The Clearing is a show about crime and the trauma that can result from crime. It may not be suitable for all audiences. Oh, this is the one where Danny called him, remember? This one too, I think. Or there may be more than one of those. Let's try this one. This is The Clearing. I'm Josh Dean. Episode 6. Give Yourself Up Son. And this is Ed Edwards in May 1996. He's talking with Danny Boy Edwards, the troubled 24-year-old who Ed and his wife Kay had taken in the year before.
Danny Boy has just gone AWOL from the Army. Where are you at? I'm out about dead. Can't tell you where I'm at. Hey, are you okay? All right, everything's going good. All right. But you won't tell me where you're at. No, I can't do that, Dad. Why? Because I don't want to try anything wrong. We're going to rewind today and tell the story of Danny Boy and his eventual murder in more detail. It's a crime that Ed Edwards documented thoroughly on paper and on tape.
The box of cassettes we keep referring to. A bunch of them were recordings from a two-year period throughout 1996 and 97. When Edwards planned the murder, executed it, and then pointed the finger at someone else. A warning. This is a hard one. It shows Ed Edwards that his sickest and most cunning. It's also the story that haunts April the most. Though, if it hadn't been for her, Edwards never would have been caught. He evaded the cops for 13 years.
So it's also a stunning example of how easy it is to get away with murder. Or, if you look at it from the other side, how hard it is to solve one. Danny Boy. That's just what Ed called him. His real name was Danny Log Lockner. He grew up in Cleveland, but his parents died when he was 14 and he moved into a group home with nine other boys near Burton, Ohio, where the Edwards family lived. Danny struggled in school, but he thrived in other ways. He drew, he painted, he loved animals that did 4-H.
Despite being scrawny, he joined the wrestling team and wrestled all four years of high school in the 119-pound weight class. That's how he got to know Edwards. Beds boys were on the team. After graduating high school in 1992, Danny moved out of the group home and wandered a bit. At one point, he traveled all over America working as a carny. When he came back to Burton in 1995, he moved in with a guy named Ralph, who'd also lived in the group home.
But that didn't last long. Ralph kicked him out, so Danny needed a place to live and he moved in with Ed and Kay. April was long gone by then. Ed tried to adopt Danny, but the court wouldn't allow him to adopt an adult. It did allow Danny to change his last name to Edwards, though. And he started calling it dad. I never saw Danny as an adopted son to my dad. I always saw my dad as using Danny. I never saw that bond. Danny wasn't... He was a little bit slower.
I don't know what this means exactly, but it's a thing a lot of people say about Danny. He was naive and easy to manipulate. What April thinks is that Danny and Ed kind of needed each other. My dad was getting on in years. His children were out of the house. He needed some help. And I saw that he manipulated Danny and was using Danny to his benefit. In what way? What was Danny doing for him and I totally understand?
I mean, just everyday little things to help him around the house. Even fetch him things. My dad would... he was horrible for not wanting to get up out of his chair. I mean, growing up, I felt like I was a retriever. Go get me this. Go get that. Go get that. And you know, it just went down to each one of us, his kids. And when the kids were gone, who else was, you know, so Danny just fit that... Who does go to guy? Ed made Danny's personal project.
Three of April's siblings had enlisted in the military, and Ed decided to get Danny into the army too. He helped Danny cram for the army's entrance exam. And monitored his workouts every day to bulk Danny up. Sit ups, push ups, free weights. A bigger problem was Danny's flat feet. The night before he was going to have his feet photographed by the army, it's true. He actually used to do that. Ed duct taped cans of baked beans to the bottom of Danny's feet and made him walk around.
So that when the pictures were taken, they'd show some arch. Somehow, all of this worked. Danny enlisted in the fall of 1995 and shipped off in January for basic training in Oklahoma. A private from his platoon later told MPs that Danny was fine physically, but would stress out often and couldn't take criticism. Sometime that spring of 96, Danny injured his ankle and the army decided to give him a medical discharge. He was going to come home.
But two days before that happened, on May 6, 1996, Danny went on the run. The army declared a Maywall. They sent MPs to the Edwards House to look for him. But no one heard anything from Danny until two days later, when Ed got the call we played at the top of this episode. Well, first of all, I'm glad that you're safe. But look, you know your AWL. Right. I know that. Let me tell you something. We'll give you a word of advice.
