The Clearing is a show about crime and the trauma that can result from crime. It may not be suitable for all audiences. There are theories about Ed Edwards and his crimes that go far beyond the Five Murders he confessed to before his death. Internet subcultures devoted to proving he's responsible for pretty much every unsolved murder you've ever heard of. Conversations filling up hours of late-night radio built upon the most preposterous theories. That's all because of this guy. Hello Ed. Hey, hello. This is John Cameron.
John Cameron. Without him, Ed Edwards would be a be-list serial killer. No, not only do a few detectives and thanks to April, the families of a handful of victims. April's struggle will be a lot simpler too. Reckon with what their father has done. Bring a little relief to herself and some of the people whose lives he destroyed. Not easy, but easier. Because of Cameron though, April is fighting a kind of psychic war on two fronts. Dealing with the wreckage caused by a father who was a monster. We're also trying to wrestle the narrative.
We're trying to have a bad way from Cameron to prove to the world that he wasn't that kind of monster. This episode is about what John Cameron has wrought. Who is he? How did he become patient zero for the mythic boogie man's strain of the Ed Edwards legend? And what happens when April finally confronts him? This is the clearing. I'm Josh Dean. Episode 4. Bullshit, bullshit, bullshit.
Cameron's contact with Ed Edwards was pretty limited. A handful of letters exchanged in the last months before Ed was died. A couple of phone calls. Well, yeah, this is actually the first time we get to talk. I mean, there's a lot of things I'd love to talk to you about and understand the position you're in. You'll get a lot of time to talk to me. Edwards is saying.
And there's a lot of things that I'll come up later and tell you and talk to you about and I know you'll be interested in things like that. And there's a lot of things I'll come up later and talk to you about as in there are many more murders to tell you about. Just not now why this call is being recorded. At least that's how John Cameron heard it. I know this because Cameron's patient zero for me too.
Back in the spring of 2016, I saw a headline on a website about a retired detective who had a new theory for what really happened on making a murderer. That Netflix series we were all talking about in those days. If you didn't see it, it was about the murder of a young woman named Teresa Hallbach and the two guys convicted of killing her. John Cameron decided the guys were innocent. No shock there. Many people felt the cops had it wrong.
But Cameron claimed to know who the real killer was. Some guy had never heard of named Edward Wayne Edwards. And this Edward's head had just killed Hallbach. He was, according to Cameron, one of the most prolific murderers in history. This was nuts. I had to know more. I thought it might make a good magazine story. So I went to go see Cameron in Great Falls, Montana, where he lived. I brought along a little digital recorder to take notes.
When I got to Great Falls, a friend of his picked me up at the airport and brought me to the hospital. Turns out, Cameron had been in an accident, a drunken fall. It's my fault being a dumbass he told me. Too much Easter. He'd broken a rib and punctured a lung. He was on morphine for the pain and had oxygen in his nose. Whether or not he knew surgery was still unclear. He told me he could feel the air leaking out of his lung.
If you can feel the air. Yeah. Shit. Well, before kick us out if you want to rest. I'm good. Keep asking away. I'm going to need you doing good. The Great Falls case. Cameron was in deep. He'd been obsessing about this little known killer for six years since 2010. Cameron was retired from his detective job by then. He was working for Montana's Bureau of Prisons and Peroll. But an old cop buddy in the Great Falls PD had called to get his help with something.
He said that a fax had come in with details about a guy in Ohio who'd confessed to five murders. Two in Wisconsin, three in Ohio. The fax laid out what seemed to be the guy's MO. In two cases, he'd killed teen couples parked in cars. Attached to the message was a map covered in dots. All the places this murder had lived over a span of decades. One was Great Falls. Cameron looked him up, checked some things.
Turned out there was an unsolved Great Falls case from 1956 that sounded a lot like the murders in Wisconsin, Ohio. Two teens in a car on a lover's lane. Robert was not emotive. Cameron had caught murders before. In one famous case, he helped catch a sadistic child killer. He told me from his hospital bed that if I walked to the window, I could see the building where they took the creep down. He wasn't a detective anymore, but he couldn't help himself.
