Edward Wayne Edwards pleaded guilty to five killings in three separate cases spread over nearly two decades. In August 1977 he shot a young couple, Billy Lavaco and Judy Straub, in a park in Norton, Ohio. In August 1980 a second young couple, Tim Hack and Kelly Drew, disappeared from a wedding reception in rural Jefferson County, Wisconsin, where he was working as a handyman; their remains were found that October. In 1996 he shot his foster son, a young man known as Dannie Boy Edwards, near the family home in Burton, Ohio, and collected the life insurance.
None of those cases was solved at the time. Edwards was arrested in July 2009, at the age of 76, after his daughter told a Wisconsin detective that she suspected him and DNA from Kelly Drew's clothing matched his. Within a year he had pleaded guilty in Wisconsin and Ohio to the two double killings. Then, already serving life terms, he told the Associated Press about the death of his foster son and said he wanted to be executed. A Geauga County court sentenced him to death in March 2011. He died of natural causes in a prison medical center in Columbus less than a month later.
His earlier life was public in a way few such cases are. In the 1950s and early 1960s he was a car thief, robber and escapee who spent time on the FBI's Ten Most Wanted list. After prison he wrote an autobiography and gave talks urging young people to stay out of trouble. The lead Wisconsin investigator later described him as a con man his whole life.
Edwards was born in Akron, Ohio, in 1933, according to Associated Press reports from 2009 and 2010. He spent his early years in a Catholic orphanage. In his 1972 autobiography, Metamorphosis of a Criminal, he wrote that he was beaten there by nuns and by other children. The same book records an exchange he said he had as a boy, when a nun asked what he wanted to be. "Sister, I'm gonna be a crook, and I'm gonna be a good one," he said he replied. A Cleveland television report in 2010 said he grew up in Cuyahoga Falls, next to Akron.
The autobiography is his own account, and he later told the Associated Press that his publisher had embellished most of it.
In the 1950s Edwards hitchhiked across the country, stealing cars, forging checks and taking money from women he met, the Associated Press reported in 2009, drawing on his book and on records. In 1955 he escaped from the jail in Akron by pushing past a guard. He then robbed gas stations in Nevada, California and Oregon, and he said he never wore a mask because he wanted to be famous. He was caught in Billings, Montana, imprisoned, and paroled in 1959. The Cap Times of Madison reported in 2009 that news accounts over the years had linked him to at least 43 armed robberies, including bank robberies, in the 1950s and early 1960s.
In Portland, Oregon, he faced robbery charges and was given probation. On December 10, 1960, he escaped from jail in Portland, where he had been held on charges of impersonating a federal officer, firing shots at a residence and turning in false fire alarms, according to the Cap Times. In 1961, after robbing a bank in Akron, he was placed on the FBI's Ten Most Wanted Fugitives list. A Jefferson County detective later gave the date as November 10, 1961. FBI agents captured him in Atlanta on January 20, 1962. An FBI supervisory special agent confirmed in 2009 that the man arrested in Louisville was the same man who had been on the 1961 list.
Edwards served his federal sentence at Leavenworth, Kansas, and credited a guard there with helping him turn his life around. He was transferred to the federal prison at Lewisburg, Pennsylvania, and paroled in 1967. He then toured giving speeches to young people about avoiding crime. His book carried the message "Don't be a crime victim. Be a crime stopper," the Associated Press reported.
In the late 1960s he married a student at the University of Akron, according to a Cleveland 19 News report that drew on the Summit County prosecutor's office. The couple had children. The family moved often. The Summit County prosecutor, Sherri Bevan Walsh, said in 2010 that they drifted across at least nine states, moving every few years. One of his daughters later told a Wisconsin newspaper that the family moved abruptly every six months to a year.
The speaking career faded. In 1982 a court in Pennsylvania sentenced him to two years and three months for arson after he burned a rented house that he had emptied of furniture, the Associated Press reported. Asked in 2010 what had gone wrong, he told an AP reporter: "Don't ask me where I went wrong." He added: "So much for good intentions."