You go to the nearest Army Recruiting Station or base or wherever you're at and turn yourself in. Turn yourself in, son, because if you do, I'll bet you with it two or three weeks, you'll be out. Free. Walk into streets. No problems. But if you don't, and you keep running, you know after 30 days, you're going to be a deserter. Yeah. Danny doesn't seem to care about being a deserter. What's really on his mind is his former housemate, Ralph.
The one he lived with before getting kicked out of the house and moving in with Ed. Look, look at that letter I wrote to you about Ralph. Yeah. Well, he wants his money. Yeah. I'll tell you what you need about it. I can take it anymore and he'll tell you what I'll about it. So Danny borrowed money from Ralph. Well. How much, and when, is it entirely clear? It's also unclear and would remain that way for a long time. Why Danny's saying all these things and these conversations with Ed.
How are you doing? I mean, you don't have money or whatever. Well, it's sort of something I want to talk to you about, Dad. What's that? Talk to me, what? Well. A couple of nights ago. I don't remember when they were, but when you were in my home, I was at a better house. Yeah. And I had to get in so there wasn't winders that I found out whether I'm locked. A window unlocked? Yes. Where? You know where your treadmill and bike is? Yeah. There. So here I see it is unlocked.
So go ahead, I'm listening. I remember now I was getting a house looking around. When I couldn't get my bag and stuff. Your bag or with the attic? Yes. Yeah. And I've seen that bottle with a change in it. Just money? Yes. That big bottle? Yes. Yeah. Jeff is April's youngest brother. He was working overseas when Ed took Danny in, but some of his stuff was still in the house, including apparently this big water jug with a bunch of money in it.
You got the money out of there and I had to pick the bottle to get it. No. Jeff will appreciate that. Yeah. Because there was about 260 bucks in that. Believe me, it wasn't easy. I saw, and with downstairs looking around and seeing a couple of... And broke some of the cards and had credit cards in them. You... Credit cards. Yes. Uh... Paying numbers with them. Uh huh. So have you been using that credit card? Yes, I have. Uh huh. Where are you at? Say it at me.
Okay. So, you might be wondering what the hell is going on here. It's complicated, but for now the short explanation is, Danny really has gone AWOL. He really does owe Ralph money, and Ralph really has been harassing him for it. But everything he's saying in his conversation... It's been scripted by Ed. Ed works put him up to all of it. Told him to break into the house and steal Jeff's money. He even told him to break the glass jug and cut himself on it. It's all a complete sham.
Ed knows exactly where Danny is. He's calling from a pay phone five minutes down the road. April, Jonathan and I listened to this call for the first time together. We just got in the tapes from Jagga County and we were sitting on the floor of April's bedroom. The acting's pretty good. Yeah. Like, it's convincing. This is not his first con. How do you think he got away with it for all those years? But Danny's too. Like Danny's saying, it all sounds natural.
I'm sure my dad prepped him over and over and over. The next obvious question is, why? What con is Ed running? Or more accurately, what con does Danny think he and Ed are running? It's impossible to know what Ed told Danny exactly. It's the one thing he never puts on paper or says on tape. You can imagine some motivations Danny might have had. He didn't like the army. Lots of people describe him as gullible and he clearly trusted Edwards. Who we know is gifted at manipulating people.
Why would Danny go along with this, especially when he was about to be medically discharged? That part's a mystery. I'm not sure what he thought. But I can guarantee you that my dad had him rehearse it and rehearse it until it was just second nature to him. When she was younger, April had to rehearse stories, her dad fed her to. Stories to cover for abuse, like visible bruises from beatings. I wonder how familiar this seems.
Exactly. That's what I'm saying. It's like Deja Vu, him training me or coaching me to tell the story, to cover up for something. I could just see him doing the same thing to Danny. Except Danny has no idea. Well, he does know that he's lying, but he doesn't really know what role he's playing in this play. Totally oblivious. Danny thinks that he and Ed are in on a scheme together. What he doesn't know is that he's an unwitting participant in a much, much darker scheme.
