Mack Ray Edwards worked on Southern California's highways. He was a construction worker who ran heavy equipment, and at times he worked as a bulldozer operator under contract with the California Department of Transportation. In 1970 he turned himself in to police and confessed to killing six children between 1953 and 1969. He told police he had buried his victims at highway construction sites where he was working. He led officers to three sets of remains, the bodies were recovered, and he was convicted and sentenced to death. He hanged himself in his cell at San Quentin in 1971.
Three of the six children he named were never found. One of them was Roger Dale Madison, a Sylmar teenager who disappeared in December 1968. Almost 40 years later a Los Angeles police detective and a Pasadena author tried to find him, and in October 2008 more than 100 people dug for five days at a site near Moorpark, in Ventura County. They found nothing. In 2011 the Santa Barbara Police Department, which had come to believe that Edwards also killed a seven-year-old girl named Ramona Price in 1961, searched for her at a site in Goleta. They did not find her either. The Los Angeles Police Department has called Edwards "the most prolific serial killer of children in the history of Los Angeles."
NPR described him in 2008 as a highway construction worker; the Santa Barbara Independent called him a former heavy equipment operator who worked on freeways; the LAPD said he was a bulldozer operator who worked under contract with Caltrans. According to the Santa Barbara police, he worked on the crew that built an overpass in Goleta, just west of Santa Barbara, which was finished several weeks after a seven-year-old girl disappeared in 1961, and he spent time visiting a friend who lived in a housing development next to it.
He was also a neighbor. The Madison family in Sylmar knew him well enough that he sometimes ate dinner at their home, NPR reported, and ABC7 Los Angeles described him as a neighbor and family friend. Roger Madison was one of their children.
Roger Dale Madison was 15 when he disappeared, according to NPR and the LAPD; ABC7 gave his age as 16. He lived in Sylmar, at the north end of the San Fernando Valley, with his parents, a brother and three sisters. On the afternoon of December 16, 1968, by NPR's account, he left home and was never seen again. The LAPD put the date of his death on or about December 14, 1968.
His family never recovered his body. His parents died before the search that began in 2008. His brother and three sisters gave DNA samples to investigators so that any remains found could be identified.
Edwards confessed to killing him, according to the author Weston DeWalt, who studied the case for years, and ABC7. In 2008 the LAPD said it believed the boy's remains might lie in Ventura County, near a highway on which Edwards had worked.
Edwards turned himself in to police in 1970, about two years after Roger disappeared, NPR reported. He confessed to murdering six children between 1953 and 1969, and Roger was one of them.
He took the police to three sites. At each of them a child's body was recovered. The remains of the other three children he described, Roger among them, were never found. Other accounts give a slightly different span: the Santa Barbara Independent wrote in 2011 that he confessed to killing at least six children over 17 years, and the Santa Maria Sun that he admitted kidnapping and killing six children from 1953 to 1968.
Edwards was convicted and sentenced to death. NPR, in its 2008 report, placed the conviction in 1971. He was held at San Quentin State Prison.
He hanged himself in his cell at San Quentin in 1971, NPR, the Associated Press, the Santa Barbara Independent and the Santa Maria Sun all reported.
Edwards's own count to the police was six. He gave other numbers in custody. NPR reported that he told an officer there were more victims than the six, and that he once told a cellmate the number might be 18 or 20. The Santa Barbara Independent reported in 2011 that he told a fellow prisoner he had killed as many as 18 children. An Associated Press report the same year said he had confessed to killing more than 20 children. None of these larger figures was ever tested in court, and no remains have been tied to him beyond the three bodies recovered in 1970. The true number, as NPR put it in 2008, is not known.
About three years before 2008, by NPR's account, Weston DeWalt, a Pasadena author who had been researching Edwards's killings, took what he had found to Vivian Flores, a detective in the LAPD's cold case work. Flores made finding Roger Madison her own mission, NPR reported. ABC7 quoted her calling the case a three-year effort.
The two of them went back over everything they could. They interviewed people who had survived encounters with Edwards and men who had worked on his construction crews. They collected DNA from Roger's surviving brother and sisters. They reread Edwards's confession and studied old documents, construction plans and weather reports from the time. All of it pointed them to one stretch of ground beside a state highway near Moorpark, in Ventura County.
Then they tested the spot. Four cadaver dogs, brought in separately, all signaled at the same place. Forensic archaeologists used ground-penetrating radar there and found anomalies under the surface, and the experts recommended digging. DeWalt was careful about the odds. "The best I can say is that it looks very promising, but there are no guarantees," he told NPR.
The LAPD announced the search on October 3, 2008. The dig would begin on Monday, October 6, and could run for up to ten days, from six in the morning to four in the afternoon. The department named its partners: the FBI, the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department, the Ventura County Sheriff's Department, the Ventura County medical examiner's office, Caltrans and DeWalt himself. The department streamed the work live online.