William Lavaco, known as Billy, was 21 and lived in Doylestown, Ohio. Judith Straub, known as Judy, was 18 and lived in Sterling, Ohio. They were a young couple. Their bodies were found in a park in Norton, in Summit County, on August 8, 1977. Both had been shot at close range.
Few details of their lives were reported. At the 2010 sentencing, Judy's brother, who was nine when she died, told the court that she had been his older sister and his friend, and spoke about her prized collection of Matchbox cars. "I never actually got to say goodbye," he said. Billy's sister wrote a statement that she could not finish reading through her tears, so a victim advocate read it for her. "I miss him so much," she wrote. "He took that from me."
The case went unsolved for 33 years. Billy's mother and Judy's father both died without learning who had killed their children, the prosecutor said in 2010. A man who had been accused in the case, but never indicted by a grand jury, was cleared when it was finally solved, according to the Summit County prosecutor's office. Edwards's daughter later recalled that when she was eight, her father took the family to the park where the couple were killed and showed them the place where they had been found.
Timothy Hack, known as Tim, was 19 and from the Town of Hebron in Jefferson County, Wisconsin. Kelly Drew was 19 and from Fort Atkinson. Both had graduated from Fort Atkinson High School, and they had dated through high school. Tim's family farmed, and he drove a tractor he had nicknamed "The Lonesome Loser," the Associated Press reported. Kelly had recently finished beauty school. She had wanted to be a hairstylist from a young age, and she worked in a salon in Fort Atkinson with the stylist who had cut her hair since she was two. She liked cooking, baking, crafts and fashion, and she cut her friends' hair. Tim's younger sister later said she had looked up to Kelly as an older sister.
On the evening of August 9, 1980, the couple went to a wedding reception at a dance hall in the Town of Concord, in Jefferson County, about 40 miles west of Milwaukee. They left at about 11 p.m. and planned to meet friends at the Fort Atkinson summer festival, Fort Fest. They never arrived. Tim usually called home if he was going to be late. His father reported him missing at about 11 a.m. the next day and found his son's car still parked at the hall, locked, with his wallet, jacket, checkbook and 67 dollars inside.
On August 15, 1980, investigators found some of Kelly's clothing along a road about three miles from the hall. A search followed that lasted 72 days. The Daily Jefferson County Union later described it as one of the largest manhunts in Wisconsin history. On October 19, 1980, two squirrel hunters from Milwaukee found remains at the edge of woods near a cornfield in the Town of Ixonia, about eight miles from the hall. A second body was found the next day in a nearby field. Dental records identified Tim and Kelly.
The medical examiner ruled both deaths homicides and estimated that they had died in August 1980. The bodies had been outdoors too long for a firm cause of death, but the findings, set out in the 2009 criminal complaint, indicated that Tim had been stabbed and that Kelly had been tied and probably strangled. No weapon was found.
The couple were buried under a single headstone that reads "Kidnapped and Slain," the Associated Press reported in 2009. Over the next 29 years the Jefferson County Sheriff's Office pursued more than 100 suspects and thousands of leads, the Watertown Daily Times reported. Some in the community feared the killer was a local person. Tim's family said decades later that learning it had not been anyone they knew was a relief.
Edwards and his family had moved to Wisconsin in early July 1980 and were living at a campground next to the dance hall, according to the 2009 criminal complaint as reported by the Daily Jefferson County Union. He worked as a handyman at the hall and the campground and may have been there on the night of August 9. Witnesses recalled that he had a bloody nose that weekend; he said he got it while deer hunting. Investigators questioned him about a month after the couple disappeared. In September 1980, shortly after that contact with police, he left Wisconsin with his family and left no forwarding information. Nothing at the time gave investigators grounds to hold him.
One of his daughters, who was 11 that summer, later recalled being woken one August night in 1980 at the family's home and told to pack. The account appeared in a 2018 People magazine feature and was summarized by the Daily Jefferson County Union.
