Edward Wayne Edwards, Who Admitted Five Killings in Ohio and Wisconsin, Dies Weeks After His Death Sentence
The 77-year-old died of natural causes at an Ohio prison medical center. He had said he confessed to killing his foster son for life insurance because he wanted to be executed.
Published
Edward Wayne Edwards, a career criminal who admitted five killings decades after the fact, died in an Ohio prison medical center on April 7, 2011, weeks after he was sentenced to death.
Edwards, 77, died that night at the Corrections Medical Center in Columbus, where he was being held, Ohio prisons spokesman Carlo LoParo said. The Ohio attorney general's office recorded that he died of natural causes, with no capital proceeding pending. The Daily Jefferson County Union, which first reported his death, said he suffered from leukemia, heart ailments and diabetes. He had been sentenced to death in Geauga County on March 21, 2011, after admitting that in May 1996 he killed his 25-year-old foster son, Dannie Boy Edwards, to collect $250,000 in life insurance. He had told the Associated Press in a prison interview that he confessed to that killing because he wanted the death penalty.
Edwards was already serving life sentences for his other crimes. He had pleaded guilty to killing Bill Lavaco, 21, and Judith Straub, 18, in Ohio in 1977, and admitted killing Tim Hack and Kelly Drew, both 19, who disappeared from a wedding reception in Jefferson County, Wisconsin, in August 1980. That case stalled until 2007, when state analysts developed a DNA profile. In 2009 one of Edwards' children called authorities to say he might have been the killer, and detectives traveled to Louisville, Kentucky, obtained his DNA, matched it to the profile and arrested him. Born in Akron in 1933, Edwards had been on the FBI's Ten Most Wanted Fugitives list in 1961.
The Ohio attorney general's report placed the 1996 killing in woods near Edwards' Troy Township home, while the Associated Press said it took place outside Burton, east of Cleveland.
Sources
- Capital Crimes Annual Report: State and Federal Cases 2011 (case history sheet: Edwards, Edward, p. 113; 'Deceased Prior to Execution' list, p. 22), Ohio Attorney General
- Edward Edwards, convicted killer of 5, dies of natural causes in Ohio prison, Wisconsin State Journal (Associated Press)
Related News
- June 11, 2010: Edward Wayne Edwards Pleads Guilty to the 1977 Murders of a Young Couple in Norton, Ohio, Solving a 33-Year-Old Case