Crime Junkie
Crime Junkie
"I don't need no lawyer, I'm guilty." — Mack Ray Edwards
"I was going to add one more to the first statement. And that was the Tommy Bowman boy that disappeared in Pasadena. But I felt I would really make a mess of that one. So I left him out of it." — Mack Ray Edwards
"It turns out that during that time, at least in that area, the police would destroy the files of missing kids when they turn 18. Like just gone. They basically said like, oh, they're adults now, so they're not missing kids, but they're still missing." — Ashley Flowers
This episode of Crime Junkie explores the disturbing case of Mack Ray Edwards, a man who confessed to multiple murders and kidnappings spanning several decades in the Los Angeles area. The narrative begins with Edwards' surrender to police in 1970, confessing to the kidnapping of three sisters, which led to the recovery of the girls. However, his confession quickly expanded, revealing a deeper, darker history of unsolved murders dating back to 1953, including the cases of Stella Nolan, Brenda Howell, and Donald Baker.
The investigation into Edwards' confessions revealed a pattern of targeting young victims, often disposing of their bodies in ways designed to conceal them, such as along freeway construction sites. The lack of comprehensive national databases at the time allowed Edwards to evade suspicion for many years, despite his violent past. The episode highlights the challenges faced by law enforcement in connecting seemingly disparate cases and the devastating impact of lost or destroyed investigative files, particularly the policy of discarding missing child files after a certain age.
The story takes a significant turn with the efforts of author Weston DeWalt, who, through meticulous research and access to private records, began to connect Edwards to additional unsolved disappearances, most notably that of Tommy Bowman. This connection, bolstered by a posthumous letter from Edwards, prompted renewed police interest in expanding the scope of their investigation to include other potential victims, such as Bruce Cremen, Karen Tompkins, Dorothy Brown, and Ramona Price, underscoring the ongoing struggle for closure for families of the missing.