Aging Ky. con man to plead guilty in Ohio to 2 murders after admitting to 2 in Wis.

Aging con man to plead guilty to 2 more murders

AKRON, Ohio — A 33-year criminal odyssey was headed toward an end with the killer of a teenage couple in Wisconsin poised to plead guilty to killing two young people in Ohio in 1977.

Relatives of his Ohio victims were expected in court Friday to see Edward Edwards, 76, close out a second double murder case in three days.

Prosecutors asked relatives to withhold comment until after the plea hearing to make sure there’s no hitch to Edwards’ signed agreement to admit guilt.

Ohio prosecutors plan to seek two consecutive life sentences. He faces two mandatory life sentences in the Wisconsin slayings.

Edwards, of Louisville, Ky., was arrested in July after DNA connected him to the deaths of Tim Hack and his girlfriend, Kelly Drew, both 19. They disappeared from a Wisconsin wedding reception in August 1980 and their bodies were found weeks later in the woods. Edwards pleaded guilty Wednesday to killing them.

In April, he confessed to Ohio authorities that he also 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.

Born in Akron 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.”

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. He eventually was captured in Atlanta.

Edwards 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, Wis.