Chapter 18
The Atlanta Child Murders
Cameron had spent the better part of a year investigating Edwards and connecting him to murders all over the country. He had traveled to Napa, Vallejo and met with law enforcement giving them everything he had uncovered on Edwards. Many in law enforcement could not wrap their minds around a serial killer such as Edwards. The Atlanta Child Murders changed that.
Cameron called Neal and asked him, “Did you watch TV last night?”
“No,” he replied. “I was studying up on the Egyptian Book of the Dead. Why?”
“Edwards would have loved this. They aired it right on the anniversary of his mother’s ‘suicide.’ It was a special on a convicted killer named Wayne Williams out of Atlanta. I remembered Wayne and the Atlanta Child Murders because they all happened while I was in the police academy in Alexandria, Minnesota, 1979-1981. We followed them as a class project. It was the biggest FBI manhunt at the time. Someone was killing black teens and dumping their bodies in church parking lots, police parking lots, etc…It was causing a race war in Atlanta. Ed repeats Atlanta 39 times in his book and one of the chapters is titled, ‘Love in Atlanta.’”
“Tell me more! I’m intrigued” Neal asked.
“I always expected Edwards was doing something brutal in that city. Remember when April, Ed’s daughter, told me Ed killed two little black kids with a baseball bat? Well, I started snooping and here’s what I came up with. In 1979, Edwards, his wife, and 5 kids were hiding in campgrounds traveling between Florida, Arizona and Colorado. They had lived in Pennsylvania, but their dad burned down their house. April told me this story when I interviewed her in 2010.”
“It was during the time my great aunt Lucille was visiting us. And one wet night, my dad came home all muddy. The next day was when we heard kids were missing. My aunt questioned my dad on this. She suspected him of something. So much so, she talked about it with some of us kids. We befriended two boys, they were African American brothers. One day they just stopped coming over. We heard rumors that something happened to them. I remember thinking it wasn’t good and we never saw those boys again. We left Florida after selling almost everything. It didn’t make sense to me because we had just bought everything. It was also odd that one day when we came home from school a police car was pulling out of the drive and dad wouldn’t tell us what it was about. We moved shortly after that—into a campground. We suspected dad of killing a little African American boy, 5-7. The boy was giving Jeff a hard time. One day the boy wasn’t in school. Dad said someone hit him in the head with a baseball bat and he died.’
From the investigation we have done, Edwards was in and out of Atlanta his entire life. He was captured there in 1962.
KINGSPORT TIMES NEWS, January 22, 1962
POLICE CAPTURE EDWARD EDWARDS
Atlanta Georgia (AP) Police today arrested suspected bank robber Edward Wayne Edwards, 28, one of the Nation’s 10 most wanted criminals. Edwards and his wife Marlene were captured by Detective L.N. Bradley, and other officers who surprised the couple in an Atlanta apartment they rented yesterday.
After his capture, imprisonment and release in 1967, Edwards went back to Atlanta in the 70’s to get himself photographed with the cop that caught him in 1962, Captain Bradley.
The Atlanta Child Killings occurred from 1979 until 1981. During this period someone was kidnapping and killing young black boys and taunting the police with anonymous calls and letters. Over 24 young boys were brutalized and left dead, many left on ‘Memorial Drive,’ near churches. Edwards’ daughter April provided more information regarding their stay in Atlanta.
“1979-82 ‘My dad was arrested for shoplifting. I didn’t know this at the time, my mom told me later. She had to bail him out of jail. Dad set fire to the house we were renting. Authorities suspected him of arson. We left town quickly. When we moved, dad wouldn’t allow us to write or call friends. We had to break all connections. I do not think he left forwarding addresses. We stayed with a police officer’s family in Atlanta and authorities from Pennsylvania found a Marietta Georgia police uniform in the burned out remains and came to Atlanta and arrested Dad for arson, March 1982.’”
In 1981 many in Atlanta thought that a white police officer was killing black teens and trying to start a race war. The killer started taunting preachers and the press with anonymous calls.
Associated Press, March 9, 1981
Atlanta Letter-Writer Claims Killings
ATLANTA (AP) —-Someone claiming to be the Atlanta child killer has written taunting letters sprinkled with police jargon, and a man making the same claim has been telephoning the minister of a church near the site where the 20th body was found.
The latest developments have fueled some existing theories about the case that has baffled investigators and terrorized the black community for 20 months. The police jargon written in the letter, written to reporters at the Atlanta Constitution, could spur speculation that the killer poses as a police officer to gain the trust of victims.
The minister said the body was found near the church soon after, and a man who said he was the killer, contacted him on the church’s 24 hour help line. There has been evidence the murderer responds to publicity, and the minister had issued a well-publicized plea for the killer to contact him.
The letters purportedly written by the killer were disclosed Sunday by the Atlanta Constitution and the Atlanta Journal. The newspapers said they decided to publish only part of one letter because it contained a veiled threat that another child may be killed Tuesday during a benefit concert for the investigation.
Television station WAGA, however, reported Sunday that one of the letters was signed “Ghost Killer” and included a phrase suggesting the writer was responsible for more deaths than have been contributed to him. The letter contained police jargon and phrases taunting police.
