Nevada Lore Series: the murderous Thanksgiving Reno Rampage of Priscilla Ford

On Thanksgiving Day almost forty years ago, a mentally ill woman carried out what would today be considered a terrorist attack on the streets of Reno.

Just before 3 o’clock in the afternoon on November 27, 1980, a blue Lincoln Continental was heading north on South Virginia Street in Downtown Reno. People were milling about, both tourists and locals alike. It was a warmer day, and casinos were offering Thanksgiving dinners to patrons.

Inside the car was now-infamous Priscilla Ford, a 51-year-old woman with a blood alcohol level of .162 along with a broken mind. She had told an attorney previously that the “people of Reno would pay for taking her daughter.” She specified violence.

On Thanksgiving, she made good on her promise.

She drove onto the sidewalk near the Second Street intersection, jumping the curb. She accelerated the Lincoln to around 40 mph, driving back and forth across the streets, onto the sidewalks. People try their best to throw themselves out of her path, but not everyone succeeds.

In only a few short minutes, five people were killed instantly. The injured were numerous, 24 in total; ten were sent to St. Mary’s hospital, fourteen to Washoe Medical Center. Seven people total died after two additional victims succumbed to their injuries.

The street resembled something from a horror movie or an active war zone. Everything was destroyed. Bodies of the dead laid in the streets, body parts of the wounded scattered amongst crushed shopping bags, discarded shoes; broken street signs were flung to the side like rag dolls.

“It looked as though someone had gone through the streets with a lawnmower, mowing people down,” said a Canadian tourist in a report by the Reno Evening Gazette. “It looked like a battlefield—there were bodies all over the place.”

Ford stopped the car, and did not resist when she was taken into custody. One of the questions she asked deputies was, “how many did I kill?” When she was told five or six, she allegedly answered, “Good.”

Ford was lucid and knew what she’d done. She was unusually calm, police officers at the time noted.

A six-month trial followed, which at the time was Nevada’s longest. No one could understand why she had done what she’d done. Her attorney contested she was insane and could not stand trial.

Her plea: not guilty by reason of insanity.

At the time of her crimes, Nevada’s death sentence was a gruesome one by today’s standards: death by gas chamber.

Ford gave her reasoning that Joan Kennedy, wife of then-Senator Edward Kennedy, had instructed her to run the victims down in the street. She thought she was the reincarnation of Jesus, and had tried to sue Seventh-day Adventists and Latter-day Saints for half a billion dollars as she was “America’s only authorized divinity.”

The reason she targeted Reno specifically, she said, was because child welfare officials in Reno had taken her then-eleven-year-old daughter, Wynter, seven years before. She said she wanted to get attention so she could find her daughter.

Wynter had been taken into state custody after Ford was arrested for assault and trespassing, but for years they’d been attempting to find her to disclose Wynter’s whereabouts. To add insult to injury, Wynter had also been placed with Ford’s relatives in LA years before; something, some alleged, Ford knew about.

Ford also later changed her story to say that the car had malfunctioned — possibly during a moment of clarity as to what faced her at the end of the trial if things did not work out well for her.

During the trial, Ford was diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia with religious delusions and psychosis by three different psychiatrists. Previously, in 1973, she’d been diagnosed with a “passive-aggressive personality with hysterical episodes.” In 1957, she’d shot her husband and herself in an alleged self-defense shooting.

During the trial, like most psychopaths and serial killers, Ford decided to take the stand in her own defense. She told the court she was the reincarnation of Jesus Christ, the Holy Spirit, and Adam.

Over 100 witnesses gave testimony to the atrocious acts on Thanksgiving, and there were over 500 exhibits between the defense and prosecution.

At the trial, Wynter took the stand. She told the court her mother had taught her to smoke marijuana at the age of 9. She said her mother often talked about her plans to have Wynter artificially inseminated so as to bring forth a virgin-birthed messiah.

On March 28, 1982, Priscilla Ford was found guilty of murdering six victims and attempted murder of 23 more.

However, Ford never made it to the gas chamber, or to lethal injection as it became law in 1983. Instead, at the age of 75 in January of 2005, Ford died of emphysema at the Southern Nevada Women’s Correctional Center after spending over twenty years of her life in prison.

The Nevada Lore Series focuses on the legends of Nevada and the surrounding areas that help build our culture, from ancient Washoe stories, to Old West ghostly visions, to modern day urban legends.

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