Edward Wayne Edwards (born Charles Wayne Murray; June 14, 1933 – April 7, 2011) was an American serial killer, rapist, prison escapee, and fugitive. After committing a series of gas stations holdups in the 1950s and early 1960s, he was put on the FBI's Ten Most Wanted Fugitives list, leading to his capture in 1962. After his release from prison on parole in 1967, Edwards murdered at least five people between 1977 and 1996 in Ohio and Wisconsin. He was apprehended for these crimes in 2009 and died in 2011.

Edwards was born in Akron, Ohio, in 1933. In his autobiography Edwards wrote that he grew up in an orphanage, and that he was abused both physically and emotionally by nuns there.

Edwards was allowed out of juvenile detention to join the U.S. Marines, but he eventually went AWOL and was dishonorably discharged. He traveled frequently during his 20s and 30s, working as a ship docker, vacuum cleaner retailer, and handyman, among other assorted jobs.

In 1955, Edwards escaped from a jail in Akron and drifted around the country robbing gas stations. He wrote that he never disguised himself during these crimes because he wanted to be famous. After spending several years as a fugitive, he was placed on the FBI's 10 Most Wanted list in 1961 following a 1960 escape from a Portland, Oregon, jail, where he had been held on suspicion of impersonating a Federal Officer. After his 1962 capture, he was imprisoned in USP Leavenworth, from which he was paroled in 1967. Edwards claimed that the influence of a benevolent guard at Leavenworth reformed him. He married and became a motivational speaker.

Edwards appeared on two television shows, To Tell the Truth (1972) and What's My Line? He wrote an autobiography, The Metamorphosis of a Criminal: The True Life Story of Ed Edwards, in 1972. By 1982 he had returned to crime, and was imprisoned in Pennsylvania for two years for arson.

Between 1974 and 2009, when not incarcerated, Edwards lived in more than a dozen different states using many false names, according to his daughter April.

In a 1993 letter to the FBI found in his papers, Edwards requested his criminal and history records for cities in 19 states, claimed that J. Edgar Hoover "more or less gave me permission to proceed" with his 1972 autobiography "after I assured him there was nothing in it bad about the FBI" and he was writing a new book about criminals he met while incarcerated, such as Tony Provenzano, Charles Manson and Jimmy Hoffa.

The first murders for which Edwards was convicted took place in Ohio in 1977. William Joseph "Billy" Lavaco, 21, of Doylestown, Ohio, and his girlfriend Judith Lynn "Judy" Straub, 18, of Sterling, Ohio, had been dating eight months when Straub's car was found in the parking lot of Silver Creek Metro park in Norton, on August 7, 1977, with her purse and shoes inside. Family members gathered in the lot the next day as Norton police, aided by a National Guard helicopter, searched the high weeds. There, they found Lavaco and Straub lying on the ground, shot at point-blank range with a 20-gauge shotgun. Edwards received life sentences for these crimes in 2010.