IT'S ME-John A. Cameron

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He killed scores and scores of people of all ages over a sixty six year period and was never apprehended for murder. Included are some of the most famous cases in the past century. The book that we are featuring this evening is It's Me Edward Wayne Edwards, the serial killer you Never heard of. With my special guest journalist and author and detective John A. Cameron. Welcome to the program, and thank you for agree to his interview.

my career. And when I retired, I went to work for the Montana Board of Pardons and Parole and Deer Lodge Prison, Montana, and my job in that position was to be an analyst for all of the paroles wanting to get out of prison, and that is I would sit down with them in review them, review their cases, and make a recommendation to the parole board as to whether or not those people are deserving of an early release.

And in twenty ten, while I was working in this position, I was introduced to a serial killer that just got caught at the age of seventy six in Ohio and his name was Edward Wayne Edwards. And I eventually tied this man to a nineteen fifty six lovers Lane double

murder that happened here in Great Falls. And mister Edwards in twenty ten was actually confessing to lovers Lane's murders in Ohio and Wisconsin, and so I decided to challenge him with letters, and that began the unraveling of what he had done.

newspaper there. Tell us why they ran this story, this thirty year old cold case, and what it contained, and then what was the result of them running case in terms of people contacting the police. Tell us a little bit about that. First.

scene of that double murder. So in two thousand and nine, she picks up the phone and she calls the police and says, I think you should talk to my dad. We were at that scene and he said there were

bodies there. So the police actually took the evidence from the case from nineteen eighty and sent it to the lab and they recovered DNA and it matched Edward Wayne Edwards, who is seventy six years old in two thousand and nine, living down in Louisville, Kentucky with his wife who we had been married to for forty three years.

And it turns out in many of ed Edwards's cases, the victim would have a broken hyoid bone, and that what it represented was that he was always able to get so close to his victims because of the way he was able to groom himself into them so close and impersonal that they wouldn't even see it coming when

the punch occurred. And the punch is it called a rabbit punch to the neck, right to the throat, breaks the necks, not the neck, but breaks the hyo outbone, makes you so you can't breathe, but also makes it so you're going to sit there and watch it as a terror he's going to inflict on you occurs that way, he has complete control, and that proved true through many of mister Edwards's murders over this six decades that he killed and got away with it is that he had

groomed his way into the lives of his victims and got it so close to him that he was able to rabbit punch them out of the blue without them even suspecting it was going to happen, and then stage the murder.

following your instincts as a cold case detective. When detectives go visit him in Louisville, Kentucky, this vicious serial killer that no one really realizes is that based on the the tip from his daughter and you know, they confirming that he was in that area. Well, what does Edward Wayne Edwards look like, what's his health like, what's his what does he look like at seventy six years old when they do go to interview him.

seventy six years old when it finally came. And when it came, here's this guy who's three hundred pounds, who looks horrible, And that's the vision everybody got on Wayne Edwards was identified as a serial killer. Was this three hundred pound man totally out of health? And how could he possibly hurt anybody. I mean, that's really what everybody thought.

But what they didn't know is that this man had actually been planning his capture his entire life, but had played a game against the criminal just decided to get caught by sending puzzles and anonymous letters and phone calls to police's whole life, teething them with his identity because his real name was never Edward Wayne Edwards.

along with the male victim. And he was arrested and he was transported to Wisconsin and was arraigned for the double murder and sat in that jail for about a year before he went to the press and announced that he had killed others.

And so he started sending letters to police officers in Ohio and Wisconsin telling other murders and that he wanted the death penalty and that he was willing to confess to other murders to get that. Once he found out he couldn't get the death penalty in Wisconsin, he contacted the press in Ohio in June of twenty ten and announced that he had killed a twenty three year old man and beheaded him and collected two hundred and fifty

thousand dollars worth of insurance. That case got him his death penalty, but he had actually confessed to another lover's lane murder in nineteen seventy seven in Ohio, trying to get the death penalty, but in nineteen seventy seven they didn't have the death penalty, so therefore he couldn't so in the end, in June of twenty ten, mister Edwards

confessed to five murders. Four of them were lovers lanes parked in their cars and kidnapped and tortured, and one was the actual adoption of a twenty two year old man waiting two years, killing him for two hundred and fifty thousand dollars for insurance and collecting and getting away with it in nineteen ninety six, while.

