FBI Most Wanted to Motivational Speaker to Murderer: Edward Wayne Edwards

1
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:03,800
He was on the FBI's 10 Most Wanted List.

2
00:00:03,800 --> 00:00:08,480
Then he got out, wrote a book about his own redemption, and started touring police academies

3
00:00:08,480 --> 00:00:10,680
as a reformed man.

4
00:00:10,680 --> 00:00:14,840
And while all of that was happening, he was actively murdering people.

5
00:00:14,840 --> 00:00:16,560
This is Edward Wayne Edwards.

6
00:00:16,560 --> 00:00:38,560
[Music]

7
00:00:38,560 --> 00:00:42,960
Edward Wayne Edwards was not born Edward Wayne Edwards.

8
00:00:42,960 --> 00:00:48,960
His birth name was actually Charles Wayne Murray, and he arrived in Akron, Ohio on June 14,

9
00:00:48,960 --> 00:00:53,880
1933 into a situation that is almost too brutal to absorb.

10
00:00:53,880 --> 00:00:57,200
His mother died by suicide when he was still a toddler.

11
00:00:57,200 --> 00:01:01,240
She shot herself in the stomach, and he was there.

12
00:01:01,240 --> 00:01:03,440
Old enough to register what happened.

13
00:01:03,440 --> 00:01:07,480
Young enough to not have any framework for processing it at all.

14
00:01:07,480 --> 00:01:14,000
After that, the state placed him into a Catholic orphanage, which turned out to offer zero refuge.

15
00:01:14,000 --> 00:01:16,000
The nuns beat him.

16
00:01:16,000 --> 00:01:17,760
Older boys beat him.

17
00:01:17,760 --> 00:01:23,800
The psychiatric evaluation from those early years documented strong, sadomasochistic tendencies.

18
00:01:23,800 --> 00:01:28,400
Meaning someone looked at this child, wrote it all down in a clinical language, and the

19
00:01:28,400 --> 00:01:31,440
institution still had no idea what to do with him.

20
00:01:31,440 --> 00:01:35,600
He was eventually expelled for violent, uncontrollable behavior.

21
00:01:35,600 --> 00:01:40,280
At some point during all of this, a nun asked him what he wanted to be when he grew up.

22
00:01:40,280 --> 00:01:44,200
He told her he was going to be a crook and a good one.

23
00:01:44,200 --> 00:01:50,680
He wrote about that exchange in his autobiography decades later with what reads as real satisfaction,

24
00:01:50,680 --> 00:01:53,480
and at that time he was roughly 10 years old.

25
00:01:53,480 --> 00:01:58,920
He cycled through juvenile detention and eventually enlisted in the Marines, which is probably

26
00:01:58,920 --> 00:02:02,520
the most structured exit available to him at the time.

27
00:02:02,520 --> 00:02:07,000
He went AWOL within months and received a dishonorable discharge.

28
00:02:07,000 --> 00:02:09,560
Career path 1 - Out.

29
00:02:09,560 --> 00:02:15,160
Through his 20s and 30s, the criminal resume he had promised the nun started filling in.

30
00:02:15,160 --> 00:02:20,800
He drifted across the country as a burglar, a car thief, an armed robber, picking up side

31
00:02:20,800 --> 00:02:25,880
jobs as a vacuum cleaner salesman, a ship docker, and a handyman.

32
00:02:25,880 --> 00:02:30,080
Those jobs moved in between cities and gave him proximity to targets.

33
00:02:30,080 --> 00:02:35,680
In 1955, he escaped from a jail in Akron and launched a multi-state gas station robbery

34
00:02:35,680 --> 00:02:38,680
spree across the Pacific Northwest.

35
00:02:38,680 --> 00:02:42,800
And here's the thing, he refused to wear a mask for any of it.

36
00:02:42,800 --> 00:02:45,880
He wrote later that the money was almost beside the point.

37
00:02:45,880 --> 00:02:48,160
He wanted people to know his name.

38
00:02:48,160 --> 00:02:52,400
There's an ego operating there that never really went away.

39
00:02:52,400 --> 00:02:58,360
Also in 1955, he met and married a woman named Jeanette in Idaho Falls, Idaho.

