[citation needed] Edward attended Aliquippa High School, where he studied up to eighth grade, graduating with honors and most of his friends having a positive outlook of him.

However, starting in the ninth grade, he lost interest in studying and began to spend more time on the street, which led him to engaging in crime in the late 1950s.

He served at Fort Dix, New Jersey, where he was disciplined at least twice: for injuring a colleague with a pipe during a fight; and abandoning his post, later being arrested by local police for dangerous driving and illegal weapons possession.

Surratt was dismissed from the Army in August 1965 and returned to Aliquippa, where he inherited the business of his late father, who had died in June of that year due to complications from throat cancer.

At the time, he was working as a truck driver for a company based in Charlotte, North Carolina, and during his professional career, from 1977 to 1978, he visited cities in both Ohio and Pennsylvania, where a series of at least 27 unsolved murders stirred a moral panic among the population.

While being arrested, Surratt, in spite of several warning shots, fiercely resisted seven officers and managed to escape, hiding in a nearby metallurgical plant on the Ohio River.

While examining the interior of Langford's car, police found a bat with Surratt's fingerprints, as well as a number of items belonging to a 30-year-old disabled Vietnam War veteran Joseph Weinman and his wife, 29-year-old Catherine, who were beaten to death on September 30, 1977, in their Marshall Township, Pennsylvania home.

[12] On New Year's Eve, 1977, Surratt was in Breezewood; on that day, 64-year-old Guy Mills, his wife Laura and 36-year-old Joel Krueger were all killed by an assailant with a shotgun.

In addition, credit card receipts and a number of other evidence showed that Surratt was in Boardman, Ohio, not far from where another similar murder occurred, making him a prime suspect in the killings altogether.

[15][16] During the course of the investigation, on the basis of material evidence, Edward Surratt was checked for involvement in at least 18 murders, in which the offender had a similar modus operandi to him and the attack in Vilano Beach.

[18][19] At his first trial, Surratt confessed to the murder of 56-year-old John Shelkons, who was shot with a shotgun at his home in Baden, Pennsylvania on January 7, 1978, as well as attacking his wife Catherine, who was beaten severely but lived.

Surratt also claimed to have killed 17-year-old John Feeny, who was shot to death on October 22, 1977, in Findlay Township, Pennsylvania, while trying to meet his 16-year-old fiancée Ranee Gregor.

Edward agreed to indicate Gregor and Hamilton's burial sites, as well as to testify in other murders in exchange for a transfer to a penitentiary in South Carolina, where conditions were much more lenient; his offer was denied, however, and ultimately, no agreement was reached.