Caitlin Rother's Blog

In a previous post a few months back, I showed you the cover of HOOKED, my new upcoming thriller, which will launch my new "Katrina & Goode" series on Feb. 1. What I didn't know at the time, was that my publisher, Thomas & Mercer, was going to tweak the cover. So, now I get to do a second cover reveal post! I also didn’t know that the launch date was going to change, and that I would have the cover of the sequel, #2 in the series, to post as well! So first things first. Here’s the new,...

To be honest, I didn’t know if I was going to be able to generate the necessary energy to be a Guest of Honor at the Killer Nashville conference, which was a great honor in itself. After being on a seemingly never-ending book tour for the past eight months, I was, in a word, tired. But keep reading, because this turned out to be one of the best conferences I’ve been to in a long time. Because COVID is on the rise again this summer, I wore a KN-95 mask in the Uber and airports at either end of...

By Caitlin Rother I’ve been playing the piano since I was seven, when I started taking lessons. I always hated to practice, so I rarely...

By Caitlin Rother I’m thrilled to say that I’ve been getting some really nice feedback from readers of my new book, Down to the Bone ,...

The invisible stage, that is... By Caitlin Rother I’m thrilled to announce that today marks the beginning of a three-month book tour for...

By Caitlin Rother In 2006, I quit a full-time job as an investigative newspaper reporter to pursue my dream of making it as a full-time...

By Caitlin Rother HOOKED is the first of my new "Katrina & Goode" thriller series and will be released by Thomas & Mercer on Jan. 13,...

By Caitlin Rother My deadline was only four months away—and I had 90,000 words written—when I finally obtained crucial discovery and...

After researching this book for a dozen years, I'm thrilled to announce that the long-awaited release of the story behind the McStay...

“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.”

-- Katherine Ramsland, author of The Serial Killer’s Apprentice 

Twenty-five years after a boater found a Twenty-five years after a boater found a young woman’s torso in Ryan Slough, the Humboldt County Sheriff’s Office has finally been able to identify the victim using forensic genetic genealogy: Kerry Anne Cummings. 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.

BODY PARTS, by New York Times bestselling author Caitlin Rother, takes a deep psychological look at serial killer Wayne Adam Ford. A long-haul trucker, Ford confessed to picking up dozens of prostitutes and troubled women along California roads. After torturing and repeatedly choking and reviving them with CPR during sex, only 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 and who went unidentified for 25 years. If there is such a thing as a happy ending to a book about a serial killer, this is it. 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. Kerry now has her name back and her 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 Kerry and 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.

 

Please join Rother at one of these four book signings over the next month:

 

1)    Saturday, March 1 from 12-2 pm at Bay Books in Coronado (San Diego County)

2)    Sunday, March 2 from 1-3 pm at the Barnes & Noble in Carmel Mountain (SD County)

3)    Saturday, March 8 from 1-3 pm at the Barnes & Noble at the Galleria in Riverside (Riverside County

4)    Saturday, March 15 from 2-4 pm at Book Carnival in Orange (Orange County)

To buy a copy of this book online, go to Amazon or bookshop.org

To buy an autographed copy, please contact Rother at crother@flash.net