Authors: Caitlin Rother
“Oh, I’m sure they did,” Meloy answered.
“And everybody that’s spanked with a belt doesn’t grow up to murder people?”
“Fortunately, not,” Meloy replied. “Again, it’s the confluence of all these different factors that we are talking about.”
Trying to dissect Meloy’s methodology, Mazurek noted that the expert took into account Wayne’s statement about his father pulling out his mother’s breast at the dinner table, even though it couldn’t be corroborated anywhere in the record. Meloy explained that he’d specifically asked Forbush to pose that question to Wayne’s mother, but that did not happen.
The prosecutor blasted Meloy for admitting that Wayne had exaggerated some of his personality test answers, and yet relying on those test results to form his opinions. On this, Meloy stuck to his guns, speaking in psychological jargon that rationalized his methods.
As Mazurek went through the various tests that Meloy had administered, the prosecutor raised what he saw as inconsistencies between Meloy’s testimony, the test results, and his published statements.
Meloy stood firm, although agitation crept into his voice as he answered Mazurek’s questions. “I would never score a person just on the basis of the finding from one test, as I said probably half a dozen times,” he said, referring to the Psychopathy Checklist.
Mazurek also confronted Meloy for contending that Wayne lied in certain instances, exaggerated or distorted facts in others, while still claiming that Wayne was truthful.
“My clinical interviews with him were not such that I found him to be a chronic liar,” Meloy retorted.
During the questioning, some new information about the death of Jane Doe was revealed. Wayne told Meloy that he placed her body in a sleeping bag, took her back to his trailer, and went to bed. He woke up in the middle of the night, put her in the bathtub, cut her throat, and bled her out. The next day, he left her in the tub and went to work. When he came back, he cut off her breasts, head, arms, and legs, then sliced out her vagina.
“He didn’t call anybody, he didn’t call the paramedics, didn’t notify anybody he just had this horrible accident and this girl died?” Mazurek asked.
“Correct.”
This was all good fodder for Mazurek to dispute Meloy’s finding that Wayne had shown guilt and remorse. The prosecutor presented a long list of Wayne’s actions surrounding this incident, attempting to force Meloy to say they did not indicate remorse or guilt.
“Neither is putting her breasts in the oven and trying to melt them?” Mazurek asked.
After repeatedly saying Wayne did feel guilt and remorse, Meloy finally had to agree with Mazurek on this example, but he pointed out that the prosecutor had overlooked some details.
“You left out the fact that—that he also told me that he was dry heaving and vomiting during the dismemberment,” Meloy said.
“Okay. That could be for a number of reasons?”
“It could be. One of them being disgust and horror at what he was doing.”
“Of course, not so disgusted and horrified that he had to stop,” Mazurek said.
“Correct.”
The next morning, Mazurek used a similar line of questioning about Wayne’s conduct after killing Tina Gibbs, again revealing some new details.
Wayne told Meloy that after strangling Tina with a tie, he went drinking and won $1,000 while gambling. Meloy said this was consistent with Wayne’s history of numbing his emotions with alcohol.
“So, keeping her in the cab for three to five days after she’s dead, is that consistent with remorse?” Mazurek asked.
Meloy gave a long answer, saying that behavior was consistent with his other findings about Wayne’s paraphilias—but he said, “One could not confirm whether or not he was experiencing conflict at that moment.”
“And keeping Ms. Gibbs’s body and using it for necrophilia, for sexual intercourse, that’s certainly not conduct consistent with remorse?”
“It could be,” Meloy said, prompting the jury to snicker. He explained that Wayne’s attempt to achieve sexual relief by gratifying his paraphilias could have been a way to manage the intolerable emotions resulting from what he had done.
Mazurek asked if Wayne knew these girls could die when he engaged in these behaviors.
“I think he was too disorganized and psychiatrically disturbed and agitated and personality-disordered to comprehend that,” Meloy said. “It is my opinion that he was not aware that he was causing the death of anybody.”