40
00:02:58,360 --> 00:03:02,000
And you know when people say they're looking for their partner in crime, I don't think

41
00:03:02,000 --> 00:03:06,960
they mean exactly this, but this is exactly what Edward meant.

42
00:03:06,960 --> 00:03:11,480
Because he essentially immediately drafted her as his getaway driver.

43
00:03:11,480 --> 00:03:16,840
By late 1956, with Jeanette Pregnant, they arrived in Portland, Oregon.

44
00:03:16,840 --> 00:03:21,120
Edwards committed three armed robberies on three consecutive nights in the first five days

45
00:03:21,120 --> 00:03:22,440
in the city.

46
00:03:22,440 --> 00:03:26,920
He was eventually arrested in Billings, Montana and sent to Montana State Prison.

47
00:03:26,920 --> 00:03:32,080
While in prison, he hand-carved a leather baby book for his newborn son, Wayne.

48
00:03:32,080 --> 00:03:36,320
When Jeanette came to prison to inform him she was filing for divorce, he handed her the

49
00:03:36,320 --> 00:03:39,640
book and told her to fill it in with photos of the boy.

50
00:03:39,640 --> 00:03:43,720
Because once he got out, he planned to kill Wayne to punish her for leaving.

51
00:03:43,720 --> 00:03:45,040
She took the book.

52
00:03:45,040 --> 00:03:46,640
She believed every word of it.

53
00:03:46,640 --> 00:03:48,800
"View what of two, I'm sure."

54
00:03:48,800 --> 00:03:54,480
Released in July 1959, Edwards returned to Portland on pending robbery charges and

55
00:03:54,480 --> 00:03:56,880
received five years of probation.

56
00:03:56,880 --> 00:04:00,760
He immediately began stalking his ex-wife with a firearm.

57
00:04:00,760 --> 00:04:07,440
In November 1960, two Portland college students, Larry Payton and Beverly Allen, were murdered.

58
00:04:07,440 --> 00:04:12,120
Edwards was spotted near the crime scene carrying a fresh, unexplained gunshot wound to his

59
00:04:12,120 --> 00:04:14,920
left arm that he couldn't account for.

60
00:04:14,920 --> 00:04:19,800
Before police could build a case, he was picked up on a completely separate charge.

61
00:04:19,800 --> 00:04:21,680
Setting off fire alarms.

62
00:04:21,680 --> 00:04:26,120
And then he escaped from Portland's rocky butjeal after an accomplice called the facility,

63
00:04:26,120 --> 00:04:30,840
pretending to be a probation officer and then verbally cleared him for release.

64
00:04:30,840 --> 00:04:32,240
So they let him go.

65
00:04:32,240 --> 00:04:33,960
This is 1960.

66
00:04:33,960 --> 00:04:39,760
So apparently the security protocol for holding a violent multi-state fugitive was one

67
00:04:39,760 --> 00:04:42,160
confident phone call.

68
00:04:42,160 --> 00:04:43,440
Just one.

69
00:04:43,440 --> 00:04:45,960
That escaped triggered a federal manhunt.

70
00:04:45,960 --> 00:04:52,680
On November 10, 1961, the FBI placed Edwards on the 10 most wanted fugitives list.

71
00:04:52,680 --> 00:04:56,160
Atlanta police called him in January 1962.

72
00:04:56,160 --> 00:05:00,040
He was sent to the United States Penitentiary at Levinworth.

73
00:05:00,040 --> 00:05:05,840
He parold in 1967 into a country that had fully committed to criminal rehabilitation as

74
00:05:05,840 --> 00:05:07,400
a philosophy.

75
00:05:07,400 --> 00:05:12,200
This was the philosophical peak of rehabilitationism and American corrections.

76
00:05:12,200 --> 00:05:16,160
A movement built on the premise that even the most hardened criminals, the most hardened

77
00:05:16,160 --> 00:05:21,400
offenders could be completely transformed through systemic intervention.

78
00:05:21,400 --> 00:05:26,600
Edwards looked at that cultural movement and made a very deliberate decision.

79
00:05:26,600 --> 00:05:28,000
He wrote a book.

80
00:05:28,000 --> 00:05:33,800
His autobiography, The Metamorphosis of a Criminal, it came out in 1972.

81
00:05:33,800 --> 00:05:39,120
He claimed FBI director J. Edgar Hoover had personally reviewed the manuscript.

