[3] He traveled frequently during his 20s and 30s, working as a ship docker, vacuum cleaner retailer, and handyman, among other assorted jobs.

[5] After spending several years as a fugitive, he was placed on the FBI's 10 Most Wanted list in 1961 following a 1960 escape from a Portland, Oregon, jail,[4][5][6] where he had been held on suspicion of impersonating a Federal Officer.

[8] In a 1993 letter to the FBI found in his papers, Edwards requested his criminal and history records for cities in 19 states, claimed that J. Edgar Hoover "more or less gave me permission to proceed" with his 1972 autobiography "after I assured him there was nothing in it bad about the FBI" and he was writing a new book about criminals he met while incarcerated, such as Tony Provenzano, Charles Manson and Jimmy Hoffa.

William "Billy" Lavaco, 21, of Doylestown, Ohio, and his girlfriend Judith Straub, 18, of Sterling, Ohio, had been dating eight months when Straub's car was found in the parking lot of Silver Creek Metro park in Norton, on August 7, 1977, with her purse and shoes inside.

[10] Family members gathered in the lot the next day as Norton police, aided by a National Guard helicopter, searched the high weeds.

[14] In 2010, he pleaded guilty to the murders of Billy Lavaco and Judith Straub, in Norton, Ohio; and Tim Hack and Kelly Drew, in Concord, Wisconsin.

[17] Edwards died of natural causes at the Corrections Medical Center in Columbus, Ohio, on April 7, 2011, avoiding execution by lethal injection set for August 31.

[18][19][20] According to Phil Stanford in his book The Peyton-Allan Files, Edwards may have been responsible for the murders of Beverly Allan and Larry Peyton in Portland, Oregon, in 1960.

[22] Retired homicide detective John Cameron speculated that Edwards was responsible for several high-profile cases, including the Zodiac killings in the Bay Area of California and the murder of JonBenét Ramsey.

In October 1972, Edwards appeared on the television game show To Tell The Truth,[24] claiming to be reformed and denying having committed any murders.

[27] In 2017, A&E broadcast a Cold Case Files episode[28] describing the murders of Tim Hack and Kelly Drew.

[30] The daughter told People that Edwards had a dark side, verbally and physically abusing her mother Kay, and making the children watch videos about the Zodiac Killer while screaming, "that's not how it happened!

According to an article in Rolling Stone by Amelia Mcdonell-Parry, Larry Harnish, who had also researched the Black Dahlia case, ridiculed Cameron's use of a website which Cameron believes was authored by Edwards; Cameron's efforts to reach out to Kathleen Zellner, attorney for Steven Avery, were unsuccessful, but in an e‑mail Zellner doubted that Edwards could have murdered Teresa Halbach, while citing no evidence which definitively excluded him; Mcdonell-Parry claimed that Cameron embellished his theories in the A&E documentary, citing a lack of evidence that the Zodiac Killer's hood was made of leather, but also noted that Detective Chad Garcia agreed that Edwards had committed more than the five murders for which he was convicted.