The Actress And The Serial Killer

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Studio City Actress Flaunts Her Friendship With A Serial Killer

She's making waves at jail and in court with her obsession with recently convicted murderer Wayne Adam Ford.

California - Serial killer Wayne Adam Ford had few public admirers when Victoria Redstall, a former spokesmodel for breast enhancement supplements, breezed through the doors at the West Valley Detention Center in Rancho Cucamonga determined to meet him.

Redstall, a British-born actress from Studio City, admits to a lifelong fixation on serial killers and said meeting Ford in April — to interview him for a documentary — was "the dream of a lifetime."

She expected to be fascinated, she said, but not drawn into a deep bond with Ford that has caused a disruption in court and triggered an investigation by the Sheriff's Department.

"I trust Wayne with my life…. He's got such a kindness to him and such a conscience," she said, her eyes briefly filling with tears during an interview at a cafe in Studio City last week. "He is so tuned in to me and I to him that sometimes words don't have to be said."

Ford, a former long-haul truck driver, is on trial in San Bernardino County for crimes that would send most women running in the opposite direction. In 1997 and 1998, Ford murdered three prostitutes and a hitchhiker, dismembering two and dumping all four bodies in California waterways, before surrendering voluntarily with his final victim's breast in a Ziplock bag in his jacket pocket.

A jury convicted Ford of four counts of first-degree murder in June and on Monday began deliberating over whether to send him to death row.

Redstall, who also does voice-overs for commercials and had bit parts in the movies "The Rock" and "Nothing to Lose," began visiting Ford so often last spring at the detention center that it dominated her evenings and weekends.

She says they shared details of their childhoods and sang country songs together through the plexiglass in the jail's visitors chambers and that she got gooseflesh the first time he sang. When Ford couldn't remember all the words to Dwight Yoakam's "A Thousand Miles From Nowhere," she sent him the lyrics, she said.

The unusual relationship between Redstall and the defendant is causing waves at the San Bernardino County Sheriff's Department and appears to have unnerved Ford's attorneys.

At their request, San Bernardino County Superior Court Judge Michael A. Smith held a hearing Friday to review Redstall's media credentials to cover the trial.

The judge asked Redstall to provide verification on letterhead that she is actually doing a documentary with the company she listed on her media request, but he told Ford's lawyers he was reluctant to ban her from filming and photographing Ford.

The San Bernardino County Sheriff's Department also has launched a "personnel investigation involving inmate Ford and his visitation," said department spokeswoman Cindy Beavers, declining to elaborate. But Redstall said the inquiry was related to her visits.

She says she met Ford when a deputy who works at the detention center gave her a tour. The tour included a very unusual stop in Ford's maximum-security unit while he was out of his cell for free time, she said.

During Redstall's hearing Friday, Ford's attorney, Steven Mapes, said the deputy who shepherded Redstall into the jail was told he would be fired if he brought her back again.

Mapes also asked Redstall whether she knew jail officials had posted a flier with her picture instructing deputies not to let her in.

"No!" she exclaimed on the stand with a response that made even the judge chuckle. "Can I get a copy of the picture?"

Beavers said she could not comment on the fliers or on Redstall's visits.

After getting the judge's permission, Redstall photographed Ford so frequently — even keeping one picture as the screensaver on her cellphone — that court officials began publicly reprimanding her for taking pictures in the courtroom when it wasn't permitted for any photographer.

Soon courtroom officials scaled back all media access to Ford — even taking the extra step of ordering everyone near the courtroom to be out of Ford's line of sight when he was escorted down the hall.

One of Ford's attorneys, Deputy Public Defender Joseph D. Canty Jr., declined to comment on his client's relationship with Redstall, saying it would violate attorney-client privilege.


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