Serial Killer Central - News: Edward Surratt admits guilt in six area slayings

Thu Sep. 02, 2010 - 9:18 PM

Instant Messenger

Start Messenger

Navigation

Latest Youtube's

Books

Newest books:

She Had No Enemies

Outcry

I, Monster

Peter Manuel, Ser...

Predator

Most popular books:

Looking for something special?
Use search!

Mp3 Player

Edward Surratt admits guilt in six area slayings

Â©Beaver County Times (PA) Allegheny Times 2007

By Lori DeLauter, Times Project Director

BEAVER TWP., OHIO - The area's most notorious suspected serial killer has admitted to six unsolved murders, including two in which the women's bodies were never recovered - and never will be, according to him.

Beaver Township Police Chief Carl Frost, who inherited four of the 30-year-old unsolved murders linked to former Aliquippa resident Edward Surratt, instigated and obtained the information that allows him to close his cases. But he's planning to continue working with Florida investigators to get Surratt to reveal more information.

Surratt, a long-distance truck driver and Vietnam combat veteran, was long believed by police to have committed at least 18 murders in 1977 and 1978 in eastern Ohio, western Pennsylvania and South Carolina, as well as the rapes of a mother and daughter in Florida.

Surratt, now 65, is serving two life sentences in Florida, where he was captured on July 1, 1978, still inside the St. John's County home where he had repeatedly raped a woman and her teen-age daughter in front of the bound husband. When Surratt, drunk and on drugs, fell asleep, the husband escaped, and police caught Surratt in the house.

The Florida arrest ended a manhunt that began when Pennsylvania State Police lost Surratt in a foot chase through the former J&L Steel Corp. plant in West Aliquippa about a month prior.

Police gave him the nickname "the shotgun killer" because of his favorite mode of operation: to enter secluded, single-story homes occupied by couples, immediately kill the husband with a shotgun blast, then take away the wife and beat, rape and kill her.

In many cases, their young children woke to find the slaughter.

He left police nothing but some hairs consistent with those of a black man and a couple of his size 10 shoeprints in blood and dirt.

Frost, 49, joined the Beaver Township department about a year after the first killings, which were in his rural township, adjacent to burgeoning Boardman Township, Ohio.

The unsolved murders nagged at him. He'd occasionally thumb through the dog-eared files and look for missed clues. Last September, he said, someone scrawled "John and Mary Davis 1977," two murder victims, next to his picture on a police display at the Canfield Fair in Mahoning County.

Frost, a soft-spoken man with a graying buzz cut, said it struck him, and ignited a memory. He'd done a recent favor for a Florida police chief. Perhaps the man could approach Surratt and fish for information that would allow him to close cases.

Even if he'd never get a conviction, victims' families could at least know for certain who took their loved ones' lives. Ultimately, Frost hoped, the families of two missing women could finally lay them to rest.

Thomas E. Hunker, chief of Bal Harbour, Fla., police, put Frost in touch with his friend Joe Matthews, a retired Miami Beach, Fla., investigator and current investigator with "America's Most Wanted" television show. Both agreed to help, and Frost sent them all his information. Included was a copy of a 1999 two-year Times investigation that for the first time detailed and linked the murders and revealed information about Surratt.

Frost said the investigators primarily relied on the newspaper report as background.

The two approached Surratt earlier this month. He refused to talk to Hunker, saying he hates police, but Surratt did talk twice at length with Matthews.

Surratt wanted to be moved from Century Correctional Institution in northwestern Florida's Escambia County. He wanted to go to a prison with air conditioning. He wanted to deal his way into a South Carolina prison, where two more life sentences are tagged onto his record.

Matthews promised to do what he could, and Surratt gave up some of his ghosts.

As far as Frost is concerned, based on Matthews' account, Surratt admitted to killing David A. and Linda Hamilton and John J. and Mary Davis in Beaver Township, and teenagers John Feeny and Ranee Gregor in Findlay Township.

Linda Hamilton and Gregor were never found, and their bodies are "unrecoverable by anybody's standards," Surratt told Matthews.

'A VERY PLEASANT GUY TO TALK TO'
Frost kept thick files on the Sept. 20, 1977, murders of David A. Hamilton, 28, and his wife, Linda, 28, who was never found; and the Nov. 10, 1977, murders of John J. Davis, 64, and his wife, Mary, 61.

David Hamilton was shot three times with a .38-caliber handgun in his single-story home. The Davises were shot with a 12-gauge shotgun and set afire in their secluded, single-story home. Mary was left in a position that indicated sexual assault, but her condition left police unable to make a determination.

The Hamilton murders were the first in a string of markedly similar unsolved killings over a period of about seven months in 1977 and 1978. Public panic during that time reached untenable levels, with gun sales at record levels and enormous public pressure on law enforcement, which couldn't provide any answers.

When Surratt was arrested in Florida, the killing stopped. Officials never tried him for any Pennsylvania or Ohio murders, believing they had their man.

After Surratt was arrested, Beaver County officials claimed to have gotten a confession, which Surratt later recanted, for a Baden murder. John J. Shelkons, 56, was fatally shot and his wife, Catherine, 56, severely beaten on Jan. 7, 1978, in their home.

