Raised by a Serial Killer
Discovering the Truth About My Father
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3.7 • 7 Ratings
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- $14.99
Publisher Description
The untold story behind the hit true crime podcast The Clearing, this unforgettable memoir traces one daughter’s moving quest to understand her larger-than-life childhood as she searches for the truth about her father, the serial killer Edward Wayne Edwards.
One evening in 2009, April Balascio was searching online, as she had been every night, for unsolved murders in the towns her family had lived growing up, when she stumbled across the latest investigations into the “Sweetheart Murders” cold case. All at once, the buried memories of her father’s dark history were awakened, and she knew she had to take action. She picked up the phone to call a detective and the rest is infamous true crime history.
In her unflinching memoir, Balascio bravely reveals an astonishing tale of a lifetime of manipulation, unexplained upheavals, and silent fear. Some part of her had always known what her father was capable of, but the full truth of how she came to these revelations is as riveting as it is quietly terrifying. Through searing storytelling, dedicated research, and intimate insight, Raised by a Serial Killer is a gripping, courageous memoir unlike any other.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In this chilling debut, The Clearing podcast host Balascio recounts her growing realization that her father, Edward Wayne Edwards, was a murderer. Balascio was born in 1969, and her childhood was marked by frequent relocations across the East Coast and Midwest. It was also marked by chronic abuse: Edwards, a convicted bank robber at the time he married Balascio's mother, frequently beat his wife and children. After Balascio started a family of her own and lost touch with her parents, she remained haunted by her childhood. Vague memories that her family's stints in various cities coincided with reports of people going missing in those places led her, in 2009, to look up Watertown, Wis. She found reports about the 1980 double murder of teenagers who were last seen alive at a hotel where Edwards worked. Balascio called the cold case hotline, setting in motion an investigation that led to the 76-year-old Edwards's arrest that same year, and a dogged quest by law enforcement and amateur sleuths to establish what other killings he might be responsible for. Balascio's blunt, conversational prose allows the horrors of her situation to register without melodrama or overstatement. Readers will be riveted by this frank and frightening account.
