Credit - Jonathan Easterling
- Growing up with a volatile father, April Balascio, 56, and her family moved constantly while her father worked odd jobs and secretly hid a violent past.
- Years later, she linked him to the 1980 Wisconsin “Sweetheart Murders,” leading to DNA testing and his arrest for multiple killings.
- He confessed to more murders before dying in prison; she shared her journey through the podcast The Clearing and her memoir Raised By a Serial Killer.
Here she tells her own story in her own words.
‘Pack a bag. Let’s go,’ my dad, Edward, then 61, called, rousing me from sleep.
I was 11 and it wasn’t the first time we’d left a town in the middle of the night. Dad worked as a handyman, so we never stayed too long in one place, constantly moving to where the work was.
Dad also did some motivational speaking, teaching others how to choose the right path, after he’d served time in prison for a string of robberies in the 1960s.
Squeezing into the car with Mum, Dad, and my four younger siblings, I wondered where we’d call home next.
My father was incredibly hot and cold with us all when we were growing up.
On special occasions like Christmas, he’d go all out decorating our rentals and was giddy with excitement watching us kids rip open the gifts he’d picked.
Other days, he had a raging temper which he’d take out on us.
By age 18 I’d been to 17 different schools.
Moving out of home shortly after graduating, I fell in love, marrying just nine months later. In time, we had three children.
But even as an adult, haunting images of my childhood still plagued me – plates of dinner being thrown and a trail of broken bones.
Missing people and dead bodies also seemed to follow us to every town we stayed in.
At night when I struggled to sleep, I’d try to recall all places we’d been.
Whenever I remembered a town’s name, I’d grab my laptop, researching each location for cold cases to see if anything jogged my memory. Nothing stood out until one night in 2009, when a place sprang to mind – Watertown, Wisconsin.
We’d lived there for a couple months when I was 11.
Memories of two teens going missing swam in the back of my mind.
Researching online, I found articles on ‘The Sweetheart Murders’, the name given to a cold case involving couple Kelly Drew and Timothy Hack, both 19, who vanished in August 1980.
They’d celebrated a friend’s wedding reception at a venue called Concord House before vanishing.
I felt a jolt of recognition. I know that place… we camped nearby, and Dad was working there, I realised.
I recalled him, like everyone in the town, tuning into the nightly news for updates on the missing couple.
‘I bet they find those kids in a field,’ he’d said over and over again.
We left town not long afterwards. But as I read on, I was horrified to discover their bodies had been located in a field more than two months after they’d disappeared.
Tim had been stabbed. Kelly had been bound and strangled and possibly raped, with semen located on her pants and underwear.
Police never found the killer and all the leads dried up.
Thinking back, I recalled Dad coming home with a busted nose around the same time. He told me he’d injured himself hunting, but even as a kid I remembered thinking it was odd.
Could Dad be responsible? I wondered now.
Hands shaking, I dialled my sister to fill her in on my suspicions.
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‘Think of what it will do to our families,’ she warned.
I knew she was worried, but all I could think about was Kelly and Tim’s loved ones. As I thought about my teens sleeping down the hall, my heart ached for the couple’s parents.
Mind made up, I called the hotline I’d found on the article. Speaking to Detective Chad Garcia, I told him everything I knew. About a month later, he went to visit my father, who agreed to a DNA sample.
The next week, the results were in.
‘Your father’s DNA was a match,’ the detective said.
I felt sick.
Soon afterwards, Dad was arrested. I never spoke to him again.
In April 2010, my father, Edward Wayne Edwards, then 76, was handed a double life sentence for the murder of Tim Hack and Kelly Drew.
Then he confessed to two more murders – Billy Lavaco, 21, and Judy Straub, 18, in 1977.
Then came the most chilling confession of them all – Dad had killed my brother’s friend, Dannie.
After I’d left home, my parents had taken in Dannie and encouraged him to join the Army.
He admired Dad so much he even took our surname.
But in 1996, shortly after Dad signed up Dannie for the maximum military life insurance of $382,412, he’d been found dead by a gunshot wound, aged 24.
I’d always had a niggling feeling Dad was involved in his death, but brushed it off.
After all, he’d been devastated when Dannie died. But now, he’d admitted to pulling the trigger. Even his confessions were selfish.
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Dannie Boy Edwards was shot dead. Credit – IMDb_
He wanted the death penalty to avoid life in jail.
I knew my father was a volatile man, but it dawned on me that, while he’d been giving motivational talks on how to be a model citizen, he’d been a secret serial killer all along.
In March 2011, he was sentenced to death. But the next month, he died in jail due to diabetes before he could be brought to justice.
I felt relief that our family was spared the media circus.
But the weight of Dad’s actions hung over me like a dark cloud.
Not wanting to burden my family with the agony I felt, I’d muffle my screams in the shower with a wash cloth.
In 2019, I created a podcast, The Clearing with journalist Josh Dean, detailing the journey to discovering the truth about my father. In the final episode I arranged to speak with Tim Hack’s parents, Dave and Judy.
They shared sweet stories of their son growing up, and their heartache of losing him before his life had truly begun. ‘I’m so sorry,’ I cried.
But they told me I was not to blame.
READ MORE: My sister was murdered in her backyard. Now I’m raising her kids
In 2020 I started writing a book, piecing together the story of my childhood.
Finally in January this year, I released Raised By A Serial Killer, dedicating my work to Dave and Judy.
For a long time, I shied away from the parts of myself that reminded me of my father, including my own temper.
But I’ve learned I don’t have to be a product of my environment, that I can choose my own path – such as by helping people instead of hurting them.
Sadly, I no longer have contact with my mum or siblings, but with help from therapy, my animals, my family and my faith, I’m finally healing.
I may never know why my father did what he did, but I know I’ll do everything I can to leave the world a better place than I found it.
‘Raised by a Serial-Killer – The shocking true story behind The Clearing podcast’ available from Amazon.
