https://youtu.be/BU94s8b7EZY
One of the most frustrating questions regarding the death of Teresa Halbach in Netflix’s crime documentary Making A Murderer is “If Steven Avery didn’t kill her, who did?” We’ve heard a couple of theories offered up by internet sleuths and Steven Avery himself, but there’s been nothing very conclusive – partially because the police did such a terrible job of following leads once they’d decided Avery was the killer. But former police sergeant and FBI cold case task force worker John Cameron thinks he knows who did it.
According to Cameron, Edward Wayne Edwards was a serial killer that liked to set other people up for the crimes he committed and was obsessed with the media attention surrounding murder. Sometimes he would pick victims based on reports he read in newspapers. Other times his target would be the person being set up for murder, with the victim being almost inconsequential.
Officially, Edwards has been convicted of five deaths from 1977 to 1996, including the murder of his adopted son for insurance money. But there’s a growing number of people that buy into the theory that he is responsible for some of the biggest unsolved murder cases in American history, including the Zodiac killings, the West Memphis Three, Chandra Levy, and Jon Benet Ramsey. Now Cameron believes Edwards may have something to do with Teresa Halbach’s death as well.
Related: Who Does Steven Avery Think Killed Teresa Halbach?
What ties Edwards to all these cases? Location, letters to press/police/families of victims, and blogs written by Ed Edwards himself. His daughter, who was the one who ended up turning him in to the authorities, has also put forward information linking Edwards to more murders than he was officially tried for.
Here are some things that may make you go hmmm when considering Cameron’s theory that Edwards killed Halbach:
- Several of Edward Wayne Edwards’ past victims were murdered on Halloween night. Teresa Halbach disappeared on Halloween night.
- Edwards had killed in Wisconsin before: In 1980, Edwards mudered Timothy Hack and Kelly Drew in what was later dubbed the Sweetheart Slayings.
- Edwards was living about an hour away from Steven Avery at the time of the murder.
- Avery’s new lawyer Kathleen Zellner has already freed one of the men wrongfully convicted of a crime Cameron attributes to Ed Edwards – Ryan Ferguson spent nearly 10 years in jail for the death of Columbia Daily Tribune sports editor Kent Heith. That murder went down on Halloween night.
- Edwards has a history of showing up at funerals and trials of his victims. Cameron contends he’s been caught on camera doing this a few times, appearing in the background of a documentary on the West Memphis Three. As for the Halbach case, take a look at someone Cameron noticed in episode six of Making A Murderer:
Was this Edward Wayne Edwards? Cameron has spent time in Wisconsin trying to determine the mystery individual’s identity, with no luck so far.
If you thought the people out there fighting to determine Avery’s innocence or guilt are hardcore, wait until you wade into the section of the internet devoted to serial killer theories. There are endless message boards crammed with opinions, theories, and suppositions made by all sorts of people about every case ever left unsolved. Cameron makes some solid arguments and has a legit background in police investigation, but it’s hard to ignore the fact that he’s accusing one man of literally over a hundred murders.
I mean, just look at his website, which declares with no uncertainty that “EDWARDS IS THE KILLER OF TERESA HALBACH AND SET-UP OF STEVEN AVERY AND BRENDAN DASSEY.” Well, that’s, like, just your opinion, man. The rest of us would like a few more hard facts to back this up before we go all in on this theory. And when someone is willing to throw so much certainty behind one claim we know isn’t for sure, how are we supposed to give him the benefit of the doubt in anything else he says?
But the further you go down the rabbit hole, the harder it gets to ignore certain evidence unearthed by Cameron. For more information, you can check out Cameron’s book, listen to some of his appearances on crime podcasts, or take a look at this website which attempts to summarize the evidence that ties Edwards to his many alleged crimes.
