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Robert N. Edwards of Columbus, Ohio, was convicted at age 68 in 2023 of killing Alma Renee Lake and Michelle Dawson-Pass, whose deaths went without a suspect for decades.

On August 9, 2023, Judge Sheryl Munson sentenced Edwards to life in prison with no chance of parole for 45 years. Ohio prison records list consecutive terms of 15 years to life for murder, 20 years to life for aggravated murder and a mandatory 10 years for rape. Edwards told the court only, "I'll wait for my appeal." He is held at Noble Correctional Institution, and his first parole hearing is listed for August 2067, when he would be 112.

Two passersby found Lake, 30, dead in the grass at the northwest corner of Olive and Craig streets in Urbancrest, a village in southwest Franklin County, on June 3, 1991. Dawson-Pass, 36, was last seen walking to a friend's house on the East Side of Columbus after being seen on Kelton Avenue. Her body was found on November 11, 1996, in a remote area near 1740 James Road in Granville, in Licking County. The Ohio Attorney General's office said both women had signs of blunt force trauma and sexual assault and died by asphyxiation. Prosecutors said Edwards lived in Urbancrest in 1991 and Newark in 1996, and argued that both bodies were found near where he lived.

The state Bureau of Criminal Investigation (BCI) lab developed a DNA profile from evidence in the cases, but it matched no one at the time. DNA linked the deaths in 2003. In 2020, the Franklin County and Licking County sheriff's offices asked BCI's Cold Case Unit to apply newer technology. The Attorney General's office said a familial search for relatives of the DNA profile led investigators to Edwards in March 2021. A sample of his DNA obtained by search warrant matched DNA left on both women.

Edwards voluntarily attended a police interview on the afternoon of November 2, 2021, about nine months before his arrest. Detectives first asked where he had lived, about his military service and his work driving trucks, then questioned him about the early 1990s. Charging documents say he denied knowing Lake; the Attorney General's office said he denied knowing the victims. Franklin County Sheriff's Office detectives arrested Edwards, then 67, on Friday, August 5, 2022, and he was charged with aggravated murder in Lake's death. In a recorded phone call from August 2022 played at trial, he accused authorities of framing him and planting his DNA.

A jury tried Edwards in Franklin County Common Pleas Court, with Munson presiding. His defense attorney argued that the DNA and the bodies' proximity to his home did not prove he killed the women, and that he could have had sex with them days before they died. An assistant prosecutor told jurors it was "so astronomically unlikely" for this to happen to Edwards once and then happen again. Edwards did not testify.

On July 14, 2023, the jury found Edwards guilty of murder and not guilty of aggravated murder in Lake's death, and guilty of aggravated murder, murder and rape in Dawson-Pass's death. Prosecutors said he also raped Lake, but no rape charge could be brought in her case because of the 30-year statute of limitations. He was also found to be a sexually violent predator.

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Part 2 of 2 of the recording described above.