Then-Beaver County District Attorney Edward Tocci charged Surratt with first-degree murder and aggravated assault. Tocci dropped the charges by May 1980.

Pennsylvania didn't have the death penalty at the time, nor did Ohio, and Tocci and other local officials pinned their hopes on a murder charge Surratt was facing in South Carolina, which did have the death penalty.

Boardman Township, Ohio, police also had filed a murder charge against Surratt for Katherine Flicky's murder on March 27, 1978. Boardman also dropped its charge, noting the same reason. But the Ohio charge wasn't dropped until May 22, 1991, when Surratt sent a letter demanding action on the charge.

Years after Beaver County dropped its murder charge, Tocci also received a letter from Surratt. He wrote that he'd acquired psychic powers and had visions of where the body of Nancy Adams could be found. Surratt said he might be willing to share if Tocci could make him a deal.

Adams had been missing since Nov. 20, 1977, the day her husband, William Adams Jr., was found murdered in their Fallston home.

Tocci didn't answer. Nancy Adams' body was discovered in 1985 in Bradys Run Park without Surratt's help.
Police from early on knew Surratt was afraid of Florida prisons, which were known to be much harsher than their Northern counterparts.

He played with the officers, trying to see who would offer him what kind of deal. Some thought the number of various officers talking separately to Surratt kept them from making a deal to bring him back to Pennsylvania.

"He was a very pleasant guy to talk to. He'd talk about anything except what he did. He wanted to know what we were going to do for him," one state trooper said about that time. In 1999, two Pennsylvania state troopers from Butler's cold-case unit tried unsuccessfully to talk to Surratt.

Frost thought it might be time to haggle with Surratt again.

Surratt's prison counselor set Matthews and Surratt up in a private office for their interviews. Surratt gulped down coffee with plenty of sugar and cream, which he said was the best he'd had since being in prison. Matthews saw his opportunity when Surratt complained about the prison.

"Century is by far the worst," Surratt told Matthews of the prison in Florida's northwestern panhandle. "There are no bed springs. You just have a pad over a cement or steel slab. There is no air conditioning, and the officers are all rednecks."

When he was being tried in South Carolina, Surratt said, he had a comfortable bed, an air-conditioned cell and he was credited with $5 a week for the commissary. He had no way to earn money for the commissary in Florida, he said.

In the Florida prison, he said, there was only one TV with an antenna on the roof. "Majority rules, unless somebody's got a knife," he said.

He said he had no interest in being transferred to Ohio or Pennsylvania. "I have no family or friends," he said. He mainly wanted to be out of Florida's northern prison region; he wanted to be away from the "rednecks."

At the second interview, Matthews showed him proof he'd started working on getting Surratt transferred to another Florida prison, and Surratt started to talk.

BODIES 'UNRECOVERABLE'
Surratt was certified as a legal clerk by the Florida Department of Corrections, assisting fellow inmates with their legal matters. He lost the certification, however, when he had a conflict with a law library staff member.
He's considered a loner, who spends his time reading, exercising and lifting weights.

In 28 years, he's had only one visitor, an unidentified woman three years ago. An inmate friend felt sorry for him and asked his girlfriend to have one of her girlfriends visit Surratt. He said he enjoyed it. She never came back.

He receives and sends no mail.

He said he is still a practicing Hindu, which teaches that life on earth is hell from a previous life. He believes that the people you meet in this life are the only people you have had contact with in previous lives.

So, he said, he and Matthews must have known each other in a previous life.

As Matthews asked him about the various crimes, Surratt offered up small details.

The Hamiltons had a gold car, Surratt said. When pressed on the location of Linda Hamilton's body, he said, "It's unrecoverable."

Later, when Matthews mentioned missing Ranee Gregor, 15, of Robinson Township, who disappeared from another murder scene in Findlay Township on Oct. 21, 1977, Surratt repeated, "unrecoverable."

He told Matthews that a gas can used to set the Davises on fire came "from out back."

He blamed his behavior on his Vietnam experience and the United States not providing him counseling upon his return. Death and time had no relevance to him, he said.

Matthews told Surratt he was a sociopath, and he would have to give him more information if he wanted to go to South Carolina. He mentioned a few young girls who were killed during the same time period.

"I'll give you a (expletive) carrot," Surratt said. "You can mark off your list all the young kids that I am accused of killing. ... You look back at all the murders and you will see the ones I committed: There were no kids hurt. If a kid was there, I protected them. There's your (expletive) carrot."

HOPING FOR CLOSURE
Frost said he has enough to close his cases on the murders of the Hamiltons and Davises, but he won't just yet.

Frost said he can meet the FBI's definition of "exceptionally cleared," which means he could charge Surratt, but there is a reason beyond his control for prosecuting him.

"I would like to have the full-blown version just to know," Frost said. "If we don't get that, this is enough."

Frost, a perfectionist, said he doesn't like to have outstanding cases, but the personal aspect nags at him more. His police station is within a half-mile of the Hamiltons' house; he sees it every day.

