Body Parts, page 28
Canty said the defense had also planned to present depositions of Wayne’s maternal grandmother, a videotape of Forbush’s interview with Wayne’s mother and a transcript of excerpts, along with some other witness interviews.
After Mazurek reiterated his objections, Smith ruled that any testimony by relatives or other witnesses about Wayne’s emotional and mental history should be limited to the period just before he turned himself in.
“Whether or not he has remorse and understands the need for punishment afterward is a penalty phase issue, not a guilt phase issue, in the determination of what offense was actually committed,” Smith said.
This ruling dramatically altered the scope and duration of the case the defense had intended to present.
“A lot of the time we were planning to spend has now been removed from the case,” Canty told the judge.
So, in the end, Rodney was the only family member the defense was able to call, and briefly at that.
On Tuesday, April 25, one of the male jurors was excused after being hospitalized for a medical problem and his doctor suggested that he shouldn’t continue with the trial. Smith seated one of the alternate jurors—a woman—in his place.
Next up, Canty called a neurologist and a radiologist, who had conducted tests on Wayne’s brain and found some abnormalities.
Dr. Arthur Grant, the neurologist, had performed a twenty-four-hour video EEG study on Wayne at a hospital in the city of Orange in October 2002. The test was to measure his brain waves and videotape any seizures or spells that might occur, but none did.
In layman’s terms, Grant found that Wayne’s brain was like an eight-cylinder car running on six or seven cylinders, i.e., not functioning at its normal speed. One test result showed activity that was consistent with chronic alcoholics, even if they’d been sober for a while. Other possible causes could’ve been Wayne’s head injury, but the doctor couldn’t say for sure. He determined that these abnormalities had been present for quite some time, but he couldn’t say how long.
On cross-examination, Mazurek asked if people with these mild abnormalities could still function in daily life.
“Most likely,” Grant replied.
“There aren’t any definitive studies in your field that say, ‘People with these findings act this way’?” Mazurek asked.
“No, there are not.”
“There’s nothing that says people with these findings go out and murder people?” Mazurek asked.
“No, of course not.”
Dr. Michael Green, the radiologist, testified that he conducted an MRI to look at the structure of Wayne’s brain in September 2000.
The MRI, he said, showed mild to moderate atrophy in the cerebellum, the part of the brain that is used for sensory perception and coordination of muscles and movement. He said the atrophy could have been caused by alcoholism, certain medications, or congenital defects.
Once again, Mazurek cut to the chase on cross: “This type of cerebellar activity doesn’t cause people to go out and commit crimes, right?”
“Not that I’m aware of.”
“Doesn’t cause people to go out and murder other people?”
“Not that I’m aware of.”
On May 4, Canty decided to present to the jury the brief transcript excerpt from Forbush’s interview with Brigitte that the judge had decided to allow, but not the videotape. Instead, Canty played the video taken while Wayne was being booked to illustrate his mental condition at the time.
After keeping the jury all morning without presenting any witnesses, Canty was concerned the panel would think the defense had done something wrong.
“I hope the court won’t make it look like our fault,” he said.
The judge said he would repeat his earlier explanation, that they had expected to have some testimony, but additional legal issues arose, and after discussing them, “much or some of that testimony was not available.”
“You might even include that the defense had their witnesses here,” Canty said.
“If you want me to,” Smith said.
After the jury had been excused for the day, the judge revisited Mazurek’s request to conduct a psychological exam of Wayne to use as rebuttal testimony to defense expert Reid Meloy’s. Canty objected, arguing that psychologist Paul Berg had already done an interview with Wayne days after he surrendered.
Mazurek said he was planning to have Dr. Park Dietz do the exam, which prompted an unusual eruption from Wayne at the defense table.
“The guy is a liar, though. I won’t talk to him,” Wayne said.
Smith told Wayne that was something he could discuss with his attorney.
On the morning of Monday, May 8, Judge Smith announced that he would grant Mazurek’s request for Dietz to do the exam, with Wayne’s attorneys and Meloy present as observers. The exam would take place on May 15 at the courthouse, after Meloy had finished testifying.
Canty launched another objection to using Dietz, which explained the basis for Wayne’s outburst.
“The ground for that involves our impression that Dr. Dietz has, in fact, participated in testifying to falsehoods in other cases, including a famous case in Texas, which resulted in a reversal of a conviction there, the [Andrea] Yates case, as a result of the falsehoods to which he testified and which were relied upon by the prosecution in that case,” he said.
Smith overruled Canty’s objection, saying those issues could be raised during cross-examination.
Next, the attorneys and judge debated what Meloy could and could not say in his presentation to the jury.
The prosecution’s main concern was that Meloy shouldn’t be allowed to give an opinion about whether Wayne had the capacity, intent, or premeditation to kill these women, and the judge agreed. Smith ruled that Meloy could discuss his research and different types of killers, but should leave it to the jury to decide which type Wayne was.