One that, when you think about it, seems to have begun way back when Ed first took Danny in. Get him into the army, take out some life insurance policies, then kill him, collect the money, and pin the murder on someone else. Ralph. You might not remember, but Edwards admitted to all that back in episode three of this show. In his confession to Brian Johnston, the cop would have been trying to solve the case for 13 years.
Anyway, when you listen to this 1996 call between Ed and Danny with that in mind, it's somehow both incredibly dark and comically transparent. This is like a conversation no two humans would ever have. Like talking about it in this way is like so mechanical, now that you think about it. That's where I was thinking. Oh, by the way, and then this thing happened. It's just not the way you would have this conversation.
If you're like, I took some money from my brother, I'm sorry, like I'm on the run. It's not like, how did you get in and what exactly credit card did you take? Could be my dad's juice that he was making fishing for the answers, making Danny talk. Yeah, but really when he's trying to get his all of the important facts on tape so that he can give it to the cops and be like, he broke in, he admits to everything.
Well, every time it seems like Danny isn't quite following the script, he then says, let me ask you a question. Yeah, right. Let me ask you something, I'm just thinking of something here with those credit cards. There was also, I think, I'm not certain. Was there any blank checks with those? Yes, there were. Uh huh. And it's my guess then you're writing checks on them. Yeah. Uh huh. That's clearly something Danny was supposed to say and forgot to say.
It almost sounds like Danny's not following the role play so my dad is having to fill in for it. Right. On top of the money in the glass jug, Cash Advanced checks from two different credit cards and Jeff's name, as well as personal checks from his bank account, were stolen, filled out in Danny's name, and then deposited into a joint account edit setup so that Danny could deposit his army pay checks into it. The stolen checks told $4,363. As the call progresses, Ed continues to prompt Danny.
He says he noticed some clothing, socks, missing from a dresser in Jeff's room. Did you take any of Jeff's clothes? Yes, I took a couple pants. You took a couple pants. Socks, underwear. You know they weren't yours to take, son. Yeah, not a bad. I'll not have any replays. Do you realize how much trouble you can get into? Yes, I do. That's a pretty eerie line. I'm not sure if I'm like, you know how much trouble you can get into. I mean, considering what we know, the outcome of the story is.
Danny just thinks he's in trouble for stealing some socks. I mean, doesn't it? Doesn't it just make you sick? Go and give yourself up to the army. I can't do that. Well, I mean, Danny, I don't want to tell the police that you broke in. I don't want to tell the police that you stole Jeff's money or you stole his credit cards or you stole his clothing. Uh, uh, or whatever else you might have taken. Edward seems to have thought of everything.
It's like he's working from a checklist, making sure to cover everything the cops might possibly ask about Danny's break in. Like, Edward said this big rot while I'm in Misha. Clearly he's considered that the cops might ask why this ferocious dog didn't react to someone climbing through an unlocked window. And Danny has an answer ready. Because at first, Misha did come after him. She gave you a hard time, huh? Little bit, but found in my doggy treats to care of that.
Oh, okay, there is a bag of bits sitting right there. Look, Danny, please, you won't tell me where you're at. I know there's got to be a recruiting office somewhere around. Give yourself, up, son, you know that I'm going to have to report this phone call. Yeah. So you was here that night? Yes, I've been there about three times before. You've been here three times? Yes. You've been here three times while we haven't been home? Yes. There hasn't been three nights that we haven't been home.
Then a couple times a one day and one time another night. During the day? Yes. You've been home during the day? Yes. How? Very carefully. Do that window? Yes. Danny is getting off script. Because I can just tell him my dad's, look at my dad's, I don't know what to say. Yeah, he's one thing, so you've got guts. One other thing I want to, wouldn't Danny have keys to the house? He would think so. Right. Like, quote unquote son at this point, right? Yeah, why wouldn't he have keys?
I don't remember where my parents keep in the house locked, honestly. Right, but it needs to be locked for the sake of the story because Danny has to go in through a window because then it seems more like a crime. I want you to stay safe. I want you to be healthy. I want you to call me, Danny, anytime you need to, anytime you need help. Call me. All right. Come here, Danny. Call me. Keep in touch with me, and I wish you let me know where you're at, but I wish you'd please give yourself up.