The CBS affiliate said the letter referred by initials to three Constitution reporters who have written about the cases, and that the newspapers responded by placing a classified ad in the personals section, addressed to “GK” for ghost killer. The ad read:
ATTENTION GK: Received your message, your information informed and challenged us. Send us another verse and chapter.
Atlanta Journal and Constitution, March 9, 1981 Classifieds
Neal replied, “Three reporters contacted? In every case, the circumstances are identical! He writes the press, makes demands; they comply and then hear nothing. It’s the same M.O.”
“He wrote in his book about being in Atlanta in 1955, long before he killed in 1980.”
“While in Atlanta, I met a seventeen-year-old girl whose father was a police officer. She lived about two blocks away from a drug store I frequented. Several times I’d been over to her home when her parents weren’t there. When the policeman and his wife left for work the next morning, his daughter and I put all of her clothes in the trunk of my car. Her father had a huge gun collection, and I helped myself to some choice pieces. Then we went downtown and wrote 400 dollars’ worth of checks against her father’s account. After we rode around for a while, I dropped her off at the house, picked up Jeanette, my wife, and took off for New York City with all the girl’s’ clothes, the stuff she’d bought, her father’s guns, and all the cash.” (Ed Edwards MOAC 1955-56, Atlanta)
Cameron wanted to clarify something. “Even though he’s killing in the 80’s and his book was written in 1972, he follows the same ritualistic patterns. He replicates and mimics his crimes over and over in the same cities, returning throughout the decades to taunt them and repeat them. If a city convicts an innocent man he returns to kill. He’s always inside the police, knowing the details of the investigation. He’s a police officer.”
In Atlanta, the FBI brought in a task force bigger than any other in history. Edwards had started a race war in 1980; a white police officer, killing black kids, and setting innocent people up. This was one of Edwards’ biggest crimes of recognition. There is no doubt about the religious connotation. The boys were left on Memorial Drive near churches and he called and taunted a minister.
Neal challenged him, “Tell me about the letters to the press!”
“They will make you sick. Here is a poem he sent to the press and police in 1981.”
Original March 1981 Atlanta Letter
Well you’re all afraid, you’re all upset.
Cause none of those cops have caught me yet.
I struck again and didn’t leave a clue.
Now the whole city doesn’t know what to do.
You finally found Lubie, he’s been there all the while.
Keep looking you might find another child.
You think that number starts at nineteen?
Man, there are some things you haven’t seen.
One night some kids got killed in a fire.
I struck the match so the death toll is higher.
But you can’t seem to catch me, I wonder why.
Thousands of you see me every day when I pass by.
It’s pathetic to know that I can get away.
With first degree murder on any chosen day.
Politicians are worried as the plot thickens.
Leaders running around like headless chickens.
All different cops can’t cooperate with the others.
You’ll never catch me you bumbling mothers.
Go back from the ridiculous to the sublime.
And you’ll find that I’ve been with you every time.
You’d better start looking before it’s too late.
Or there’ll be another “50-48”.
So as I leave you with this piece of evidence.
Don’t do something stupid like dust it for prints.
Signed, the Ghost Killer
March, 1981 Atlanta Child Killer Letter
The handwriting on the Atlanta letter matched letters Edwards sent to Cameron. Cameron furthered that a “50-48” in Atlanta police terms represents the 28 police officers killed in the line of duty. He continued with another incredible letter written by Edwards in March of 1981.
Zodiac Letter Atlanta, 1981
“He sent this letter with a threat containing the misspelled word ‘bussing’ just like the Zodiac did.”
Neal responded, “How could anyone deny that the Zodiac was the Atlanta Child Killer? It’s the Zodiac talking. ‘I used to be in San Francisco. I use to stalk women, but I like to kill children now. At all my victims’ bodies, I have left clues.’
“He’s the killer of JonBenet, Neal. There is no doubt. Compare this letter I got from him to the Ghost Killer Letter.
The Atlanta letters confirmed that Edwards had been changing up his handwriting his entire life, confusing experts. He could write cursive, block, left hand, right hand and he always played games within the letters, speaking half-truths and giving leads to be followed. It was the letter that Ed sent to Neal in 2010, and the way it started, ‘It’s Me!’ that led to tying Ed to the Atlanta Child Killings.
Ed Edwards Letter to Neal Best November 2010
Edwards had been killing children and staging horrific murders his entire life. After his 1982 capture in Atlanta, he started informing to officials. He contacted investigators in Erie, Pennsylvania, looking for a deal and a way out of prison. He had information on an arson that he had committed but wanted to set someone else up for it. The arson resulted in the death of two children. He confessed to doing the crime in the above poem. “One night two kids got killed in a fire. I struck the match so the death toll is higher.” In typical Edwards’ fashion, he pinned the whole deal on someone else. Edwards convinced investigators to go after Louis DiNicola for the August 30th, 1979 arson at Deborah Sweet’s home, which killed two children and an adult man. Edwards testified that DiNicola had made admissions to him while in prison, in 1983, resulting in DiNicola’s arrest. After testifying and serving only 3 years of a 12-year sentence, Edwards was released after filing an appeal and walked out the doors in June of 1986. Prosecutors claimed in later filings that Edwards had received “no benefit” for his testimony. Edwards NCIC records showed his long history of custody in other states yet he was always released early when caught.
Edwards NCIC Records Listing Other Agencies with Arrest Records