Edward Wayne Edwards Interviewed by the Geauga County Maple Leaf, March 2011 (Part 1 of 3)

Name: Edward Wayne Edwards Interviewed by the Geauga County Maple Leaf, March 2011 (Part 1 of 3)
Uploaded: 2011-04-22
Duration: 7 min 40 s
Description: The day after he was sentenced to death in Ohio, Edwards told a local newspaper editor how he spent about a year setting up his foster son's murder for insurance money. Part 1 of 3.

The day after he was sentenced to death in Ohio, Edwards told a local newspaper editor how he spent about a year setting up his foster son's murder for insurance money. Part 1 of 3.

Subject: Edward Wayne Edwards
Recorded: about March 9, 2011
Runtime: 7:40

Content warning: Edwards describes, step by step, how he planned and carried out the shooting of his foster son, and what he later did with the remains.

The Interview

On March 8, 2011, Edward Wayne Edwards was convicted in Geauga County, Ohio, of the 1996 murder of his foster son, Dannie Boy Edwards, and sentenced to death. According to the newspaper that recorded it, the next day Edwards gave a jail interview to Glen Miller, news editor of the Geauga County Maple Leaf, a weekly paper in Geauga County. The paper posted the interview on its YouTube channel in three parts on April 22, 2011, two weeks after Edwards died. This is Part 1. After a short local advertisement, it is almost entirely Edwards speaking, with two brief questions from Miller.

Historical Context

Edwards, born Charles Wayne Murray in Akron, Ohio, had a long criminal record, had once been on the FBI's Ten Most Wanted list, and in 1972 presented himself on television and in an autobiography as a reformed criminal. He was arrested in Louisville, Kentucky, in 2009 after DNA linked him to the 1980 murders of Tim Hack and Kelly Drew in Jefferson County, Wisconsin. In 2010 he pleaded guilty to those murders and to the 1977 murders of Billy Lavaco and Judith Straub in Norton, Ohio. In a June 2010 jail interview with the Associated Press he said he had also killed Dannie, who had been born Dannie Law Gloeckner, had lived with the Edwards family in Burton, Ohio, and had taken their surname. Dannie was shot in 1996; a hunter found his body near Burton in 1997.

Circumstances of the Interview

Edwards had said publicly that he wanted the death penalty, which Ohio had and Wisconsin did not. He had been convicted and sentenced the day before. He was 77 and in poor health, and he died in custody on April 7, 2011, about a month after the interview. It is one of his last recorded interviews.

What the Interview Covers

Edwards describes how Dannie came to live with the family after his foster parents divorced, and says Dannie was "not a foster son" or an adopted son but "someone that we had taken in". He says he began "plotting down the road to kill him for the insurance", had Dannie's name changed, and had him name Edwards and his wife as beneficiaries of a $50,000 policy and $200,000 of military cover. He says he persuaded Dannie to go AWOL from the Army, picked him up at the Columbus bus station, hid him at the family home without his wife's knowledge, and had him make a recorded phone call "confessing" to a burglary to draw suspicion. He says he shot Dannie behind a cemetery after telling him a man from Youngstown would hide him, left the body partly covered so that it would be found later, and moved the skull about a year later. He says he collected $250,000, that a lawyer took a third, and that he forged his wife's signature.

What Makes the Recording Significant

It is Edwards's own account, given the day after his death sentence, of a killing for which he was never charged until he confessed it. He frames it plainly as a premeditated scheme: "It was premeditated. It was thought out. It was planned." Compared with his June 2010 AP interview, he gives far more detail here about the insurance, the AWOL plan and the staged phone call, and he speaks only of the insurance as his motive.

Important Caveats

Everything Edwards says here is his own account. Some of it agrees with the case record (the insurance motive, Dannie going AWOL, a hunter finding the body near Burton). Other details are his claims only, including the staged phone call, the moving of the skull and his wife's lack of knowledge. Insurance figures differ between reports: Edwards says $250,000 ($50,000 plus $200,000 of military cover); the Associated Press reported about $183,000 in June 2010 and $250,000 later. In the 2010 AP interview clip he gave another motive (that Dannie was stealing from his children); the AP reported that he cited both the insurance and the stealing. The transcript is a machine transcription checked against automatic captions; it has not yet been checked by a human listener.

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Edward Edwards: This boy lived with some foster parents on the other side of town in Burton. And he was 21 when he graduated from high school, and he went to school with my kids. The people there got divorced, and so he ended up living with one of the kids that he used to be there with. And so anyways, that kid brought him to me one day. He said, "I'm going to put him out on the streets in Chardon if you don't want him," he said, "'cause we don't want him." So we took him in and let him live there.