Like Detective Chad Garcia, he ordered Edward's book. But instead of the story of Edward's life, Cameron came to believe that the book was a puzzle containing clues to all the other murders he'd done. He spent the next three years assembling a master theory that Edward's committed dozens of murders, maybe hundreds, and in many cases framed other people for them. He started emailing and calling.
And in some cases drove hundreds of miles to confront cops and lawyers in person, certain that he was going to open their eyes. The guys nuts, that's what they think. Well yeah, I mean that's an easy to fence, right? On the more high profile cases. Well, the more nuts you look. Yeah, because I mean here you're trying to claim you did all these high profile cases. And actually when you look at it, it just makes total sense. That's what you did.
But I have to say, like whenever I've been telling everyone about this, like that's their first reaction. It's like there's no fucking way. Exactly. That's just, that's amazing, right? That's, I've been hearing that since 2010. This obsession cost him a lot. Cameron's boss at the parole board told him he had to choose his very good job with insurance and a pension or his bizarre crusade. Cameron picked Edwards.
He walked away from $50,000 a year to become the self-appointed expert of Edward Wayne Edwards that no one was asking for. He spent his savings to publish a book called It's Me, Edward Wayne Edwards. The serial killer you never heard of. All because of Ed. Here you are with no insurance. Yeah, sitting in a hospital room. It's kind of his fault. Yeah. Vials times. With Cameron's permission, his friend drove me to his house to take a look at his files.
The first thing I saw when I walked in the door was a large mirror with It's Me written on it. In what looked like blood, he left the files out in stacks for me. They covered most of the table in the corner of his living room. I spent hours digging through them. Notes and files on cases I'd never even heard of, cases with no apparent connection to Edwards at all. I'd expected to come here and see evidence of a clear and coherent investigation. But this sure wasn't that.
Cameron is a smart guy and a likable one. And he was clearly a good cop. There were plaques lined up on his mantle. He'd been great false PD officer of the year twice plus victims advocate of the year. He told me he hadn't chosen to walk this bizarre path. He said that a good cop quote just follows the evidence wherever it leads. Good evening. Good morning and welcome this is coast to coast. A.M. I'm Dave Schritter. I'll be your host for the evening. Thank you for joining me in 2014.
After his book was published, John Cameron made a few appearances on the late night radio show, Coast to Coast. A.M. Coast to coast. If you don't know it is a mecca for conspiracy theorists and fans of the paranormal. It airs on 600 stations over four hours in the middle of the night and reaches a vast audience of truckers, shift workers and people who aren't sleeping when they ought to be the life and crimes of Edward Wayne Edwards.
That's our focus tonight Edwards. A misguided boy vowed to be the best criminal ever. A satanic or demonic pack he made he killed scores and scores of people of all ages over a 66 year period and was never caught from murder. Cameron was the perfect guest. A good talker with a calm convincing delivery and an act for unspooling the kind of theories that can fill four hours of radio. What she did. Edwards was an evident believer. He left letters. He was a letter writer. His whole life.
That's why on the front of his book he says now I'm a writer. Well, that's what the zodiac killer was also. The zodiac killer was a writer. The zodiac. This is Cameron's Rosetta Stone. Everything comes back to it. Cameron traces the whole thing back to July 2010 when he was obsessively pouring over Edward's memoir. Page 232. He remembers the exact page.
I'm not going to take you down to deep here, but basically Cameron saw clues in the book that pointed to the zodiac case. Enough of them that it hit him like a revelation, especially because the zodiac targeted couples parked in cars, just like the Edwards cases in Wisconsin, Doyle's Town. Cameron asked a friend of his, a savant as he described it to me, to take a crack at the infamous zodiac's slifers.
The friend spoke several languages, had closely studied the Egyptian book of the dead. It took him only 24 hours, and when he finally cracked the Egyptian hieroglyphic code, there it was. I'm Edward E. I'm not sure the world's top cryptologists would believe him, but Cameron did. After that, Cameron saw Edwards everywhere he looked. It wasn't just the couples in cars. He was on the lookout for hidden messages, symbolic dates, anonymous letters to police.