I can't. Ain't no way, Matt. I'm free. I can't go back. I would like to say I'm sorry for the things that are happening. But, uh, we'll make it up. Things will get. We've placed them. Because I know from that letter, you guy. You said you said Ralph was after you for your money. Yeah, I know. You're not fucking out. Yeah. So. Okay, so again, Danny obviously doesn't know that Ed plans on killing him, and he's going to try and pin the murder on Ralph.
But, in other words, he needs to make it clear on the call that Ralph has a motive to go after Danny. So, when he hands his tape over to cops, they'll understand the narrative. Danny went AWOL, then broke into the house to steal money so that he could pay off Ralph, because he was afraid Ralph was going to hurt him. Alright, well, fuck. I'm going to let you get off the phone. Uh, call me. And please think about giving yourself up. I'll be there. I'll think about it. And stay safe. I will.
And when you do get picked up and you're going to, give me a call from jail. Okay. Let us know what's happening. Okay. Hey, we love you. Oh, I'm a fan. And do not come back to try to break into the house. So, it ends there. April, it's pretty obvious. You just screamed out, oh God, when he said, I love you, but I don't know. Do you have anything else to say about it? Or do you say to that? I honestly don't know what to even say. I mean, evil, evil.
Knowing that what he has planned all along and the elaborate, I don't know. I don't even know how to describe it. I just, it's hard to even comprehend that someone can do it. I mean, it's just... One thing that's sort of striking about that tape is that, you know, I don't know. You think that when you're, like, when you imagine evil or hear it, it's going to sound like some, like, menacing, horrific, scary person.
And that's just, like, a different manifestation of, like, someone who lacks empathy and human emotions and can, like, say, I love you to a person that you're, know that you're going to murder. Like, it's a different, not sure I've, like, heard it in real life before. Sometimes the week after this call was recorded in early May 1996, we still don't know for sure which day.
Ed Edwards lured Danny Boy to a cemetery near their home by telling him a guy was coming to pick him up to take him out of town, to lay low for a while, until Ed figured things out. Ed met Danny at the cemetery to wait with him. He asked Danny to get some cigarettes out of a bag on the ground. And when Danny crouched down, Ed pulled a shot gun out of another bag and shot him in the back of the skull. When the first shot didn't kill him, Ed fired again.
After the break, Ed Edwards does hand this tape and more over the cops. And a 13-year-long game of cat and mouse begins. There's no question at this point in the show that Ed Edwards is an irredeemably terrible person. And you can't really measure the horror of one murder against another. But this one, killing this lost man, he pretended to save a young man who trusted him. It sure feels different. Ed Edwards appears to applaud it from the moment he took Danny Boy in.
And it was always about money. Ed Edwards made himself the beneficiary of two life insurance policies. He helped Danny take the first one out for 50,000 after he came to live in the house. The second one for 200,000 came with Danny's army enlistment. But it would only kick in after he finished basic training. The plan was for Danny to be murdered when he was on his break between basic training and the beginning of his advanced training.
This is Brian Johnson, the Ohio detective you heard in episode three. He's the one that Ed Edwards eventually confessed to in 2010. He worked on Danny's case from the beginning. So the plan was simple at first. Danny would finish basic training and that Ed would kill him. But Danny heard his ankle, so he went out on a disability. Now, once he went out and got discharged, that life insurance policy would be no-unvoid. However, if he went AWOL, the life insurance policy was still intact.
I know this doesn't seem logical, but it is in fact true. Medical discharge would mean Danny was no longer in the military, which means no life insurance policy. But if someone goes AWOL and turns up dead, the policy is valid. Because in that case, the person has not officially left the military yet. And that's why Ed was planning this to have him go AWOL two days before he was going to be discharged. Of course, Brian didn't know any of this at first.
When Ed was handed over the tape of the call, he wanted cops to think Danny was on the run from his menacing former housemate. And it worked. The agger cops really did ask Ralph some questions, treating him like a person who really might have played a role in Danny's disappearance. And until Edwards confessed in 2010, they still thought Ralph was involved in some way. Also, while this tape seems extremely fishy in hindsight, Brian says that at first he didn't find it that suspicious.
I wasn't surprised because Edwards tape recorded everything. So basically, it wasn't a red flag that this whole thing was staged. And it was believable, to a point. Edwards was doing a lot more to deflect suspicion than just handing over the tapes of his calls with Danny Boy. He typed an anonymous letter and mailed it to Geogasherif, pointing the finger at Danny's brother. He meant Ralph.