"I'm sure the families have put this behind them as best they can," he said. "But if it was me, I'd still like to know."

When Surratt is transferred to the other Florida prison in the next several days, Matthews and Hunker plan to continue to talk with him. Surratt has promised more information. Once Surratt sees proof that he's being sent to South Carolina, Surratt is supposed to spill everything he knows.

If he doesn't, Matthews told him he will be sent back to Century.

Frost said once everything they can accomplish is complete, he will divide up the results and provide copies of reports to all the affected police agencies for their use.

The crimes and the capture

It's been nearly 30 years since Linda Hamilton, 28, disappeared from her neat, boxlike, single-story home with view of the Methodist church and cemetery across two-lane Route 164, just miles over the Beaver County border in Ohio.
Her husband, David, also 28, worked as an electrician's apprentice. Linda, a former beautician and Avon saleswoman, worked as a waitress about 1Â½ miles away at the Clover Leaf restaurant/truck stop.

Sept. 20, 1977
That night, Linda slept through a thunderstorm. The couple's children, 5-year-old Melynda and 3-year-old Christopher, had crawled into bed at 9 p.m. David watched late-night TV in the living room in his T-shirt and underwear. Next-door neighbors heard what sounded like strong, rapid strokes of a hammer at 12:45 a.m.

Seconds before, a knock had sounded on the Hamiltons' kitchen door. David answered.

Three rounds from a .38-caliber handgun punched into the back of his head and each of his shoulders as he turned to run. He collapsed and died in the entryway. The children found him there in the morning and ran to the neighbors.

They never saw their mother again.

Police found the couple's car near the entrance of a closed strip mine in view of the truck stop where Linda worked. Prints of a man's boots and Linda's bare feet, sometimes walking and sometimes dragging as if she had been pulled, led from the driver's side.

Later, neighbors in the modest, blue-collar area remembered seeing a black man walking down the road from the direction of the truck stop. A bicycle found in the Hamiltons' yard was stolen from the garage of a house along that trek. In between, people discovered their flower pots toppled as though someone had tried to peer through their windows.

Initially, the Mahoning County Sheriff's Department suspected Linda of killing her husband. It issued a fugitive warrant, which prompted a federal warrant for her arrest, and kept it active for several years after her disappearance.

Beaver Township, Ohio, Police Chief Carl Frost always thought it was clear that Linda was abducted.

But when Frank Ziegler, 28, a driver for Taylor Milk Co. in Ambridge, turned up shot to death a week later, the Mahoning sheriff believed Linda Hamilton was the killer.

Sept. 27, 1977
Ziegler was bound for his farm from Taylor's loading dock in Ambridge. Police don't know what led him to pull off the road that night.

Ziegler, of Kittanning, was shot once in the head in his milk tanker truck on Warrendale-Bayne Road in Marshall Township, Allegheny County. The community borders Economy. The call initially came in as a suicide, but police found no gun at the scene.

They found the contents of Ziegler's wallet strewn inside the cab and on the road's berm. Four hundred dollars was missing. Ballistics tests showed the same .38-caliber gun that had killed David Hamilton killed Ziegler.

Allegheny County police didn't make the connection the Mahoning sheriff was sure of. A killer was loose, but Allegheny officials didn't think it was Linda Hamilton.

Three days later, Joseph and Katherine Weinman turned up dead in their Marshall Township home.

Sept. 30, 1977
The Weinmans' one-story house in Marshall was in a rural setting within easy walking distance of the Pennsylvania Turnpike.

Joe, 30, became a paraplegic when he was machine-gunned in the back in Vietnam. He got around either on a gurney or a wheelchair. Kathy, 28, cared for him and their two young boys, Joe Jr., 5, and Kenny, 2.

That night, the children slept as Joe lay on his stomach on the gurney so Kathy could dress an ugly half dollar-sized bedsore on his buttock. Joe, nude, was outside the bathroom door as Kathy nursed him when the killer confronted them. Police never found the weapon he used but think the killer took a 5-pound sledgehammer discovered to be missing from the garage.

He slammed the weapon into Joe's head, then chased Kathy around the home, beating her, stripping her of her clothes and raping her.

In the meantime, Joe regained consciousness. He wheeled himself down the hall. In a closet was a shotgun, inoperable, but possibly he thought it would be a deterrent, a bluff.

The killer caught him at the open closet door before he could reach the gun and hit him from behind, caving in his head. Kathy ran. She made it to the gravel drive before the killer caught her. He killed her with at least 11 stab wounds to her face and chest area and cut her throat with one of her steak knives taken from the drain bin on the kitchen sink.

Her little boys, who hid all night in fear under a bed, found her there face up in the morning. Hairs from her killer were clutched in her hand; her right index finger was broken from the struggle.

Joe Jr. ran to a neighbor's house for help. The boy told officers he saw the killer from his room. He was a "bank robber," the boy said. He wore a red bandana around the lower half of his face.

Again, police had little to go on. From the hair roots, they determined the killer was probably black and had Type A-positive blood. From prints, they learned he wore size 10 shoes. But those were their only clues.