a burglar, but never a killer. And then in nineteen sixty nine, at age thirty six, he came out of Leavenworth Prison and wrote a book, and the book was four hundred and thirty six pages, and it was titled Metamorphosis of a Criminal, The True Life Story of Edwards, and that book ended up being a four hundred and

thirty six page murder puzzle. He actually documented his entire life from birth up until nineteen sixty nine when he came out of prison claiming to be reformed, and placed himself in cities all over the country in the forties, fifties and sixties, committing horrible burglaries, robberies, and detailing a lot of this in his book, but what he never

mentioned in the book was that he killed anybody. And so in the end, it turned out that his book Metamorphosis of a Criminal was a murder puzzle that he had written in nineteen sixty nine, and he never got identified as a serial killer until two ten.

to five murders. But tell us exactly how you get involved, how it is that you become alerted to him specifically.

I live in, Great Falls, Montana. Only mister Edwards wrote about being in Great Falls, Montana in January of nineteen fifty six, and he was twenty two years old at that time and married to another woman that he'd actually married back in nineteen fifty five, so he in nineteen

fifty six, he was actually in my hometown. What we had here was a horrible murder on January second, nineteen fifty six, and it was a little sixteen year old girl and her eighteen year old boyfriend Airman were parked on the banks of the Sun River here in Great Falls, making out in their car when they were approached by somebody who most likely was dressed like a police officer because the way he controlled the scene, and the killer ordered the two out of the car, made the girl

tie up the boy with his belt, put the boy on his knees, and executed the boy two shots to the head in front of the girl. He then kidnapped the girl, took her to the top of what's called Mount Royal Road where there's an old Indian burial site, and put her on her knees and executed her. And this case remained unsolved from nineteen fifty six until twenty ten, when I finally confronted Edward Wayne Edwards in prison about it.

And so I had a friend here in town who's kind of a crime follower, a book reader, and she had the book Metamorphosis of a Criminal and it's a very rare book behind that were I think there were

only about three thousand copies made of it. And when we started reading the book, we found the evidence that Edwards was in great falls and our double murder, and evidence of other murders in the book, and the way the book is written, it's now clear, you know, after all this time of investigating mister Edwards, that this was one highly intelligent serial killer. In this book was nothing but a puzzle murder of his first thirty years of killing and getting away with it.

He was a hold up man, a bank robber, a dangerous character. He spent fourteen years in five jails. Now he is a writer, a respected citizen and the head of a family of five, metamorphosis of a criminal. Tell us a little bit more because I think it's fascinating too. He even made a religious album, inspirational religious album.

very popular television program. So tell us a little bit more about some of the touring he did, the motivational speaking he did, which provided him to be able to travel throughout the country while he was on parole.

Psychiatry ci Agent. How Edwards portrayed himself throughout life. He was two people. He was married for forty three years with five children, and he was a good guy on that side, and then he had this horrible killing side, and he used his family as the alibi. And so when he says that now he is a writer and a respected citizen in the head of a family of five on the front of his cover, that was a ruse. And then he ran around the country portraying himself just

as that as a reformed criminal, a good writer. But in fact what he was doing is showing up in their communities, portraying all that, and then killing in their hometowns and setting people up. That was his amo. And so with the title Metamorphosis of a Criminal.

finding his victims and killing them. And his published publishing of his books and his religious motivational albums were really a sign that mister Edwards was a Satanist. He basically took everything from the Catholics and turned it into Satanism because he was so abused at the age of seven in a Catholic orphanage that he just set out to become the best killer ever. And that's what the title of his book meant, metamorphosis of a criminal.

and his father never cared for him. So when he was five years old, he finds out that his parents that he thought were his parents up to that point

are no longer his parents. He's handed back to mother, who has just come out of prison for theft, and within eight months of her coming out, she dies of a gunshot wound to her stomach, but lives for six days from August second on nineteen thirty eight until August eighth of nineteen thirty eight, and after she is dead and buried, they change his name from Charles Edward Myers to Edward Wayne Edwards, stick him in a Catholic orphanage

in Parmadale, Ohio. And he's very little, and he's very young, and he's a bedwidder, and he's beaten by the kids, by the nuns, and then eventually sexually assaulted, and by age eleven, escapes the orphanage in nineteen forty five and starts killing people and does it until his capture in two thousand and nine.

every type of crime you can imagine. He had acede and when he was actually in Great Falls in nineteen fifty six where he killed a couple here, he was burglarizing this town the whole time he was here, stealing everything. So not only was he a serial killer, but he was a criminal and highly intelligent with a very high IQ.