If even one of these things fit a famous cold case, Cameron decided that Edwards was the killer. When I tried to follow threads myself, sitting there at his dining room table, looking at papers, I just got lost. There's no sense to so much of it. But that doesn't matter much when you're a guest on Coast to Coast.
He created a series of murders all over the country where he kidnapped young girls out of their hulls while they slept. Tortured three little boys in a park in Chicago, stabbed pregnant women to death, and shot women on college campuses and left items clutched in their hands. It was kind of a series. You couldn't cast a net any wider. In the scope of his one appearance, Cameron ranges from the Black Dahlia killing in 1947 to Chandra Levy in 2002.
He also mentioned the West Memphis 3. It was Edwards who killed those three eight-year-old boys. Cameron didn't just the Edwards work in those killings. He saw Edwards himself in the background of a scene from Paradise Lost, the famous documentary about the case. The limitations of a podcast prevent me from showing you this video. You can find it yourself on YouTube if you really want. But let me save you the time. This random Santa, I'm not sure who he is, but he's not at Edwards.
Cameron talks like a cop, and at times like a Raymond Chandler character. If you love pulp, can't get enough true crime, he can sound authoritative. And that authority provides cover for huge leaps and logic, at least most of the time. There's another moment on Coast to Coast when Cameron spends the story so wild that when he's finished, the host just pauses for an uncomfortably long time.
You research these kind of cases. You see all of these stories. Do you ever think that the obsession of tracking this kind of story makes you start seeing a, you know, a boogie man behind every corner and seeing him in these cases? I know that's quite a few of the questions that we had after your first visit was it just seems you were too willing to believe that he was there everywhere, like a shadow.
Yeah, and that's the way this whole thing is played out is that's in fact how it at Edwards was. He was the shadow. He was the ghost killer. He was the zodiac killer. You know your way too far in the weeds when even the Coast to Coast guy is dubious. Coast to Coast wasn't his only media spot. For a while there, Cameron was on fringe radio a lot and the theory started to spread.
Conspiracy radio, begat conspiracy internet, which ultimately begat a conspiracy TV show. But this TV show was on a major cable network. It was a six part television event that aired in the spring of 2018 on the Paramount network. It's not exactly frontline, but it's in a hell of a lot of homes. The show is called it was him and laid out some of the more outrageous claims from Cameron's book. And that's how he ended up talking to Megan Kelly on the today show.
Ed Edwards lived a life of crime and trauma. Edwards lost his mother through suicide at the age of two and later was allegedly abused by those men to care for him. Some including former detective John Cameron say these events contributed to Edwards life as a career criminal. He had rage. He was diagnosed a sadom as a kiss. When who who who diagnosed him. That was the first I've ever heard of that who I like to know where he got that information from last summer.
We sat down with April and watched this segment. She hadn't seen it. She avoided the show and everything related to Cameron in his work on purpose. They'd met once way back in September 2010. When Cameron showed up at her house and she took him to be a legitimate investigator working on her dad's case. She and her husband Michael invited Cameron in. But it only took 15 minutes or so before they were shooting each other looks trying to figure out how to get rid of him.
Watching this Megan Kelly tape was the most time she's been with him since. At first Cameron comes across pretty well on Kelly's stage. He doesn't seem like a crank or anything until he begins spinning some of his more tenuous theories, including Edwards' connection to Lacey Peterson. Actually, he was Lacey was killed six years after Joe Manay Ramsey Edwards ties a lot of his murders to 666.
Okay, that's just absolutely ludicrous. To me that is just totally ludicrous. It's crazy. Have no idea how he came up with that idea. But that's where the evidence led. What evidence? Seriously, what evidence? And he's not great. Lacey was killed on Christmas Eve. Her body was found on Palm Sunday. He stages his murders on Christian holidays. Fourth of July, more Memorial days. Anything that's a significant day in history. You also suggest he may be responsible for this.
