Edward Wayne Edwards Interviewed by the Geauga County Maple Leaf, March 2011 (Part 2 of 3)
Edwards describes the moment he shot his foster son, agrees he is a cold-blooded killer, and denies he came back to Ohio for "the easy way out" of a death sentence. Part 2 of 3.
- Subject
- Edward Wayne Edwards
- Recorded
- about March 9, 2011
- Runtime
- 7:01
Content warning: Edwards describes shooting his foster son and calls himself a cold-blooded killer.
The Interview
This is the second of three parts of the jail interview Edward Wayne Edwards gave to Glen Miller, news editor of the Geauga County Maple Leaf, about March 9, 2011, the day after he was convicted in Geauga County, Ohio, of the 1996 murder of his foster son, Dannie Boy Edwards, and sentenced to death. The newspaper posted the three parts on April 22, 2011, two weeks after Edwards died. In this part Miller asks more questions, and pushes back on some of Edwards's answers.
Historical Context
Edwards, born Charles Wayne Murray in Akron, Ohio, was arrested in 2009 and in 2010 pleaded guilty to four murders: Billy Lavaco and Judith Straub in Norton, Ohio, in 1977, and Tim Hack and Kelly Drew in Jefferson County, Wisconsin, in 1980. In June 2010 he told the Associated Press that he had also killed Dannie, born Dannie Law Gloeckner, who had lived with the Edwards family in Burton, Ohio. Dannie was shot in 1996 in a scheme to collect his life insurance; a hunter found his body near Burton in 1997.
Circumstances of the Interview
Wisconsin has no death penalty; Ohio does. Edwards had said he wanted to be tried in Ohio and sentenced to death. Miller tells him that Dannie's half-sister had opposed a death sentence in court as an easy escape for him, and asks for his reaction. Edwards was 77 and ill; 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 says the recorded call in which Dannie "confessed" to a burglary took suspicion off him, and that the tape went to the police. Asked how it felt to point a shotgun at someone, he describes leaving his car at "Riverside", walking back through the woods to the cemetery, telling Dannie there was money at the bottom of a duffel bag, and shooting him while he knelt to look. Asked "So you're admitting to being a cold-blooded killer then?", he replies, "In fact, yeah, that's right." He responds to the half-sister's statement, lists his life sentences, describes his work history (including a claim that Jimmy Hoffa found him a Teamsters job after his 1967 parole), says he had been cleared at the time, which let him collect the insurance, and denies that he chose Ohio to get "the easy way out".
What Makes the Recording Significant
Here Edwards is challenged rather than simply allowed to narrate. Miller tells him he was a person of interest after Dannie's death, and puts it to him that he came to Ohio for the death penalty as an easy way out; Edwards gives his own replies on the record a day after his sentence.
Important Caveats
Everything Edwards says is his own account. His details of the shooting differ from his earlier version: here he says he told Dannie there was money in the bag and shot him in the chest; in the 2010 AP interview he spoke of cigarettes in the bag. Published accounts of the wounds also differ: the AP reported in 2010 that Dannie was shot twice in the chest, while a local report quoted the Geauga County sheriff as giving the cause of death as a shotgun blast to the back of the head. His remarks about Dannie's half-sister are his unverified claims about a living person and should not be repeated in page copy; her name is not given on the page. His statements about Jimmy Hoffa and his work record are unverified. The transcript is a machine transcription checked against automatic captions; it has not yet been checked by a human listener.
Edward Edwards: Set it up, this took the heat off of me. This showed that he did, I mean, that he had burglarized the house and things. This showed that he was back in the area and doing these things. And it said I had had him giving money to another person, and it all, it took the heat, it put everything on him as doing all this, and other people, not me. I didn't know anything about it.
Glen Miller: What happened to that phone call? Recorded phone call?
Edward Edwards: The recording was given to the police. Once he was dead, I [unclear: "gave, I called up" / "told him"], I told them he'd just called, and he gave them the tape of everything. And so they had the tape. He come out and checked and picked the pieces of the glass up, had his blood on it and everything.
Glen Miller: You used a sawed-off shotgun. People can't imagine, how does it feel to point a shotgun at somebody and pull the trigger? What were your thoughts at that time?