So his whole goal was just to kill people, make sure it was someone close to like a family member, that would defall for the crime, and over and over again he set people up throughout the forties, fifties, sixties, seventies, eighties, nineties, and then in the two thousands he actually became the best at it. The last nine years of his life he had some of the best setups he'd ever done.

who he was. I had really researched him and got his book and got all of his records and interviewed some of his family and stuff, and I wanted to just see if he would be willing to say, yes, I did it, you know, confess and be done with it, since he was going to be executed anyway in Ohio.

And I didn't get a response back. And I had a friend named Neil, who's about fifty five years old, highly intelligent, had studied Chinese and Greek, and had studied the Book of the Dead, had studied Satanism but in a good way, and just was a real puzzle solver.

And early on in the investigation, after tying mister Edwards to the nineteen fifty six murder and realizing that he confessed to one in nineteen seventy seven, one in nineteen eighty and one in nineteen ninety six, I knew that he had been killing since at least nineteen fifty six, all the way up until his capture, and his MOO matched that of what was known as the Zodiac Killer, a killer who terrorized San Francisco nineteen sixty eight to

nineteen seventy and sent anonymous letters and was a writer and killed couples on Lover's Lanes. I suspected that Edwards could have been the Zodiac Killer because he was released from Levenworth Prison just before it started, and he matched

the composite. So I contacted my friend Neil and showed him what is known as the Zodiac Killer's identity cipher, which was actually a puzzle of thirteen characters sent April twentieth, nineteen seventy, and the Zodiac said that when that puzzle was sold, it would name his name, and Neil, having the highly intelligent prane, was able to crack it and it actually named Edward DA which is thirteen characters, the

same noun of characters as the Zodiac Killer cipher. And so we confronted Edwards in a letter as being the Zodiac Killer after we saw that cryptogram, and that began our relationship with mister Edwards.

And I'll just read a little passage which is very interesting, one of the first letters, and it says, dear John and Neil, and this is after we confronted him about being the Zodiac killer and that we cracked the Zodiac cipher's And here's what he said, Dear John and Neil, it's me. You say you won the Zodiac game. I remember a guy in Deer Lodge back in fifty six they called the Zodiac he killed a guy in Great Falls. I maybe seventy seven, but I don't forget things. Good

luck with your Zodiac game. If you write about me, make sure you say nice things. Your friend ed Edwards DS, I love you too. We had actually forgiven mister Edwards in a letter when we confronted him, because we knew he was Catholic, and we knew that he was destroyed in a Catholic church, and we knew that that's the biggest thing is Catholics has forgiveness, and he was really

actually looking for that. He was looking for those puzzles to be solved and for somebody to relate to what he was actually up to, and that really began a horrible nine months of confronting mister Edwards and exchanging letters and phone calls and just the division that created between everybody, law enforcement agencies everywhere. And it was pretty horrible time, but it was well worth doing.

letters to authorities. Every one of those letters was a puzzle that he followed as to what he had really done, and he was looking for people to challenge him. And I tried to explain this to the FBI, to the local police, the sheriff agencies that had murders, but nobody really wanted to hear it because in most cases where Edwards killed somebody, somebody else went down for the crime. That is how he worked. And once a man is convicted of a crime and he's innocent, he's stuck and

the system shuts down. And I couldn't understand why there were such resistance to mister Edwards at the beginning, but I found out as the investigation went on that he been an FBI informant in nineteen fifty and never stopped all the way up until his capture. But unfortunately, what he was doing was informing on his own murders that he had already designed to steer the evidence to some

of the innocent and set up. And so he became an informant, released out of prison throughout his life for informing on his own murders, and the system shut down in twenty ten when he got identified and hoped it went away.

