Former Detective Says Serial Killer Murdered Teresa Halbach, JonBenét, Chandra Levy, Jimmy Hoffa & More!

By: Catherine Townsend

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FBI Ten Most Wanted mug shot of Edward Edwards [Wikimedia Commons]

Teresa Halbach [Calumet County Sheriff’s Office]

A retired Montana police detective believes that serial killer Edward Wayne Edwards not only murdered Teresa Halbach, but is also responsible for many of the 20th century’s most notorious murders.

Steven Avery, the subject of the Netflixdocumentary Making a Murderer, was sentenced to life in prison for the brutal rape and murder of the 25-year-old photographer in Wisconsin in 2005.

John A. Cameron, who worked for the Great Falls police force for 24 years, including 14 years specializing in cold case investigations, says that he has uncovered evidence proving that Edwards killed Halbach.

But Cameron veers into strange territory when he also fingers Edwards for killing victims including Jimmy Hoffa, Chandra Levy, and JonBenét Ramsey. In fact, Cameron blames Edwards for a vast number of headline-grabbing homicides — perhaps any major case you’ve ever heard of, with the possible exception of Tupac’s.

“Every one of his murders was about setting anybody but him up,” Cameron told BuzzFeed. “He did exactly what he did in the Avery case, all over the country.”

Authorities do know that Edwards killed at least five victims, and police believe that there may be many more out there.

Edwards’ first known victims were of Lavaco and Judy Straub, a double murder that took place in Ohio in 1977. He was convicted of these murders in 2010, and received life sentences.

He committed a second double homicide in Wisconsin in 1980, killing Tim Hack and Kelly Drew in a case known as the “Sweetheart Murders.“ Edwards also later confessed to the 1996 murder of Danny Gloeckner, who had changed his last name to Edwards, in Ohio. The victim was a young man who lived with Edwards and his wife for several years, and Edwards killed him in a scheme to collect insurance money.

In his book It’s Me: Edward Wayne Edwards, the Serial Killer You Never Heard Of, Cameron notes several similarities between Edwards’ murders and the Zodiac killings — especially the fact that both killers targeted couples on lovers’ lanes. And Cameron isn’t the only person who thinks Edwards could be responsible for the Zodiac murders.

Edwards was brought to justice after his daughter April Balascio called police to report her suspicions that her father had committed the so-called “Sweetheart Murders” in 2009.

Balascio recalled on the Investigation Discovery show People Magazine Investigates: My Father, the Serial Killer how she tipped off authorities, which led to her father’s arrest and conviction. She also told People that she had suspicions that her father could have been behind some of the Zodiac murders.

She said that Edwards verbally abused her mother, and made the children watch a program about the Zodiac Killer while screaming, “That’s not how it happened!”

Edwards was sentenced to death in March 2011. He died in prison the following month, at 77.

In 2017, Detective Chad Garcia of the Jefferson County Sheriff’s Office who was in charge of the “Sweetheart Murders” said that he believes that there are at least five to seven more murders that Edwards committed — but said he was less sure that Edwards was specifically involved in the Zodiac killings.

In the 1960s, prior to his murder conviction, Edwards was put on the FBI’s 10 Most Wanted list for a string of robberies, and then spent five years in jail. He later appeared on the TV show To Tell The Truth claiming to be a reformed criminal.

After reading a memoir written by Edwards in 1972 called Metamorphosis of a Criminal,Cameron said he began to notice that Edwards’ descriptions of his locations seemed to place him near to the scenes of known murders.

He later traded letters with Edwards over a nine-month period until Edwards died in prison in 2011. “What it turns out Edwards would do is he would create horrific murders that were in the press constantly that created terror, and he would set people up,” Cameron said, according to The Independent.

“Starting at a very young age, when he was 12 years old, he was able to set up a guy for a murder he had done. And [for] the rest of his life, he would get off on not only killing people, but then setting up someone close to the victim and then watching the system execute them.”

So what ties Edwards to Halbach’s murder? Cameron claims that Edwards committed multiple murders on Halloween nights. Halbach went missing on October 31.

Cameron also claims that Edwards lived only an hour away from Avery in 2005 when the murder took place. Somewhat chillingly, Cameron points to a piece of footage shown in the sixth episode of Making a Murderer that shows a heavyset man standing in the background (above, left) — whom he claims could be Edwards. Whether or not it actually is Edwards, of course, is hotly debated.

Chandra Levy [Wikimedia Commons]

Cameron also states that Edwards could be responsible for many other notorious murders. These, according to Cameron, include the Atlanta Child Murders and the murder of Sam Sheppard‘s wife Marilyn, which was fictionalized in the movie The Fugitive.

Edwards, he says, is also the culprit behind the Colonial Parkway killings, and the brutal slayings of three small boys in Arkansas in a case later known to public by the arrest and imprisonment of the suspects known as the West Memphis Three.

Perhaps most outlandishly, he also claims that a 13-year-old Edwards may have committed the murder of Elizabeth Short, known as the Black Dahlia. And the list goes on: Cameron also believes that Edwards killed Chandra Levy and attempted to frame Gary Condit in a bid to have a higher body count than Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh.