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Held Captive
One day that April, Munger returned to the apartment after auditioning for a New York talent agency interested in signing her as a solo client. Oddly silent, her boyfriend grabbed her and twisted her arm; he threatened to break it in retribution for Munger's "sabotaging" his career. When she tried to flee, he held up a bottle he'd broken in the sink. He used the glass to cut himself, then spread blood on Munger's arm. "See what I can do to you?" he shouted.
That night, Munger stayed with friends. But she went back to Ford the next day -- as she would, again and again. "I know how crazy it sounds," she says, "but like most victims of abuse, I thought I could be the one to save him."
In the spring of 1983, Munger and Ford left the tour and moved to Oakland, California, where Munger's sister, Ann Carlin, had settled with her family. Munger hoped that, without the pressures of the show, Ford would stabilize. Instead, his delusions worsened. One day as Munger headed out for groceries, Ford blocked the door, saying Zen gods inside him were refusing to release her. Munger realized that her boyfriend had finally had a total break with reality.
For the next 54 days, Ford held her captive in their apartment. He told Munger she had the spirit of a woman from the 1800s living inside her and that he needed to exorcise her. He bound her hands and feet with leather belts, and when she struggled, beat her. Eventually Munger stopped fighting back. "I was numb," she says.
Ford, who disconnected the phone lines, allowed her to eat only tomato soup, which he would crush cigarette butts into. "He'd blindfold me and throw a glass at the side of my head to see if I trusted him," Munger recalls. "If I flinched, he would do it again." He repeatedly raped and beat her. "In my mind," says Munger today, "I was a dead person."
Finally, one afternoon in the spring of 1984, Ann Carlin, who had assumed that her sister was on an extended tour out of town, drove to Munger's apartment and rang the bell. When Ford opened the door a crack, Carlin caught a glimpse of her sister, covered in blood. She ran to a nearby pay phone and called the police. When the officers arrived, it took five of them to haul Ford off in a straitjacket.
Munger was taken to a safe house run by the Alameda Victim/Witness Assistance program, and Ford was committed to Oakland's Highland Hospital for 72 hours. Afterward he was flown back to Philadelphia, where his parents were waiting. Soon Munger moved to her sister's home to recuperate.
But her nightmare was not over. One afternoon just two weeks after Ford flew East, the phone in Carlin's kitchen rang. It was Ford, who told Carlin that Zen gods had instructed him to return to Oakland, dismember and kill Munger, hang her entrails from a tree and then kill himself.
Munger contacted police, who took up watch outside Carlin's home. Two weeks later, the officers apprehended Ford as he approached the house; he was dressed all in white, wearing a white wig. Charged with being a danger to himself and others, Ford was found guilty and committed to Napa State Hospital for six months.
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