Thomas Francis Edwards

Thomas Francis Edwards (1944 – February 14, 2009), known as The Bethesda Butcher, was an American serial killer. A long-time suspect in two murders committed along the Capital Beltway for which he was never tried, Edwards was instead convicted and sentenced to death for murdering a girl in California in 1981; he remained on death row until his death in 2009.

Three years after his death, he was linked via DNA to the two murders and positively identified as the killer.

Early life Thomas Francis Edwards was born in 1944 in Bethesda, Maryland, and was adopted at an early age by an affluent family who had one son, Terry. His father, a government official based in Washington, D.C., died from undisclosed causes in the late 1950s, after which his widowed mother moved the children to 5126 Manning Drive.

Shortly after his arrival, the 14-year-old Edwards started terrorizing the local children by walking on the streets with a black bullwhip and randomly attacking them. As he was fairly large for his age, few could oppose him, and he later switched to a shotgun and bow - despite this, there were no reported serious injuries. While the neighbors were initially tolerant of his behavior as they sympathized with Edwards' mother, this all changed in 1962.

In early 1964, he was transferred to the Patuxent Institution to undergo psychotherapeutic treatment. Due to patient confidentiality, little is publicly known about Edwards' time there, but the treatment was considered successful, leading to him being paroled to a halfway house in Baltimore in 1968. There, he befriended a man named Martin Salisbury, who would later recall that he considered Edwards to be a "genial and affable man" who was nicknamed "Teddy Bear" and was to be rather clever. Despite this, he also stated that the man suffered from an "intense sexual rage" aimed at women. After having an argument over who was going to use the phone, Kennedy left and started walking back home. Somewhere along the Cabin John Creek Regional Park, she came across Edwards, who proceeded to abduct her before ultimately stabbing her seven times in the head with an ice pick, slashing her throat and shooting her with a Ruger pistol with .22 caliber rounds. He then abandoned her body under a bridge in a snowy ravine near the intersection of Cabin John Parkway and Clara Barton Parkway. She was found later that day, with the ice pick still lodged in her head. A reward of $5,000 would later be offered for any information that would lead to an arrest. The coroner would later reveal that Kalberer had most likely been hit on the back of the head while returning home from grocery shopping, after which she was dragged inside the apartment's kitchen and had her throat slashed with one of the knives. After this, the killer stabbed her six times in the abdomen and three times in the chest, leaving her to bleed to death. Even after this, he then dragged the body to the bedroom, where he continued slashing it for at least half an hour.

On February 2, 1970, 18-year-old FBI clerk Donna Sue Oglesby was found stabbed to death at her residential apartment in Alexandria, Virginia. She was found completely nude and with multiple stab wounds on her body, with a pair of three-inch sewing scissors lodged in one of the wounds. Due to the similarities in brutality and victim profile to the cases in Maryland, this led to public speculation that they were all related, despite reservations from authorities to link the Oglesby case to the others. While his name went undisclosed at the time, it would later be revealed that the suspect was Edwards, who worked as a gas station attendant in the area. When his house in Bethesda was searched, police located various knives and guns - as this violated his parole conditions, he was re-interned at Patuxent.

According to Salisbury, Edwards would attempt to control his reemerging impulses by spending lots of time in the woods, sometimes living out of his camper van along with his dog. His enthusiasm for the area eventually led to him being hired as a forest range officer at the South Coast Gun Club in Irvine. Not long after, an instructor at the club named Richard Malchow started noticing that the new employee exhibited odd behavior, such as sneaking around and taking pictures of young girls and women, as well as spying on people from his camping spot at the Blue Jay Campground. However, as none of these were considered criminal offenses, Edwards was never arrested.

Arrest and trials While authorities in California were looking for him, Edwards boarded a bus bound for College Park, Maryland. Upon arrival, he checked in at a Days Inn and called two friends of his, a former cellmate and Martin Salisbury. During the conversations, he told where he was - less than an hour later, a squad of heavily armed state troopers surrounded the motel. These efforts were unsuccessful, as Edwards was eventually extradited, tried and convicted of murder and attempted murder. However, as the jurors could not agree on a sentence, a new sentencing trial with a new jury was scheduled. At that second trial, Edwards fired his public defender and refused to defend himself, resulting in a death sentence. Just prior to sentencing, Edwards asked for a new public defender - Deputy Public Defender Michael Giannini was chosen, and managed to convince the court to have a third sentencing trial.

At this third trial, the prosecutor presented further evidence of Edwards' disturbed behavior, including revelations that during his marriage with Lisa, he would play sex games in which he pretended to tie her up and then cut her throat, watching her bleed out while she begged for her life. Eventually, Edwards was sentenced to death yet again - upon hearing the verdict, Iberri's father Joseph expressed relief about the recent removal of Justice Rose Bird from the Supreme Court of California, as she was known for her anti-death penalty stance.

Imprisonment, death and link to previous crimes For the remainder of his life, Edwards remained on death row at the San Quentin State Prison, attempting to have his sentence commuted. In 2008, after another of his appeals was denied, Joseph Iberri gave an interview to the Los Angeles Times in which he expressed his frustrations with the fact that executions in the state had been halted and that his daughter's killer had still not faced justice. When asked if Edwards deserved mercy, Iberri replied that he deserved none.

In December 2008, Edwards was admitted to the California Medical Facility in Vacaville to undergo treatment for lung cancer. On February 14, 2009, he died from natural causes. When informed of his death, Joseph Iberri expressed relief that his daughter's killer was finally dead, but also anger that he had not been executed years prior.

Starting back in 1985, detectives from the Montgomery County Police Department started actively reinvestigating the murders of Kennedy and Kalberer, focusing on any evidence that could implicate Edwards. This led to the examination of a small bloodstain found on a green army jacket that was found during the initial search of his residence back in 1970. Using new DNA technology, it was determined that there was a match between the bloodstain on the jacket and Sherry Kennedy's DNA. Although not considered a perfect match, it was enough for both her and Kalberer's cases to be officially closed in January 2012, with Edwards named as their killer.