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"There are a lot children out there that are alive only because of chance," Weston DeWalt says of serial killer Mack Ray Edwards, whose career as a child murderer with many unknown victims Weston has been piecing together for nearly three years.

Mack was an opportunistic killer able to control his impulse until the circumstances were all aligned to his advantage -- Weston believes he probably had his eyes on children spared by a lack of opportunity or happenstance.

He had a penchant for both young boys and young girls, but media accounts I've read of his six confessed crimes in 1970 -- including one in the Tribune -- referred to "unsuccessful" attempts at molesting victims. Interpret as you will.

Here's Sunday's story Searching for Tommy

By Kenneth Todd Ruiz, Staff Writer
10/14/2007

Fifty years after Tommy Bowman vanished from an Upper Arroyo Seco trail, Pasadena police have relabeled the case a homicide. Cold-case detectives believe Tommy was the victim of Mack Ray Edwards, as suggested earlier this year by local author Weston DeWalt and a team of investigators from other law-enforcement agencies.

But now, as DeWalt seeks to fill the gaps in Edwards' criminal biography, Pasadena's prime suspect falls under suspicion of unsolved crimes from Santa Barbara to Tijuana, prompting police to consider the unsettling possibility he might have murdered the most children in state history.

"Everybody needs to know about Mack Ray, who may be one of the most prolific child killers in history," said Pasadena police Detective John Dewar. "DeWalt's done a magnificent job, and I have to give him credit for everything we've been able to do up to this point. I'd hire him any day as a detective here."

Although Pasadena's new cold-case unit shares DeWalt's belief about where Tommy's body could be buried, the 63-year-old investigative journalist has added six more children he suspects Edwards killed.

Continued after the jump.

Much as the trailhead for Weston DeWalt's full-time pursuit of Mack Ray Edwards began, Tommy Bowman was the entry point for my coverage in the Pasadena Star-News and other LANG papers.


Scans of the original mainbar from March 19 story with pictures, timeline, et al are PDF'd here and here.

After the jump: March's mainbar, "Cases closed?" sidebar "'Foolish promise' sparks search for truth," and the two folos from the ensuing week, "Caltrans may aid search" and "After 50 years, father mourns."

Eldon Bowman says it was "happenstance" that Gordon Wicks, his brother in law, invited the family out from Redondo Beach to their Altadena home for dinner that night, and that they spontaneously decided to take a hike while that dinner was being prepared.

His 50 years of anguish over Tommy, who disappeared on a spur-of-the-moment hike into the Arroyo Seco while that dinner was cooking, was best explained to me by Weston DeWalt in his Pasadena office.

It's like that first moment of panic when you realize your child is unaccounted for, he explains, has never gone away after 50 years.

I'm going to visit Eldon tomorrow morning to take him some copies of Monday's paper and the story about Tommy.