The Life and Crimes of Serial Killer Edward Edwards "The Sweetheart Killer" | True Crime
Channel: Psych-Macabre
Date: 2021-01-14

The Life and Crimes of Serial Killer Edward Edwards "The Sweetheart Killer" | True Crime
Edward Wayne Edwards is a serial killer who was convicted of murdering Billy Lavaco, Judy Straub, Tim Hack, Kelly Drew, and Dannie Law Gloeckner (Dannie Boy Edwards) throughout the middle to end of the 20th century.

Edward Wayne Edwards was born on June 14, 1933 in Akron, Ohio. His mother committed suicide in December of 1935 Edwards grew up in an orphanage beginning in 1940, where he claims that he was abused physically and emotionally by the nuns who ran it. 
At some point while an adolescent, Edwards was arrested and placed into Juvenile detention in 1948 but was eventually released in order to join the U.S. Marine Corps but went AWOL and was dishonorably discharged after being arrested in Jacksonville Florida. 
In 1952 he was sentenced to a federal prison in Ohio for two years for impersonating a Marine and theft of a car traveling across state lines. 
In 1955 Edwards broke out of jail while being held on burglary charges. 
In 1956 he was apprehended in Montana after a series of armed robberies and sentenced to prison. Three years later he was released from his Montana prison and taken to Oregon to stand trial for two armed robberies and was sentenced to five years’ probation. 
In 1960 Edwards broke out of a Portland jail that he was serving time in for pulling a false fire alarm. At the time of that arrest, he was questioned in connection with the double murder of a young couple. After his escape, he was traced to Colorado where he cashed multiple checks for the Portland Bowling Club which he was a member of. 
On November 10, 1961, he was added to the FBI’s 10 Most Wanted List. The federal warrant, which was created for him, charged Edwards with unlawful interstate flight to avoid confinement after a robbery conviction. On January 20, 1962 he was apprehended in Atlanta Georgia with his wife Marlene. 
On May 18 of the same year he was sentenced to 16 years in Leavenworth Federal Penitentiary but was transferred to Lewisburg Federal Pen in Pennsylvania in 1967 where he was paroled. 
From 1971 to 1973 he began touring the country, speaking on prison reform and even published a book on his rehabilitation where he claimed that the influence of a benevolent guard at Leavenworth reformed him. 
In 1977 Edwards murdered Billy Lavaco and Judy Straub in Ohio.
In 1980, he murdered Tim Hack and Kelly Drew by way of strangulation and stabbing in Concord, Wisconsin. It was at this point that his homicides became known as the Sweetheart Murders. Though he had been questioned at the time, there was no lawful basis to hold him. His connection to the murders wouldn’t be made until nearly 29 years later via DNA testing. At the time, Edwards’ daughter April Balascio tipped off police about his possible involvement. 
In December of 1982 he was incarcerated in Pennsylvania prison on Arson charges and was released in July of 1986. 
In 1996 he murdered 25-year-old Dannie Boy Edwards in in Burton, Ohio, who had lived with the offender and his family for several years as their unofficially adopted son. The victim’s given name was originally Dannie Law Gloeckner and was killed in a scheme to collect insurance money. 
On July 30th, 2009, he was arrested in Louisville, Kentucky for the murders of Hack and Drew and in 2010 he plead guilty to the 1977 murders. 
Edwards was eventually convicted and sentenced to death for his crimes in March of 2011 but died in prison of natural causes a month later. 
At his murder trial, he made no apologies and offered no explanation for his crimes. 
His neighbors in Louisville, Kentucky described him as pleasant and neighborly. During the commission of his crimes both homicidal and robberies, he never disguised himself because he wanted to be famous. 
In the Phil Stanford book “The Peyton-Allan Files” the author made the claim that Edwards may have been responsible for the 1960 Beverly Allan and Larry Peyton murders in Portland, Oregon. Retired homicide detective John Cameron has speculated that Edwards may have been responsible for several other high-profile cases, including the Zodiac murders and the abduction murder of Jon Benet Ramsey in 1996. While there is a slight possibility of Edwards being connected to the Zodiac, it’s unlikely that he was at all involved with the Jon Benet Ramsey murder because it doesn’t fit his Modus Operandi. 
I say this because Edwards generally only ever murdered adults… To completely change his preferred victimology so late in life, would be near unheard of. 
It’s also been suggested that Edwards may have killed Elizabeth Short better known as the Black Dahlia in 1947, as well as Teresa Halbach and planted the remains of Laci Peterson on the shore of the San Francisco Bay in April 2003.