Danny planted photos of Danny's US Army Duffelbag, plus a photo of what appeared to be a body on his own porch, and called police to report that someone had left them there. Edwards was also calling people, playing grieving father and helpful investigator. He called soldiers at Fort Siul, Oklahoma, who are in basic with Danny, pretending to be desperate for info. I'm sorry, I'm not sure what you're doing. On some of these calls, Ed made sure to bring up Ralph.
As well as made several threats against Danny. Here, Danny's also. Thank you very much, and I'm very sorry. I'm not the friend, too. Well, thank you. Thank you, Ed. According to police files, Edwards was asked to come in and talk to detect it was a few times in June 1996, but declined. Instead, he wrote and handed over a 71-page history of his relationship with Danny, one that included various theories about what could have happened to him.
It pointed the finger at Ralph repeatedly, and stated that Edwards was both distraught about the loss of Danny and so angry at Ralph that he might seek revenge. Edwards gave this document to the cops and then got on the phone with Brian to talk about it. As I said, I wrote, I tried. You know, this was my only outlet was to put it on a paper. You know what I'm saying? And I was putting my thoughts down and as I was, I only outlet. And that's why they're there. Why did you get?
Because you saved me taking a statement from Danny 70 some pages of type range material. All right. At this point, the cops are still not open to murder investigation. Danny Boy was just missing. But something about the story didn't sit right with Brian. He listened to the conversation with Danny Boy that Ed recorded repeatedly, and eventually he noticed something that made him suspect Danny might not be missing at all. Danny might be in the area.
He says that at one point on the tape, Edwards is talking. Brian calls him Wayne. Wayne to say, turn yourself in, son, the police are after you. I'm definitely not telling myself in. Well, I certainly wish to work and would listen to this call on their seagulls. These seagulls are faint and a little hard to hear. Let me play it again. I'm definitely not telling myself in. Well, I certainly wish to work because here's the thing. I knew the seagulls were gone by the reservoir just down the road.
I went down there and it was a pay phone. And believe it or not, we went to get the pay phone records. Turn out a record of calls for that phone was only kept for 30 days. It had been more than 30 days. If we could have proven that he was at that pay phone, that would have really helped the son showing that he was in the area. Instead, months go by with no leads in the case.
And then shortly after Thanksgiving in 1996, six months after Danny won A-Wall, a hunter is in the woods behind a cemetery in Burton, maybe a mile from the Edwards house, and see some bones sticking out of the snow. But he thought it was a deer ball because animals die back in the fields in the woods and with snow cover. The hunter goes about his day. But four months later, he goes back to the site for a second look.
And realize it wasn't a deer. There was a piece of a shoe coming out of the ground. Okay, I'm going to pause here and give you a moment before we go on. This is Grim and it's about to get grimmer. And also more absurd. It's one of the most absurdly grim things I've ever encountered, really. But it's important to the story we're telling because Edward's whole scheme depends on it. Because there was a statue of limitations on the assurance policy for the A-Wall.
So Edwards at certain times would go back there and scatter some of the bones. So that somebody would find them. Edwards had to get that body found because he was right in our time. He's just getting impatient at home thinking like, God, when are they going to find the body of the kid that I killed? So he's like trying to speed the process along? Yeah, and he threw those bones. He showed us how he threw the bones.
And they actually were, some of the bones were recovered in that type of pattern how he were thrown away from the body. He was very frustrated that no one found that body. It's on one of these bone scattering trips that Ed takes the pieces of the skull you heard so much about in episode three. What he told Brian Johnson later is that he took it to throw into a creek near Ralph's house as part of his plot to frame him. Cop searched the area but it never turned up.
Once the bones are found, a corner identifies the body. Here's what Geaga cops know at this point. Danny Boy was murdered sometime in the spring or early summer of 1996. The corner lists the date as undetermined. Officially, the cause of death is shot gun wound with severe head and neck injuries. How soon after the body's found, do you start to change your mind about Edwards to think like, okay, I think he was involved in this if not the actual primary suspect?
