Chapter 24
Chicago
Chicago Illinois, October 16, 1955
Cameron ran over to Neal’s house. “Guess what I found—the murder he did three days before he married Jeanette and you aren’t going to believe it. It’s the same type murder as the West Memphis Three triple murder in 1993! Only this one happened in 55!”
“What!! Those three innocent teens from ‘93 were just released after serving 16 years.”
“I know. Edwards did a murder exactly like the West Memphis Three—-only he did it in 1955!”
Edwards’ book, NCIC records and documented travels led Cameron to one of Chicago’s most horrific murders ever. The crucifixion of three Catholic school boys on a Sunday night, and it occurred “three days” before Edwards married Jeanette. Edwards’ rise through satanic spirituality and killing before getting married is a rebirth. On the third day he rises again. The crime was horrible. The families were devastated.
Two brothers, John and Anton Schuessler and their thirteen year old friend, Bobby Peterson, left home on October 16, 1955. All three were good Catholic boys. Bobby had received a phone call from an unknown male just before leaving. The boys were supposed to be headed to a nearby bowling alley, but ended up going to the Monte Cristo in downtown Chicago. They had never done anything like it before. They had gone to the Garland Building, a downtown doctor’s plaza where Bobby Peterson signed the register and went to the 8th floor. The plaza was known to house doctors of psychiatry and was closed for the day, but the doorman remembered the boys coming in, asking to use the 8th floor bathroom. Only Bobby, the oldest, went up. When he returned, he and the other two boys left. They were spotted throughout the day in various bowling alleys and they had enough money to get something to eat. They didn’t when they left home and did when they left the doctor’s. Whoever Bobby met on the 8th floor must have given them some extra cash.
The last time the boys were seen was around 9:00 pm. One of them was standing on the curb, hitching a ride. The other two were huddled out of the rain. A truck pulled up and one of the boys was heard saying, “Hey Ed.”
Three days later their bodies would be found laid out in the sign of the cross, beaten and naked near a ditch bank in Robinson Woods Park. The astrological sign Ursa Major had been carved in the thigh of one boy and the word Bear engraved. Some of the flesh had been removed meticulously with a scalpel.
Photo of Crime Scene, Robinson Woods Park, Chicago, 1955
As for the crime fitting Edwards? First, the profile was three for three. There was sensationalism, anonymous letters and phone calls. Secondly, forty years after the murder, a man named Kenneth Hansen was convicted and died in prison screaming he was innocent and set up. His conviction was controversial and based on information provided by anonymous informants and letters to the press and police in 1993.
Finally, the satanic religious connection to the crime. The boys had been beaten just as Sister Agnes Marie beat Ed in the orphanage. “Sister Agnes Marie then made me walk over to a little tree, stand against it, and put my arms around it to hug the tree. She instructed the children to form a line: and each, in turn, would kick me on the backside, and then return to the end of the line. To demonstrate how this was done, she placed the first kick on my rear herself. She was going to break me of my bed-wetting, she warned, or kill me in the process.”* (MOAC)
Cameron considered the astrological connection. The killer carved “Ursa Major” the “Big Dipper” into Bobby Peterson’s thigh. This astrological sign is considered the Lost Zodiac and spans the dates of August 8th through August 15th. The big dipper never sets below the northern horizon. It has eternity, exactly what the Zodiac sought. Edwards was born June 14th which made him a Gemini, the twins, good and evil. But on August 8th, his mother died and his name was changed. This new date, August 8th, made him The Great Bear, Ursa Major, The Lost Zodiac. The connection to the Zodiac case was undeniable.
Cameron felt that the pieces all fit. Now, he had to prove that Edwards bragged about getting away with things in Chicago. A 1975 Chicago Tribune interview of Ed Edwards proved him right.
“The thinking criminal could get away with it for a life time. It was in Chicago at the Greyhound Bus Station that I first found out I was on the most wanted list. I was waiting for the bus to Norfolk, Virginia, and I went to the newsstand, and there was my picture in True Detective magazine—wanted for double murder. The thinking criminal could go a lifetime without being apprehended if he played it the right way. I spent a year on the most wanted list, something I’m not proud of, but at the time considered it a game. The FBI concentrated its efforts on me because I did things to aggravate them. Because I found out later I was in crime only for the recognition. I wouldn’t let the FBI know where I was going, but I wanted them to know I’d been there. I changed cities often and completely reversed habits to throw off what they had on my previous modus–operandi. I found cab drivers to be the most observant people, and many times was confronted by citizens who knew they knew me, but couldn’t make the final association of the top ten list.”
(Edward Wayne Edwards, Chicago Tribune interview, August 5, 1975)
Cameron got another verification to place Edwards in Chicago in 1955 when he traveled to Oklahoma in 2012 to interview convicted copkiller Bill Rose, who did time with Edwards and Dryman in Deer Lodge. Rose reminisced in the interview about Edwards being so enraptured with people’s gullibility in believing he was a doctor and a psychiatrist. He said Edwards had portrayed himself as a doctor in Chicago before his arrest in Montana in 1956. He had befriended him and was impressed with his intelligence. Rose stated, “I’d forgotten about this. After Jeanette left Edwards, he was in the infirmary and asked me to get him a knife so he could commit suicide. I told him he was on his own.”
Edwards had used the doctor ruse for many years and at one time had paying clients in Minneapolis.
Now that Cameron could place Edwards in Chicago in 1955, he checked the exact dates. The boys were killed October 16th, on a Sunday night. Edwards married Jeanette Thursday, October 20th in Idaho Falls. Those two dates were indisputable. Edwards had detailed these three days in his book. In “Metamorphosis of a Criminal,” Edwards claims to get rid of Verna and after “three days” returns to marry Jeanette. The wedding certificate proves this took place with a justice of the peace on Thursday, October 20th, 1955. The three days that Edwards writes about in his book, claiming to be hiding out on a farm waiting for blood tests, are the days Verna disappeared and the boys were killed in Chicago. Jeanette said he had left with Verna and came back without her.
The Idaho Falls newspaper dated October 21st stated that the wedding reception for James Langley (Ed Edwards’ alias) and Jeanette White, for Saturday, October 22nd had been canceled. The reason this was in the paper is that Edwards had grabbed Jeanette a few days earlier, forced her to marry through a justice of the peace, and was heading back toward Chicago to attend the funeral of the three boys he had killed three days earlier.
The Schuessler boys’ funeral took place Saturday, October 22. Life Magazine snapped this shot, showing the grieving family weeping before the casket.
Life Magazine, October 22, 1955
There is a young man standing near the cropped right hand side of the picture with his tie pulled down, shirt unbuttoned and collar turned up. It appears his left cheek is swollen. The man has many characteristics of Edward Edwards. The police reports stated that one of the victims had gotten a few good hits on the suspect. Whether or not this is Edwards will be left for someone else to answer.
Ed Edwards, 1955
Unknown Male October 22, 1955
Cameron had always proclaimed from the beginning that Edwards’ book was a puzzle of murder, and it was proving to be true.