Before calling Meloy to the stand, Canty asked the judge to verify for the jury that the black and blue marks on his face were not the result of a fight. Apparently, both defense attorneys had dental work done the previous Friday.
“So that’s the reason for any bruises or swelling, not that they were out doing anything else,” Smith told the jury.
Meloy, a forensic psychologist and expert in sexual homicide, was the witness Canty hoped would pull together the complex aspects of the case for the jury. It also didn’t hurt that he was a handsome witness.
As Canty led Meloy through his qualifications, Meloy said he had a Ph.D. and two master’s degrees, one in psychiatric social work and one in theology. He ran his own nonprofit research company called Forensis, focusing on violent criminality. He’d published eight books, three of them on sexual homicide. And he’d been retained by the federal government on the Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols cases, the two men responsible for the Oklahoma City bombing massacre.
Meloy would be on the stand for three days, split almost evenly between direct and cross-examination—longer than any other witness during the trial. His testimony was crucial because it would help explain Wayne’s complicated mental state and, the defense hoped, persuade the jury that he did not commit premeditated first-degree murder, let alone deserve the death penalty.
Meloy spent quite a bit of time explaining his methodology, which included interviewing Wayne for fifteen and a half hours, reviewing transcripts of interviews with family members, friends, and other witnesses, looking at crime scene photos, and reading various case reports. He also explained the series of tests he administered to Wayne before reaching his conclusions.
Severe mental disorders, he said, have both psychological and biological components, and although they may skip a generation, they are often passed down directly from parent to child. Traumatic events would typically make such disorders worse, causing people with “insult to the brain” to develop psychological problems.
Meloy explained that there are two types of homicides. The first is “predatory,” which are planned killings and are committed without feeling, such as a contract murder, and the second is “affective,” which are based in impulse or emotions such as anger or fear of a perceived threat. Following the judge’s restrictions, Meloy carefully indicated that Wayne fit the second category.
One of the tests he gave Wayne was called the Psychopathy Checklist, on which he scored 24 out of 40 (the higher the score, the more psychopathic traits a person has).
“He’s slightly more psychopathic than the average inmate who’s in prison in the United States,” Meloy said. “About 57 percent of inmates would be less psychopathic than him and 43 percent would be more psychopathic.”
Mazurek would do his best on cross-examination to poke holes in Meloy’s opinion that Wayne was not a severe psychopath.
Meloy then proceeded to lay out his complex diagnosis of Wayne, including his personality disorders and paraphilias, the formal term for a sexually deviant pattern of behaviors or perversions.
The four more common paraphilias were exhibitionism, sexual masochism, sexual sadism, and voyeurism. The rarer ones were picquerism, which is attaining sexual arousal through the insertion of needles, usually into a woman’s breasts or buttocks; erotic asphyxia; partialism, an intense focus on one body part for sexual arousal, which in this case was the breast; and pseudonecrophilia, or isolated incidents of sex with a corpse that occur without preexisting fantasies or desires.
Meloy said Wayne had a recurrent major depressive disorder with psychotic features, noting that Wayne’s military records showed that he was first diagnosed with depression when he was twenty-two, in April 1983, which indicated that the condition was chronic and started long before the killings.
“Psychotic is a general term that means a person at times will lose contact with the reality around him and will create in his mind an idiosyncratic, oftentimes bizarre reality,” Meloy explained, adding that Wayne would still be in such a state if he weren’t taking Paxil.
Meloy said that Wayne was an alcoholic, dependent on liquor since at least 1983. He said alcohol, and Bacardi 151 rum in particular, helped lower his inhibitions and increase his impulsivity and depression during the year of the killings.
Next, he said, Wayne had three out of ten possible personality disorders, the first being a severe case of Antisocial Personality Disorder, for which he lacked only one criterion.
“This individual shows guilt and remorse,” Meloy explained, adding that he not only observed Wayne “wracked with emotional pain and remorse for these acts he committed,” but Wayne also discussed those feelings in detail with him.
Meloy later said that he believed these killings were out of character and perceived even by Wayne himself to be unacceptable behavior, which was “exceedingly troublesome and disturbing and guilt-inducing to Mr. Ford.” Furthermore, he said, Wayne was not glib, superficially charming, or grandiose, as psychopaths often are.
He said Wayne also had a Borderline Personality Disorder, which was borne out in his history of attaching quickly and intensely to certain women. Initially, he would idealize them, but later, after the relationships grew rocky, he would devalue them, then turn angry and aggressive.
It is typical, Meloy said, for people with this condition to be sensitive to abandonment, reacting with rage and fury. Because their self-esteem is very unstable, they often act impulsively, exhibiting self-destructive behavior, such as suicide attempts, substance abuse, and risky sex.
“When alone, these individuals also feel very empty and . . . try to seek other people to take care of this feeling of emptiness inside.... [Wayne] shows the most instability in his relationships” with women, he said.
Wayne’s last personality disorder, he said, was of the NOS, or “not otherwise specified,” category, meaning he had features of several other disorders, but he fell short of having those full-blown conditions.
