An unusual listing from Beaverton cropped up on Facebook Marketplace last week with the title “Murder memorabilia.”
For $50,000, you can buy “a hand carved leather photo album made by serial killer Edward Wayne Edwards in 1957 while he was in prison.”
The album features a smiling blond baby boy on the front and the name “Wayne Jr.” etched in cursive on the back.
The seller is Wayne Wolfe, but when the album was created for him, his name was Edward Wayne Edwards Jr., son of convicted serial killer Ed Edwards.
When Edwards died in 2011 from natural causes while awaiting execution in Ohio, he had confessed to five murders. But Edwards was suspected in more — many more, depending on whom you ask.
Now 68, Wolfe never knew his biological father. As a child, he was adopted by his stepfather.
Ten years ago, not long before she died, his mother presented him with the leather album that Edwards had made decades earlier.
Now, facing eviction from his home of 15 years, Wolfe is looking to sell it.
The album was featured in the 2018 Paramount Network true crime series “It Was Him: The Many Murders of Ed Edwards.” In the series, a retired police detective argues that Edwards was responsible for a number of sensational murders across the country, including the killings of JonBenet Ramsey, Laci Peterson, Jimmy Hoffa and the Zodiac Killer murders.
The series’ premise is far-fetched, but Edwards was a legitimate suspect in other murders, including the 1960 double murder of a young couple in Portland’s Forest Park.
LIFE OF CRIME
Edwards was a prolific criminal who traveled across the U.S. committing armed robberies, arsons and brutal assaults against women, according to his own 1972 autobiography, “Metamorphosis of a Criminal.”
In the book’s final chapters, Edwards claims to be a reformed man, but the bulk of his writing includes graphic details of his lifetime of crime, delivered without a trace of remorse.
News reports from the time of his arrest on the FBI’s Most Wanted list said he had a near genius IQ of 132.
Edwards met and married Wolfe’s mother, Jeannette, in 1955 when he was traveling through Idaho Falls, Idaho. The couple moved often across the Pacific Northwest as Edwards robbed stores and gas stations. Jeannette — coerced in an abusive relationship, according to her family — served as the getaway driver.
Just a few months later, Edwards learned Jeannette was pregnant with Wolfe while they were on their way to Portland.
“Five days after our arrival in Portland, I committed three armed robberies on three successive nights,” Edwards wrote.
Edwards was eventually arrested for a robbery in Billings, Montana, and sent to prison in 1956, while Jeannette was still pregnant. Edwards writes about learning leather-working while at Deer Lodge State Prison.
But the marriage would not last, and Jeannette divorced Edwards in 1958 while he was still incarcerated.
“Mom took me into the prison to tell him that she was divorcing him and for him to be able to see me one last time,” Wolfe said. “That’s when he gave her the photo album. He told her, ‘Fill it full of pictures of Wayne, because I’m going to get out of prison and I’m going to kill him to get even with you for divorcing me.’ ”
After serving his sentence in Montana, Edwards was released in July 1959 and taken to Portland to face armed robbery charges. He received five years’ probation and stayed in the Portland area, first working for a cabinetmaker and then as a vacuum salesman (while committing fraud and other petty crimes on the side).
As he writes in his book, Edwards drove one night to Idaho Falls, tracked down his ex-wife and waited outside her home with a gun.
“In Portland, I’d convinced myself that I wanted to kill Jeannette, a thought I just couldn’t turn off. Then, after actually seeing her and the boy, I had my doubts,” he wrote. “I decided I would return to Idaho Falls some other time and at least maul her face enough so that people would throw her peanuts if she happened to be at a zoo.”
Edwards wrote that after being “abandoned” by Jeannette, “violent feelings began to overtake me.”
PEYTON ALLAN CASE
Edwards was living in Portland when college students Larry Peyton and his girlfriend, Beverly Allan, both 19, were brutally murdered along a road in Forest Park on Nov. 26, 1960.
Peyton’s body was found the next day in his parked car, with 23 stab wounds and a crushed skull. A bullet had been fired from inside his car through the window, and police suspected Peyton, who was known to carry a gun, had fired a shot at the killer.
Allan’s body was found six weeks later in a ravine off U.S. 26, 40 miles west of Portland. She had been raped and strangled.
Edwards was questioned by police after hanging around the crime scene the day after the murder, with a bullet wound in his left arm, according to news reports.
“They started questioning me about the lover’s lane murder,” Edwards wrote. “I told them I knew nothing about it; I had just driven to the scene because, like a lot of other people, I was curious.”
Interestingly, Edwards’ book doesn’t mention the gunshot wound.
