It used to take 11 defenders to contain former Cal wide receiver Mariet Ford on a football field. Sometimes even that wasn’t enough. Those who recall the final play of a memorable 1982 game know that 11 players and the Stanford band weren’t enough to corral Ford.
But armed guards, razor-wire fencing and a 6-foot-by-9-foot living area now do what so many opposing teams couldn’t: prevent his escaping.
Ford is an inmate at Mule Creek State Prison in Ione, about 45 miles southeast of Sacramento. He was convicted of three counts of second-degree murder April 22, 1998, and sentenced to 45 years to life in prison.
He lives two hours from where he gained fame for his football prowess and less than an hour from where he set fire to his home in which the bodies of his wife, Teresita, 31, their 3-year-old son, Mariet Jr., and their unborn son were found almost eight years ago.
He has maintained his innocence.
Ford recently granted the Contra Costa Times an interview, speaking with the media for only the second time since his conviction.
“I was wrongly convicted of a crime I did not commit,” Ford said from a visiting room at Mule Creek. “I have been working non-stop trying to get this injustice corrected.”
Ford hopes to get his case reopened based on DNA evidence or testimony from a former prison inmate. Neither scenario is imminent.
Ford has nothing but time on his hands. In addition to the 45 years to life, Ford, 43, also was convicted of arson and ordered to serve a concurrent five-year term on that count.
Then-Sacramento County Deputy Dist. Atty. Mark Curry, who worked the case, said Ford will serve at least 40 years before he is eligible for parole.
“In effect, it’s a life term for him,” Curry said. “He’d be a very old man by the time he saw a parole board.”
Teresita “Tess” Cabello Ford’s father eulogized his daughter before Mariet Ford’s sentencing and urged the court to put away Ford long enough “to make sure this man cannot do it again.”
The Cabello family could not be reached for comment.
No eyewitnesses or direct evidence linked Ford to the murders. Curry said Ford was implicated by other evidence. That included gasoline on his shoes, a scratch on his face and inconsistencies in his alibi.
The prosecution in the monthlong trial portrayed Ford, then a salesman for a telecommunications company, as a philandering husband who had a hot temper and financial problems. Prosecutors contended Ford erupted into a deadly rage, fatally kicked his son and bludgeoned his wife when she tried to intervene.
Ford says he is a victim of circumstantial evidence. Many agree.
“Mariet is the most gentle, caring soul I’ve ever met,” said Fred Williams, a teammate of Ford’s at Cal who has known him for 25 years. “Someone would have to show me physical evidence, give me proof that he did this. The prosecution couldn’t even come up with a motive.”
Bill Gagen, the attorney who represented Ford at the trial, said: “I find it hard to believe, to this day, that he could have been responsible for this crime. … It’s just beyond the [scope] of believability.”
Ford’s case proved so compelling that it attracted the interest of the Innocence Project at the Golden Gate School of Law in San Francisco in 2002. The two lawyers now representing Ford, law professor Susan Rutberg and DNA expert Robert Blasier, have asked a Sacramento County judge to order further DNA testing of evidence.
“There were some scrapings taken from under [Tess’] fingernails that they tried to get DNA from when the case was tried but were unable,” Rutberg said. “Now a more sophisticated test might be able to get DNA.”
Curry said “no human DNA was located” in the original testing.
The hope is that the scrapings found under Tess’ fingernails contain DNA that could breathe life into the case. Ford said he doesn’t expect the scrapings to yield evidence that would exonerate him right away, but the potential findings might be enough to get authorities to reopen his case.
Rutberg said testing for DNA isn’t without its downside.
“It might destroy the entire sample,” Rutberg said. “Or do we wait until next year when a more discernible test might be available? This is sort of like our one chance.”
Ford said he is inclined to wait until further scientific advances give him more than an all-or-nothing option. So he’s left weighing his eagerness to get out of prison against the advances of science.
“I’m in no-man’s land,” Ford said. “Right now I’m not comfortable with the science in place. I’m not willing to risk my life on it. I want to leave here now, but I’m not stupid.”
Ford was the product of working-class parents who preached the virtues of doing the right thing.
“He was brought up to be responsible for his actions and productive in his community,” Carrie Ford said last week from the home she shares with her husband in Madison, Miss. “You obey your parents, get as much as you can out of school and be respectful of others.”
Those qualities were obvious from the first day Joe Kapp met Mariet Ford after taking over as Cal’s coach in Ford’s senior season, Kapp said.
“Mariet was an outstanding player, an outstanding student and an outstanding human being,” Kapp said. “He had all the qualities you look for in a young man.”
Ford made the most of his 5-foot-9-inch, 165-pound body during his playing days. He excelled as a receiver and kick returner in high school and at Diablo Valley College before enrolling at Cal in the spring of 1981.
He soon developed into Cal’s top receiver. He caught a team-high 45 passes in 1981 and 42 in 1982.
His football career reached its zenith at Cal. He caught seven passes for 132 yards and a touchdown in his final game, the one that ended with the play that gave Cal a stunning 25-20 victory over a Stanford team quarterbacked by John Elway on Nov. 20, 1982. Ford’s over-the-shoulder lateral was caught by Kevin Moen, who weaved through the Stanford band to score the winning touchdown.
The Atlanta Falcons signed Ford to a free-agent contract after he went undrafted. He failed to make it through training camp. He enjoyed several short stints in the Canadian Football League before falling short in tryouts with two teams in the defunct U.S. Football League.
He retired from football in 1985 and took a job with Liberty Mutual Insurance in San Francisco. He spent most of his professional career in the insurance industry.
Tess Cabello was Ford’s second wife. His first marriage, to LaDonna Allen, lasted three years and ended in divorce in 1990.
Mariet and Tess met at a San Francisco nightclub March 13, 1992, and were married three months later. Mariet Ford Jr., later nicknamed “MoMo,” arrived less than eight months after their marriage. He died weeks short of his fourth birthday.
Ford left for work Jan. 16, 1997. He said he called Tess at home a few hours after he left that morning because she wasn’t feeling good–she was eight months’ pregnant–and intended to stay home from work. He said he called his brother Orrin after a second call home went unanswered, and Tess’ mother said she hadn’t heard from her, either.
Court documents show Orrin Ford arrived at his brother’s house at 8:55 a.m. He entered the smoke-filled house after no one answered the front door, and he discovered the burning bodies in the living room by tripping over them.
Autopsies revealed Tess and Mariet Jr. were dead at the time their bodies were set on fire. Mariet Jr. died as a result of repeated blows to his head. Tess had, among other things, a broken jaw, a broken collarbone and broken ribs, according to the autopsy, and died from “homicidal violence.”
Orrin Ford, 42, now living in Bothell, Wash., said simply: “It was horrific.”