He had them under assumed identity wherever he was. But he always demanded to be called Wayne, no matter what his last name was going to be, you know, with his identities, he was always wanting to be called Wayne because that way he could remember exactly who he is and what he's doing. But yes, I have pictures of him in nineteen seventy nine with the captain of the

Atlanta Police Department arm around him, saying it's his best friend. Well, Edwards was actually in that city killing children in nineteen seventy nine, and when he got caught there for arson in nineteen eighty two, he had a police uniform that he had been using, and it turns out that is

his ruse. He would make friends with the police, obtain their uniforms, impersonate them, and kill in their communities, and then steer the evidence to whoever he decided to steer it to, and then screw with the police by sending letters that would either taunt them or steer the evidence more towards them, any ones to set up, and just over and over again in cities throughout the United States. He set people up and got some executed and some

are serving. There's quite a few servings still right now.

being the Zodia Killer. But as it went on, we tied him to other famous killings, because that really was his m O and the most famous one that we tied him to right away, besides you know the killing in Great Falls in fifty six and the possibility that he's a Zodiac killer, but the Joemen A. Ramsey case

in nineteen ninety six in Boulder, Colorado. We confronted Edwards about that also because the way that Joemen A. Ramsey note was signed, it was signed Victory SBTC, and what it ended up meaning in the end was victory, which is a Christian phrase taken to the dark side by Edwards and SDTC stood fort signed by the cross. The Zodiac Killer was always famous for signing his letters with

the cross and circle. And what the cross and circle is is actually the zodiac which goes back into ancient Egyptian history and time where there were very evils such as Osiris and Isis and Herod and just these evil satanic cold gods, I guess you'd call it. In those thousands of years ago days, Edwards wanted to be known as the best killer ever, and he wanted to be known as a godlike image when it was revealed. Because he went on for so long and tied it all

to either Christianity or Judaism or Islam. That's how we worked. He terrorized religion because he knew that people would divide that way, and he just let us down a path for sixty years of killing, setting people up, and watching us as the system killed.

was definitely there. So and then the m's match. But what are the commonalities that you're already seeing in these murders, Because what I didn't realize was the extent of some of the contact with authorities after these murders, the media or end or family. So tell us what you're already seeing in terms of Edward Wayne Edwards, m O or end or signature. The commonalities already that you're seeing.

hall such as Christmas, Easter, Thanksgiving, fourth of July. Edwards was a ritualistic killer, killing over and over and over again on Christian holidays and the twelve days of Christmas between the twenty fifth and the sixth of January, because she's a Satanist, and he would steer the letters and the evidence after somebody else was arrested to look for a Satanist. In most organizations that got letters from Edwards probably blew them off as a nut. But many of

his letters contained actually his identity. They were always signed anonymously or signed with Portrade but written by a female. But inside the letters were always clues as to the true identity of who the real killer was. And that's why my letters and Neil's letters to Edwards became so important because he was communicating with us in prison, and he knew they were reading everything he was sending, and they were reading everything we were sending, and it was

game of code. And that's what they do in prisons, is they write in code always. That way their letters get through. But he had given hints and clues as to the letters to look for in some of the biggest cases that we attached to him, and in those cases we recovered the letters and there was the identity

inside of them. And in the end, as Edwards became very good in the two thousands, he was a blogger and a website owner, and he was actually just challenged, challenging everybody throughout the late nineties and all the way up until his death to identify him on some of the most famous murder sites out there, because he was actually responsible and he loved to go in there and just mess with people and see if they'd figure out who he is.

and tell us how you confirmed it. You guys are doing you and Neil are doing handwriting analysis again. He's breaking code, comparing the book and to the zodiac and those letters. So tell us about that.

spread around the streets of Chicago. And then Edwards taunted the press with letters and phone calls, and they were very immatureish. They said things like please stop me, I can't control myself. I'm going to kill more and he was thirteen years old when he did it, and that's he actually had started killing when he was eleven, and that would be his amo is to kill on a

holiday ritualistically. So when we tied him to the Jemeny Ramsey case in nineteen ninety six, it started to unravel that he actually put up websites to his killings that he had done in forty six from forty seven and the one famous website that everybody should go to if they want to read the true story of Ed Edwards

and his first three murders. It's called black Dalias solution dot org and that is the website he put up in two thousand and two, just before Christmas, the two thousand and two and that website was the solution to identify the real Zodiac killer and how long he'd been killing. So the evidence came about. I've been working on it for five years. I published the book about eight months ago, and since the release of the book, all the people that are out there finding the cases just have to