Oct. 22, 1977
John Feeny, 17, of Coraopolis was shotgunned to death in his parents' van while parking with his date, Ranee Gregor, 15, of Robinson Township, along a lonely lovers' lane in Findlay Township.

No trace of Ranee, a pretty junior at Montour High School just days from her sweet 16th, was ever found.

Nov. 10, 1977
The killer came in the morning for John Davis, 63, and his wife, Mary, 61. It was John's birthday.

The couple rose and made coffee in the kitchen of their isolated single-story structure about 100 yards from the road. Across the road, patchy woods stretched to behind the same truck stop in Beaver Township where Linda Hamilton had worked.

The killer came to the back door. John took a blast from a 12-gauge shotgun in the eye at close range. Mary probably drew her last breath in their bedroom, where the killer stripped her, shot her in the chest and left her spread-eagled. At some point, he also shot their dog in the basement.

The killer then took a gas can from the Davises' garage, doused the couple and set them ablaze. Passing motorists reported the blaze late that afternoon. Portions of the home were destroyed; the bodies of the Davises were intact but charred. Any evidence of the killer was destroyed.

Nov. 20, 1977
The relative calm Beaver Countians felt was shattered.

That morning, 7-year-old Billy Adams woke in his bed in his family's secluded mobile home off Route 51 in Fallston. His little sister, Wendy Jo, 4, woke shortly after him.

They found their father, William Adams Jr., 31, dead on his bedroom floor. He was nude and lying on his back, his chest mangled from the close-range blast of a 12-gauge shotgun. Their mom, Nancy, 29, was gone.

No signs of a struggle disrupted the place. Despite some valuable possessions in the home, family members didn't notice anything missing. Nancy's purse and keys were still inside. Police could find no trace of the intruder.

Searchers covered the surrounding woods and the area for miles and found nothing.

Nancy Adams' remains wouldn't be found until eight years later, in nearby Bradys Run Park.

Dec. 3, 1977
Police officers responded to a call at a one-story ranch home on Shafer Road in Moon Township. There they found two shocked girls, Kelli, 9, and her little sister, Karri, 4, the daughters of Richard and Donna Hyde.

Richard, 34, the well-liked principal of Fern Hollow Elementary School in Moon Area School District, lay dead face-down on the kitchen floor. A blast from a 12-gauge shotgun had mangled his chest.

Donna, 34, who had had a beautician's business in their basement, was missing. Police later found her partially clad body beneath a pine tree, face-up. Something like a blackjack had been used to strike her head repeatedly, leaving several cuts. But Donna had not been raped. Police thought barking dogs at a nearby home had frightened off her attacker.

She died from the beating and exposure to the bitter cold.

Police discovered that the shell casing found at the end of the hallway in the Hydes' home matched the casing found in the Adams home.

Dec. 31, 1977
A couple in Breezewood, the "town of motels" off the Pennsylvania Turnpike in Bedford County, saw the killer coming, but they didn't realize it and did nothing to stop him.

The elderly couple were preparing to celebrate New Year's when the husband noticed a black man looking in his window. He didn't bother to notify the police about it, and the peeper went away.

But then he went to another ranch-style home nearby. There, the killer knocked on the kitchen door. Guy Mills, 64, who had been watching TV, answered. The killer shot him at point-blank range. He then walked into the living room and shot Guy's wife, Laura, 65, in her bedclothes.

Their grown grandson, who lived with them, found them when he returned home.

By then, police had also found the body of Joel Drueger, 36, of Altoona. He was in his car four miles away at a rest stop on Interstate 70, then old Route 126. He was killed with the same shotgun used on the Millses.

Police were perplexed by the killings until people came forward to report they'd seen a car that night at an abandoned gas station.

The car, a Buick Electra, was parked a short distance downhill from the Millses' home. The people who spotted it sandwiched between two semis thought it curious enough to jot down the license plate number.

A check produced the owner's name and address: Edward Surratt of Aliquippa.

When state police contacted officers in Beaver County about Surratt, pieces started to fall together.

The Millses had been killed in much the same way as the others in this area. Though Laura Mills wasn't beaten or raped, other similarities were enough to interest police.

And although Drueger's death didn't fit the pattern, it was similar to the death of Ziegler, the Taylor Milk truck driver killed in Allegheny County.

Ziegler and Drueger's cases also were inexorably connected to the other deaths because the guns used to kill them also were used to kill victims who did fit the pattern.

Police finally had a suspect.

Surratt, they learned, was a long-distance truck driver and former garbage hauler. Suddenly, it made sense that all the murder sites were near major routes, truck stops and garbage dumps.

Feeny and Gregor were parking near a garbage dump, a place Surratt knew. The Hydes lived near another garbage dump. The rest lived near major trucking routes.

Police already had used a psychologist to examine information from crime scenes and had come up with a personality profile. In his report, the psychologist surmised the killer was a combat veteran, most likely from the Vietnam War.

He also figured the killer was symbolically killing his mother and father; was of above-average intelligence; was white and divorced or separated; was betrayed by a woman; was a loner; and worked in a job involving driving.

The psychologist also theorized the killer suffered from paranoid schizophrenia that he was able to disguise.

