She tells that the people she hit were "just pigs,
animals let out in a wild place." She testified that she was the
incarnation of Jesus and incapable of sin. So she killed 6 by driving her car
onto a crowded Reno sidewalk on November 27, 1980 and was arrested the same
day. In Washoe County, Nevada, USA, she was sentenced to death on April 29,
1982. Died in prison on January 29, 2005.
Ford, Priscilla:
Black; age 51 at crime (DOB 2- 10-1929); murder of 3 white females and 3
white males in Reno on 11-27-1980; sentenced on 4-29-1982. Priscilla Joyce Ford
(February 10, 1929 – January 29, 2005) was a mass murderer who was sentenced to
death for killing six people, and injuring 23 more, driving down a Reno
sidewalk on Thanksgiving Day in 1980. Ford launched numerous appeals against
her death sentence, all of which failed. A heavy smoker, she died at the age of
75 after suffering from emphysema.
Death row inmate
Ford dies
Woman drove car down Reno sidewalk in '80, killing six,
injuring 23
The only woman on Nevada's death row died Saturday at the
Southern Nevada Women's Correctional Center in Las Vegas, authorities said. She
was 75. Priscilla Ford had been suffering from emphysema and was pronounced
dead at 11:05 a.m., said Fritz Schlottman, spokesman for the Nevada Department
of Corrections. Ford killed six people and injured 23 others when she drove her
1974 Lincoln Continental down a crowded Reno sidewalk on Thanksgiving Day in
1980. "She had been very quiet for so long," Schlottman said.
"No one ever had any problems with her (in prison). I don't remember
hearing about her violating any rules." Ford's numerous appeals of the
death sentence cost taxpayers a lot of money and unfairly caused victims'
families to relive the tragedy, Washoe County Assistant District Attorney John
Helzer said.
Ford had exhausted her state appeals but still had federal
appeals left to challenge the death sentence, he said. "That was such a
sad case. It was such a tragedy for so many people," Helzer said.
"The fact they had to relive that case, appeal after appeal. Her death
will probably bring some peace to those people. She should have been executed a
long time ago." In 1995, Ford lost a state Supreme Court bid to get her
sentence eased to life without parole on grounds she didn't get a fair trial. Ford's
lawyer had argued there were all sorts of constitutional problems caused mainly
by inadequate legal counsel during her 6-month trial. But prosecutors had
argued there was no basis for the appeal -- and given Ford's mental state it
was unlikely she would ever be executed anyway.
Expert medical witnesses said Ford was suffering from a
variety of mental illnesses, but prosecutors maintained she knew the difference
between right and wrong. "She was angry that day (of the killings) and
what she did was what she attempted to do," Helzer said. "She stayed
angry and probably died angry." The official cause of Ford's death will be
determined by the coroner, Schlottman said. "If they think an autopsy is
warranted, they'll do one," he said, adding Ford had been a heavy
cigarette smoker.
Ford's death
leaves 83 men on Nevada's death row:
Ford was a Michigan native with an IQ of 140. A
schoolteacher, she had moved to Reno from Maine about three weeks before the
rampage. She told acquaintances she went to Reno to look for her missing
daughter, Wynter Scott. Washoe County authorities had placed the girl in a
foster home in 1973 after Ford was arrested for trespassing. Before the 1980
crime that became known as the "Thanksgiving Day Massacre," Ford had
said "the people of Reno will pay in death" for taking her daughter.
She also told a U.S. attorney in Maine in 1979 that she would run down
pedestrians if he did not help her get her daughter back. In 1982, she was
sentenced to death at the conclusion of a nearly six-month trial, at the time
the longest murder trial in Nevada history. She showed no emotion when the
verdict was read.
Witnesses said Ford deliberately struck people while driving
along the gambling strip on South Virginia Street, sending holiday strollers
diving for cover. "She came right at us; she came right at us with a body
still on the hood of the car, and she looked like she was looking for somebody
else to hit," Reno resident Marty Edmundson said shortly after the attack.
The black Lincoln twisted street signs, crushed newspaper vending boxes and
knocked over a fire call box. The car carried one woman on its hood the length
of a city block. The dead and injured littered the bloody sidewalk as rescue
workers frantically administered aid. Nearby casinos remained open. Ford
subsequently referred to her victims as "beasts and pigs." After her
arrest, she told a doctor that the voice of Joan Kennedy, then the wife of Sen.
Edward Kennedy, D-Mass., ordered her to kill. "Just run through a whole
bunch of people and kill everybody," the voice said.
She pleaded innocent by reason of insanity and testified at
her trial, where she told jurors she was "as happy as I could possibly
be" on the day of the rampage. "I am in the state of mind that I am
in heaven," said Ford, who told jurors she was the reincarnation of Jesus
Christ. The prosecutor showed her pictures of each of the six dead victims. "Were
you as happy as you could be and in a heavenly state when you ran into (this
person)?" he asked six times. "Yes," Ford replied each time in a
firm voice, appearing glum but unshaken by the photos.
She told the jury she had shown remorse in private, but when
asked if she cared about the six dead victims, she said, "How can I care?
Is there anything I can do? Feeling good doesn't do any good for them." Ford
took the stand against the wishes of her attorney, who called her testimony
"public suicide." Ford said she began experimenting with marijuana in
1971 and considered it "the tree of life." She told jurors her
husband died after their separation in 1972, one day after she told her
children, "I hope God strikes him dead." She said she left Reno in
1973 in an odyssey aimed at regaining custody of her daughter. Her travels took
her to Maine, Vermont and Chicago, where she quit two jobs because she did not
like black people. Ford was black.
On appeal, her attorneys contended she was insane at the
time of the slayings. "She did not appreciate the fact that the people she
was hitting were human beings," an attorney wrote.
As always, stay safe !
Bird
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