Man’s Murder Stories May Reopen Cases

Four dead women dumped in remote bodies of water: the California Aqueduct, an irrigation canal and an isolated marsh. Four cold cases, no leads and no suspects, the kind of investigations that haunt a law enforcement officer.

Then Wayne Adam Ford walked into the Humboldt County Sheriff’s Department with a troubled heart and a woman’s breast, two hours before the polls closed Tuesday. And everything changed.

Ford, a long-haul trucker, allegedly told sheriff’s deputies about a naked female torso--no head, no legs and no arms--that had been found just over a year ago in a marshy region outside of Eureka called Ryan’s Slough.

He told them about a naked, decomposing female body that had been dumped in an irrigation ditch along California 12 just outside Lodi in September.

He told them about a naked female body--this one missing a breast--that had been dumped in the California Aqueduct at Interstate 15 in Hesperia two weeks ago.

And he told them about the naked body of a young prostitute from Las Vegas who had been strangled in June and dumped into the California Aqueduct along California 58 in the Kern County farm town of Buttonwillow.

That final woman was Tina Renee Gibbs, 26, who was identified by the Kern County Sheriff’s Department after her fingerprints were re-created and run through California’s computer system--with no luck--and then computers nationwide.

But with her name came no other information. Officials figured she had been murdered by a truck driver. All clues tended to point in that direction, said Sgt. Glenn Johnson.

“She’s a prostitute, Las Vegas, in an aqueduct alongside a highway,” Johnson said in an interview Friday. But “we had no leads to go on. The case sat on the shelf waiting for the next piece of information.

“On the morning of the 4th, a couple days ago, we got a phone call that this Wayne Adam Ford had turned himself in to Humboldt County and made admissions to four homicides up and down the state,” Johnson continued. “One of them matched ours.”

One of them matched the murder of Lanett White, 25, found outside Lodi, a young Fontana mother who held a night job in a warehouse and was never reported missing. One matched Patricia Anne Tamez, 29, found in Hesperia. And one matched Jane Doe, found in Ryan’s Slough.

Ford pleaded not guilty to one count of murder when he was arraigned Friday morning. Unable to post $1-million bail, he waits in his cell at the Humboldt County Correctional Facility for further court dates.

He turned himself in on Tuesday “because he felt guilty,” said Carol Margart of the Humboldt County Sheriff’s Department. “He came of his own accord. He came to us with the information.”

Authorities in four counties crisscrossed by Ford are opening their books and looking for more unsolved murders of young women whose bodies were dumped along the highways of California.

The breast that Ford presented to Humboldt County deputies, wrapped in a plastic zipper bag, was brought back to San Bernardino County by deputies who had traveled north to interview the suspect about Tamez and several other open murder cases.

The coroner’s office will test the severed body part to see if it belongs to Tamez.

Ford’s semitrailer rig was also returned to San Bernardino County, where “our crime lab will be processing the vehicle to look for fingerprints or other forensic evidence that could link the suspect to the murder of Patricia Tamez,” said Chip Patterson, a sheriff’s spokesman.

“We believe that the truck possibly was the crime scene,” he said. Until Ford spoke, “we had few leads in this case.”

On Friday morning, the San Bernardino County detectives who had interviewed Ford sat down with the entire homicide department, Patterson said, “to compare notes and determine whether or not we have any other cases that might be connected to the suspect.”

“We’re concerned, because he indicated to us that he’s been through San Bernardino County on a number of occasions in the course of his work as a truck driver,” Patterson said. “He lived in Big Bear in the 1980s. We have some research to do on unsolved cases and open murders. We suspect we can connect him to the Tamez murder for the time being.”

Kern County sheriff’s deputies are doing similar work on unsolved cases and say that at some point authorities will sit down with Ford’s truck routes and figure out if there are other, similar unsolved crimes along that network.

Right now, they seem to know more about the short life and bad death of Tina Renee Gibbs than perhaps is known about any of Ford’s other alleged victims. Gibbs had been arrested for prostitution at least one time.

Ford admitted killing Gibbs, Johnson said. “He said he’d picked her up in Las Vegas on Tropicana Boulevard.” Ford told authorities that Gibbs died during consensual sex, which included the use of bondage.

Ford could not tell the Kern County deputies who flew north to interview him the exact date and location of her death. Authorities assume it was within driving distance of Las Vegas.

“He drove around for two days with her [body] in the truck,” Johnson said. “As he was driving through Kern County, he decided to dispose of her.”

The biggest questions right now center on Ford. Authorities say that he was a trucker who hauled lumber and other freight and had driven regularly through San Bernardino County--where White was allegedly picked up and Tamez was found strangled.

Authorities throughout the state are trying to piece together his background and actions, motives and targets. They know that, in addition to Big Bear, he lived in Las Vegas and the college town of Arcata, near Eureka. He also lived a lot of the time out of his truck.

“We don’t know a whole bunch about him,” Kern County’s Johnson said. “It appears that a lot of his victims are young white females, hitchhikers or prostitutes. Once he kills them, he dumps them in water. It’s the common thread at this point.”

Times staff writer Tom Gorman in San Bernardino County contributed to this story.

Trail of Death

Wayne Adam Ford, a trucker, walked into the Humboldt County sheriff’s office this week and told deputies where they could find the bodies of four women. Each was left in a watery location near the cities highlighted below.

Eureka

Lodi

Buttonwillow

Hesperia