Flores did not promise a result. "We know there is little chance that we will find remains," she said in the department's announcement, which spoke of a small chance of finding Roger "and perhaps others." She told NPR why she kept going anyway. "He deserves, just as much as all the other homicide victims, to be found and to be brought back to his family," she said. "I refuse to let Mack win." Speaking of all the families of missing people, she added: "He didn't come home. He never came home."
More than 100 people took part, including highway workers, police officers, FBI agents, forensic experts and archaeologists. Local residents brought food and water to the crews, and earth-moving companies sent equipment and operators as volunteers, the LAPD said.
The digging went several feet down over five days. No remains were found. On Friday, October 10, the LAPD said the search would end at eleven that morning unless compelling evidence turned up, and chaplains held a memorial service for Roger at the site. His sister attended. She told ABC7 that the visit gave her a chance to say goodbye to her brother. The hole was to be filled in, and investigators said they hoped the publicity might bring in information about other children.
Ramona Price was seven years old. On September 2, 1961, while her family was moving to a new home a few miles away in Santa Barbara, she walked away near her home and was never seen again. A man who was 11 that day remembered police stopping him and his friends as they collected bottle caps nearby, asking whether they had seen her and sending them home. "We were all scared," he told the Santa Barbara Independent in 2011.
Edwards never confessed to taking her. The link came from DeWalt, who, about four years before 2011, told the Santa Barbara police that the circumstances of her disappearance matched Edwards's other killings. According to the police, Edwards had worked on the crew that built a nearby overpass, which was finished several weeks after she vanished. Investigator Jaycee Hunter said DeWalt's information made the department "a lot more confident" that Edwards was the man responsible. Police Chief Cam Sanchez said the police were pretty certain Edwards had kidnapped and killed her.
By 2011 Caltrans was demolishing the old overpass in an unrelated project. On Wednesday, June 15, 2011, a volunteer team with four cadaver dogs worked the area and signaled what the police called an area of interest. Sanchez promised the department would "turn every stone" and would keep investigating even if nothing was found that day, the next, or a year later.
Digging began on Tuesday, June 21. The police said they were prepared to go as deep as twenty feet. "I've been here 31 years and this is the first time we've done anything like this," said Lieutenant Paul McCaffrey, the department's spokesman. A new set of cadaver dogs, an anthropologist and an LAPD detective who had worked at freeway excavations joined the team. Caltrans records showed that the overpass's concrete span was already in place before Ramona disappeared, so the searchers turned to the ramps and roadway, which were still being built in 1961.
Nothing was found. On June 27 the police said they had stopped actively searching. McCaffrey said the dogs had probably reacted to seepage from an unrelated burial some distance away, which could be much older than Ramona's case. Caltrans took over the excavation, and one detective stayed on the site in case anything turned up. "The dogs still seem to alert in the area," McCaffrey told the Santa Maria Sun, but without remains the police could not say whose they might be. "We knew from the beginning that this was something we wanted to see through to the conclusion," he said.
Ramona's parents had died by then. Her older sister, her closest living relative, told police she was still devastated. The police had said they would return any remains to her.
How many children Edwards killed is unknown. He confessed to six; he spoke in custody of 18 or 20; an Associated Press report in 2011 said he had confessed to more than 20. Only three bodies were recovered, and only those cases, by NPR's account, led to his conviction.
Roger Dale Madison's death rests on Edwards's confession. His body has never been found, and the 2008 search did not find it. His age (15 or 16) and the date he vanished (December 16, 1968, or on or about December 14) differ between reports.
Ramona Price's disappearance is attributed to Edwards by the Santa Barbara police, on the strength of his work on the nearby overpass and the pattern of his other confessed killings. He never confessed to it, he was never charged with it, and the 2011 search found no trace of her. Her case remains open.
The span of his confessed killings is given as 1953 to 1969 (NPR) and 1953 to 1968 (Santa Maria Sun).
1953: The first of the six killings Edwards later confessed to.
September 2, 1961: Ramona Price, 7, disappears in Santa Barbara; Edwards is working on a nearby overpass crew, police later say.
December 1968: Roger Dale Madison, 15, of Sylmar, a neighbor and family friend, disappears (December 16 by NPR's account; on or about December 14 by the LAPD's).
1969: The last of the six killings he confessed to.
1970: Edwards turns himself in to Los Angeles police and confesses to killing six children; he leads officers to three bodies.
1970 or 1971: Convicted and sentenced to death (NPR places the conviction in 1971).
1971: Hangs himself in his cell at San Quentin.
About three years before the dig (NPR): Weston DeWalt brings his research to LAPD Detective Vivian Flores.
October 3, 2008: The LAPD announces a search for Roger Madison's remains near Moorpark.
October 6 to 10, 2008: The dig; no remains found; memorial service held at the site with his sister present.
June 15, 2011: Cadaver dogs signal an area of interest in the search for Ramona Price in Goleta.
June 21, 2011: Santa Barbara police begin digging.
June 27, 2011: Police stop actively searching; nothing found.