82
00:05:39,120 --> 00:05:44,560
He began touring the country lecturing at civic groups, at churches, and police academies

83
00:05:44,560 --> 00:05:47,320
about his own redemption story.

84
00:05:47,320 --> 00:05:49,000
Then he went on television.

85
00:05:49,000 --> 00:05:51,440
He appeared on to tell the truth.

86
00:05:51,440 --> 00:05:53,120
And what's my line?

87
00:05:53,120 --> 00:05:55,120
This happened in 1972.

88
00:05:55,120 --> 00:05:59,360
This is where celebrity panelists attempt to identify the reformed federal fugitive sitting

89
00:05:59,360 --> 00:06:00,760
in front of them.

90
00:06:00,760 --> 00:06:03,880
Edwards sat under the studio lights and let them guess.

91
00:06:03,880 --> 00:06:08,880
Two national television appearances in one year, four man, who was already planning his

92
00:06:08,880 --> 00:06:10,680
next murders.

93
00:06:10,680 --> 00:06:15,520
Criminalologists who later reviewed these appearances describe him as a psychopath, using

94
00:06:15,520 --> 00:06:20,040
national media to mock the entire system from the inside.

95
00:06:20,040 --> 00:06:23,720
Looking at what he was doing during that same period, that assessment is hard to push back

96
00:06:23,720 --> 00:06:25,200
on.

97
00:06:25,200 --> 00:06:30,240
While Edwards toured the country as a redeemed man, his five children were growing up in

98
00:06:30,240 --> 00:06:36,360
conditions his eldest daughter April later described as controlled psychological terror.

99
00:06:36,360 --> 00:06:42,280
The family moved through more than a dozen states between 1974 and 2009.

100
00:06:42,280 --> 00:06:48,120
He frequently occupying remote, deteriorating houses without heat or running water.

101
00:06:48,120 --> 00:06:53,240
Edwards ran the household as a labor operation, putting the kids to work scrubbing floors,

102
00:06:53,240 --> 00:06:56,200
repairing roofs, doing this for hours.

103
00:06:56,200 --> 00:06:58,760
His moods were completely unpredictable.

104
00:06:58,760 --> 00:07:03,560
He could stay by April's bedside after she suffered a severe electrical burn and

105
00:07:03,560 --> 00:07:07,120
coach her through recovery with genuine care.

106
00:07:07,120 --> 00:07:11,480
And then in the middle of a completely ordinary night, order everyone to pack up the car

107
00:07:11,480 --> 00:07:16,360
with no warnings, no good buys allowed to friends and neighbors, and drive them off to another

108
00:07:16,360 --> 00:07:18,560
state before sunrise.

109
00:07:18,560 --> 00:07:23,520
Criminal records indicate that he frequently set fire to the homes when they vacated, which

110
00:07:23,520 --> 00:07:27,600
served as both insurance fraud and evidence removal.

111
00:07:27,600 --> 00:07:31,120
April left at age 18 and did not look back.

112
00:07:31,120 --> 00:07:35,600
Her siblings drifted away carrying what those years had built in them.

113
00:07:35,600 --> 00:07:40,800
During the peak of his public reputation, Edwards was actively killing people.

114
00:07:40,800 --> 00:07:48,440
In 1977, he shot 18-year-old Judith Straub and 21-year-old Billy Lovaco in Sterling, Ohio.

115
00:07:48,440 --> 00:07:54,440
In August 1980, he lured 19-year-old sweetheart Timothy Hack and Kelly Drew away from a wedding

116
00:07:54,440 --> 00:07:59,760
reception at the Concord House in Sullivan, Wisconsin, a venue where he actually worked

117
00:07:59,760 --> 00:08:01,680
as a living caretaker.

118
00:08:01,680 --> 00:08:05,360
Kelly Drew was bound, stripped, and strangled.

119
00:08:05,360 --> 00:08:07,320
Timothy Hack was stabbed.

120
00:08:07,320 --> 00:08:12,020
Their remains turned up more than two months later in a wooded area at an adjacent cornfield

121
00:08:12,020 --> 00:08:13,800
miles from the venue.

122
00:08:13,800 --> 00:08:17,800
Jefferson County launched the largest search in its history looking for them.

