Model says she's living her dream with notorious serial killer

LOS ANGELES - He's one of America's most notorious recent serial killers and she's a model and actress.

He's waiting to find out if he faces death or life imprisonment for the murders of four California women he picked up, assaulted, strangled and dismembered a decade ago. She will wait with him.

Officially, Victoria Redstall has been following the trial of Wayne Adam Ford as a documentary maker. Unofficially, though, she has developed something of a fixation on the truck driver-turned-brutal killer - visiting him several times a week in jail, photographing him constantly in the courtroom and out, and speaking of a strong emotional bond with him.

British-born Redstall's devotion has made even Ford's own lawyers nervous, as they hope to impress the jury with their argument that their client is a changed and remorseful man, not the monster beyond salvation portrayed by the prosecution.

What makes the relationship particularly strange is that Redstall once worked as a model touting herbal breast enhancement pills. Ford, meanwhile, not only fixated on the breasts of his victims, but he also cut them off. When he walked into a police station in northern California to confess his crimes eight years ago, he had the severed breast of his last victim in a plastic bag in his pocket.

"It's hysterical," was Redstall's breezy comment on the matter.

In an interview with the Los Angeles Times, she explained her fascination. "I trust Wayne with my life."

"He's got such a kindness to him and such a conscience. He is so tuned in to me and I to him that sometimes words don't have to be said."

She described how the two of them had talked about their childhoods and sung favourite country music songs together across the plexiglass divide of the visiting room in the county jail.

She said meeting him last April was the culmination of a long fascination with serial killers - "the dream of a lifetime".

Asked whether the extraordinary brutality of his crimes gave her pause, she said: "Everyone tells me, 'Be careful, he's a serial killer'. But they don't know Wayne like I do. We've all got evil in us - all of us.

"He took it to the extent of killing humans. But I'm going on the man he is today and the remorse that he has."

For much of the trial, Redstall enjoyed the support of the judge, Michael Smith, to the point where she was authorised to take pictures in circumstances granted to no other reporter or photographer.

She used one of the pictures of Ford in court as the screensaver on her mobile phone.

Last week, however, Ford's lawyers asked for a hearing to reconsider Redstall's media credentials and argued that she had not conducted herself in an "honest and forthright" manner.

After the final sentencing hearing last week, Redstall drove her red convertible alongside the bus taking Ford back to his cell so he could see her blond hair and jewellery.

"Wayne's pleasure of his day is having me visit him," she said.

"And we're going to get this documentary made together."

- INDEPENDENT