I went to Danny's funeral and Edwards showed up there, dressed in black. Thought it was Johnny Cash walking in. And there was a little country church down south end of the county. And I watched Edwards and he put on a show, you know, grieving and I didn't see sincerity in his emotion. Then he stood in the back, his wife was there. But I noticed that the family and the foster kids were there.
And there was no indication of sympathy towards them or them toward Edwards, which I thought was suspicious because the community was coming together for this man. They got killed and actually a child of a man's clothing because he was a victim. Afterwards, there was a very little of any interaction between Edwards and them. And I remember the foster mom telling me, you know, I don't want him there. And we think he's involved.
And she knew that Danny had problems with his foster brother, Ralph also. At one point, she thought maybe Edwards and Ralph were in collusion together. Did she say more to you about why she suspected him? I don't think she was fond of Edwards and him taking Danny in because Danny had grown up with her in her home for a few years and they just seemed to be some tension there. There's actually a recording of this woman talking on the phone to Edwards. It's from right before Danny's funeral.
He's telling her what he's planning to bring to the reception. Okay, here's what we've done. We're having a complete sheet cake made up. Okay. And it will say we love you, Danny. Yeah, I'm not sure. For those months when no one knew where Danny was, the police seemed to be falling for his plot, suspecting that Ralph was somehow involved. So when Danny's body was found, Ralph was a person of interest. But now Brian is increasingly thinking that Ed is involved too. Maybe they're working together.
You're saying basically from the funeral on, you suspect Edwards. But how quickly do you let on to him that you think it's him? Do you try and not let him know right away? Yes. It didn't take long for that to deteriorate when I asked him to come in and take a polygraph test to clear him. He made it into the building and then got chest pains. Just animated and he's very holding his chest and saying, I'm having chest pains. I don't have any nitro. He says, I need some help getting up the stairs.
Can you get me out of here? And that was it. The operator said, I can't do it if he's having a heart attack. Ed is obviously nervous that Brian is now focusing on him. We know this because he loyered up. And again, recorded the call. His very first call to the lawyer. Edwards gives him details. Way too many details about Danny and Ralph. Brian comes up a lot too. Every once in a while he throws that in a situation in there. Is it trying to get me to elaborate and talk more?
And I haven't done this matter back. I've got four signs up that I wrote. One right here on my telephone and one in my car. One of my pocket says, stop talking. We found this lawyer, but we're not going to name him. He didn't want to talk to us and was upset to hear that Edwards had recorded the call. But it's clear from the call that this criminal defense attorney thinks the murder or death protest too much. Because he brings up a point that Edwards should have thought of before.
Honey, I mean, right now, you don't know that it's even a homicide. It's right, another don't have it. Other than the fact that it was buried. You know, he was still. In early summer in 1997, a few months after Danny's funeral, Ed flees the state with K. They moved Arizona near Tucson. But Edwards can't help himself. And he starts to taunt Brian from afar. Until I 31st, he sends a postcard with a picture of the US-Mexico border on the front.
All right, so Brian, here we are in Mexico, although I wish it were you because it is 118 here. So I forget to tell you that we were coming here. Went to the titty club last night. Wife wouldn't go with me. See you later, Wayne and Kay. So it's possible that you didn't even know he was in Arizona yet. And he's basically just sending you this out of the blue. Yes. And in true Wayne fashion, it's postmarked Rico, Texas. So somewhere between Mexico and Texas in Arizona is.
Brian isn't totally giving up. Every so often, he calls to check in. And Ed happily answers. Hello. Big doll. Hey. What about you, man? I've been here most of the day. I missed you. I called you earlier. Yeah. This recording was made on November 29, 1997, just after Thanksgiving. 18 months after Danny went AWOL, and seven months after his body was found. April founded on a microcassette in her parents' mobile home when her dad was arrested. Somehow, the cops had missed it.
As in all the other conversations we've heard, the two men sound like old friends. There's laughing and ball-busting, and somehow unbelievably more jokes about a catheter. Ed was just had one put in. And he winds to Brian about how much it hurts. That serves you right. Is that part of your anatomy? It's called a lot of pain to a lot of women and... All right. All right. Hey. Dr. Lomb. Just trying to establish a rapport with him.
