SACRAMENTO ? A jury on Thursday recommended the death penalty for a former truck driver convicted in the slayings of four women whose mutilated bodies were dumped across California in the 1990s.

Jurors could have recommended either death or life in prison without parole for Wayne A. Ford, who carried out the killings in 1997 and 1998. The same panel convicted him last month of the slayings.

Judge Michael A. Smith, who will ultimately decide Ford’s fate, scheduled the sentencing for Oct. 20.

The judge also was to hear defense motions for a new trial at that time, a Superior Court clerk said.

In 1998, Ford walked into a Humboldt County sheriff’s station with a woman’s severed breast and told authorities the body part was just the “tip of the iceberg.”

He was subsequently charged with the killings of Patricia Tamez, 29; Lanett White, 25; Tina Gibbs, 26; and an unidentified woman whose torso was found in a marsh.