As police began an intensive background study of Edward Surratt, they found many of the psychologist's summations to be accurate. His most obvious discrepancy: Surratt was black. To this day, black serial killers are rare. Most are white, perhaps leading the psychologist to his conclusion.

As police began to look at Surratt, the killing continued.

Jan. 7, 1978
The killer shot steelworker John Shelkons, 56, and left Shelkons' wife for dead in their single-story home on McNair Street in Baden.

Catherine "Kay" Shelkons, 48, had taken a sleeping pill and was in a deep slumber on the living room couch when she heard a bang, jumped to her feet and confronted a strange man wearing a bandana over most of his face and holding a shotgun. He told her, "Keep quiet, you're coming with me."

When Kay refused and darted for the phone, he attacked her, beating her and kicking her in the face. The next thing she knew, the killer was gone, and her daughter, returning home with a date, stood over her in horror. Police thought her daughter might have frightened the killer away.

Police found that the killer had entered through a basement door and climbed the stairs. John Shelkons, who was watching television, probably heard him approach and met the blast of his shotgun in the hallway at the top of the stairs.

Kay Shelkons, her beaten face nearly unrecognizable, told the police she couldn't describe the killer. After much questioning, she remembered tidbits. The killer wore a bandana, she said. He had dark hair she thought was a wig. Otherwise, she couldn't say.

But the pressure on her was immense. All police had from the crime scene was a man's size 10 shoeprint.

Many people were dead. Most others were scared out of their minds that they would be next. Kay had to help police find the killer.

So despite her groggy state during the attack, Kay described a white man.

Her words led to instant division among the investigating officers. Many gave up on Edward Surratt and began to search for the white man Kay envisioned. Others thought the enormous pressure on Kay elicited an imagined response.

Either way, the description crippled the police effort.

March 27, 1978
Boardman Township, Ohio, police stopped Surratt for making an illegal left directly in front of a police cruiser. The officer cited him and let him go.

The next morning, a neighbor noticed that Katherine Flicky's home on Hitchcock Road, a stretch two streets back and parallel to Route 7 in Boardman, had a broken glass door. Police discovered Flicky, a 70-year-old widow, dead inside.

Flicky lived alone in a neat, single-story home backed by woods just two miles from the same truck stop near the two sets of Beaver Township murders. She also lived about one mile from where police had stopped Surratt.

Flicky had been beaten to death. Officers found a bloody pan in the kitchen.

They found Flicky nude in her bathtub. Moisture on her skin made it appear the killer had filled the tub and then allowed it to drain, possibly destroying physical evidence on her body.

Police carefully vacuumed the crime scene and found hairs consistent with those of a black man. Police could find no evidence a black person had visited her home prior to the murder, Bowers said. So they believed the hairs must have been from the killer.

June 1, 1978
Luther Langford, 66, of West Columbia, S.C., was found murdered, along with his wife, Nell, 58, who had been severely beaten, sexually assaulted and left for dead inside their single-story home.

South Carolina police put out an alert for their missing vehicle.

Surratt's wife, Offia, who had been secretly cooperating with police, notified them about a car with South Carolina plates she said her husband had left in the West Aliquippa parking lot next to the J&L Steel Corp. plant.

June 6, 1978
When Surratt appeared at the parking lot at 10:20 p.m., undercover troopers attempted to apprehend him. But Surratt led the men, weighed down with heavy protective vests, on a chase toward the mill.

State police hadn't notified local police about the stakeout, and no immediate backup was available.

An undercover vice trooper chased Surratt through the massive mill and lost him when Surratt plunged over a steep and jagged 50- to 60-foot drop to the edge of the Ohio River.

The search continued well into the night. Officers debated Surratt's course: Perhaps he had cut back across the mill, over the four lanes of Route 51 and into the dense tangle of homes clinging to an otherwise wooded hillside in the city's Logstown section.

Maybe he had sprinted through the half-mile length of the plant and found the opening to a piped stream of storm water snaking beneath Franklin Avenue, Aliquippa's main street. The stream has an 8-foot opening near the Franklin Avenue J&L entrance plenty large enough for a man to run or even drive through. The tunnel's beginning a little more than a mile away at the city's Stone Arch area was a place Surratt had played as a child.

Others argued that Surratt dived into the Ohio River and swam away. Another theory was that a mill worker sneaked Surratt out. Surratt was familiar with the mill, having delivered steel ingots there many times.

Surratt would next turn up in Florida.

July 1, 1978
That night, a man, his wife and their teen-age daughter were held hostage by a black man at their North Beach single-story home.

The intruder had fallen asleep, and the father, 52, had escaped to a neighbor's house, where he called police.

Four officers arrived to find a silent struggle, with neighbors holding back the distraught father as he tried to go back into the house and kill the intruder.

The intruder, the man said, had forced his way into his house earlier that day with a 7mm Mauser rifle, tied everyone up with electrical cords in the bedroom and then repeatedly raped his wife, 47, and his stepdaughter, 18, in front of him.

Then the intruder drank a bottle of their wine, smoked two marijuana cigarettes and passed out naked on the bed. The father somehow freed himself and escaped with the gun.

