Chardon, Ohio - An aging serial killer already serving multiple life prison terms pleaded guilty on Tuesday to a fifth slaying and was given the death sentence he wanted.
Edward Edwards, 77, of Louisville, Kentucky, pleaded guilty in Geauga County Common Pleas Court to killing his 25-year-old foster son in 1996 for $250 000 in life insurance. A three-judge panel sentenced him.
He has asked for the death penalty but the victim's sister, Jai-Dean Copley of Garden City, South Carolina, told The Plain Dealer newspaper of Cleveland that life in prison would be harsher.
Edwards told The Associated Press during a jailhouse interview last year that he considered Dannie Boy Edwards an adopted son. He said he was confessing to killing him outside Burton east of Cleveland because he wants the death penalty.
Last year in Akron, Edwards was sentenced to life in prison after he pleaded guilty to killing Bill Lavaco, 21, of Doylestown, and Judith Straub, 18, of Sterling, in 1977.
Edwards also was sentenced last year to life prison terms in Wisconsin in the deaths of 19-year-old sweethearts Tim Hack and Kelly Drew. They disappeared from a wedding reception in 1980.
His 1972 autobiography, “Metamorphosis of a Criminal,” details how he drifted across the country in the 1950s and 1960s, running scams, robbing gas stations and seducing women. - Sapa-AP