Serial killer Wayne Adam Ford’s first murder victim is identified by genetic genealogy 25 years later

By Caitlin Rother

       People often ask me how I cope with writing about such dark subjects in my true crime books. Usually, I laugh it off and say it comes with the job, but to be honest, it does take a toll, especially cumulatively. That’s why I go for walks and swim, sing and play music, and also write crime fiction.

I make it a point not to set out to write a book that I wouldn’t want to read, but I have to admit that BODY PARTS, which was first published in 2009, proved more challenging in that respect than I’d anticipated. To this day, I have difficulty reading parts of it aloud or even summarizing some of the horrific things that Wayne Adam Ford did to his victims.

The short version is that he picked them up in his truck, repeatedly choked them out during sex and revived them with CPR, and when four women didn’t make it back, he dumped their bodies in waterways up and down California. He also dismembered the first and cut the breast off the last, which was in his jacket pocket when he turned himself in.

That’s why I’m happy to announce that I’ve updated this book with 32 pages of new developments to give it a happy ending, if such a thing can exist for a book about a serial killer. The updated edition of BODY PARTS will be released Feb. 25, 2025.

       Fourteen years after the book was originally released, I learned from a source that Ford’s first victim had been identified through genetic genealogy—25 years after her torso and left arm were found in Humboldt County. Of course, I was immediately compelled to find out the details, and it was well worth the effort.

As a result, this updated edition not only brought my second-bestselling book back into print, but it brought me a sense of satisfaction that I didn’t get when the book first came out.

It was rewarding for me to explain how a troubled young woman, Kerry Anne Cummings, got her name back and to show that her family has gained closure by finally learning what had happened to her, partly, as it turns out, because her sister read the original edition of my book three times.

BODY PARTS was my third book, all three of which were nonfiction books about murders or attempted murders. I’d also written a crime novel, but it didn’t come out until after this one. Due to its gruesome, violent, and wrenching emotional content, this one had a powerful impact on my well-being.

After writing books back-to-back without a break, something I now know not to do, I was in the throes of chronic arm, neck, and back pain, with bouts of depression, for the nine months I was under deadline to finish this book. The pain continued for nine months after that, while some part of my upper body was constantly in spasm. My acupuncturist told me she thought it was the dark topic, that I should try to surround myself with images of positive light. I told her I could handle it, and said it was probably just the constant sitting at the laptop and typing. I think we were both right.

The couple of years I spent in Ford’s head, researching and then writing this book, grew increasingly dark. And it didn’t get any better, the way Hollywood movies do at the end. This story was tragic, not just for the victims and for their families, but also for Ford’s family. Everyone suffered because of what Ford did, partly because he never got the mental health treatment or help that he needed along the way that might have prevented him from killing these four women, who were among the 50 he picked up in his truck and put through this same ordeal. All the others lived, he said, and one of them testified at his trial.

I chose to write this story because I saw Wayne Adam Ford as a rare bird, a serial killer who felt remorseful and guilty enough after what he did to these four women—Kerry Anne Cummings, Tina Gibb, Patricia Tamez and Lanett White—to stop himself from killing again. He knew what he did was wrong. He was troubled, even disgusted, by it, so much so that he enlisted his brother’s help to turn himself in.

I thought that was a compelling story that needed telling, because it showed that people are not all good or all bad. I just didn’t realize until I got into the details just how gruesome that story was going to be.

Wayne Adam Ford is not your typical serial killer, if there is such a thing. He’s a complicated character, a deeply troubled and disturbed man who suffered a severe brain injury at nineteen. He was in the U.S. Marines at the El Toro base in Orange County, where he sang karaoke at a sushi bar, Taka-O in Laguna Niguel, and drove a school bus for disabled kids. He also spent nine days in the ICU with a head injury after being hit by a drunk driver while trying to save the life of a car accident victim at the side of the freeway.

The way Ford’s family described him, he seemed to have a split personality. He always seemed sweet and polite, they said, never cussing in front of women. He was so good-looking, a talented singer who did a mean Elvis tune. They just couldn’t reconcile these positive memories with the horribly violent murders he’d admitted to.

For these reasons, my proposed title for the book was KILLER WITH A CONSCIENCE. But my publisher didn’t like it. The marketing department knew better, they said, and titled it BODY PARTS.

       My goal in writing this book, and several others I’ve published about mentally ill killers, is to help all of us learn more about the human condition, to illustrate what makes a sexual predator, mass murderer, or a serial killer, and how and why these men (yes, they are almost always men), turn out this way. How mental illness can cause bad and even violent behavior, but to me, that does not equate to being evil.