look for the person screening. I didn't do it. The press frenzy on the case, the ritualistic nature of the case itself. Are they laid out? Are they staged. Are they missing limbs? Are they beheaded? Edwards beheaded people his whole life, which was a signature Satanic thing, and rounding them and laying them out of water. He did everything based on ancient Egyptian Satanism. I guess I would call

it the Book of the Dead. Aleister Crowley back in the nineteenth century who wrote the Book of the Dead, or had to study the Book of the Dead and wrote his own three part book about bringing out a

change of you know, murder and mayhem. Edwards studied that throughout his adolescent years and actually did it and continues to do it even though he's dead, because there's people sitting on death row right now that will be executed for his murders, and he will be sitting up in his afterlife laughing at the system.

understand the magnitude of it. And his letters kept telling us that that we didn't know the whole story, because we were kind of cocky with him, telling him we got ya, you know, and he was basically telling us, oh, no, you don't. You don't know the whole story. And so he was in prison up until April seventh and twenty eleven, and I was actually going to go interview him about April eleventh, but he died naturally in prison at the age of seventy seven years old and had hard ailments diabetes.

But he had actually always when he got caught, attempted to kill himself in some way. I always wonder if, if, in fact, he he helped himself along. He had actually asked us to send him this candy that he should have never had, but we sent him one hundred dollars worth of candy that he wanted and he was a diabetic and he got it and he did die shortly

after that. But I don't know if that played any part in it at all, But it was very strange when we were exchanging these letters with him about this candy issue and why did he want that so badly? So it was the whole letters was just a big game between him and society, and it was the same between Neil and I and him. It was figure me out.

it's just unbelievable what he's done. He announced his count in nineteen ninety six on a blog was between nineteen forty six and nineteen ninety six, he killed five hundred people in every part of the country Canada, Mexico and got away with it, and he didn't get caught till two thousand and nine. So it's unknown how manymore there are, but I've found two hundred and about forty now and you can see a lot of that on my website, Coldcasecameron dot com.

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True Murder. Squarespace, build it beautiful now, John, you were speaking about this incredible claim of five hundred murders in a sixty six year period of time of killing the book. Once Edwards was dead, you continued to look at this book, and then you went online, like you say, and tried to find out what his presence was online. So tell us a little bit more about the investigation once he's dead, and how you are continuing to find other murders that

you can attribute to Edward. Wayne Edwards positively sure.

you know, you can catch similarities in his writings. So I was wondering, if he's a writer and he's killing, is he blogging once the computer age came along, because the big years for him were nineteen forty six to nineteen ninety six, and that's fifty years of killing, five hundred killed, and he announces that on Google Blogs on January eighth, nineteen ninety seven, that he killed five hundred people.

So I took his book and started searching phrases and that's when I found the phrases in his book on the Black Dalia Solution dot org website, and that began to unravel really what mister Edwards said done, because now I had a website where he actually gives the details of how he did all these killings many years and how you break the codes down. And it turned out everything he said on that website was exactly what Neil had already used eight months earlier, and we were right.

And so then it began a process of starting from nineteen forty five and just doing a timeline of his life all the way up until his capture. And that's really what you do in a homicide investigation in any case. You take your victim, to take your suspect, and you do a timeline of their life. Well, mister Edwards had so many victims and so then had set up so many suspects that the timeline took three years to do, and the investigation never stops even to this day after

the publication of the book last year. There's so many other murders to talk about that are out there, but it'll never end. And that's really what he wants wanted it to do. He knew it would be revealed, and in the end he began blogging that it would be almost three hundred years he thought before someone figured it out. But we were very fortunate to have, you know, I

worked in Deer Lodge Prison. The Zodiac Killer had actually mentioned to one of his victims that he had been in Deer Lodge Prison and I was just in the right position at the right time in twenty ten with the right serial killer dropped in my lap and the right lover's lane murder in nineteen fifty six to kind of unravel the puzzle. And I was hoping the book would be the end of the puzzle, that I knew

it wouldn't be. I knew that when it was released that it would just open the floodgates, and it has and it's been fun, but it's also just raining seeing the system still play out to his false leads. And that's what the Zodiac Killer was always about, was the false leads, making fun of the police, teasing them with his identity, saying Haha, I'm smarter than you. And that's what Edwards was.