So and then all right, now the ones that he confessed to were any of those on any holidays? No. No. To be fair to Megan Kelly, she doesn't simply hand Cameron a megaphone. She presses him at times. Like when he says he's certain that Edward's not the cheating husband killed Lacey Peterson. What was he seeing Amber Fry? Scott Peterson's a fair partner. I mean, like this one seems like a big leap. Well, that's what everybody said. And that's the one I've gotten the most stuff about.
But other than a few moments when she presses him, Kelly respectfully lets Cameron explain how Edwards' book provides a roadmap to as many murders. And he doesn't seem like the crank anyone else saying these words would. It's one thing to hear these unfounded assertions on tinfoil hat radio. It's another thing entirely when you hear them from a former detective sitting on a chair across from Megan Kelly.
He would kill by knife, by rope, by gun and by fire. Strangle him, stab him, burn him, shoot him. That, by the way, basically no evidence. But here's the other thing. Some of Cameron's theories are not totally nuts. The zodiac did kill couples on Lover's lane. And when Cameron tells Megan Kelly that Edwards killed Jimmy Hoffa, that sounds completely bananas.
But Edwards did know Jimmy Hoffa. He wrote about in his book. They served time together at Lewisburg. Hoffa got him his first job with the trucking company after prison. So if you're sitting in your kitchen with a bowl of cornflakes watching this guy on TV, rather than thinking, oh, the today's show just gave 15 minutes to a fabulous. There's a chance you walk away thinking, wow, I just learned about the greatest serial killer of all time.
Here's the $50,000 question. How did John Cameron, a guy who caught real murders, get here? I honestly can't explain it. I don't think it's about fame or money. I really do think that John Cameron believes what he's saying and that to him, I'm the crazy one. Remember when Cameron called Edwards in jail back in January 2011? They were trading letters too for months. And Cameron saw clues in everyone.
Here's another thing too. I don't know if people know this or not. John Cameron was actually giving my dad money when no one else would. None of his children, his wife, he was my dad had been writing different people reaching out to them, asking them to send him money. With that being said, my dad's going to do anything now, saying anything, play his games to keep that money coming in.
And part of me feels sorry for John because I think some of his theories that he has got is because my dad fed him to him intentionally. It gave him a bunch of bullshit and John fell for it. It's kind of sad. If you think about it, it's sad. If I wasn't so pissed at him for all the roadblocks he set up and made it more difficult for us because of what he's done, I would think I would have nothing but empathy and sympathy for him.
April's obsessed with trying to figure out what her dad did, just like Cameron is. She wants to clarify what's real and what's not. As far as she's concerned, Cameron doesn't clarify anything. The clues that he sees everywhere just muddy the water. But sometimes April sees those clues too. Like one day, we were at her house. She had the suitcases out again, file scattered around and living room carpet. Okay. So here's the envelope I was talking about that I started labeling things.
On this one manila envelope, she scribbled a bunch of dates in a column. So if you look at these, he loved his adoptive mom and see when Lillian dies. Look at all these August, August. All these important people, his beloved grandfather dies in August. His beloved adopted mom is born in August. His mom, who he didn't realize was his true mom dies in August. Then some other important dates in August is his name change. His adoptive name is in August.
This date of August just keeps popping out everywhere and a lot of his murders were in August. It's just something that just popped out. Right before this, she shared another theory that her dad's weird motivational record is called build a fire in the person and not under them because he was an arsonist. She thinks the fire might be a clue. It's a little bit like the use of fire on the record where like, I don't know, it could be a total coincidence or could not.
No, I mean, I don't think it's coincidence. No. Coming up, murderer's daughter meets murderer's myth maker. That's right after this break. This past January, April, Jonathan and I went to Great Falls, Montana. We decided to go see John Cameron. April wanted to talk to him. She had some things to get off her chest. And I didn't see any way to tell the true story of Ed Edwards without confronting the mythology head on. Hi. Nice to see you. Hi. How are you?
I'm good. How are you doing? You've heard on the phone a few times. Cameron lives in a tidy two-story house on a leafy street in the middle of Great Falls. His porch lights for some reason are red. What's up with the red lights? They're from Christmas, three years ago. I've never taken them down. The mirror I saw three years ago. The one with its me written in fake blood. It's still the first thing you see when you walk in.
