One evening in 1980, April Balascio’s father, Edward Wayne Edwards, awoke the family and advised everybody to start out packing. They have been leaving their residence in Watertown, Wisconsin, after dwelling there for a yr.
It wasn’t new for Balascio, who was 11 years outdated. She was accustomed to shifting each six months to a yr with out warning. It wouldn’t be till many years later when she found why.
“Every time we moved, it was arduous,” Balascio advised Fox Information Digital. “You develop new associates every time, after which it’s important to depart them. However one factor that got here out of it’s you learn to pack rapidly and tightly as a result of when you didn’t, your stuff would get left behind.
April Balascio as a baby. (Courtesy of April Balascio)
“However it was arduous having to upend all the things,” she shared. “It was arduous beginning a brand new faculty yearly and even generally twice a yr. … He made us imagine we have been leaving as a result of individuals have been coming after us. So, there was additionally that worry that we have been being hunted, that worry that we might be killed.”
Edward Wayne Edwards along with his spouse Kay Sept. 25, 1972. (Akron Beacon Journal/USA As we speak Community)
Balascio has written a brand new ebook, “Raised by a Serial Killer: Discovering the Truth About My Father.” In it, Balascio particulars how she found her father’s true id and the horrific crimes he dedicated.
The patriarch died in 2011 at age 77 from pure causes. On the time, he was behind bars after being sentenced to loss of life by deadly injection.
April Balascio’s memoir, “Raised by a Serial Killer,” is out now. (Gallery Books )
“I wished this story to be advised, however it took a very long time to write down it,” Balascio admitted. “It was a really troublesome factor to do. I used to be defending my recollections.”
Balascio described Edwards as charismatic, a “large child” who loved events and entertaining. However he additionally had “a really darkish facet.”
“It was scary,” she stated. “He was abusive. And particularly as I obtained older, I grew to become extra petrified of listening to his tires on the gravel within the driveway. I might surprise how he was going to stroll by way of the home. Was he going to be in a great temper or a foul temper? For some time, I hated him.
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Edward Wayne Edwards was charming and charismatic, however he additionally had “a darkish facet,” daughter April Balascio advised Fox Information Digital. (Courtesy of April Balascio)
“I witnessed his violence, and it was a standard incidence, whether or not he took his anger out on me or he took it out on my mother,” Balascio added. “Particularly once I was youthful, I witnessed extra of him taking his anger out on my mother.
“I witnessed him hitting her, punching her within the face.”
For years, Balascio puzzled why, at instances, the household needed to all of the sudden depart in the course of the evening. It stayed along with her that Edwards additionally had a fascination with crime announcements within the native newspaper.
April Balascio had a nomadic upbringing. As an grownup, she would uncover why. (Courtesy of April Balascio.)
In March 2009, when Balascio was about 40, she started digging, revisiting the circumstances that intrigued her father. After trying to find “chilly case” and “Watertown” on-line, Balascio got here throughout reports about the “Sweetheart Murders.”
On this Aug. 19, 1980, photograph, a psychic, who was known as in on the case of the 2 lacking Jefferson County teenagers, stands close to the automotive the couple had pushed the evening they have been final seen, in Sullivan, Wis. (Michael Sears/USA As we speak Community)
In 1980, highschool sweethearts Timothy Hack and Kelly Drew disappeared after a marriage reception. The stays of the 19-year-olds have been present in a area two months later. Edwards, then a handyman, was questioned by police however insisted he had no data.
After the our bodies have been found, Edwards and his household left Wisconsin.
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Judith Straub, 18, of Sterling, Ohio, was present in Silver Creek Metropolitan Park in August 1977. She was certainly one of Edward Wayne Edwards’ 5 identified victims. (Akron Beacon Journal/USA As we speak Community)
“I suspected my dad was performing some dangerous issues, however I didn’t verbalize it to anybody,” stated Balascio. “There was no proof. … I can’t say I suspected that it was precisely homicide, however I did imagine he was harming individuals.”
Folks seek for Timothy Hack and Kelly Drew in Jefferson County. (Benny Sieu/USA As we speak Community)
Balascio discovered that investigators had reopened the case. She reached out to detectives, desirous to share all the things she remembered from her childhood. Balascio advised them she suspected her father might have been answerable for the killings however did not have any proof, solely recollections of what she noticed and felt.