Adam Walsh's head was found on August tenth, nineteen eighty one, floating in a canal, and they never did figure out who did it. A serial killer named August Toole actually confessed and then recanted, but in the end, the Zodiac Killer actually sent John Walsh letters in nineteen ninety one, and the public didn't know any of this until two thousand and six, when John Walsh finally went public and

actually published what are called the Scorpion Letters. Those letters were actually sent by Edwards, the Zodiac Killer, and it turned out that nineteen eighty one, Edwards was living in Florida and traveling to Atlanta where he was killing children and dressing up as a policeman, and he had killed twenty four little children nineteen seventy nine eighty eighty one in Atlanta, he trialed to Florida and killed Adam All actually in the backyard of one of his ex wives

and girl named Marlene, who he was married to in nineteen fifty nine. Edwards liked to go to the towns where he had relatives or an ex wife or someone he knew and create terror, and the Adam Walsh case created terror, started the program America's Most Wanted, and Edwards taunted John Walsh his whole life with false letters because

Edwards was America's Most Wanted. And John Walsh did many, many stories on Edwards's murders, but they were always placed on somebody else, because that's really the design of Edwards's murders, the setup. So the John Walsh Adam Walsh case didn't even come into the picture until after Edwards had died, and we found the Scorpion letters and then found Edwards down in Atlanta at the time, an in Florida, and

it just really unraveled. What he did is he just killed every type of victim there is, whether it be a boy or an infant, a six year old, a twenty year old, a forty year old, it never mattered. What mattered was to do it ritualistically, create terror and set somebody up.

of Edwards's last setups. And I confronted Edgar Patino as to why would you plead guilty to a murder you didn't do? And he sent me a letter and actually the reason that he pled guilty is because he knew that they were going to kill him, they were going to eat They were offering him a deal or the death penalty. And it's amazing the thought process of that. When you have the death penalty hanging over your head. Most people think, there's no way I would confess to

doing something I didn't do. But when you have the death penalty hanging over your head, the standard answer I got from every one of these guys in prison on Edwards's murder was how am I going to prove I'm innocent if I'm dead?

this together. So the idea with all these these murders that you were tying in there, tell us what again, what that commonality is between all of these murders that you are unequivocal that this is a proof that they're all done by Edward Wayne Edwards.

tying him to the book. That way the mo once discovered is you just have to read my book and look at my criminal records and you'll see I was there. And that's exactly how it played out. I have his criminal records on my website and they go all the way back to nineteen forty nine and they go all the way up to his death. And it's amazing where

this man was. He was in every major city of the US, and he had FBI files on him in at least half of the states where he had been either caught for robbery or burglary and was informing so the information actually always came from Edwards. It was always out there, and when the information on the murders wasn't out there, he did it by anonymous letters to either the editors of the papers, the police departments that had

the murders, or to the victims' families. And in the Joeman A. Ramsey case, in the end, I received a call from Patsy Ramsey's family here just recently and they got the book. They saw an article about me in the Globe and read the article and they were just astounded and are actually quite upset that the press hasn't said any that family was destroyed basically by the killer himself.

And in the end, Edwards taunted Patsy Ramsey through anonymous bloggings from two thousand and two until two thousand and six, until she died, actually giving her the details of how he did it under assumed name. And it's been very horrible. They you know, I knew they had killed Joe Beaney, but I didn't know the details of what he had done and what he had done to them, And after speaking with them, it's just horrible. They were actually from Atlanta,

and Atlanta was very important to Edwards. That's where it all started. And he targeted the Ramseys, probably twenty years advance, to kill their firstborn later on in life. That's how he worked. He would groom his way into somebody in the military and take their first burned son or daughter, or set up a husband for cheating on his wife. He picked his victims. He didn't just drive around kidnapping people.

He knew who he was going to kill and how the setup was going to go along in advance of doing it.

after convincing her to go with, raped her, and forced her to drive around the country for six months while he participated in some horrible murders in Chicago, Montana, California, Omaha, Nebraska,

in Florida, and she was the driver. And the ruse was they would portray themselves as a happily married family man with a pregnant wife, and he'd have a military uniform or a cop uniform, or a doctor dressed up as a doctor, and he would groom into the lives of the people who's going to kill and kill and then drive away with his wife. She didn't participate in the killings, but she participated in the leaving the scene.