Edward Edwards: And then it was after I started plotting down the road to kill him for the insurance purposes and everything that we had his name changed to Dannie Boy Edwards. But he was not a foster son. He was not an adopted son. He was someone that we had taken in. With Dannie, I saw an opportunity to, I was always a schemer. I was always thinking of ways of making money. I've always been into crime. And with Dannie, I saw an opportunity here, [unclear: "at the long range" / "at Long Range"]. It took about a year to set it up, and that's what I did. I set it up to collect the money, and ended up getting $250,000 out of it. And it was arranged. It was premeditated. It was thought out. It was planned. And that's what I did.

Edward Edwards: He went AWOL. I sent him the money. He got the money, he got it at Greyhound. He went AWOL and went to Columbus, the bus station in Columbus, and that's where I went and that's where I picked him up at, is the bus station in Columbus. He didn't come here. Then I brought him back to the house, and he stayed at our house, unbeknown to my wife. He was out in the barn, he was in the car that was parked there, he was in the house, and it was all set up.

Edward Edwards: I'd already had, prior to him going into the military, he took out a $50,000 insurance policy, named us beneficiary. And then while in the military...

Glen Miller: Did you ask him to do that, or he did it voluntarily?

Edward Edwards: No, I asked him to, but...

Glen Miller: But that was part of your plan then?

Edward Edwards: That was part of my plan, yes, that started back prior to him going into the military. Then the name change was not, was not all the way through yet once he went into the military. When he went into the military, he was Dannie Gloeckner. It was while he was in basic training that the name change went through to Dannie Boy Edwards. So at that time, he had to go down and change his name on the records to the insurance policy, because the insurance policy had been made out to the people that he used to live with, that had already separated and everything, and as a matter of fact, one of them was dead. And so he went down and changed his policy over and named my wife and I the beneficiaries.

Edward Edwards: And he was going to get a medical discharge from the Army because he couldn't handle it. But it was about three days prior to that, that's when I talked him into going AWOL, because they said he was going to Korea, and he didn't want to go to Korea. So I talked him into going AWOL, or told him to. He did what I told him, and we went to Columbus. I picked him up in Columbus, brought him back here, and then that was part of the scheme that I put together. And it was, "Okay, we're going to," I'm talking to him, as to, "we're going to make a phone call that he burglarized the house and stole money and different things like that."

Edward Edwards: And so then when he had it memorized and everything, I took him down to [unclear: a place name; "Leoo" / "to do"] and dropped him off [unclear: "at a telephone" / "the cell phone"]. I went back home and he called me. It was being recorded. "Hi, Pops, how are you?" And we talked, and "I'm sorry I burglarized the house," and things like that. I said, "Well, I didn't know you were even in here, Dannie," and, you know, and so we went all through that, and that he gave the money to another person. And so then it ended. So I went back and picked him up and brought him back to the house.

Edward Edwards: And it was the next night, I think it was the next night, that he ended up losing his life up behind the cemetery, 'cause I had told him that there was a fellow in Youngstown that was going to come by, pick him up and hide him out for a couple of months, and then he would be clear. He wouldn't have to worry about anything. He believed all this, and it was up there that he, where he died. And I had the body partially covered and kept it that way. I went back up there about every three or four months to check, 'cause I wanted the body found, but not immediately, but I didn't want to bury it either. So I left it partially covered.

Edward Edwards: And the one time, it was about a year later when I went up to check on it, the head had been separated from the body, due to the animals and everything. And I took it with me and took it across the street, threw it up into the field, and the police and everything, they've been looking for it, but they can't find it. It was nothing but the skull. They've been unable to find it. But there was a hunter that found Dannie, and the rest of the story, everybody knows where he was found and why. But that was set up.

Edward Edwards: And after he was found, it was, oh, I'm not sure, maybe a year later, maybe not as much as a year, that I collected $250,000 from the, the [unclear: "investigation" (both machine readings) / possibly "insurance"]. But the attorney, I had an attorney representing me, and he got a third of this, so the rest of it we got. And my wife, she was not aware of any of this. I endorsed all the paperwork and forged her name, and she knew absolutely nothing. She's a very Christian-like woman.

Glen Miller: Where did the additional, you said it was originally a $50,000 policy. Where did the other $200,000? Did he take out an additional policy?

Edward Edwards: No. When you go into the military, you can have different amounts that they give you, and it comes out of your pay. And he was covered with $200,000 military. [clip ends] ---