It smells nice and clean. I appreciate that, especially being a bachelor. I cleaned it all night last night. Just for us? Yeah. Whoa, you have three pianos? Oh, I had an organ. I wasn't sure how April was going to react to Cameron. And even though I'd given him a heads up, the two was coming, he still couldn't believe it when he looked out the window and saw Ed Edwards' daughter coming up the walk. And yet, it was all very normal seeming. Friendly. John introduced us to three weener dogs.
Hello, hello here. One of them immediately peed on the floor. Hi there. Cameron laid everything out from his investigation on the dining room table for us. Legal pads covered in notes, folders, printouts of emails. You know, I tried to haul everything out, but it's just, there it is. It's in boxes, binders, and that's everything right there. You're gonna sit in here? I mean, while we go through this stuff, that makes sense. Yeah. But... Help yourself.
Why don't you show us what we have here? There's like four, six binders. I have not looked inside these forever. I know, yeah, but I cleaned it all up after the show. And just I didn't want to have, didn't want to really deal with it again. And actually just doing this a little bit today. It's just like, ugh. So you feel like you're done with it? No, I'm sitting here waiting on pins and needles for this case in Illinois, the Christopher Coleman case.
That's the case with all those crazy drawings that I have over on that piano. Did you see those? Cameron pulled out some crime-seemed photos from one terrible case that's not even worth getting into. The guy in Illinois was convicted of killing his family. Cameron's convinced that this guy was wrongly convicted, and that it was actually Ed Edwards who killed his family. Okay, so my question is, why do you think it was my dad? What would be the reasoning behind it?
He killed three people on 5593 in West Memphis. 55 was always important to your dad, because 55 is EE Day. Did you get that? EE Day. Ed Edwards Day. He always uses letters and numbers, the fifth letter, alphabet is EE. So killing three on 55 was something that had done in the past. Anybody has three other three people? Ah, the West Memphis three. 5593. But they were juveniles, right? Yep, they were three kids. Bullshit. But your father also killed three kids in 1955 in Chicago. Bullshit.
Yeah, when before he came here. Yes, he did. No, he didn't. Bullshit. I would take my life on it. My dad does not kill kids. Unless, unless that child would have hurt one of us. Ah, yeah, I just totally disagree. He loved killing kids. Nope. April kept her cool. She was going to call Bullshit if she heard it, but she hadn't flown across the country to yell at John Cameron. We sat down in his living room. One of the weiner dogs jumped into John's lap.
For almost two hours, the conversation was just surreal. I was listening to a woman whose father was a murderer, argued with the conspiracy theorist to turn him into a cartoon serial killer. Let's just talk about a couple things. Do you still believe that my father killed John Benet? I can prove that he was in Burton at that time. I was in 96, so my kids were really young. It was still Christmas time. The other thing is he had just killed Danny Boy.
He was also very much involved in trying to plant evidence, get evidence, very much on the cover-up of Danny. Yes, he was not traveling. He was staying in Burton at that time. Do you think your dad ever chartered planes? I can't say either way. That's why I bring up John Benet's, because she wasn't killed on Christmas Day. She was killed on Christmas night. Not Christmas Eve, but Christmas night after 10 o'clock at night.
Actually, no one knows what any certainty what time of day she died, or whether it was the 25th or the 26th. I'm trying to understand what you're saying. You're saying that all of this story jives because he could have been with the family for Christmas and then chartered a plane. And chartered a plane. Right up to Boulder, Colorado. But why? To kill Roman A. I'm telling you what, that ransom note is signed by the Zodiac. The Zodiac again. It always comes back to the Zodiac. You know what?
April didn't tell his shoot this one down. I believe that my dad was consumed with the Zodiac. I believe my dad was great at copying things and taking on other identities and manipulating people. So the Zodiac, I mean, we're all, you know, I don't know. But I can look you in the eye and tell you he did not kill John Benet. I don't know what he likes that one. At various times, April, Jonathan and I each challenged him.
