Kentucky con man receives 2 life sentences for killing Wisconsin couple in 1980

Ky. con man gets 2 life sentences for 1977 deaths

JEFFERSON, Wis. — Aging Kentucky con man Edward W. Edwards received his second pair of life sentences in two weeks on Monday.

Before sentencing, 77-year-old Edwards sat handcuffed in his wheelchair and made no comments to family members of the Wisconsin couple he admitted to killing 30 years ago.

He also has confessed to killing a couple near Akron, Ohio, in 1977 and was sentenced to two life terms in that case 10 days ago. In a jailhouse interview with The Associated Press last week, Edwards said he had killed a fifth man — a 24-year-old he considered to be his foster son in 1996.

Edwards showed no emotion and spent most of the brief 20-minute sentencing with his head drooped, facing the ground.

Family members who packed the courtroom cried as relatives talked about the pain and loss they have felt for three decades since the murder of 19-year-old Wisconsin sweethearts Tim Hack and Kelly Drew.

“You are a lying, evil murderer and god is saving a special place in hell for you,” said Drew’s mother, Norma Walker.

Patrick Hack, who was 16 at the time of the murders, wiped away tears as he spoke about his brother’s slaying.

“I’ve been waiting 30 years to face the bastard who killed Tim and Kelly and now I just want to leave my anger and frustration right here today and never waste another second thinking about you,” Patrick Hack said. “May god show no mercy on your soul and may you rot in hell.”

Edwards agreed to a plea deal earlier this month in which he admitted to both the Wisconsin murders and the killing of Judith Straub, 18, of Sterling, Ohio, and Bill Lavaco, 21, of Doylestown, Ohio. The four life sentences were agreed to as part of the plea deals.

Edwards also did not speak to relatives of the victims at his sentencing in Ohio.

In his AP interview last week, Edwards would only talk about murdering a fifth person, Dannie Boy Edwards. He said he wanted to confess to that killing so he could be sentenced to death for it in Ohio.

He has not been charged in that death.

Edwards spent much of his life running from the law, landing on the FBI’s 10 Most Wanted list in 1961. In his 1972 autobiography, “Metamorphosis of a Criminal,” he wrote he spent the 1950s and early 1960s drifting across the country, stealing cars, robbing banks and gas stations and seducing women he met along the way.