And she never was interviewed until we found her in twenty twelve, and it was the most intense interview I've ever heard on the phone. She said when she got in the car in nineteen fifty five, within five minutes he had her raped her and that was the beginning of what he was going to do with her. He was just going to drag her around and kill. Then he got caught and went to Deer Lodge to prison in nineteen fifty six here in Montana for Robbrey, and

nobody ever talked to her. So he's then's ends up marrying Kay Edwards in nineteen sixty eight after he gets out of prison and does the exact same thing with her, only he does it with her for forty three years, and she was just a wealth of information.

of his. And so he would basically make his wife watch the kids in a campground for months on end while they'd live in the summer, say in Colorado, while he traveled around and killed everywhere around Colorado. She detailed that the police coming over in questioning her about Jimmy Hoffa in her leaving Florida, and this is in nineteen seventy nine, seventy seven, somewhere around there and taking off and going into Atlanta where he starts the Atlanta child killings.

So she was witnessed to a lot of events that the police were after it, but she didn't know what he was doing. All she was therefore was to take care of the kids and survive. She's almost as if she has the Stockholm syndrome. She was a captive for forty three years, the worst serial killer there's ever been, and she said she would not have gone against anything he did. He just went with the program. And even after his capture, she just said, I just didn't quite

understand it all until he was put away. And now she kind of understands how manipulative he was, but she still can't believe the extent of what he'd done, and she just felt like he was always two different people.

evidence that was needed to identify the Zodiac Killer. Because in nineteen sixty nine, when the Zodiac killed the two couple, the couple on the beach at Lake Berriessa, he had said he had been in Deer Lodg Prison, Montana. And what nobody understood was he had been there, but not in nineteen sixty nine. He had been there in nineteen fifty six to fifty nine, and it was a clue. And that interview he gave was a clue put out right at the time, at the height of the Zodiac

tear going on all over the country. That article was played throughout the Associated Press and here was the real Zodiac killer telling him to look towards Deer Lodge Prison and you'll find the Zodiac killer. And it ended up being the truth. That's where he was.

wanted to go away, and the public is divided. I've had a great response from people and calls, phone calls and emails and other cases. But the biggest thing that's come about is I knew there would be many more cases, and it's just phenomenal. When I wrote the book, I had them at around one hundred and twenty murders. Now I have them at around two hundred and forty, and I know that he killed five hundred, so I you know,

there's a lot more work to do. But I got so many people out there, investigators that are helping and sending connections to some of the cases. So it's working out really well.

It was really responsible for the destruction of many of the innocent people that he set up because it looked so obvious that they must have done it, so they reported it that way. And that's exactly what happened to the Ramsayes, and that's what happened to everyone in its cases. He was always designed to destroy an innocent person, kill an innocent person, and set up an innocent person, and that way you're not only killing, but you're just creating

care and horrible forever. You know it's going to go on a long time because he was alive for sixty six years killing and there'll be many more.

But what has the media and who have you approached and what has the media's I mean major media, What has then been their response to the claims that you can wrap up a bunch of unsolved cases or wrongful convictions or both with this book.

with false letters. So throughout his life, what he would do is kill someone and hide the body, and then he would lead the media to the body through anonymous letters to the newspaper, and then he would collect the reward under assume name because the body has been found. And he would always pick his victims who were wealthy, so he knew there'd be a big financial gain to

plant the body, find it and collect the reward. And then once the innocent man was arrested, Edwards would send those editors another letter and taunt them with you got the wrong guy. There are going to be many, many more letters that he sent. Whether or not many of the news organizations are going to release them remains to be seen. But he always made sure that once the wrong guy went down for the crime, that he would return to the media and taunt them with you got

the wrong guy. And a lot of that is the reason why they don't want to expose that Edwards, because it's pretty horrible. It was easy to use reporters for his to destroy people because they don't have to give up their sources source was actually the killer, and so it creates quite a problem.

How could it be all tied in there? But you state a very very very compelling case. You did dogged detective work to place him here, handwriting analysis, cryptograms analyzed by your cohort or your partner, Neil. This is not a sensationalistic ploy to sell books. You have your background, your credibility is not to be shaken. Have you disappointed or surprised by the lack of the media even giving you a chance to explain the controversy or take the

controversy at face value but challenge you. Are you surprised or disappointed by that non challenge?

and I really it doesn't bother me at all. I've had such great response from the victims' families all over the US and from all over the country, from people that were really hurt by this man. That's really what it was all about, and just getting the story out there. I was really hoping that the press would pick up on it in twenty eleven when he died and just put it out there and let the police do their investigation. But they never investigated at Edwards fully after his capture.

