Body Parts

East County News Service

January 21, 2025 (San Diego) – New York Times bestselling author Caitlin Rother, an investigative journalist and former San Diego Union-Tribune reporter, will release an updated edition of her true-crime book, Body Parts, on February 25.  The book takes a deep psychological look at serial killer Wayne Adam Ford, a trucker who confessed to killing four prostitutes picked up along California roads.

The new edition contains information on the identity of Ford’s first victim, who has finally been identified by the Humboldt County Sheriff’s through forensic genetic genealogy 25 years after her body was found by a boater.

For a year after her murder, detectives had no suspects until one evening in November 1998, when a 36-year-old former Marine walked into the Eureka sheriff’s station with a woman’s breast in his jacket pocket. Initially saying he had “hurt some people,” Wayne Adam Ford turned himself in, describing the gruesome details of repeatedly choking four young women during rough sex until they stopped breathing, reviving them with CPR, then doing it again.

Ford told authorities that after torturing and repeatedly choking and reviving dozens of prostitutes with CPR during sex, four of them didn’t survive, he said, claiming that was an accident. After dismembering two of his victims, he dumped their bodies in the California Aqueduct and other waterways in Humboldt, Kern, San Joaquin, and San Bernardino Counties. Ford's complex death penalty case made national news because he is one of the only serial killers to turn himself in and help authorities identify his victims. He was recently transferred from death row at San Quentin to a state prison in San Luis Obispo.  

Originally released in March 2009, this new edition of Body Parts has been updated with 32 pages of developments about the identification of Kerry Anne Cummings, Ford’s first victim, whom he dismembered. The new material takes the reader through the investigative process involved in solving a cold case like this one so many years after the fact. The victim’s family has closure after so many years of not knowing what happened to her, and being prevented from reporting her missing to police because she was using drugs. Rother is the first writer to interview the Cummings family about her troubled life before she went missing in late 1997.

Overall, this book is based on exclusive information Rother uncovered during her extensive research and exclusive interviews with key players, including Ford’s father and brother. She also interviewed, the prosecutor, sheriff's detectives from all four counties, the defense’s sole investigator, and a woman who survived after being raped and tortured by Ford.  By obtaining a court order to release sealed court files and digging through boxes of evidence and investigators’ reports, Rother was able to paint comprehensive and compelling portraits of Ford, his family and his victims. Her book shows readers how Ford’s family dynamics, his severe head injury, his bouts of mental illness, and his compulsive sexual perversions led to his tragic killing spree, tearful confessions, and dramatic trial.

Rother has written or co-authored 15 books including Death on Ocean Boulevard, Hunting Charles Manson, Then No One Can Have Her, I’ll Take Care of You, Lost Girls, Poisoned Love, Dead Reckoning, Twisted Triangle, Where Hope Begins/Deadly Devotion, Naked Addiction, and My Life, Deleted

Her next title, Down to the Bone, about the murders of the McStay family of San Diego County,  comes out in June 2025. The author of narrative non-fiction crime, thrillers, and memoir, Rother also has the first two books in a new series of crime novels coming out in 2026, starting with Dopamine Fix (Thomas & Mercer). Her most recent title is Death on Ocean Boulevard, which was optioned by Untitled Entertainment. An award-winning investigative newspaper reporter for 19 years,

Rother’s journalism has been published in Cosmopolitan, the Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, The San Diego Union Tribune, The Boston Globe, Chicago Tribune, and The Daily Beast. Her more than 250 TV, radio and podcast appearances include 20/20, People Magazine Investigates, Crime Watch Daily, Australia's World News, and numerous shows on Netflix, Investigation Discovery, Lifetime, HLN and REELZ. For more information, visit her website: https://caitlinrother.com

What critics are saying

“With a seasoned journalist's doggedness and a novelist's ear for drama, Caitlin Rother paints every page with all the violent colors of a malignant sociopath's fever and captures what all too often is hidden right in plain sight,” says NYT bestselling author Ron Franscell. “This kind of frightening and fascinating glimpse into a killer's mind is rare, and an extremely intuitive Rother makes the most of it.”

“Caitlin Rother is the model for serious crime journalism today. She's bold, meticulous, and exhaustive, returning to cases with loose ends to update us on the latest innovations and developments,” says Katherine Ramsland, bestselling author. 

“The updated material in this new edition of Body Parts not only brings the story full circle by giving a name, face, and tragic backstory to the mystery that set the nightmare in motion, it adds another layer of depth,” says Simon Read, author of In the Dark. “Caitlin Rother never lets the horrific nature of the crimes overshadow the humanity of the victims… Rother explores Ford's savage career in chilling detail… Her fast-paced narrative and the brutality of Ford's rampage come together in a book crime aficionados will be loathe to put down.  A story this shocking can only be true.”

“Rother has produced a superior study of the formation of a serial killer and his lost and lonely victims,” says Carol Anne Davis, author of Sadistic Killers. “You’ll want to lock up your daughters—and raise your sons with respect and compassion – after reading about the depraved acts of Wayne Adam Ford.”

“As with all of her nonfiction, Caitlin Rother delivers page-turning excitement and blood curdling terror once again,” says M. William Phelps, author of Bad Girls. “Using a reporter's edge, a novelist's eye, and a crime-scene investigator's nose for evidence, Rother's latest is all at once riveting, unbelievable, fast-paced, and sure to keep you up at night wondering how evil seems to top itself time and again."

BODY PARTS by Caitlin Rother

On sale date: February 25, 2025 

Price: $18.95, a Citadel Press trade paperback

ISBN: 978-0806543918