Florida police held Surratt for three days before FBI descriptions of Surratt's tattoos, fingerprints and scars alerted them to who he was.

As soon as word got out, officers from nearly every local agency involved headed to the Sunshine State to question him.

A Florida deputy sheriff joked about handing out tickets to talk to Surratt.

Surratt: A man no one really knew

No doubt, Edward Arthur Surratt was a complicated man whom no one completely knew. Police made it their business to learn.

They compiled detailed documents about his family, education, military and work history, friends and criminal dealings.

They even knew about scars on his left knee and chest and the 2-inch tattoo on his upper right arm, "mom" and "dad" written inside.

But even with all the information they were able to piece together about Surratt, they still were surprised to find he was balding and wore a variety of wigs that altered his appearance.

Born on Aug. 8, 1941, in Aliquippa, Surratt was the only child born to Arthur Edward and Anna Mae Surratt. He was raised in the Plan 11 neighborhood, commonly known as the hill, and educated in Aliquippa's schools.

His parents were respected Georgia transplants to the hill, at that time a bustling area full of social clubs and churches. His father came to Pennsylvania sometime in the 1930s and worked as a butler, as a farmer and at J&L Steel Corp. in Aliquippa. He also operated his own successful refuse collection company.

Folks on the hill knew him and his wife as hard workers and doting parents. Anna Mae liked to dress her son well.

Surratt's boyhood schoolmate remembered he and Surratt were bumped through fifth and sixth grades in the same year. In those days at Jones Elementary School, teachers would "double-promote" kids based on intelligence.

Surratt was very outgoing, laughing, telling jokes, the friend said. He had a happy-go-lucky demeanor. Eddie Surratt never had a nasty word to say, and his parents came to school functions.

Something changed Surratt in Vietnam, many thought.

But his trouble predated the war.

Aliquippa police arrested Surratt while he was in high school for loitering and prowling at night in 1959 and 1960. During the second incident, Surratt broke the arresting officer's nose. He was convicted of the loitering charge and assault on a police officer and spent 14 months in state prison at Camp Hill.

Also in 1960, an Aliquippa woman filed charges of fornication and bastardy against Surratt for conceiving an illegitimate child with her daughter the year before. Surratt was ordered to pay $8.50 a week to support the child, who later came to live with Surratt's parents.

Although he was a good student early on, by high school, Surratt had problems. He eventually graduated in 1960 with a D+ average, 186 out of a class of 298.

In 1963, however, Surratt's parents reported to The Times that their son had made the dean's list at Youngstown State University, where he was a freshman studying pre-med. The college stint lasted only that year.

Police and military records show that in March 1964, he underwent U.S. Army basic combat training at Fort Dix, N.J. In June, he took the basic Army chaplain course and served as an assistant chaplain.

Sometime in 1964, the same records show Surratt paid a fine for assaulting a man with a pipe. And by April 1965, he was reduced in rank for going AWOL.

The next time Edward Surratt appeared in the newspaper was June 1965, and his grinning, good-looking face sported a helmet and chin strap. He had completed airborne training.

During the same year, he was arrested for reckless driving, leaving the scene of an accident, driving without a license and carrying an unregistered firearm. He was fined $200. In another case, Surratt faced a charge of loitering or prowling at night. The case was dismissed for lack of evidence. Both happened during his stay in the Army.

In June 1965, his father died of lung cancer. Two months later, Surratt got an honorable "hardship" discharge and was released to the U.S. Army Reserve. He returned to Aliquippa to run his father's garbage business until it folded in 1966.

His obligation to the Army Reserve ran out on Oct. 3, 1966. He enlisted in the U.S. Marine Corps the next day. His mom bragged to friends that Eddie liked the "rough stuff."

He arrived in Vietnam in the spring 1967, in an amphibious tractor battalion team, the guys most often seen jumping from the beds of landing craft into surf and the heat of battle.

Surratt participated in 11 combat expeditions during two tours of duty, according to military records.

In 1967, Surratt took part in search-and-destroy missions. Badger Hunt, in the Da Nang rocket belt, resulted in the destruction of 6,000 communist bunkers, tunnels and shelters, according to military records.

Surratt told a recent investigator that he was in the Tet Offensive in 1968, arguably the defining year of the Vietnam War.

By the time he was transferred to Subic Bay in the Philippines in September for duties as a guard and later a platoon sergeant, Surratt had suffered a shrapnel wound to his chest and a ruptured eardrum.

Surratt told the investigator he had been in a foxhole when Viet Cong in loincloths threw in an explosive, blowing him and his partner out of the hole. Surratt said he was temporarily blinded and deaf. The first thing he saw was his partner standing without an arm. Surratt played dead as their position was overrun, and the secondary force killed off the enemy.

He went back into battle from July 1970 until he was discharged in late September 1970. He came home with several medals, most of them common service medals except for the Republic of Vietnam Cross of Gallantry with palm and frame, and a Purple Heart.

Surratt returned from Vietnam to North Carolina.

There, he married Offia, a North Carolina native, in October 1970 and began a long pattern of short stints with a number of trucking companies. On some of his job applications, he claimed attendance at a truck-driving school and a plumbing school in North Carolina.