We were all trying to understand how this unflavable cop couldn't see where he'd gone wrong. I think what's so hard about this, if we're trying to get to the truth, which I think everybody is here, is that a lot of this is built on the Zodiac. Which is not a thing we know. Nobody knows. Well, I know that's why I've said from the very beginning, you have to go with the understanding that he was the Zodiac. Why? Why? Why? Why take that start to work?
I can say it, you know, nobody else has really done the work to see if he's the Zodiac. But if he did the work, it's work you can show. Well, I did, I published the book and I did a show and I tried to get to it. I didn't have any proof. I mean, I even, you know, was the one who in the beginning even said that I wouldn't be surprised if my dad was the Zodiac. I would be willing. I want you to show me the proof that he was the Zodiac. But I don't see that proof.
But I can tell you the murders that he admitted to and some of the other murders that we're looking into, I can prove he was there. Whereas the ones that you are accusing him of... You can't prove. Right. They're crazy, okay, John? They're crazy. I'm saying that nicely. I'm not telling you that you're crazy. I'm just telling... You're not telling me anything that I have not heard. You're facts. That's what bothers me.
You can say anything you want about my dad, as long as you can prove to me that they're true. We've been sitting there talking for most of the afternoon and something started to happen to a subtle. I've seen Cameron challenge before. I've argued the particulars of certain cases within many times. He just doesn't see ground. But talking to April and me and Jonathan, he started to crack. Just a little. Oh, I've been wrong about some of them, actually.
I'm fine with that. You can't be a good investigator if you're not willing to say, hey, I fucked up. I screwed that one up. Here's the thing. You just admitted that sometimes you've been wrong. I think a lot of people would have no problems with you. I've said the things that April has said and others have said to you, if you said, here's what's possible. Evidence has led me to believe that this is what's possible. But you're not saying that. You're saying, here's what happened.
Well, I guess I'm putting it in the way that this is what I believe happened. And I lay out the evidence like I did in my book and let you decide if I'm wrong, I'm wrong. I've never heard you say, here's what I believe happened. Yeah, neither have I. You put it as, this is fact. This is how it's happened. That's probably how I wrote it in my book. That's how I've heard you say it. You state it. That's how you talked about it on the today show. Yeah, well, that's what I truly believe happened.
And I did the work to get to those conclusions. I'm not a police station. I don't have access to all the information that they have. I never will. I can only go with what I can get publicly. And with Ed, it was always about following the writings and the letters. And that's how this whole thing played out. He's a zodiac. He's a writer. He taunts the police. And he kills. To John Cameron's credit, he was a patient host. He sat there with a docks on his lap.
As three people told him in a variety of ways that he was wrong and crazy. And in April's due, doing real harm. He listened, nodded and said over and over that we weren't telling him anything he hadn't heard before. You know, I think I've become so desensitized to this whole thing that no matter what anybody says, I just have to shrug it off and move forward. I disagree with you. I see the look in your face. I don't think your desensitized. I think it affects you.
Oh, I'm sure it does. I know it. But what I mean, I work in an old folks home now. And people die there every week. And people say, well, doesn't that bother you? And you know, to see someone die in an old age and go, it doesn't bother me. I don't get bothered by it. I think it's wonderful. They had a great life. And now that's the way I'm kind of looking at this whole ed thing is like, I got to do something that nobody else got to do. I got to do something that nobody else got to do.
There's something to unpack there, I think. Like, maybe it explains how Cameron got here. And why he persists. This obsession had cost him so much. He lost his job, his insurance, the respect to former colleagues. Unbelievably, when all that was on the line, Cameron picked Edwards. And I think I understand now why he did. It made him feel important. Cameron saved everything on his idea of Edward Wayne Edwards, the Boogie Man. And he got a lot out of that. He wrote a book. He got a TV series.
And there are people on the internet, even now, who tell him he's brave for pursuing the truth. So if he admits that he's wrong, all that goes away. I'd considered a lot of ways this Cameron thing could go down. They would kick us out or April would storm out. Or maybe we just leave feeling exactly the same way we felt when we started. But I never imagined that Cameron would say this.
