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In March 1970, a Los Angeles highway construction supervisor named Mack Ray Edwards walked into a police station, set a loaded handgun on the counter, and confessed to killing children for sixteen years. Only three of those killings were ever charged. The rest of his claimed victims - a number that grew to as many as eighteen or twenty across his own retellings - were never charged, and the sites he directed investigators to, decades apart, have all come up empty. This week, Eli and Simone dig into what's left when a confession outruns the evidence behind it: a freeway built over one victim's grave, two more empty excavations under freeways and overpasses across two counties, and a debate about how much a dying man's word should count when the physical record can't confirm or rule it out.

CONTENT NOTE: This episode discusses the murders of children, including cases involving surviving family members who may still be living. Several of the discussed cases remain open, unresolved cold cases with no other suspect. Neither host resolves any specific uncharged case as fact - the debate stays at the level of how much an uncorroborated confession should be credited.

You'll find the source list here: https://verbeditorial.github.io/precision-and-instinct-notes/episodes/11-the-confessions-of-mack-ray-edwards.html

The hosts' voices in this episode are AI-generated. All research, writing, and production are done by a human team.