In 1973, while he still lived in North Carolina, Virginia Beach, Va., police arrested Surratt for sodomy, abduction and enticement charges involving a 13-year-old boy. He was found guilty of all charges except abduction in March 1974 and spent three years in prison. Details of the crime were not available.

In January 1977, Surratt returned to Aliquippa. That's when the local killing started.

'Roller-coaster ride' ends at last for families

Sharon Ruffner had trouble sleeping Thursday night. She kept shifting back in time to 1977 and the constant replaying in her mind of her parents' last moments.

When she woke Friday morning, her first thought again was of the scene when a killer came to John J. and Mary Davis' back door the morning of Nov. 10, 1977.

It was John's 64th birthday. He and Mary, 61, were making coffee in their kitchen. John shuffled about in his bedroom slippers.

The Davises lived in a single-story structure about 100 yards from the road in rural Beaver Township, Ohio. Their closest neighbor was the small Elser Airport. Its runway was about 100 feet from the house, but the nearest human neighbor was another 100 yards away.

Passing motorists caught sight of smoke late that afternoon. Officers found portions of the home destroyed. The bodies of the Davises were intact but charred. The killer had shot John at close range in the eye with a 12-gauge shotgun. Mary was in their bedroom, where the killer stripped her, shot her in the chest and left her spread-eagled. At some point, he also shot their dog in the basement.

The killer then took a gas can from the Davis garage, doused the couple and set them ablaze.

The terror her parents must have felt, what they must have gone through - it's a horrifying scenario that Ruffner re-created in her mind countless times afterward.

Ruffner, the second-youngest of the Davises' six children, was only 26 then. Now 55, Ruffner said the pain was no less when the scene re-emerged in her mind.

"It took me instantly back to that day," she said.

Her heart and stomach fell to the floor, she said, when Beaver Township (Ohio) Police Chief Carl Frost called Thursday to tell her convicted killer Edward Surratt told investigators that he murdered her parents.

Frost said the reaction from family members of murder victims David A. Hamilton, 28, and his wife, Linda, 28, also of Beaver Township, was similar. David was shot Sept. 20, 1977, in his single-story home with a .38-caliber handgun. Linda was never found.

"You get to the point where you think there's never going to be an answer, then to have something that seems like an answer come out of the blue ... ," Ruffner said, her voice trailing off. "It's been a roller-coaster."

She said her parents' murders changed her. Growing up in a small town where they left the doors unlocked, she began locking her doors at all times for months afterward. She'll probably start doing it again for a while, she said. Little house sounds that she knew were nothing Thursday night scared her.

Living now in nearby tiny Greenford, Ohio, wedged between tiny North Lima and Salem, she said, "It's not city life. It's just country living." What happened to her parents was never expected. She never looked at anything the same way.

"I can remember standing in the grocery store and looking at the person next to me and thinking, 'Do you know something?' " she said.

"It's something that's always there with you," she said. "You learn to live with it. You go on with your life. But it's always there."

But she was grateful to Frost. "I didn't want to feel these emotions again," she said. "It's so, so awful. But I'm glad to have an answer."

THE DREADED NEWS

Darlene Rudolph was baby-sitting her 4-year-old granddaughter Thursday afternoon when her phone rang with news she'd dreaded for nearly 30 years.

But even though she'd imagined it every day, come up with every possible horrific scenario, it still struck her hard in the gut.

She called her daughter and told her to come immediately to get the child. She couldn't hold it together much longer.

When her daughter arrived, Rudolph told her: Her oldest sister, Ranee Gregor, missing for nearly 30 years, was dead. Police said Edward Surratt had killed her and told investigators Ranee's body was unrecoverable.

Mother and daughter broke down in tears for the 15-year-old girl who disappeared on Oct. 21, 1977, days short of her 16th birthday.

Ranee had been with her boyfriend, John Feeny, 17, of Coraopolis that night. Police found Feeny's body the next day, shot with a 12-gauge shotgun in his van parked on a secluded road near the airport in Findlay Township. Ranee never was found.

A short while after talking to Frost, Rudolph, 62, sat alone in her Robinson Township home, still in shock, and worried about how to tell Ranee's two other sisters.

"I think in my heart, I knew she was dead," she said. "But as hard as it is to hear, it's better to get closure."

Worse was the news that her killer said Ranee's remains are "unrecoverable."

"Everybody's meaning of unrecoverable is different, even if we could get something," Rudolph said. "That really upsets me. It hurts a lot. If we at least had something to bury in a place, if there was something ... Not to have something of her is hard."

Rudolph does have Ranee's scarf, her mittens, books from her room, her baby dolls and favorite records, a copy of the yearbook that should have contained her senior picture. She keeps it all in a box she sifts through.

There was some small measure of relief, she said, because she was always afraid she would die and her three remaining daughters would someday have to deal with this news alone.

The family kept Ranee alive, she said. "We talk about her all the time, all the time," she said. "You can't help it. She was a part of our lives. I thought about her every day."

James and Rita Feeny were no different.