She described how, when the pair have been initially lacking, Edwards talked about them “continually.” In the future he quipped to a pal, “I guess you they discover them in a area.”
William Lavaco, 21, from Doylestown was present in Silver Creek Metropolitan Park in August 1977. (Akron Beacon Journal/USA As we speak Community)
At a lab, Edwards’ DNA and the genetic materials on the crime scene matched, Oxygen.com reported. Edwards was arrested in Kentucky, the place he had moved along with his spouse. He confessed to 5 murders.
“That’s when it really hit me how evil my dad was,” stated Balascio. “He was a foul man.”
As a baby, Edwards was raised in an orphanage and frolicked in juvenile detention, the outlet reported. In 1962, he was arrested for an armed financial institution theft and spent 5 years behind bars. His lifetime of crime didn’t finish there.
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Edward Wayne Edwards at an orphanage. (Courtesy of April Balascio)
Edwards confessed to killing 21-year-old William “Billy” Lavaco and 19-year-old Judith Straub, one other couple, in 1977. The murders took place in Ohio, the place Edwards grew up.
Edward Wayne Edwards had a tumultuous childhood that led to a lifetime of crime. (Alamy)
Edwards additionally confessed to murdering his foster son, Dannie Boy Edwards, in 1996. His motive was to gather the payout of the 23-year-old’s life insurance coverage, which was price $250,000.
Balascio remembers one of many final instances she noticed her father. He was hospitalized, and she or he determined to go to him along with her youngsters.
Edward Wayne Edwards died in 2011. He was 77. (David Harpe/USA As we speak Community)
“My daughter wrote my dad a get-well card,” Balascio recalled. “I don’t bear in mind the precise phrases, however it stated one thing to the impact that Jesus forgives all people and all the things. You simply have to ask him. There was additionally one thing in there about God being forgiving and God being loving. My daughter was solely in elementary faculty, however she had made this card for him.
“I bear in mind my dad studying it and crying. He stated, ‘It’s humorous that it’s best to say that as a result of I used to be simply pondering, telling God that he couldn’t forgive me for all of the dangerous issues that I had finished.’
“We needed to depart the room as a result of he had an emergency that wanted to be taken care of,” she shared. “I bear in mind pondering, ‘Possibly he was going to vary his methods.'”
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April Balascio is seen right here along with her dad and mom at 7 months outdated. (Courtesy of April Balascio)
Balascio stated she was “relieved” when Edwards died.
“He was presupposed to be executed, and he ended up dying earlier than the execution,” she stated. “I used to be not trying ahead to the execution. I knew it could be a media circus. I knew the reporters can be knocking on the door once more and calling as a result of he requested for the loss of life penalty. His dying earlier than the execution was a blessing. It was a reduction. It was throughout.”
Edward Wayne Edwards follows court docket proceedings together with protection legal professional Larry Whitney. Edwards entered responsible pleas on two counts of aggravated homicide for the 1977 killings of Billy Lavaco of Doylestown and Judy Straub of Sterling. (Phil Masturzo/USA As we speak Community)
However the story isn’t fairly over for Balascio, who now lives a extra peaceable life on a farm. She has submitted her DNA, hoping it might result in answers to any cold cases her father could have been concerned in.
Police searched the world alongside Freeway 16 for the our bodies of Timothy Hack and Kelly Drew, who went lacking in August 1980. (Ned Vespa/USA As we speak Community)
“You don’t should be a product of your atmosphere,” stated Balascio. “All of us make decisions. My dad made the alternatives that he made, and so they have been dangerous decisions. However he has youngsters who’re all law-abiding residents who’ve made the suitable decisions and have loving households.
“I’ve a lot empathy and sympathy for the dad and mom who misplaced their youngsters. … To at the present time, I nonetheless break down and cry once I take into consideration the devastation that my father has brought about in individuals’s lives… There are nonetheless repercussions from the evil issues my dad did. That doesn’t go away.
April Balascio lives a extra peaceable life on a farm. (Jonathan Easterling)
“My dad did confess to 5 murders, sure, however I additionally imagine … there’s extra on the market,” she mirrored. “There are extra victims on the market.”
The Related Press contributed to this report.
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