The young man Edwards called his foster son was born Daniel Gloeckner and was known as Dannie Boy. He had been a foster child without a stable home, the Daily Jefferson County Union reported, and he later took the family name, legally changing his name to Dannie Boy Edwards at 24. He lived with Edwards and his wife in Burton, in Geauga County, Ohio, east of Cleveland. Edwards told the Associated Press in 2010 that he had considered the young man an adopted son.
In 1996 Dannie Boy disappeared. Accounts give the month as May or June. In April 1997 hunters found his body in a shallow grave behind a cemetery less than a mile from the Edwards home. He had been shot. Geauga County sheriff's Sergeant Brian Johnston investigated the death from 1996 on. Investigators questioned Edwards about it at the time, but no charges were filed, the Daily Jefferson County Union reported. Edwards collected insurance on the young man's life, the Geauga County prosecutor later confirmed. Most reports give the amount as 250,000 dollars; one Associated Press report gave it as about 183,000 dollars.
The Wisconsin case stayed open. In 2007 investigators sent biological evidence found on Kelly Drew's slacks to the state crime laboratory, which developed a profile that excluded Tim Hack, according to the Associated Press and the Watertown Daily Times. In March 2009, 500,000 dollars in federal Justice Department money went to the Wisconsin Department of Justice's cold case unit, which rehired three retired special agents to review between 150 and 160 old cases, including the Hack and Drew killings. That same month, NBC 15, the Madison television station, aired a report on the case, and the Daily Jefferson County Union ran a series of articles.
One of Edwards's daughters, then living in Ohio, read the station's online coverage. In early May 2009 she called Jefferson County sheriff's Detective Chad Garcia, told him of her suspicions about her father, and pointed him to the 1972 autobiography. Garcia read the book and went to Ohio to interview her in person, according to the 2018 People feature as summarized by the Daily Jefferson County Union. She later described years of moving, her father's interest in newspaper clippings about killings, and his habit of offering to help police with investigations.
At the time of the arrest, officials declined to say what had led them to Edwards. District Attorney Susan Happ said only that new evidence had come to light since he was first questioned in 1980. The Daily Jefferson County Union later reported that the tip had come from his daughter.
Edwards had lived in a trailer park on the edge of Louisville, Kentucky, since about 2000, where police said he had stayed out of trouble. On June 9, 2009, investigators questioned him at his home. He said at first that he did not recognize the victims' names. When reminded, he remembered being interviewed in 1980 and said he had had a few beers at the dance hall bar and might have seen the couple. He also admitted that he had never been deer hunting, only elk hunting in Colorado. Investigators then obtained a search warrant for his DNA.
The state crime laboratory received his sample on July 8, 2009, and found him the likely contributor of the DNA on Kelly Drew's slacks. The laboratory estimated that about one person in four million could have left that profile. On Thursday, July 30, 2009, Detective Garcia arrested Edwards at his home in Louisville, with Louisville police and the Wisconsin Department of Justice. He was taken without incident.
Wisconsin Attorney General J.B. Van Hollen and Jefferson County Sheriff Paul Milbrath announced the arrest that night. "My goal has always been and remains to get justice for the victims of these crimes," Milbrath said. At a news conference the next day he said that the justice process had begun for two families, and he added: "These are people we know." Happ, filing two counts of first-degree murder, said: "The evidence is strong and I am confident in filing this complaint."
Kelly's mother learned of the arrest from the sheriff. She told the Associated Press that it reopened old wounds and that she dreaded a trial. "You hope this day would come, but now that it's here, it's really hard," she said. "He robbed me of my daughter, robbed me of Christmases, birthdays, weddings, everything families do together." Tim's father said he wanted to know why the two had been chosen. "I'm glad it's over," he said, and added that he did not see how anyone could deny it if the DNA matched.