But the one thing they had, Rita said, was a body to bury. She said her heart broke for Rudolph.

"I had the comfort, if you could call it that. I had a body to bury. Ranee's parents don't. That's who I feel for," she said.

John was the fourth of Rita and James Feeny's six children. He was only Ranee's second boyfriend.

"This is such a shock, really," John, 77, said shortly after talking to Frost. "It's a good thing I'm sitting down right now."

"That bastard admitted he killed Ranee," John Feeny said. "He admitted it."

His voice rose, "I can't believe it's finally reaching some resolution. ... I say transfer him up to South Carolina just so we can know (more)."

John had dyslexia, Rita said. He dropped out of school when he was 16 rather than be expelled. But they said Ranee was helping him to turn his life around. He had taken the Air Force entrance test. They said she was a special girl.

"So many people were hurt by this guy," Rita said.

Rudolph said Frost brought her family some closure. She said she will wait to see whether he is able to get any more details about Ranee before finally planning her memorial service.

"He was a godsend working on this," Rudolph said, " 'cause nobody else was. ... I'm so glad for that. ... Now I know someday I'll see her."

"There's some comfort that other people haven't forgotten either," Rita Feeny said.

An interview with the monster

The following is taken from interviews done early this month with Edward Surratt by Joseph Matthews, a retired Miami Beach, Fla., investigator and a current investigator for the television show "America's Most Wanted".

On the missing women:
Matthews asked about the Hamilton murders in Ohio, and described the car as being orange.

"Maybe it was gold," Surratt said. Matthews pulled out a photo of the car.

"I told you it was gold," Surratt said.

Matthews then pulled out photos of Linda Hamilton and her two children, and crime scene photos of her husband, David. Surratt showed no emotion.

Matthews asked about recovering Linda's body.

"It's unrecoverable," Surratt responded.

Matthews asked, "By whose standards, yours or mine?"

Surratt looked up, leaned forward and slowly pronounced the word, "Unrecoverable."

Matthews asked about the location of Ranee Gregor's body.

"That body is unrecoverable, too," Surratt said.

Matthews explained that even a bone fragment would allow officials to identify a body.

Surratt responded aggressively, "The body is UNRECOVERABLE."

Matthews again asked by whose standards.

"Unrecoverable by anybody's standards. But I am not going to give you any more information until I see it on paper that I am going to South Carolina," Surratt replied.

On the Davis case:
Matthews showed Surratt pictures of John and Mary Davis of Beaver Township, Ohio, who were burned after they were murdered. Surratt showed no reaction.

"Gas was poured from a couple of five-gallon cans," Matthews said.

"Yeah, from out back," Surratt said.

Matthews pointed out that Mary was lying on her bed.

Surratt responded with a sarcastic nod of his head, "Yeah, I know."

"Of course you would know," Matthews said.

Surratt chuckled.

On Vietnam:
Matthews asked Surratt how he could go from being a man who loved his father and was a college student to being a serial murderer.

"Vietnam caused all my problems," Surratt said.

"I was told that Vietnam was a threat to the United States. When I got there, I realized that they had no air force, they had no navy, didn't have an organized army, and they weren't really a threat to the United States.

"Yet thousands, tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands are dead because we went to Vietnam. Just like us going to Iraq.

"Bloated bodies floating in rice paddies. Death all around. A squad of soldiers would go out for two weeks and only two would return. Soldiers without arms and legs, without faces. Because of that - death had no relevance to me.

"I was in the Tet Offensive, and when I returned to the United States, there was no counseling, no therapy, and no psychological quizzes to see if I was normal."

Surratt said he became sympathetic to the Viet Cong, who he said gave up their lives for a cause.

But he said he's never lost a second of sleep.

"I have hurt a lot of people, a lot of families, but it doesn't bother me. It never did, because that's in the past and I live for now.

"I am paying for my past life in this life. This life is the hell for the next life. Back then, there were murders every week, but I didn't do every one. Some of them aren't mine."

On why he killed:

"I didn't have a reason," Surratt said. Matthews pointed out that Surratt never stole anything.

"I went in for sex," Surratt said. "I did it for sex, but I am different now. I will never get out, but if I was free tomorrow, I would be a success."

On when he committed his first murder:

"At that time, I had no concept of time. I didn't know the difference between right and wrong. Death meant absolutely nothing to me."

On whether he killed any children:

Matthews asked about several unsolved local killings involving young girls.

Surratt's face became angry and distorted, and he stood and loudly told Matthews he never killed children.

"You can mark off your list all the young kids that I'm accused of killing. I didn't kill a 5-year-old.

"You look back at all the murders and you will see the ones I committed: There were no kids hurt. If a kid was there, I protected them."

Times Project Director Lori DeLauter can be reached online at ldelauter@timesonline.com.

Â©Beaver County Times Allegheny Times 2007

Comments

#1 | still_looking_in_the_dark on March 08 2009 10:20 PM

We the family still want the whole story as to what happen to our grandparents

Post Comment

Please Login to Post a Comment.

Ratings

Rating is available to Members only.

Please login or register to vote.

No Ratings have been Posted.

Main

Forums

Submissions