When a cold murder case of two college sweethearts caught the eye of a 40-year-old April Balascio, she realized that she recognized their faces, and what followed was a chilling revelation of her elderly father’s horrifying past.
Tim Hack and Kelly Drew, two 19-year-old graduates of Fort Atkinson High School, disappeared from a Concord house in Wisconsin on Aug. 9, 1980, and were found dead a month later near Hustisford Road in the Town of Ixonia. While rigorous investigations were launched to find the culprit, the case eventually fell cold and went unsolved for 29 years until it reached Balascio.
Balascio revealed in a podcast that Hack and Drew’s faces “were always in the forefront” of her mind since childhood. So, she decided to Google cold murder cases in Wisconsin one day, and found out about the decades-old unsolved sweetheart murder. When she saw the pictures of the two victims, it instantly sent shivers down her spine as she realized that she knew the killer, disturbingly, too well.
“I started reading and I recognized everything. I recognized the Concord House, I recognized the campground, and I just knew. And then, at the end of the article, there was a number to call that said ‘ask for detective Garcia.'”
Her suspicions were also supported by several facts other than her memories of the deceased couple and the crime scene. She revealed how, growing up, people around her would sometimes disappear, and how their family was oddly always on the move. So, she immediately picked up the phone and dialed the number to reach Chad Garcia, suspecting that her father, Edward Wayne Edwards, might be the one behind Hack and Drew’s murder.
“I called, and he actually answered. And as I was stuttering, I finally got out the words: ‘You may think I’m crazy, or I might be sending you on a wild goose chase, but I think I have some information for you. I think my dad might be a serial killer.'”
How Ed Edwards was found guilty of the sweetheart murders
Balascio remembered her father working at the Concord House around the same time when the murderers happened in 1980. Fueling her suspicion further, she also remembered him returning home with a cut on his face the night of their disappearance. Even though the police had questioned him after the couple was reported missing, he wasn’t suspected at all due to zero tangible evidence.
After connecting to Detective Garcia, Balascio told him about an autobiographical book written by her father, titled “Metamorphosis of A Criminal: The True Life Story of Ed Edwards.” This gave police a new suspect, and Edwards was arrested on July 30, 2009, in Louisville, Kentucky, with concrete evidence against him, established by DNA testing.
Ed Edwards turned out to be a serial killer
Once convicted of the murder of the two 19-year-olds, Edwards also confessed to more unsolved crimes, including the murder of his 24-year-old adopted son, Dannie Boy Edwards, in 1996 and the unsolved Ohio murder of Billy and Judy in 1977. He was given a death sentence and life in prison for his crimes, but died in his jail cell at the Corrections Medical Center in Columbus, Ohio, on April 7, 2011, at the age of 77.
What’s shocking is that Edwards was already on the FBI’s 10 Most Wanted list way before he had committed these murders. He had a history of aggravated robbery, escaping from prison, and several other crimes, like impersonating a Federal Officer. However, he was paroled from the prison in 1967, after he claimed to have been reformed.
But by 1982, Edwards’ name returned to the police files, and he was imprisoned in Pennsylvania for two years for arson. While the police believed he only ever engaged in crimes of a similar nature, his daughter’s tip led to the revelation of the horrific truth. Till the time of his death, five confirmed victims of Edwards were identified. However, he is still suspected of having 9-15 more victims.
