in San Bernardino, Superior Court Judge Michael Smith...

in San Bernardino, Superior Court Judge Michael Smith sentenced former truck driver Wayne Adam Ford to death for strangling 4 women and dumping their mutilated bodies across California. Ford, 45, was convicted June 27 on 4 counts of 1st-degree murder for the 1997 and 1998 killings. The same jury recommended the death penalty on Aug. 10 (see). Ford was arrested in November 1998 after he walked into a sheriff's station in Northern California with a woman's severed breast and told authorities it represented the "tip of the iceberg." He was subsequently charged with the killings of Patricia Tamez, 29; Lanett Deyon White, 25; Tina Renee Gibbs, 26, and an unidentified woman whose torso was found in a slough. In a pre-sentencing report made public after the hearing, Ford apologized to the victims and their families, although he said he was not guilty of four counts of 1st-degree murder. "There was no struggling and no pain inflicted upon the victims," the report quoted Ford as saying. "All acts and activities were consensual. Anything that might have appeared to be painful or torturous was done post-mortem."