William Joseph ’Billy’ Lavaco was 21 when he and his girlfriend, Judith Straub, were found murdered in Silver Creek Metro Park near Norton. Official records list Lavaco’s death as August 6, 1977. The couple was last seen near the Valley Inn and their cars were later found abandoned in and near the park; Straub’s car still contained her purse and valuables. On August 8 searchers located both bodies in a remote, overgrown area of the park. Each had been killed by a single close-range shotgun blast to the neck.

Investigators searched the park and waterways for a weapon and reconstructed the couple’s last movements. More than four hundred dollars’ worth of valuables were recovered from Lavaco’s car and the area, prompting authorities to rule out robbery as the main motive. Early suspicion fell on a local man, Dennis Busson, after a witness described a heated argument and a flash of light in a car; Busson was questioned and polygraphed but not prosecuted.

Decades later, Edward Wayne Edwards contacted Ohio authorities from a Wisconsin jail and confessed, leading to an indictment and guilty plea resolving the cold case. The plea did not provide a clear motive for the killings. Did anyone who knew Billy or Judith notice tensions or threats in the weeks before that August weekend?