee can.
Pieces in the freezer, next to the ice cream.
In essence, that was what he was
doing when he made those wax molds.
He was making a disembodied breast.
KELLY: He could have stopped after the first one,
but he didn't.
He kept doing it.
He kept going out and picking up other girls.
KELLY: When Wayne went to trial,
the charges were serial murder
of four victims.
Even though he'd confessed everything,
he ended up pleading not guilty.
That's Wayne in court.
That's what I remember seeing when... when I was in
the courtroom... It was terrifying.
It was honestly terrifying, because in my head,
all these years, I, you know,
was still always afraid he was trying to find me.
And he was, you know, and basically here I was serving
myself up on a silver platter... For all those years,
the fear was always there that he was out there.
The female bailiff could see how nervous I was, and, um,
she just, you know, kind of tried to reassure me.
She said, "Don't worry, honey.
If he moves, I'll shoot him."
Made me feel a little bit better.
♪♪
This is not the person that I married.
It's an ugly version of the person that
I married... the last time I seen him,
he still looked like a Marine.
I never envisioned the downward spiral
that he headed down after our divorce.
It's a scary picture.
♪♪
I definitely feel with the severity
of the crimes that he committed,
you don't want someone like that
out and in the world.
And to be perfectly honest with you, in my view,
there is no redemption for someone like that.
He took four lives.
He took them violently and ruthlessly.
I don't feel a ton of empathy for him.
He's gone, and that's fine.
But I personally still carry
a lot of guilt.
There was a period of time where...
I felt could I have changed him, had I done this,
had I known that, but it's not my responsibility.
I would hope that
what I've said and what I'm saying
might reach a woman in a similar situation...
and...
hopefully spur her to get help to get out.
This is not the way that you're supposed to be treated.
This is not the way that life is supposed to go.