Edwards appeared in a Louisville court on a fugitive warrant the Saturday after his arrest. He was wheeled in by an officer, carried an oxygen tank and wore a cast on his left arm. He pleaded not guilty, and bond was set at 500,000 dollars cash. He was extradited to Wisconsin in August 2009 and held on 2 million dollars cash bail. He was represented by public defenders, Jeffrey De La Rosa and Elizabeth Svehlek. In 2010 he was held at Dodge Correctional Institution and treated at the state prison in Waupun because of his health. He had diabetes and used a wheelchair, and he told reporters that he had a pacemaker.
As the case moved toward trial, Edwards gave investigators another account, recorded in the criminal complaint. He said he had been nearby when the couple were killed, that he had been with Kelly Drew in a field outside the hall, and that he had seen two or three other men attack the couple. He said he did nothing to help and did not report it because he did not want to be involved. No such men were ever identified. His trial was set for June 14, 2010. De La Rosa asked for a delay to review hundreds of documents. He denied the Wisconsin killings for nine months, according to the Summit County prosecutor's office.
In the spring of 2010 the Ohio case opened. On April 9, 2010, an inmate wrote to prosecutors in Akron saying that Edwards had boasted of getting away with a double killing in a park in Norton, according to court documents reported by the Associated Press. On April 19 Edwards wrote to Walsh himself. He said he understood that they were interested in him for a 1976 double killing in a park, that he was getting old and tired, and that investigators were welcome to talk to him. When they were done, he wrote, they would want to "stick a needle" in his arm.
There had been no double killing in Norton in 1976. Investigators concluded that he meant the 1977 deaths of Lavaco and Straub, because his letter held details that had never been made public. In May 2010 Norton police Detective John Canterbury and prosecutor's investigator Mark Anderson traveled to the jail in Jefferson, Wisconsin, where Edwards confessed to the killings. Walsh and Norton Police Chief Thad Hete announced the renewed investigation on May 4, 2010, and the evidence was sent to the Ohio Bureau of Criminal Identification and Investigation. "Absolutely, based on where he's been, what he's alleged to have done," Hete said, when asked whether Edwards was a suspect.
Billy's sister was cautious. She told the Associated Press that she had heard rumors about suspects before and worried that Edwards might only want attention. "I just want to make sure that they're absolutely, positively sure," she said.
On June 9, 2010, a Summit County grand jury indicted Edwards on two counts of aggravated murder. The same day, in the Jefferson County court, he changed his pleas and admitted killing Tim Hack and Kelly Drew. Under a plea agreement between the Jefferson County district attorney and the Summit County prosecutor, he agreed to plead guilty to all four killings. Prosecutors in Wisconsin had used his Ohio confession in a motion to admit evidence of similar acts, the Summit County prosecutor's office said, and he pleaded guilty after that. De La Rosa said Edwards took the deal to spare his wife, his family and the victims' families a trial.
Tim's brother called the confessions "just one more step on the way to hell for him." Kelly's brother said he was surprised but glad. "I was hoping it would come to this," he said.
Two days later, on June 11, 2010, Edwards pleaded guilty in Akron before Judge Thomas Teodosio to the aggravated murders of Billy Lavaco and Judy Straub. The hearing lasted about an hour. He sat handcuffed to his wheelchair, answered the judge's questions in one or two words, and declined to speak before sentence. Judy's brother addressed him in court, and a victim advocate read the statement written by Billy's sister.
Ohio had a death penalty, but a United States Supreme Court ruling had invalidated the state's capital statutes for crimes committed between 1974 and 1978, so Edwards could not be sentenced to death for the 1977 killings. Teodosio imposed two consecutive life terms, the most the law allowed for a 1977 murder, according to Walsh. Reports said he would not be eligible for parole until the age of 97. The prosecutor's office described the sentence in its newsletter as 20 years to life.
Walsh made clear that she saw no remorse in the plea. "I am glad that Edwards admitted his guilt today for murdering Billy and Judy 33 years ago," she said. "Have no illusion, however, that Edwards had some epiphany and decided to give these grieving families a break." She said he had confessed partly because, facing life in prison in Wisconsin, he wanted to serve his time in Ohio. She urged him to give answers to any other families if he had killed anyone else. The prosecutor's office brought him back to Ohio, it said, so that the families could confront him in court.