I don’t write these books to rationalize killers’ behavior, but rather to educate people. To help readers, and especially women, who generally are the victims of these men, learn how to protect themselves. Perhaps would-be victims’ families might learn how to better help those vulnerable women before they became victims, when they are unwilling or unable to help themselves. I also believe it’s important to identify flaws and breakdowns in our government systems so we know where to fix them. Only then, in my view, can we hope to prevent such tragedies from happening again.

       My goal in adding the updated material to this book is also to show readers who Kerry Anne Cummings was before she became a victim, because I didn’t get a chance to do that in the first edition.  

I interviewed Kerry’s sister and cousin about her for the book, but I don’t want to print spoilers here. I’ll just say that she loved her sister, she loved to draw and paint, she liked to live on the road, and, unfortunately, she had some mental challenges that she chose to treat with street drugs rather than pharmaceuticals.

When Ford was interviewed by Humboldt County sheriff’s detective Juan Freeman about the young woman he'd dismembered, he said she was about twenty-five, weighed about 150 pounds, was about five-feet-six-inches tall, had a tattooed band of roses around her ankle, and seemed like she was on drugs.

“I really think her brain was fried,” he said, comparing her difficulty focusing to his. She was “like I am now, not mentally cohesive.”

Ford said she was different from the other women he picked up, he said, because she was not a prostitute. She asked which way he was heading, and when he said north to Arcata, she asked if he would take her to Clam Beach. Ironically, this was where the authorities found her left arm in late January 1998, three months after her torso had been found in Ryan’s Slough.

At least one of the detectives who interviewed him he said thought Ford seemed remorseful. He kept talking about how he wanted to try to help find and identify the young woman he’d cut up in his bathtub. He drew them a map, explaining where he'd buried her head under a cement slab in the river next to the Readimix cement plant in Arcata, where he’d worked and parked his trailer. He offered to go there with detectives and point them to the spot where he’d buried her parts. But when they took him there, the parts had washed away long ago. 

When Ford was asked the same questions for a documentary on the case a decade later, he added more details: she had brown eyes and short hair, just below the ears, and was “top-heavy,” with large breasts. She had a plump face with “big cheeks,” and wore a multicolored knit beanie. She told him she was “having trouble” with her parents, but that her sister loved her. He couldn’t remember exactly which state she was from, but thought it was California, Colorado or Arizona. He said she carried a backpack, and inside was a military-style can opener, a rosary-bead cross, a baggie possibly containing heroin, but no money, no jewelry, and no ID. She went by a nickname, and she seemed ill-equipped to be “out in the middle of nowhere. So, I don’t think she was out for very long.”

Most of this turned out to be accurate, but it took some DNA profiles to prove it. So, if you have a family member who has gone missing, perhaps uploading your DNA profile to GEDmatch could help find them too.

          Before I close, I also want to mention that I have a second true crime book coming out June 25, 2025. DOWN TO THE BONE is about the murder of the McStay family, a family of four from Fallbrook, California, who went mysteriously missing in 2010. After investigating their disappearance as a missing persons case, the San Diego County Sheriff’s Department gave up three years later, deciding that the family had voluntarily gone to Mexico. This was proven wrong when their skeletal remains were found eight months later in the Mojave Desert near Victorville. From there, it became a homicide case, investigated by the San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Department.

After a death penalty trial, one of Joseph McStay’s two business associates, Charles “Chase” Merritt, was sent to death row for the murders. Based on evidence presented at trial as well as witness interviews, discovery materials and investigative reports that have never been made public, my book gives the back story on the family and what was going on in their lives at the time of their disappearance. It also explores the two investigations and prosecution of the case, which Merritt and his defense team maintain were motivated by confirmation bias that resulted in his wrongful conviction.

Please contact me at caitlinrother@gmail.com if you want to interview me for your TV or radio show or podcast, write a news or feature story, or review one or both books for your print, digital, TV or radio media outlet, blog, or podcast. I am setting up interviews now and sending out ARCs for BODY PARTS. I’m also making an ARC list for DOWN TO THE BONE if you’d like a review copy when they become available in a couple of months.

          Due to circumstances beyond my control, the publication date of both books have been delayed several times, so I could really use some help with pre-orders if you are so inclined. The new pub dates are not going to change again. All pre-orders are counted in the first week of book sales, which is the best chance for me to hit the bestseller list. Here are the links for each book: BODY PARTS and DOWN TO THE BONE.