A woman whose family moved repeatedly because her father said “they needed to get away from bad people” made a terrifying realisation years later. It wasn’t until 2009 that April Balascio put together the clues that she had spotted throughout her childhood. One specific crime, 1980’s so-called ‘Sweetheart Killiings’ in Watertown, Wisconsin was the key to unravelling the mystery.
April remembered how her father, Edward Wayne Edwards, had been fascinated by the case and had suddenly moved the family away from Watertown soon after the double murder. Despite her doubts that she might be sending detectives on “a wild goose chase” April called a police tip line. She later provided a DNA sample that proved a family link to the crime and her father was arrested soon afterwards.
Edwards, who had more than once set fire to his homes as he left them, was eventually charged with five murders, and died of natural causes at the age of 77 - mere months before he was scheduled to be executed. He has since been linked to at least another five killings - with some former police officers connecting him to the unsolved murder of six-year-old beauty queen JonBenét Ramsey and even the notorious Zodiac Killer murder spree.
April Balascio isn’t convinced by some of these wilder theories, but she does believe that her father had many more victims than detectives were able to find evidence for. April says that her father was nothing like the brooding, solitary stereotype of a serial killer. He was a popular family man, with a wide circle of friends. But he also had a hair trigger temper, and could be violent and abusive towards his wife and children.