On June 21, 2010, Edwards was back in the Jefferson County Circuit Court for sentencing on the Wisconsin murders. Wisconsin has no death penalty, and first-degree murder carries a mandatory life sentence. He sat handcuffed in a wheelchair about 20 feet from the families, with his head down, and showed no emotion. When Judge William F. Hue asked whether he wanted to make a statement, he said only "no." The hearing lasted about 20 minutes.
Kelly's mother told him he was "a lying, evil murderer" and that God was saving a special place in hell for him. Tim's brother, who was 16 when the couple died, said he had waited 30 years to face him. A statement from Kelly's sister was read in court; she wanted him to stay in prison as long as possible. Tim's father wrote that Edwards seemed to have no remorse. District Attorney Susan Happ called the killings "the ultimate crime, the ultimate sin."
Hue imposed two life sentences. Under the agreement, Edwards would serve his time in an Ohio prison.
A week before the Wisconsin sentencing, Edwards gave a jailhouse interview to the Associated Press from his wheelchair in the Jefferson County jail. He said he had killed one more person: Dannie Boy Edwards, in 1996. He said he lured the young man to a secluded cemetery near the family home in Burton and shot him with a 20-gauge shotgun. He said he was angry that the young man had stolen credit cards and other belongings from his children, and that he wanted the insurance money.
"I'm responsible for it," he said, and he said the killing "didn't work on my conscience." He said he had killed only five people and that this was "the last one." He said he would rather be executed than spend his remaining years in prison, and that he would not appeal a death sentence. He admitted lying throughout his life but said his family had urged him to confess. One of his daughters told the AP only: "He is my dad and I love him." Judy Straub's brother said he did not believe anything Edwards said.
Geauga County Sheriff Dan McClelland said investigators had spoken to Edwards many times and were checking his account. "Each time he talks, we get a sliver more," he said. Geauga County Prosecutor David J. Joyce called the confession an attempt at "court-assisted suicide," and said Edwards began talking about the Ohio killing only after he learned he could not be sentenced to death for the others.
After his transfer to Ohio, Edwards was interviewed at Pickaway Correctional Institution, videotaped, and led deputies to the grave site, the Daily Jefferson County Union reported. A voice stress test and an appearance before a grand jury followed. A Geauga County grand jury indicted him on charges of aggravated murder, aggravated robbery and kidnapping. The robbery count related to the insurance money. "He had to be dead for him to collect," Joyce said. It was Edwards's fifth murder charge since his arrest in July 2009.
The case went before Judge Forrest Burt of the Geauga County Common Pleas Court. Edwards tried to plead guilty at his first appearance, but the judge could not accept a plea at that stage because of the aggravated murder charge. Under Ohio law a capital case had to go before a three-judge panel or a jury, and the Ohio State Public Defender's office prepared his defense. Edwards had leukemia, heart problems and diabetes, the newspaper reported. The young man's family, Joyce said, "wanted to see proper justice." His sister told The Plain Dealer of Cleveland that she thought life in prison would be harsher than death.
On Tuesday, March 8, 2011, Edwards pleaded guilty in the Geauga County Common Pleas Court, and a three-judge panel sentenced him to death by lethal injection. The Associated Press reported that he was given the death sentence he had asked for. His execution was set for August 31, 2011.
Edwards died on April 7, 2011, at the Corrections Medical Center in Columbus, Ohio, where he was being held. The Daily Jefferson County Union reported that he died of natural causes, less than a month after the death sentence and before the execution date. The Associated Press had given his age as 77 at the March 2011 sentencing.
The Hack and Drew families, with the stylist Kelly had trained under, set up scholarships for students of cosmetology in Kelly's memory. Tim's younger sister won one and later presented one to another student, and she gave two of her children middle names after Kelly, the Lake Mills Leader reported.