Yeah, here's what I would like to see is for you to take all of that information and sounds like you guys are doing your own investigation and run with it. And see where it goes. Because that way I don't have to do it. But finally, somebody else is doing it. And I appreciate that. I more than willing, that's the whole purpose of me actually getting this whole thing in the first place was to get people on board to look at what the possibilities are here.
The next day Cameron brought a duffel bag stuffed with files to our hotel and just gave them to us. All of his originals. He was passing the baton to April he said. I'd ask to borrow some things because as much as I dismiss Cameron's outlandish ideas, there's also real police work in some of his notes. The first time we met in that hospital room, I told him a good way to undercut all the criticism was to solve one murder. Proven a single instance that Edwards did something you're suggesting.
And why not start in your own backyard with the first case you ever considered? The 1956 killings of two kids on Lever's Lane right here in Great Falls. April and I both think Edwards might have had something to do with those murders. Cameron is sure of it. But he told us the sheriff had another suspect. Here's the guy they were targeting in Great Falls, Wayne Blackwell. That's the airman that they're stuck on and they had knew him. Blackwell. I'd never heard that name before.
But that night I started going through the files Cameron gave me and there it was again. Blackwell. In an email from a reporter in Oregon. That reporter had been helping Cameron look at a different murder case. Another couple on Lever's Lane. This one was in Portland in 1960. Turns out Blackwell had been a suspect out there. In that case too. I fired off an email to a local sheriff's sergeant who'd met with us earlier as a favorite April.
But he'd been unwilling to share anything new about the 1956 case. I asked this time if the name Blackwell meant anything to him. Maybe later I got a reply. When can you come in and talk? We have people. We'll look at that hat. Now I feel like I'm in Montana. That would be a cowboy hat. Atop the head of Scott Van Dyken. The extremely tall captain of operations for the sheriff's. It's a Saturday so he's in a weekend clothes. As is John Cadner, the sergeant I emailed.
On our previous visit the two men were friendly but not very forthcoming. This time things were different. So I guess to start off with you mentioned something that got our interest today. A name? Blackwell. How do you know about Blackwell? I don't know a lot about Blackwell. But I know that he was a suspect in Portland and a suspect here. And for some reason was cleared here at one point. He was. Turns out it's Arnold Blackwell. Not Wayne.
Arnold Blackwell had been in the Air Force in 1956. Stationed here. He's dead now. But we learned from the sheriff's that Cameron was right. Blackwell was very much a suspect in the Great Falls murders. The two cops also confirmed something else. The Blackwell was in Portland in 1960. Guess who else was in Great Falls in 1956? In Portland in 1960. Ed Edwards.
So if he and Edwards were both in both places and one of those two people later killed several other couples on Lovers Lanes, like I, it doesn't make me think less that Edwards was involved here. You guys are nodding and smiling. I just want to. This is only odd. I want to know. Who nodding and smiling? I never nodded and smiled. Is that on tape? We know for a fact that they're both here and they're both there at the same time. Nearly identical murder. Nearly identical murders occur.
We know for a fact there. We know for a fact that DNA on our scene does not match your father. But I do not know that these guys do not know each other. Honestly, I don't. Kind of ironic that both of those people are here at the same time. Wouldn't you think? We said that we weren't going to solve any murders on this show. But then this came up. Is it more than just coincidence? We think so. That's next week on The Claring.
The Claring is a production of Pineapple Street Media, an association with Gimli. It's produced by Jonathan M. Hevar and me. I'm Josh Dean. Our associate producers are Josh Gwyn, Dean Ecliner, and Elliot Adler, editing by Joel Lovell. Our fact checker has been Thaline. Our theme song is Modaphinal Blues by Matthew Deere, music clearance by Anthony Roman. The episode was mixed by Hannah Sprown and Jonathan M. Hevar.
Jenna Weiss-Berman and Max Linsky are the executive producers of Pineapple Street. Before we go, here's a little extra. As we were leaving John Cameron's house, he offered to play us a little something on one of those pianos. And when you're feeling lonely and small, you need somebody there to hold you. You can call out my name when you're only lonely. Ooh, I don't you ever be ashamed, you're only lonely. Name that song. Jesus, when you're only lonely. 1979. I have no carpet.