Priscilla Ford, a mentally disturbed woman, killed six holiday shoppers in Reno, Nevada on Thanksgiving 1980 by running them over with her car. Ford, an African-American, was born in Berren Springs, Michigan on February 10, 1929. Her early years are unclear, but she began working as a schoolteacher in Dowagiac in 1957. School officials were reluctant to hire her as she only had a high school education and the district had never hired a black teacher before, but she was soon receiving praise for her job performance. Ford married twice and had three children. She taught at Dowagiac for seven years and then went to college to obtain a bachelor's in education in 1966. In spite of this, Ford displayed signs of mental instability early on. Around the same time that she began teaching, she shot her second husband after she claimed he beat her. Ford then tried to turn the gun on herself but didn't succeed in her suicide attempt--the shooting was ruled self-defense and she wasn't charged with anything.
By 1970, Ford was living in Buffalo, New York and her behavior was becoming more erratic. She claimed to see her dead husband across the street from her house and said she had the soul of Adam and Jesus Christ. Her son came home from the Army two years later and reported that she was a delusional alcoholic. Ford moved to Reno by 1973 where she voluntarily committed herself to Nevada Health Mental Institute where she was diagnosed as having passive-aggressive personality with hysterical episodes. She was arrested the following year for trespassing and assault, and her 11 year old daughter Wynter was removed from her care by state welfare officials and sent to live with relatives in Los Angeles. Ford accused the welfare officials of kidnapping her daughter. She returned to Buffalo and sought help from a Catholic charity, where a nun called her "delusional."She was treated at an Idaho mental hospital and then a Buffalo hospital in the late '70s, where she was diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia. Ford then moved to Maine in 1980, where she asked an attorney for help in getting her daughter back and if she didn't get it, she would "drive across the state and kill everybody I see along the way." That November, she drove cross country with the intention of reaching San Francisco, but along the way stopped in Reno to cash a check and decided to stay there. Ford got a temp holiday job wrapping packages at Macy's.
Thanksgiving Day, November 27, was an average fall day in the Nevada city with the mercury hovering around 47F. It had been three weeks since Ronald Reagan's election as president and the streets were busy with holiday tourists and shoppers in spite of the ongoing economic recession. Before pedestrians knew what hit them, a black '74 Lincoln Continental drove up onto the sidewalk at about 20 mph. The two ton sedan accelerated to 40 mph, barreling 100 feet down the sidewalk according to witnesses. It crossed the 2nd Street crosswalk and continued 322 more feet down the sidewalk in front of a bank and a couple of nightclubs. The car, carrying a woman on its hood for about the length of a sidewalk, exited the sidewalk and went onto Virginia Street, crossing to the southbound lane and stopping two blocks later behind traffic at the 5th Street traffic light.
Behind the Lincoln lay a trail of destruction with five people dead and 24 injured. The latter were sent to two different hospitals. Debris, including human debris, littered the sidewalk. Police quickly surrounded the car and pulled Priscilla Ford from it. She offered no resistance, but was indignant at being arrested. John Oakes, the assistant DA for the county, was surprised at being called to a hit-and-run on Thanksgiving, but when he got there was horrified at the carnage. He was told to keep an eye on Ford, who was being guarded by police as a lot of angry people were ready to kill her. Oakes spent five hours with Ford, during which time he was stunned at how calm, unworried, and completely unrepentant she was, telling him "How many people did I kill?" "Five or six," was the reply. "Good." The investigators' interview with her was videotaped, which was then a new technology for the Reno PD, "So we could see on tape exactly how lucid she was. She knew who she was and where she was--that tape was worth its weight in gold."