The Wisconsin case was the subject of an Investigation Discovery episode filmed in the Fort Atkinson area in October 2011. Tim's father took part. Kelly's family declined and did not support the production. In January 2018 People magazine published a feature on Edwards's daughter, and Investigation Discovery aired a related program. She said she had lived with guilt of two kinds and had not spoken to her father after his confessions. She said he had made the children watch programs about the unsolved Zodiac killings in California and shouted at the television that it had not happened that way.
Convicted, on his own guilty pleas: the killings of Billy Lavaco and Judy Straub in 1977, Tim Hack and Kelly Drew in 1980, and Dannie Boy Edwards in 1996. He told the Associated Press in June 2010 that these five were the only people he had killed.
Suspected, never charged: in 1960 Portland detectives questioned him about the double killing of two college students. The Cap Times reported in 2009 that an FBI spokeswoman had told The Oregonian in 2002 that he was considered a prime suspect in two Portland killings that year, and that he denied any part in them in 1971. The Associated Press reported in 2009 that, according to a prosecutor, he was never a suspect. No charge was ever brought.
Claimed by others, never charged: authors and online commentators have linked him to other well-known unsolved killings. No court, police force or prosecutor has been reported as supporting any of these claims, and they are not part of his record.
1933: Born in Akron, Ohio; early years in a Catholic orphanage.
1955: Escapes from the jail in Akron; robs gas stations in the West.
1959: Paroled after a prison term that followed his capture in Billings, Montana.
December 10, 1960: Escapes from jail in Portland, Oregon.
November 10, 1961: Placed on the FBI's Ten Most Wanted Fugitives list after an Akron bank robbery.
January 20, 1962: Captured by FBI agents in Atlanta.
1967: Paroled from the federal prison at Lewisburg, Pennsylvania; begins speaking to young people about avoiding crime.
Late 1960s: Marries; the family later moves through at least nine states.
1972: Publishes Metamorphosis of a Criminal.
August 8, 1977: Billy Lavaco, 21, and Judy Straub, 18, are found shot in a park in Norton, Ohio.
Early July 1980: Edwards and his family move to a campground in Jefferson County, Wisconsin.
August 9, 1980: Tim Hack and Kelly Drew, both 19, leave a wedding reception in the Town of Concord and disappear.
August 15, 1980: Kelly Drew's clothing is found along a road.
September 1980: Questioned by police, Edwards leaves Wisconsin with his family.
October 19 and 20, 1980: The couple's remains are found in the Town of Ixonia.
1982: Sentenced in Pennsylvania to two years and three months for arson.
1996: Dannie Boy Edwards disappears near Burton, Ohio.
April 1997: Hunters find his body in a shallow grave.
About 2000: Edwards settles in Louisville, Kentucky.
2007: Wisconsin investigators send DNA evidence from Kelly Drew's clothing to the state crime laboratory.
March 2009: Federal money reaches the state cold case unit; NBC 15 in Madison reports on the case.
Early May 2009: Edwards's daughter calls Detective Chad Garcia.
June 9, 2009: Investigators question Edwards in Louisville.
July 8, 2009: The crime lab matches his DNA sample to the evidence.
July 30, 2009: Arrested in Louisville and charged with two counts of first-degree murder.
August 2009: Returned to Wisconsin; bond set at 2 million dollars.
April 9 and 19, 2010: An inmate and then Edwards write to Akron prosecutors.
May 2010: Confesses to the Norton killings to Ohio investigators in Wisconsin.
June 9, 2010: Indicted in Summit County; pleads guilty in Wisconsin to the Hack and Drew murders.
June 11, 2010: Pleads guilty in Akron to the Lavaco and Straub murders; two consecutive life terms.
Mid-June 2010: Tells the Associated Press he killed his foster son in 1996.
June 21, 2010: Two life sentences in Jefferson County, Wisconsin.
March 8, 2011: Pleads guilty in Geauga County; sentenced to death by a three-judge panel.
April 7, 2011: Dies of natural causes at the Corrections Medical Center in Columbus, Ohio.