123
00:08:17,800 --> 00:08:21,720
Police questioned Edwards at the time because of his physical proximity to the venue.

124
00:08:21,720 --> 00:08:26,440
He then packed his family into the car that night and drove to Pittsburgh.

125
00:08:26,440 --> 00:08:32,720
In 1996, he shot his 25-year-old foster son, Danny Boy Edwards, in Ohio, then collected

126
00:08:32,720 --> 00:08:36,080
a $250,000 life insurance payout.

127
00:08:36,080 --> 00:08:39,400
He avoided any scrutiny for 13 years.

128
00:08:39,400 --> 00:08:44,880
By 2009, his daughter April was 40 years old and living in Jefferson, Ohio.

129
00:08:44,880 --> 00:08:50,360
For about 18 months, childhood memories began coming back in ways that she could not just

130
00:08:50,360 --> 00:08:53,000
simply ignore or push aside.

131
00:08:53,000 --> 00:08:56,720
The towns, the midnight departures, the fires.

132
00:08:56,720 --> 00:09:00,800
She started keeping a journal, listening every location her family had ever lived, and

133
00:09:00,800 --> 00:09:06,160
cross-referencing those locations against cold case records she was finding online.

134
00:09:06,160 --> 00:09:08,920
She found an article about the sweetheart murders.

135
00:09:08,920 --> 00:09:12,280
The 1980 disappearance of Timothy Hack and Kelly Drew.

136
00:09:12,280 --> 00:09:17,760
The dates matched her father's employment at the Concord House in Sullivan, exactly.

137
00:09:17,760 --> 00:09:20,720
She remembered the overnight drive to Pittsburgh.

138
00:09:20,720 --> 00:09:25,120
He called Detective Chad Garcia at the Jefferson County Sheriff's Office and told him everything

139
00:09:25,120 --> 00:09:26,760
she had.

140
00:09:26,760 --> 00:09:33,960
Garcia used Edwards' own 1972 autobiography to build the affidavit for a DNA search warrant.

141
00:09:33,960 --> 00:09:38,840
The books, self-reported psychiatric history and detailed admissions, gave him the probable

142
00:09:38,840 --> 00:09:40,880
calls he needed.

143
00:09:40,880 --> 00:09:45,480
Detectives traveled to Louisville, Kentucky, where Edwards was living as an elderly invalid

144
00:09:45,480 --> 00:09:48,400
with his wife and swabbed his cheek.

145
00:09:48,400 --> 00:09:53,280
His DNA matched biological material recorded from Kelly Drew's clothing.

146
00:09:53,280 --> 00:09:56,520
He was arrested July 30, 2009.

147
00:09:56,520 --> 00:09:59,800
His own book helped to convict him.

148
00:09:59,800 --> 00:10:01,720
His own daughter made the call.

149
00:10:01,720 --> 00:10:07,040
Edwards pleaded guilty to the Wisconsin murders and to the sterling Ohio murders of Judith

150
00:10:07,040 --> 00:10:09,440
Straub and Billy Lovaco.

151
00:10:09,440 --> 00:10:14,080
He was 76, wheelchair-bound and severely diabetic.

152
00:10:14,080 --> 00:10:17,320
And then, he demanded the death penalty.

153
00:10:17,320 --> 00:10:22,480
He specifically confessed to murdering foster son Danny Boy because Ohio maintained an

154
00:10:22,480 --> 00:10:25,040
active capital punishment statute.

155
00:10:25,040 --> 00:10:28,560
He wanted an execution and he worked to secure one.

156
00:10:28,560 --> 00:10:32,280
Criminologists believe this had nothing to do with remorse.

157
00:10:32,280 --> 00:10:38,440
He wanted to control his own ending, guarantee ongoing media coverage and to also stay out of

158
00:10:38,440 --> 00:10:39,960
general population.

159
00:10:39,960 --> 00:10:45,880
He received what he was asking for, that death sentence, on March 8, 2011.

160
00:10:45,880 --> 00:10:52,400
On April 7, 2011, he died of natural causes in an Ohio prison hospital one month after

161
00:10:52,400 --> 00:10:53,560
sentencing.

162
00:10:53,560 --> 00:10:58,400
Ohio never got to carry out the execution he had spent his final months engineering.