Asked to elaborate, Meloy read aloud from his interview notes, starting with Wayne’s comments about Jane Doe:
“Bothersome feelings in her. She didn’t want to be done. I felt awkward, not horny. The best I can think, she said something that set me off. Maybe I strangled her or punched her. I remember really enjoying sex with her firm, big breasts. In my car. Vaginal, oral sex on me. No anal. When I looked up at her, she wasn’t breathing. I was face down on her. CPR trained. I’m scared she’s hurt. Overdosed. Sex facilitated it. Drive to a hospital. Last time I was honest with police I got cruelty to animals. Shocked. Confused. I took her back to the trailer.”
Similarly, Meloy said, Wayne denied knowing that he’d caused Tina Gibbs’s death, claiming he’d initially thought he was drunk and “squished the piss out of her.”
After discussing at length the many instances that seemed inconsistent with Wayne showing remorse, Mazurek tried one more time to get Meloy to admit he was wrong: “Even with all of that, we don’t even get a maybe that there’s a lack of remorse or guilt?”
“Correct,” Meloy said.
“No matter what I ask you, basically, you’re not going to change your score to that?” Mazurek said, referring to the Psychopathy Checklist.
“Correct.”
Reading aloud one of Meloy’s published statements, Mazurek asked if he would agree with it: “The use of tests to determine state of mind at the time of the crime is, at best, wholly inferential, and, at worst, grossly misleading?”
“I would agree with that, generally, given what I just said,” Meloy said.
As Mazurek finished up his cross-examination, he tried one last time to get Meloy to say that Wayne engaged in his lethal paraphilias “with reckless disregard” for his victims. But Meloy still wouldn’t go there.
The erotic asphyxiation didn’t start as a means to kill these women, he said, “I think it started as a paraphilia, but I think then, when you talk about . . . the disregu-lated fury, the impulsivity we’ve just discussed, the person is at great risk of being killed.”
On redirect, Canty went back over Meloy’s most significant findings.
“Can people do horrible things repeatedly and still have a conscience and still have remorse?”
“Yes.”
Countering Mazurek’s rhetorical drumbeat that Wayne made a premeditated choice to kill these women, Canty asked if an Antisocial Personality Disorder is thought to have a genetic component.
“Yes . . . People do not choose to have an Antisocial Personality Disorder, nor did they choose to have psychopathic traits.”
The following week, on Wednesday, May 17, Canty called psychologist Paul Berg, who had interviewed Wayne in the Eureka jail.
Although he’d initially been hired by the Humboldt County District Attorney’s Office, Berg’s testimony proved helpful to the defense.
“Did you get any sense, in evaluating Mr. Ford, that his presentation involved malingering?” Canty asked.
“No, there were a number of reasons I didn’t.”
Berg said Wayne did not do what defendants generally do when they’re trying to “con the doctor.” They either “act like a prisoner of war” and refuse to discuss anything, or they try to befriend and butter up the doctor.
“He did neither of those,” he said. “He was kind of straight.”
On cross-examination, Mazurek asked if they could write off Wayne’s depression as a natural, common reaction to being in jail.
Berg said no, because Wayne was not just depressed, he was “profoundly depressed.”
“What I believe Mr. Ford was depressed about was what had happened and what he did. And the reason I say that is, he was not arrested. He didn’t get stopped on the highway, picked up at his home. . . . It was by [his own] volition that he turned himself in. It wouldn’t make sense that he’s been depressed about being in, because . . . [it] was his own choice.”
Despite objections by the defense, Wayne’s two ex-wives testified as prosecution rebuttal witnesses after lunch—and out of order; the defense had yet to rest its case.
While Elizabeth was on the stand, Mazurek peppered her with questions about the time and attention Wayne paid to his son, Max.
During their marriage, Elizabeth said, Wayne would occasionally hold Max, but only until he cried; then Wayne would hand him back to her. He didn’t feed Max, try to change his diaper, or bathe him.
When Wayne came to see Elizabeth and Max after the separation, Mazurek asked, “Did he visit with Max?”
“No.”
“Did he hold Max?”
“No.”
“Feed Max?”
“No.”
Elizabeth said Wayne spent more time talking to her than paying attention to his son. Throughout 1997, Wayne did not call and ask to talk to Max, send him greeting cards, or call to check on his welfare. Even during the October 1997 visit, she said, Wayne spent only ninety minutes with his son and the other four and a half hours talking to her and his friends.