About a week after the murders, Edwards was arrested on a separate charge of setting off fire alarms. On Dec. 10, 1960, he escaped from Portland’s Rocky Butte Jail by having a friend, posing as a probation officer, call the jail and clear him for release, The Oregonian reported.
Edwards then promptly left town, and his armed robbery spree continued. He was placed on the FBI’s Most Wanted list on Nov. 10, 1961. Atlanta police finally captured him on Jan. 20, 1962.
Eight years after the Peyton-Allan murders, and after the testimony of a young woman plied by detectives with “truth serum,” two men were convicted of the crime and sentenced to life in prison plus 25 years.
But in his book, “The Peyton-Allan Files,” former columnist for The Oregonian and author Phil Stanford argues that Edwards was the real killer. The convicted men were quietly paroled after serving just a few years of their sentences.
“What does that tell you?” Stanford told The Oregonian in a 2010 interview. “The most sensational double murder, and they let him out on parole after three years? Nobody thought they did it.”
In his autobiography, Edwards readily admitted to robberies, arsons and assaults, but no murders. Yet he makes an eerie admission on page 351: “God, I had mowed down a lot of people in my life.”
Edwards’ book ends with him “turning his life around” after his release from prison in 1967. He used his book to travel across the country, speaking to schools, community groups and police academies about how the corrections system had worked. He even appeared on two television game shows in the 1970s: “To Tell the Truth” and “What’s My Line?”
But years later, Edwards would confess to two different “lovers’ lane” killings: the 1977 murders of a young couple in Ohio, and the 1980 murders of a Wisconsin couple that was shockingly similar to the Peyton-Allan killings.
In 2010, he confessed to killing his foster son in 1996, stating in a jailhouse interview that, at the age of 77, he hoped for the death penalty.
Wolfe’s son, Brandon Wolfe, suspects his grandfather could have been involved in more crimes, including the Zodiac killings.
“He was going to die in prison, and he didn’t want that to happen,” Brandon said, “So he just said enough to qualify for the death penalty and then he stopped talking because any extra murder he would confess to would stay his execution.”
SON OF A SERIAL KILLER
Wayne Wolfe knew he was adopted at a young age, but he never knew much about his biological father.
“All I ever knew about him was that he was a bank robber, and that he had vowed to kill us,” he said.
It wasn’t until Brandon took an online DNA test in 2015 that he and his father discovered their relationship to Ed Edwards.
“It explained a lot,” the elder Wolfe said. “I had real bad anger problems, and now I know why. That is one thing of the DNA I had to have gotten from my father.”
As a teen in Idaho, Wayne Wolfe would get into fights. After a particularly bad assault, a judged offered him a choice: spend two years in juvenile detention or sign up for the military. On his 17th birthday, his parents gave their permission for him to join the Marines. He was injured during boot camp, he said, and left the military in March 1974.
Wayne Wolfe spent his career in construction and retired last year after an injury on the job. Mirroring his father, he decided to independently publish an autobiography, “My DNA Did Not Decide My Destiny.”
“I had this stupid idea that it was going to do really well and that maybe I could live off of my Social Security and income from the book,” Wayne Wolfe said. “I sold 14 or 15 copies is all. Everything kind of fell apart, and I was unable to make my rent this month.”
Meanwhile, April Balascio, Edwards’ daughter from his third marriage, also had a book published last year. Her book, “Raised by a Serial Killer,” was published by Simon & Schuster. It followed a 2019 podcast produced by Pineapple Street Studios and Gimlet called “The Clearing.”
Times are currently tough for the Wolfes.
Brandon Wolfe had worked as a production assistant, but six months after appearing in and producing the true crime series about his grandfather, he was homeless in Los Angeles. He now lives with his father and is looking for work. Wayne’s other adult son and a grandson also live with him.
“In the Bible, it talks about paying for the sins of the father,” Wayne Wolfe said. “In my head, it told me that I was paying for the sins of my father. Nothing would go right.”
And so, he turned to the leather photo album, which represented both the burden of his father’s sins and a possible escape from his financial troubles.
“I’ve got kids and grandkids depending on me,” Wayne Wolfe said. He figured the album could bring in thousands of dollars, “if you just find the right murder memorabilia nut who’s got more money than they deserve to have.”
So far, he hasn’t found that person. A few people have reached out about the Facebook listing, though no one has offered to buy it.
But Wayne remains hopeful his father’s crimes might finally bring something positive to his life.
“You don’t lose hope,” he said. “You keep on trying.”
He has lowered the album’s price to $40,000, and is willing to entertain any reasonable offer.
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