163
00:10:58,400 --> 00:11:03,320
He ran every available angle until the very last moment and then left the way he had

164
00:11:03,320 --> 00:11:06,720
always operated on his own schedule.

165
00:11:06,720 --> 00:11:17,840
But this time, someone else had written the ending before he could.

166
00:11:17,840 --> 00:11:21,960
Thanks for listening to 10 Minute Murder, bingeable true crime stories.

167
00:11:21,960 --> 00:11:22,960
Hello?

168
00:11:22,960 --> 00:11:29,480
I'm the host, Joe, and here's an email subject, "Question from a Long Time listener."

169
00:11:29,480 --> 00:11:31,080
We call those OG listeners.

170
00:11:31,080 --> 00:11:32,080
Hey, Joe.

171
00:11:32,080 --> 00:11:35,840
I've been listening since some time during the pandemic and it's been interesting here

172
00:11:35,840 --> 00:11:39,440
the show evolved while still sounding like itself.

173
00:11:39,440 --> 00:11:42,520
I bet that's pretty hard to pull off, harder than people think.

174
00:11:42,520 --> 00:11:46,960
Do you still get nervous before recording or has it become second nature at this point?

175
00:11:46,960 --> 00:11:50,320
And that's from Melissa and San Jose, California.

176
00:11:50,320 --> 00:11:53,400
Melissa, I don't get nervous.

177
00:11:53,400 --> 00:11:58,640
And I don't mean just as it relates to the podcast, I mean just in general.

178
00:11:58,640 --> 00:12:01,880
And as I'm saying that, I probably should keep it to myself because there's probably

179
00:12:01,880 --> 00:12:06,400
something wrong with me and there's a diagnosis out there for me.

180
00:12:06,400 --> 00:12:09,240
But yeah, I don't really experience nervousness.

181
00:12:09,240 --> 00:12:15,040
There is times that I can look back and think about times in my life that I've gotten nervous.

182
00:12:15,040 --> 00:12:18,640
And it just hasn't happened in a very long time.

183
00:12:18,640 --> 00:12:20,120
I don't know what's up.

184
00:12:20,120 --> 00:12:24,480
So no, to answer your question, Melissa, I don't get nervous before recording.

185
00:12:24,480 --> 00:12:29,360
It is a little bit overwhelming sometimes, like a feeling of overwhelmed a little bit,

186
00:12:29,360 --> 00:12:31,840
like the pressure of the podcast.

187
00:12:31,840 --> 00:12:36,680
When I look at like over the course of a year, like millions of people are downloading and

188
00:12:36,680 --> 00:12:41,400
listening to this podcast and that feels a little bit overwhelming and like a little

189
00:12:41,400 --> 00:12:43,680
bit of pressure, I feel, but it's not nervousness.

190
00:12:43,680 --> 00:12:44,680
All right.

191
00:12:44,680 --> 00:12:45,880
Thank you for the email.

192
00:12:45,880 --> 00:12:49,840
And hey, if you're a brand new listener, you listening to me right now, you're a brand

193
00:12:49,840 --> 00:12:51,400
new listener to this podcast.

194
00:12:51,400 --> 00:12:52,400
Welcome.

195
00:12:52,400 --> 00:12:56,400
Get comfortable because there are literally hundreds of episodes dating all the way back

196
00:12:56,400 --> 00:12:59,520
as Melissa talked about to the pandemic.

197
00:12:59,520 --> 00:13:02,920
When the show sounded a little bit different, but hundreds of episodes feed a go back and

198
00:13:02,920 --> 00:13:06,480
binge on, but most importantly, make sure you hit subscribe wherever you're listening

199
00:13:06,480 --> 00:13:07,640
right now.

200
00:13:07,640 --> 00:13:09,400
If you're an OG listener, I love you.

201
00:13:09,400 --> 00:13:10,800
Keep doing what you're doing.

202
00:13:10,800 --> 00:13:15,240
Share in the podcast with your friends and your family, rating it five stars, and also

203
00:13:15,240 --> 00:13:19,720
commenting and just engaging with the social media content that I put out there.

204
00:13:19,720 --> 00:13:20,880
And that's going to do it.

205
00:13:20,880 --> 00:13:22,360
That's your episode for today.

206
00:13:22,360 --> 00:13:25,680
Thank you again for listening to 10 Minute Murder.