“Did you take Max and hide him from the defendant so he would never have any contact with his son?” Mazurek asked.
“No.”
“And, in fact, you encouraged him to have some contact with his son?”
“Yes.”
On cross-examination, Canty brought up situations that characterized Wayne as just the opposite—emotionally attached to and interested in the welfare of his son.
While Elizabeth was pregnant and went in for her ultrasound, Canty asked, “He viewed the picture of the child?”
“Yes.”
“And he was emotional about it?”
“Yes.”
“Cry?”
“Yes.”
“And was he there for the birth of the child?”
“Yes.”
Elizabeth acknowledged that Wayne also took out a $10,000 loan to help support the family when the couple was having financial problems in Las Vegas, and after the separation, he sold parts of his Jeep to help pay for an emergency room visit for Max.
She also acknowledged that Wayne was depressed throughout the relationship, and he had spent four days with his friends Scott and Linda Hayes, contemplating suicide, after the breakup.
After the brief testimony of Ron Forbush and DA investigator Christine Murillo, the defense officially rested.
CHAPTER 24
R
EBUTTAL
: M
ALINGERING
?
Dr. Park Dietz, a forensic psychiatrist and the prosecution’s next rebuttal witness, met with Wayne on May 15 and 19 to conduct the psychological evaluation in preparation for Dietz’s testimony.
Although he was initially retained on the case in November 1999 by prosecutor David Whitney, a former FBI agent who was one of Dietz’s associates had worked on it alone until recently. Together they had racked up more than $58,000 in fees, subsidized by taxpayers, so that Dietz could rebut Dr. Meloy’s findings and conclusions.
When Dietz took the stand on Wednesday, May 31, Mazurek led the psychiatrist through his qualifications, which included running two consulting firms: Park Dietz & Associates, and Threat Assessment Group, Inc. Dietz said he’d also coauthored a book and published articles on sexual masochism and sexual sadism, and had helped craft the language for sections on paraphilias and impulse control disorder in the
Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM),
which sets standards for the mental-health field. He also consulted for the TV show
Law & Order.
As part of the high-profile cases with which he’d been involved, he evaluated John Hinckley Jr., the attempted assassin of President Reagan, serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer, DC snipers John Malvo and John Muhammad, and a half-dozen other serial killers that Mazurek cited.
Rather than wait for the defense to attack the witness on his point of weakness, Mazurek had Dietz explain how he’d run into trouble with the case of Andrea Yates, the Texas mother with postpartum depression who drowned her five children in the bathtub. He said he’d accidentally misspoken during his testimony and later tried to correct the record. However, the prosecutor had used his statement in his closing argument, and it later fueled an appeal that led to her conviction being overturned.
As Mazurek had Dietz dissect and rebut Meloy’s findings, the psychiatrist testified that he disagreed with many of them because of insufficient evidence or proof to support them.
In some cases, he simply differed with the methodology or definition Meloy had used, including his finding that Wayne showed “affective” versus “predatory” aggression. He said those terms applied to an event, not a person, and were not appropriate to describe criminal behavior, because crimes could involve elements of both.
“One would have to know what actually happened to make that judgment,” he said. But in this case, one of the two witnesses to each of Wayne’s crimes was dead; the other witness—Wayne—claimed amnesia.
Dietz also disputed Meloy’s opinion that Wayne was depressed the year of the killings, saying, “I don’t think that the evidence is quite as convincing.”
For one, he said, if someone is drinking alcohol, it’s impossible to tell he is depressed, because the alcohol can heighten those symptoms, so “we don’t know if it’s drinking or depression.”
Suggesting that Wayne may have sought mental-health treatment because he was seeking an excuse for his crimes, he completely dismissed Meloy’s opinion that Wayne had psychotic features along with his depression because he had no history of hallucinations, delusions, or thought disorders.
The use of the term “catatonic” in Wayne’s military records about the Okinawa incident, he said, was not applied properly because Wayne was still able to talk; he simply chose not to. Dietz said Wayne may have faked certain symptoms, prompting a diagnosis of psychosis, which went hand in hand with the Antisocial Personality Disorder. Wayne’s records reflected that the military doctors gave him Haldol because he was violent and aggressive, not psychotic, Dietz said.