Andrew David Edwards

In January 1993, Edwards nearly murdered a fifth victim in San Jose, California, attacking 42-year-old Lynn Ellis Delong with a wrench behind a bowling alley. After the attack, he decided to seek help, breaking the rails of the train he was riding on and hopping onto another one, bound for Chico. On January 26, while seeking medical treatment for his injured hand in Oroville, Edwards was picked up by a deputy while wandering through a residential area. He admitted to the deputy that he had killed five men, unaware that, although he had lost an ear, Delong had survived their encounter.

Two years later, Edwards met 52-year-old Melvin Richards while riding the rails and the two men shared a drink. During their drinking session, Edwards became enraged and brutally beat Richards to death. He then threw the body off the train near Bakersfield, California on February 21, 1992.

On April 5, 1990, Edwards killed 24-year-old Anthony Keith Thurman by beating his head in with a pipe, before dumping the corpse under a freeway overpass in Portland. His body was discovered later that same month.

On October 5, 1987, Edwards was drinking with 38-year-old John Harold Schiermeister, a transient from Roseburg, Oregon, at a railway yard in Portland. Enraged by alcohol, he proceeded to beat Schiermeister to death, fatally injuring him with a blow to the head. The following day, his body was found by railroad workers in one of the yards of the Burlington Northern Railroad. Two days later, Schiermeister was identified, but his killer remained elusive.

Little is known about Edwards' upbringing. A native of Sunnyvale, California, he attended the Fremont High School and later the Chemeketa Community College in Salem, Oregon. He had a girlfriend and held a job as a bricklayer, but was an alcoholic who had been in and out of treatment centers since the age of 19. In 1985, he abandoned his girlfriend and his job, deciding to live a transient lifestyle. During this time, he began to kill his fellow drinking companions.

Andrew David Edwards (born March 6, 1958) is an American serial killer. A jobless drifter, Edwards murdered four fellow itinerants across three states between 1987 and 1992 in alcohol-induced rages, and attempted to murder a fifth in 1993. Following his last attack, he was arrested and subsequently confessed to the murders, receiving a sentence of life imprisonment for his crimes.