Edward Edwards: Don't know that I had any, other than to, I had a [unclear: "sawed-off pistol" / "saw off to a pistol" / "solid off pistol"], only this big, that I could hide it easy. And I never threatened him with it. I never pointed it at him, said, "I'm going to kill you," or anything. I never threatened him, never told him I was going to kill him or threatened him in any way. We were up there in the back of the cemetery, 'cause I had dropped him off and went down and parked my car [at] Riverside and walked back up through the woods on that side and come back. And I told him the guy will be here, and he had a duffel bag full of clothes belonging to my children. And I told him the guy will be here. I was there. I said there was some money in that, down in the bottom of the duffel bag. And when he was bent over, kneeling down and feeling around, is when I shot him. He didn't even know I had a shotgun. Is when I shot him in the chest.
Glen Miller: So you're admitting to being a cold-blooded killer then?
Edward Edwards: In fact, yeah, that's right.
Glen Miller: In court, his half-sister, Dannie Boy's half-sister, [unclear: "Jeanine Copley" / "J. Copley"], basically opposed the death sentence because she said, in your case, you know, getting the death sentence is an easy escape from having to spend the rest of your life in a harsh prison atmosphere, and that you've always had your way with people, manipulated people. That is why she opposed this. Okay, what is your reaction to what she said?
Edward Edwards: I said nothing in court. I just let her go. Dannie and I both tried to find her. She was in prison. She's a drug addict. She's living on skid row, under the bridge and in boxes and things like this. He tried finding her way back. I was with him when it happened, and she was in prison. Okay, and now she's hoping to get a dollar somewhere down on the line, and this is her only interest. She didn't have an interest way back then of contacting anybody.
Edward Edwards: And okay, in regards to her saying I should be in prison, she's been there. She knows what it's like. This is, this is the front for her. I have four life sentences right now, four life sentences [unclear: "running wild" / "running, while"]: two of them from Ohio, two of them I'm doing in Ohio from Wisconsin. That's four. Now I've got the death penalty. She had been bugging them up here. She wanted her dog in there with her. They made her get out, get the dog out. She has been a nuisance. And that's why I didn't, we knew basically what she was going to say, and that's why I didn't oppose, I didn't say anything back.
Edward Edwards: She said like I don't work, or I haven't had a job. I had my own construction business for many years. And because I was paroled from federal penitentiary in 1967, Jimmy Hoffa got me a job. [unclear: "I celled with Jimmy" / "I sold with Jimmy" / "I sell with Jimmy"]. He got me a job driving truck and working dock over in Akron, Local 24. And that's what I was doing. Then I had one in construction, building homes and remodeling and everything. So I worked, and worked hard. But as I said, I didn't say anything. I didn't in any way oppose it.
Glen Miller: But her point was that the death penalty is an easy way out. You don't have to serve those life sentences.
Edward Edwards: Well, I'm 77 years old, going to be 78 in June. I doubt seriously that I'm going to live long enough to even get it, in [unclear: "175 days" / "a hundred and seventy-five days"] from now. I'm a sick person. But I went into this, my plan was, you want to try me for this, I want the death penalty. Geauga County knew nothing about this. They knew, I wasn't even on the radar. They knew everything they had...
Glen Miller: No, you were a person of interest way back, during the, after the first murder. You were a person of interest after the first murder, after Dannie Boy's murder. You became a person of interest.
Edward Edwards: Not long, because they, I was cleared of the crime. That's why I was able to get the money. I was cleared of it. I was set free on it. I was, I mean, naturally as a suspect, everybody around was a suspect at that point. But I was not, I'm the one that gave them the tape, [unclear: "talked to Dannie" / "to Dannie"] and everything. No, I was not, I was not a suspect. I mean, I was, but I wasn't, but I was cleared of it, to where I was able to go ahead and collect the money from the insurance policy.
Glen Miller: But isn't the reason you wanted to come to Ohio is that you knew Wisconsin did not have the death penalty and Ohio did, and again you wanted the easy way out?
Edward Edwards: No, I wanted to come to Ohio because this is where I'm from. [clip ends] ---