On January 29, 1981, Ford was ruled mentally unfit to stand trial and was sent to a mental hospital in Lake's Crossing. On April 29, she was ordered to submit to treatment, including drug therapy, and on August 4 she was ruled fit to stand trial. The trial opened November 12 and went on five months, the longest and most expensive in Washoe County to date. Ford's guilt was never in doubt, the only question was why she did it. Of the several motives offered, each one seemed more insane or at least unrealistic than the last. As details about Ford's life unfolded, her ability to tell right from wrong became hazier. It took until March 19, 1982 for a jury to find her guilty on six counts of first degree murder and 23 counts of attempted murder. Seven had died of injuries sustained in her rampage, but due to issues with changing the murder indictment, she was only charged with six. As was generally expected, Ford plead innocent by reason of insanity. She was sentenced to death.Ford was quoted as saying "The more dead the better," while awaiting drug and alcohol tests at Washoe Medical Center. "I deliberately planned to get as many as possible. A Lincoln Continental can do a lot of damage, can't it?" Later she said "I am a New York teacher. I'm tired of life. I want attention. I'm sick of problems. In June of 1980, a voice told me to drive through a crowd at a theater and kill as many as possible. But another voice said she's too much of a lady to do it." That voice was Senator Ted Kennedy's wife Joan. These celebrity relationships only existed in Ford's head. She also had an obsession with journalist Barbara Walters. She wrote to Dear Abby. In 1978 she filed a lawsuit against the Seventh Day Adventist Church and the Church of Latter Day Saints for half a billion dollars, claiming she was America's only authorized divinity (both suits were tossed by the courts).
She also claimed that her daughter Wynter was stolen from her and she did the murders to get attention in helping get her back. In fact welfare officials had long tried to get into contact with Ford and inform her of Wynter's whereabouts, but she moved around so frequently that they were unable to find her. Other evidence indicated that she perfectly well knew where her daughter was. Ford at one point also claimed the rampage was an accident and her car had suffered a mechanical malfunction, which it had not.At the trial, Ford took the stand in her own defense, claiming she was the spirit of Jesus Christ, the Holy Spirit, and Adam reincarnate. "I am human. And I am divine. I don't like it more than anyone else does. I don't want to be divine." Despite her claims of being a good mother who had her child taken away from her by callous welfare officials, those claims were refuted when Wynter, now 18, took the stand for the prosecution. She said her mother introduced her to marijuana when she was 9 and often talked of her own divinity and about how she wanted Wynter impregnated by artificial insemination to bring another messiah through virgin birth into the world. "She talked about Jesus Christ, about her being Jesus Christ, about me being Jesus Christ. She talked to my aunt about me being artificially inseminated to bear Jesus Christ."
Ford said she had begun smoking marijuana in the early '70s and called it "the tree of life." Her husband died after their separation, one day after telling her children "I hope God strikes him dead." She claimed she left Reno in 1973 in a quest to get her daughter back which took her around the country, from Maine to Vermont to Chicago, where she quit two jobs because she did not like black people, despite being black herself. During the trial, she was asked by the prosecutor "Were you as happy as you could be and in a heavenly state when you ran into (this person)?" "Yes." She claimed to have shown remorse in private, but when asked if she cared about the dead, she said "How can I care? Is there anything I can do? Feeling good doesn't do any good for them."She appealed her sentence repeatedly over the years without success, charging that she didn't get a fair trial and had inadequate legal counsel. Prosecutors said there was no basis for this and given her mental condition her chances of being executed were slim. Ford was a model prisoner and caused no problems for anyone. A heavy smoker, she passed away from emphysema on January 29, 2005, two weeks shy of her 76th birthday. At the time of her death, she had exhausted her state level appeals but still had unused Federal ones.
>>18590111>>18590114AND TO THE BLACK FOLKS SHE WAS JUST A CRAZY...NO ONE DOUBTED THAT SHE STEPPED ON THE ACCELERATOR
>>18590111>>18590114this makes me happy they banned leaded gasoline tbqh
>>18590129Diana Ross - "Coming Out" was the #1 song that week IIRC.
Smoking weed is bad, mmmkay?
>>18590240I think Another One Bites The Dust would be the best theme song for this thread.