“Mr. Ford is very dependent on other people. Mr. Ford is quite narcissistic, and also is very self-defeating,” Meloy said, adding that the latter feature, a term formerly known as masochism, surprised him. “I have not seen that in a case of this kind.”
In his view, the dependent feature went back to Wayne’s relationship with his mother, who admitted to Forbush that she never bonded with Wayne because she didn’t want the pregnancy.
“She reports that she was raped to produce Mr. Ford. He was a product of rape. And she also told him this,” Meloy said. “That kind of information being provided to a child is going to deeply affect self-esteem, and also the absence of an emotional connection with a mother . . . [is] going to leave its mark over the course of a person’s life.”
Wayne, he went on, also had a strong sense of entitlement and had exploited women, showing an absence of empathy while gratifying his own desires.
“This is one of many contradictions in this man’s personality,” he said.
Sometimes, he said, Wayne showed “striking empathy in his understanding of human relationships,” and yet at other times, he demonstrated a striking lack of empathy by acting “extraordinarily cruel and aggressive.”
Meloy said Wayne was not only sadistic but sadomasochistic, seeking out women who would inflict pain on him while having sex and vice versa.
Meloy cast blame on both of Wayne’s parents for contributing to this behavior.
“Dad was an intimidating individual who could be suddenly and unpredictably aggressive in the family toward his wife, and oftentimes that aggression was sexualized,” he said. “So Mr. Ford is raised and learned that this is what you do with women. You aggress against them suddenly and you aggress against them sexually.”
Meloy said Wayne told him that when Wayne was seven years old, the family was sitting around the dinner table and his father suddenly “pulled out his mother’s breast from under her blouse and showed it to the boys.” Meloy acknowledged that he could not confirm this allegation.
Meloy said a mother’s sexual promiscuity can factor into behaviors like Wayne’s.
“Oftentimes that can teach the son, particularly if he’s overstimulated, it can bring up feelings in him as a boy that he doesn’t know how to deal with, such as fear, anger, or even excitement on the part of what his mother is doing. The indifference by the mother and the belittling by the father, I think, had an impact on both Mr. Ford’s attitude toward women and distrusting and devaluing of them. And secondly, had a large impact on how he viewed himself, because of the verbal humiliation and intimidation by Dad. So he didn’t think much of himself and, also, he did not trust women.”
Meloy noted that the number of women and prostitutes Wayne said he’d been with varied, depending on whom he was talking to and when. At different times, he told Meloy he had been with four to ten prostitutes per week between the first and second victim, that he had been with a total of fifty to sixty prostitutes, and that he’d had no sexual partners between his third and fourth victim. He told detectives that he’d been with fifteen to twenty prostitutes, and he also told them that he’d used erotic asphyxiation on fifty women.
Overall, Meloy said, what those various figures “tell me is that he engaged in these paraphilic behaviors with a number of different women during this year’s period, most of whom he paid for this kind of sexual activity, that were not killed and did not die.”
Acknowledging that Wayne’s transition from grief over losing his son to killing these women may seem bizarre on the surface, Meloy explained, however, that Wayne was not just grieving for his own son, “he’s also grieving for what he never got [as a boy]. . . . In my opinion, the grief was genuine, real, and quite intense.”
Meloy cited Wayne’s admission that he was suicidal after his wife left with their son.
On its own, he said, the loss of a son would not cause a person to commit serial homicide. But here it was merely one ingredient that proved deadly when added to the personality disorders, the depression, the paranoia, the dislike toward women, the dangerous paraphilias, the impulsivity, and “the degree to which he sees women as being provocative.”
“The combination of all these factors, in my opinion, was causative of the serial homicides,” Meloy said. “The mix here was deadly. The recipe is very, very rare for this to occur.”
Asked to explain the dismemberment of Wayne’s first victim, Meloy said he felt Wayne was trying to hide evidence and was also sexually aroused through his paraphilias, using the breasts to masturbate, then cooking and freezing them so he would be in control of them.
Interestingly enough, he said, Wayne was reluctant to admit some of these acts, telling Meloy, “I find that horrible and disgusting.”
Unlike the first psychologist who worked on Wayne’s case, Meloy said he didn’t believe that Wayne had amnesia about the killings, acknowledging that the earlier finding would have been more favorable to the defense.
“He has clear memories of those events,” he said. “There could be, literally, dozens and dozens of reasons to not admit [to that].”
Regardless, Meloy said, Wayne had a desire to stop killing, and that’s why he turned himself in.
“This is an extraordinary behavior that I have never seen in a serial homicide case,” Meloy said, adding that he’d also never read about such a case “where a person has walked into a police station with physical evidence, and over time confessed to the details of the crime, specifically to have himself stopped because he could not stop himself.”
Because Canty was not allowed to ask, and Meloy was not allowed to give an opinion about Wayne’s state of mind at the time of the killings, Canty closed his direct examination with this carefully worded question: “Your experience with what we might term the predatory or pure psychopathic killer is not one which there is a desire to stop?”