He thinks you guys are friends in addition to being... I mean, he knows your cop, obviously. Yes, he was playing me just as much as I was playing him, I'm sure. But underneath all the joking, there's some tension, too. Brian has told Ed that he's getting close, but the investigation should be coming to an end soon. Hey, you know what? You've got one more day, which is tomorrow, left of November, because you said you were going to have this thing wrapped up and gone in by the end of November.
Oh, that's before we covered that very special and significant evidence. Okay. This evidence, it's a 410 pump-action shotgun, very likely the gun that killed Danny. In September 97, after Edward's skip town, a fisherman found in the reservoir down the road from the cemetery. By the time of this call, a couple months later, Brian has sent the shotgun off to the ATF to run ballistics. But Edward doesn't know any of this. Trust me. Trust. We were out Monday, got some more.
I told you that, didn't I? No. Last Monday, we went out and got some more evidence. Yep. Were you supposed to be gathering this as? Connection with that fence there? Could be. Yeah, whatever. Whatever. So you're right. He thinks here that you're investigating Ralph and not him, right? Yeah, but you could tell in his voice he's getting a little nervous. What are you hearing? I'm hearing that he wants to know what we have. And I'm teasing him.
You could tell that, you know, busting his chops and he says, oh, whatever. Whatever. As I said, told you before, I'm off of that freaking rollercoaster. But got some fine if you don't, whatever. I'm not going to. That's the thing we got some. And once we make the big move here, we'll be coming back to you. It's more information. So he doesn't know here what you're talking about. When you say we found something.
Nope. In his mind, I can tell you he's wondering is there any way these pro-dunk assholes found this gun? You know what I mean? As I said, any questions you have, go to those notes. They'll be there. There's a day or two or nothing else I can add to it. Anything other than that is all speculation now, which is what we've been doing for the last year. Speculating, wondering ifs, you know, what if? We're close, man. We're close. We're real close. How long have I been hearing that? He was digging.
He was trying to find out what we have, you know. Whether we have the gun or not. And seeming very guilty to you. Oh, curious. He's starting to get agitated with me, too. I can tell. You can feel the stakes rising here. Ryan's wanting to get a message across. Wait, I can't tell you. I got enough right now to charge him. I want more. I want to make his life miserable. We'll have a car in front of his house on Christmas Day, just driving a real slow bug and a living HEW line up. They sweat, man.
Let's see if somebody else was involved in this, too. I'm talking about weighing in the third person. But he thinks you're talking about Ralph. Are you doing that intentionally to cover your tracks, to fuck with him? It's part of the investigation process. Just keep him stimulated. The screw with him is your sense. Well, I look went yes. But he's smart enough to know that maybe there's some of a bitch's mess with me. Keeps adding up, brother. But...
You can just recover it a little more on Monday. Life is good, pal. Good. What you recovered on Monday, whatever it is, is it positive or what? Yeah, I say so. You can definitely tell there's a... His tone changes in the middle of that conversation. We're in the beginning he's very like Chatey and kind of confident. And then he gets like rambling and starts repeating himself. I can guarantee you, when you have the four-and-a-half, he probably was very angry.
You know, everything's jell-in together. You can't keep it straight. He has a plan and it's not working out. It's not working out. Here's the thing. Ed might have sounded guilty on that call. But when it's over, Brian doesn't actually have any new evidence to connect him to the crime. And after a while, Ed seems to recognize this. He starts picking up the phone occasionally and calling his old friend. He would call, leave me messages in the middle of the night.
When he knew I wasn't there on my voicemail at work telling me how nice it is down there. And the weather and he feels good and wish I could come down to see him. But he would never do it when I was working. It wasn't being a middle of the night. Can I just say that that's twisted? So he's essentially gotten away with murder. He knows you don't have evidence. He leaves town. He's essentially Scott free. And yet, he can't resist taunting you. That's fucked up.
Yeah. And then somebody, I don't know who, but somebody turned the tables on him and sent him a father's day card with a picture of Danny on it. It wasn't actually a card. It's a black and white photo copy of Danny's US Army Enlistment photo with a short note scribbled on it. While we at his house, Brian pulled it out of a file and showed it to us. Tell everybody I said hi, the card says, take care, love Danny. That really shook Edwards up.
