Ford was born in Petaluma, California, the second son of an American father and a German immigrant mother.

[1] In November 1980, he was hit by a drunk driver, causing a head injury and leaving him in a coma for nine days.

[5] He had a series of scrapes with the law, including allegations of beating and robbing a sex worker in 1986 in Garden Grove, California.

At the time of the murders he lived in a trailer park in Arcata, California working as a long-haul truck driver.

[7] Ford turned himself in; he walked into the Humboldt County Sheriff Department on November 2, 1998, with his brother and had a woman's severed breast in his pocket.