One night in 1980, April Balascio’s father, Edward Wayne Edwards, woke up the household and told everyone to start packing. They left their home in Watertown, Wisconsin, after living there for a year.
It wasn’t new to Balascio, who was 11 years old. She was used to moving every six months to a year without warning. It wasn’t until decades later that she discovered why.
“Every time we moved, it was hard,” Balascio told Fox News Digital. “You develop new friends every time, and then you have to leave them. But one thing that came out of that is you learn how to pack quickly and tightly because if you don’t, your stuff would be left behind.
April Balascio as a child. (Courtesy of April Balascio)
“But it was hard having to turn everything upside down,” she said. ‘It was difficult to start a new school every year or sometimes even twice a year. … He made us believe that we were leaving because people were coming after us. So there was also the fear that we were being hunted, the fear that we would be hunted. be killed.”
Edward Wayne Edwards with his wife Kay, September 25, 1972. (Akron Beacon Journal/USA Today Network)
Balascio has written a new book, “Raised by a Serial Killer: Discovering the Truth About My Father.” In it, Balascio describes how she discovered her father’s true identity and the heinous crimes he committed.
The patriarch died in 2011 at the age of 77 from natural causes. At the time, he was behind bars after being sentenced to death by lethal injection.
April Balascio’s memoir, “Raised by a Serial Killer,” is out now. (Gallery Books)
“I wanted this story to be told, but it took a long time to write it,” Balascio admitted. “It was very difficult to do. I protected my memories.”
Balascio described Edwards as charismatic, a “big kid” who loved parties and entertainment. But he also had ‘a very dark side’.
“It was scary,” she said. “He was abusive. And especially as I got older, I became more afraid of hearing his tires on the gravel in the driveway. I would wonder how he would walk around the house. Would he be in a good mood or a bad mood? For a while I hated him.
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Edward Wayne Edwards was charming and charismatic, but he also had “a dark side,” daughter April Balascio told Fox News Digital. (Courtesy of April Balascio)
“I witnessed his violence, and it was frequent, whether he took his anger out on me or on my mother,” Balascio added. ‘Especially when I was younger, I often saw him express his anger at my mother.
“I saw him hit her and hit her in the face.”
For years, Balascio wondered why the family sometimes had to leave suddenly in the middle of the night. It stuck with her that Edwards did too had a fascination with crime announcements in the local newspaper.
April Balascio had a nomadic upbringing. As an adult, she would discover why. (Courtesy of April Balascio.)
In March 2009, when Balascio was about forty, she started digging and revisiting the issues that intrigued her father. After searching online for “cold case” and “Watertown,” Balascio came across this one reports on the “Sweetheart Murders.”
In this August 19, 1980, photo, a psychic called into the case of the two missing Jefferson County teenagers stands next to the car the couple had been driving the night they were last seen in Sullivan, Wis. (Michael Sears/USA Today Network)
In 1980, high school sweethearts Timothy Hack and Kelly Drew disappeared after a wedding reception. The remains of the 19-year-olds were found in a field two months later. Edwards, a handyman at the time, was questioned by police but insisted he had no information.
After the bodies were discovered, Edwards and his family left Wisconsin.
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Judith Straub, 18, of Sterling, Ohio, was found in Silver Creek Metropolitan Park in August 1977. She was one of five known victims of Edward Wayne Edwards. (Akron Beacon Journal/USA Today Network)
“I suspected my father was doing bad things, but I didn’t express it to anyone,” Balascio said. ‘There was no evidence. “I can’t say I suspected it was murder, but I did believe he was hurting people.”
People are looking for Timothy Hack and Kelly Drew in Jefferson County. (Benny Sieu/USA Today Network)
Balascio learned that investigators had reopened the case. She contacted detectives eager to share everything she remembered from her childhood. Balascio told them she suspected her father might be responsible for the murders, but she had no evidence, only memories of what she saw and felt.
She described how when the pair were initially missing, Edwards spoke about them ‘constantly’. One day he joked to a friend, “I bet they find them in a field.”
William Lavaco, 21, of Doylestown was found in Silver Creek Metropolitan Park in August 1977. (Akron Beacon Journal/USA Today Network)
In a laboratory, Edwards’ DNA and the genetic material found at the crime scene matched, Oxygen.com reported. Edwards was arrested in Kentucky, where he had moved with his wife. He confessed to five murders.
“That’s when it really dawned on me how bad my father was,” Balascio said. “He was a bad man.”
As a child, Edwards grew up in an orphanage and spent time in juvenile detention, the newspaper reported. In 1962, he was arrested for armed bank robbery and spent five years behind bars. His life of crime did not end there.
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Edward Wayne Edwards in an orphanage. (Courtesy of April Balascio)
Edwards confessed to killing 21-year-old William “Billy” Lavaco and 19-year-old Judith Straub, another couple, in 1977. The murders took place in Ohiowhere Edwards grew up.
Edward Wayne Edwards had a tumultuous childhood that led to a life of crime. (Alamy)
Edwards also confessed to killing his foster son, Dannie Boy Edwards, in 1996. His motive was to collect the payout on the 23-year-old’s life insurance policy, which was worth $250,000.
Balascio remembers one of the last times she saw her father. He was hospitalized and she decided to visit him with her children.
Edward Wayne Edwards died in 2011. He was 77. (David Harpe/USA Today Network)
“My daughter wrote my father a get-well card,” Balascio recalls. “I don’t remember the exact words, but there was something about Jesus forgiving everyone and everything. You just have to ask him. There was also something about God being forgiving and God being loving. My daughter was only in primary school, but she made this card for him.
‘I remember my father reading it and crying. He said, “It’s funny you say that because I was just thinking and telling God that he couldn’t forgive me for all the bad things I had done.”
“We had to leave the room because he had an emergency that needed to be taken care of,” she said. “I remember thinking, ‘Maybe he was going to change his ways.'”
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April Balascio was seen here with her parents when she was 7 months old. (Courtesy of April Balascio)
Balascio said she was “relieved.” when Edwards died.
“He was supposed to be executed, but in the end he died before the execution,” she said. “I wasn’t looking forward to the execution. I knew it would be a media circus. I knew the reporters would be knocking on the door again and calling because he was asking for the death penalty. His death before the execution was a blessing. It was a blessing.” It was a relief. It was all over.”
Edward Wayne Edwards follows the legal proceedings together with lawyer Larry Whitney. Edwards entered guilty pleas to two counts of aggravated murder for the 1977 slayings of Billy Lavaco of Doylestown and Judy Straub of Sterling. (Phil Masturzo/USA Today Network)
But the story isn’t quite over for Balascio, who now lives a more peaceful life on a farm. She submitted her DNA, hoping it could lead to that answers to any cold cases her father may have been involved.
Police searched the area along Highway 16 for the bodies of Timothy Hack and Kelly Drew, who went missing in August 1980. (Ned Vespa/USA Today Network)
“You don’t have to be a product of your environment,” Balascio said. ‘We all make choices. My father made the choices he made, and they were bad choices. But he has children who are all law-abiding citizens, who have made the right choices and have loving families.
“I have so much empathy and sympathy for the parents who have lost their children. …To this day I still break down and cry when I think about the devastation my father caused in people’s lives…There are still consequences of the bad things my father didn’t do.
April Balascio lives a quieter life on a farm. (Jonathan Easterling)
“My father confessed to five murders, yes, but I also believe… there’s more,” she reflected. “There are more victims.”
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
