Ailing Ky. con man admits to decades-old murder of Wis. couple, killing 2 others in Ohio

Ky. con man admits he murdered 4 in Wis., Ohio

JEFFERSON, Wis. — Edward Edwards told the world he had given up seducing women, stealing cars and robbing gas stations after a stint on the FBI’s Most Wanted List. If the straight and narrow ever really took hold in the self-described cross between John Dillinger and Don Juan, it didn’t last long.

In court Wednesday, the ailing 76-year-old former con man admitted from his wheelchair to murdering a young Wisconsin couple in 1980. Edwards also agreed to plead guilty Friday to fatally shooting a young Ohio couple in 1977 — ten years after being paroled from what he claimed was a life-changing prison sentence.

“It’s just one more step on the way to hell for him,” said Patrick Hack, the brother of 19-year-old victim Tim Hack.

Edwards, of Louisville, Ky., was arrested last July after DNA connected him to the deaths of Hack and his 19-year-old girlfriend, Kelly Drew. The couple disappeared from a wedding reception in Sullivan, about 40 miles west of Milwaukee, in August 1980.

Their bodies were found weeks later in the woods. Investigators believe Hack was stabbed to death and Drew strangled. Drew’s clothes and underwear were slashed to ribbons. Edwards later told investigators he had consensual sex with her, then watched as a group of men stomped the couple to death.

In April, Edwards confessed to Ohio authorities that he shot Bill Lavaco, 21, of Doylestown and Judith Straub, 18, of Sterling in the neck at close range and left their bodies in a park in August 1977.

A grand jury in Ohio indicted Edwards Wednesday on two counts of aggravated murder in those deaths. He signed a deal agreeing to plead guilty to all four homicides and entered his plea to Hack and Drew’s deaths in a Wisconsin courtroom.

He’s scheduled to enter a guilty plea Friday in Ohio and be sentenced. Prosecutors plan to seek two consecutive life sentences. He’ll then be sentenced for the Hack and Drew homicides in Wisconsin, where he faces two mandatory life sentences.

Then he goes back to Ohio to start serving his time.

Born in Akron, Ohio, in 1933, Edwards wrote in his 1972 autobiography “Metamorphosis of a Criminal” that he spent his early years being beaten by nuns in an orphanage. When a nun asked him what he wanted to be, he told her, “‘Sister, I’m gonna be a crook, and I’m gonna be a good one.”

Ruggedly handsome and just as cunning, he traveled the country in the 1950s, hitchhiking, forging checks and having sex with women he met along the way, convincing one he was a government agent hunting communists.

According to his book, he escaped from jail in Akron in 1955 by pushing past a guard and fled across the country, holding up gas stations for money. He never wore a mask because he wanted to be famous.

In 1961 he landed on the FBI’s Ten Most Wanted Fugitives List. After robbing an Akron bank, he fled to Atlanta, where FBI agents eventually captured him.

He claimed a guard at the federal prison in Leavenworth, Kan., turned his life around. When he got out on parole on 1967, he remade himself into an inspirational speaker, persuading people to avoid turning to crime, and eventually married.

In 1980 he surfaced near Sullivan, working as a handyman at the reception hall where Hack and Drew were last seen. Investigators questioned him shortly after the couple disappeared, and he abruptly left the state. He drifted to Pennsylvania where he burned down a rented house. He was sentenced in 1982 to 2 years and 3 months for arson.

His movements in the 1990s remain a mystery. Police in Louisville said he moved into a trailer park on the outskirts of town in 2000. A woman who answered the phone at the trailer home Wednesday declined to comment and hung up without identifying herself.

Wisconsin investigators submitted DNA taken from semen found on Drew’s pants to state analysts in 2007. They matched it to DNA from Edwards in June 2009. Police have not said what led them to obtain DNA from him.

It’s unclear what drove Edwards to murder. His attorney, Jeffrey De La Rosa, said he didn’t know if more details about the slayings would ever become known, and he declined to say if Edwards expressed remorse about the killings.

“Whatever he’s told me about the issue remains with he and I,” De La Rosa said.

The years haven’t been kind to Edwards. He suffers from diabetes, is confined to a wheelchair and often showed up at court hearings hooked to an oxygen tank. He’s been getting medical treatment at a state prison in Waupun.

De La Rosa said Edwards signed the agreement to spare his wife, his family and the victims’ families from sitting through a trial.

Drew’s brother, Mike Drew, said he was surprised but glad Edwards admitted to the murders.

“I was hoping it would come to this,” Mike Drew said.

Richmond contributed from Madison, Wis. Associated Press Writer Thomas J. Sheeran contributed to this report from Cleveland.