He contacted, attorneys up here, contacted the sheriff and I told him, hey, I got one too. The sheriff got one at home. He said, his attorney got one in the mail. I said, whoever did it, just send it to you. So shortly after that, his written correspondence, and I remember, stop coming to me too. Anything out of you who mailed this? No. No. I can only speculate, but I don't know. You got to smile on your face. Could have been somebody in that foster family, maybe. I don't know.
Wait a minute, it was you. No. No. No. That would be totally unethical. In March 1998, Ed's lawyer filed suit against the Army's insurance company to claim the money from Danny's death. Four months later, on July 30, 1998, those funds were paid out to Edwards, with Danny's beneficiary. Brian Johnston, he knows that he's stuck. There were no fingerprints on the shotgun. He has no witnesses. Embarring some miraculous break, Ed Edwards is slipped through his fingers.
I was actually at the point after several years knowing that hopefully he'll get his justice when he meets his maker. We were at a standstill. We couldn't go any further with it. Until that other case broke, we were basically dead in the water. That other case? This doesn't happen until 2009, 13 years later. When April picks up the phone and calls Chad Garcia to tell him she suspects her father may have committed that double murder in Wisconsin.
Without her call, Danny's case would have kept getting colder. Brian would have never been able to prove his suspicions about Edwards. Without that call, Ed Edwards goes to the grave knowing that he murdered this kid he took under his wing and made a pile of money on it. Brian, he never catches this killer. Man, you set us up. You're good. You're good, my friend.
It isn't until his last interview with Edwards, over lobster tails at the Jogga County Jail, that Edwards finally tells Brian that Ralph was never involved at all. Ed had acted alone, and everything else was just a goose chase, Ed had sent him on. I mean, I pulled Ralph's all his financial records. I pulled everything for him. I know more about Ralph than his old lady did. It's a peanut. I mean, I have to say, more of his records, phone records.
I got all his time sheets, everything from all his jobs. Look at it this way, though. I mean, I really helped you as far as becoming a damn good investigator. Yeah, I should have. Yeah, I mean, I hate to put it that way, but it's fine. It made me work. What the hell is that? A common kind of cold case where the cops essentially know who the killer is, but just can't prove it. Yes. It's actually not that hard to get away with murder, then. No, it's not.
All along, April says that she and her siblings were pretty sure that their father was behind this murder, or at least involved. But like Brian, they had no proof. We weren't able to speak with any of her siblings, but we did find a tape of April's sister Janine talking to her dad on the phone. It was recorded sometime in the months after he moved Arizona. It starts out like a normal call between a father and daughter, catching up. Jeans just back from vacation. Where you been?
Gone. Where you two? Anorandax. Anorandax. Ed mentions that he's just bought five and a half acres outside Tucson. Land that I have to imagine was paid for with his new windfall. Ben Jeanine asked this. Did you get that insurance money from Danny? From who? Danny. No. No, well, no. That's the first thing we know. See, what happened there? The time of death? Was more than whatever was supposed to be. So, no, nobody got anything there. No. And besides, he was AOA, AWL from there.
But, no, no. No, I got most of my money in scale from investments. Because dad and mom are spending money on everybody and things we got money from somebody, huh? No, I just think I'm off that. No. I can't imagine how much the Danny story in particular, Hans April siblings. I know how much it haunts her. There was a guilt of turning him in because he's my father. But there was also the guilt that I hadn't turned him in earlier. I had suspicions before he killed Danny Boy.
That if I would have done something earlier, you know, Danny would still be alive. And that's a lot to live with. I'm trying to come to terms with it. Some days I do better than others. Next week, April takes one more step towards dealing with that guilt. The clearing is a production of Pineapple Street Media, in association with Gimlet. It's produced by Jonathan Mennivar and me. I'm Josh Dean. Associate producers are Josh Gwynn, Dean of Clienter, and Elliot Adler, editing by Joel Lovell.
Our fact checker has been Phalan. Our theme song is Modaphinal Blues by Matthew Deere, music clearance by Anthony Roman. The episode was mixed by Hannes Brown and Jonathan Mennivar. Special thanks to Christina DeJosa, Ariana Martinez, Sophie Bridges, and Natalie Brennan. Jenna Weiss-Berman and Max Lenski are the executive producers at Pineapple Street. See you next week. Bye.