A truck driver from Arcata, Ford was leaving the truck stop and looking for a restaurant to grab a bite to eat when he pulled up to White. She was dressed nicely and carried a black purse.

White, 25, climbed into the semi truck, and the two strangers sat in the sleeper section of the truck cab and chatted about babies. She had no way of knowing the subject worked like a trigger in Ford's mind, setting off a storm of emotions that stemmed from missing his toddler son, Max.

A mother of two, the Fontana woman was upset and looked as though she might have been drinking, Ford later recalled during a tape-recorded interview that was played Wednesday for jurors in his murder trial in San Bernardino Superior Court.

Ford, who is accused of killing White and three other women, told investigators that White said she wasn't a hooker, but he still paid her. He kissed her, and then the two undressed and had sex.

"What were your hands doing while you were having sex with her?" San Joaquin County sheriff's detective Michael Jones asked Ford during the taped interview in November 1998, two days after Ford surrendered to authorities and confessed details about the deaths of White and three other women.

"... Could your hands have been around her neck while you were having sex with her, and something happened? And this is how she got hurt?" asked Jones.

White lost consciousness, and Ford said he attempted CPR. But when his attempts failed and she died, he "went crazy." He bound White in a rope and placed her in the sleeper section of his cab, then headed east on Interstate 10 to Phoenix.

On his return to California, Ford wrapped the decomposing body in a blue tarp because it started to smell and leak blood. At one point, her body fell on the hot metal floor of the cab, between the seats.

During a close call at the weigh scales in the Grapevine north of Los Angeles, a police officer actually got into the cab with Ford, but White's body was never discovered.

When Ford got to Lodi, he dumped White's body in a stagnant irrigation canal in the 9200 block of Highway 12. Her nude body was found floating in the canal on Sept. 25, 1998.

During the interview with Jones, the detective learned that talk about babies upsets Ford, who felt that his ex-wife had taken his baby away. He saw his ex-wife's face when talking with his victims, he told Jones.

Ford wanted to stop them when they talked about their babies because it made him think about Max. An incident on Max's second birthday in 1997 was a catalyst for Ford's behavior, Jones learned.

Ford took Max to day care that day, where he waited for his ex-wife to pick up their son. But she didn't show, and Ford was forced to leave Max behind.

"So I told him, told him I'll wait until she gets here," Ford cried as he told Jones. "Wait there for a couple of hours in the car. She didn't show up. Took Max in and all he could say was no daddy, no daddy, no daddy. He's crying. I didn't want to go.

"I didn't want to leave him. So I took him in there. I couldn't leave him, so I laid on the floor, told Max to go to sleep. I laid him on my chest, while I was laying on the floor.

"And he laid there for an hour or two, never moved a muscle. His eyes are wide open. He wasn't going to sleep, he wasn't saying nothin. He was just laying there."

"I finally had to leave, she didn't show up ... ," Ford trailed off. "Sat there in the car, I had my grandparent's car. So I had to leave him there. He wasn't happy, neither was I."

One of the reasons Ford turned himself in to authorities is that he didn't want to hurt his ex-wife, the defense said earlier in the trial. If Ford had seen Max again, he would have taken him, he told investigators in the taped interview.

Ford is also accused in the deaths of Tina Renee Gibbs, 26, of Las Vegas, Patricia Tamez, 29, of Hesperia, and an unidentified woman whose torso was found in a slough near Eureka.

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