They know, the FBI never got involved. They never did a full examination of what he had done. And we were able to do it because we weren't police officers. Edwards was in prison and had a lawyer. Police couldn't contact him and say, hey, I want to know about this. I want to know about that, because they had the lawyer. But we weren't police officers, so we were able to confront him. But it really was the solving of that Zodiac cryptogram at the very beginning of the thing that

unraveld who he was. He's the Zodiac Killer. He's the real guy, and he's been alive for seventy seven years and he's been killing for sixty six of those. What has he been doing? And the book is about the timeline of his life.

I knew I had gotten to him once he answered like that, because that's the exactly what the intention was. Edwards was two people. He was on the dark side and he was on the good side, and Neil and I confronted him like that. Neil knew the dark side and took all of the cryptograms that he had solved and used the words in those cryptograms right back at Edwards,

and Edwards just fell in love with it. Actually, Neil forgave him and the two actually became close, and it became very scary for that period of nine months, wondering if Edwards was actually playing planning to get us some way. He actually said in a letter he was sending somebody out to talk to us, and you know, well, what do we expect a serial killer sending someone out to talk to you. He was very scary, and the fact that he died was actually a good thing that man alive.

There's not a police officer in the world that would have ever caught him confronting him. He would have taken away someone close to you. That's how evil he was.

everybody in. He didn't have to jump out the car and grab people. They all came to him, they invited him into his house. The reason was he wanted to

show society how degraded we've become. That he could kill, and he could set someone up, and he could watch society jump all over that innocent man and then execute him and in the end, you're wrong, and it would show that we have become so dark in society that this is just a repeat of history going all the way back to ancient Egyptian history, which was what the zodiac was always based on. And it was the revelation of we're dark, We're in a very dark spot, and

you know, we sit here and fight Isis in America. Well, Isis was actually an ancient Egyptian god, female god, and he portrayed ancient Egyptian gods his whole life. Trying to exact his fans and his religious views on us.

I mean, it's really You've got two guys that are on a massive murder mystery that unprecedented, and you have this constant source material from Metamorphosis of a Criminal, which you include in your fine book and the letters and the cryptograms and everything that you want to do to

support your case. So it's incredible for true crime fans to be able to read something like this, which is unusual to have these kinds of documents in this kind of proof and you have to painstakely state your case here. So it's very different type of books. So it's I congratulate you on this case by case analysis in a very very unique way, but you know, very very entertaining.

So for those people that have been contacting you and maybe as a result of this, want to find out a little bit more about this fascinating book, this case or like I say, some of this original source documentation, or just the incredible past where there's all these videos where he was on to tell the truth and these great photographs are that are containing your book. So how could they contact you, John for more information or if they wanted to correspond with you personally?

and documentation, and that website is a growing thing. So if anybody wants to read Edwards's book, Metamorphsis of a Criminal, there's a free copy of it on my website a PDF file and you can read it. It's just amazing when you read it because now knowing who he is, when you read what he wrote in that book, you knew he was a good con.

people that were innocent. You even have a case that you chronicle in here, sister Margaret Paul, and we had author Fred Rosen talking about his book about that case, Saint Wore Across again fantastic, an incredible, almost unbelievable case. Talk about the back of the Black Dahlia and evidence to support that. And the Atlanta child killings, where again another wrongful conviction. You talk about people that were executed wrongfully,

people that were accused, their lives were ruined. And this masterful Edward Wayne Edwards tried to provide to the world that he would become this most infamous killer of all time by providing all the clues and puzzles and proof that he was this most prolific serial killer.

just seemed to fall into place. You were there, and very many of the stories that I've covered in this five years are stories like that, were a detective, a hard working guy, just happens to pick up the phone at the right time or be there to make that you know, tenuous connection, but instinctually you understand from your background that, oh, I think there's a little bit more to this, and so incredibly you get involved inextricably in one of the most incredible cases in true crime history.

So I want to thank you very much, John for coming on and sharing with us the story of It's me the Edward, Wayne Edwards, the serial killer you never heard of.