John Harold Schiermeister, a 38-year-old male from Roseburg, Oregon, was killed in Portland on October 5, 1987. That day, Schiermeister encountered Andrew David Edwards at a Portland railway yard, where the two men spent time drinking together. During the encounter, Edwards became enraged and violently attacked Schiermeister, striking him in the head with enough force to cause fatal injuries.
Schiermeister was left behind in the railroad yard, and Edwards disappeared without being identified as the killer.
The following day, October 6, railroad workers discovered Schiermeister's body in a Burlington Northern Railroad yard in Portland. Investigators determined that he had died from a severe blow to the head. His identity was established shortly afterward, with contemporary reporting indicating that he had been identified by October 8. At the time, however, investigators had no publicly identified suspect, and Schiermeister's killing remained unresolved for years.
What investigators did not yet know was that Schiermeister had been the first known victim in a series of killings committed by Andrew David Edwards. Edwards continued traveling and living as a drifter, and in April 1990 he killed Anthony Keith Thurman in Portland, beating him with a pipe and leaving his body beneath a freeway overpass. In 1992, Edwards killed Melvin Richards near Bakersfield, California, and later Bud Griffith near Pueblo, Colorado. The victims were men Edwards encountered while living a transient lifestyle, and the attacks were repeatedly associated with drinking and sudden episodes of violence.
The break in Schiermeister's case came in January 1993 after Edwards attacked another man, Lynn Ellis DeLong, with a wrench behind a bowling alley in San Jose, California. DeLong survived, although Edwards apparently believed he had killed him. On January 26, 1993, Edwards was encountered by law enforcement in Oroville, California, while seeking treatment for an injured hand. During his contact with authorities, he confessed to killing five men, not realizing that DeLong was still alive. His statements led investigators to connect him with the previously unsolved Oregon homicides, including Schiermeister's death more than five years earlier.
Edwards was subsequently returned to Oregon and charged in connection with the murders of Schiermeister and Thurman. Authorities were able to verify enough of his account to establish his responsibility for the two Oregon killings, and he was ultimately convicted of two counts of murder. Edwards received a life sentence, with Oregon prison records cited by published accounts showing that he entered the state prison system on October 18, 1993. He was incarcerated at the Eastern Oregon Correctional Institution in Pendleton, bringing Schiermeister's long-unsolved homicide to a resolution through Edwards's confession, the renewed police investigation, and his eventual conviction.
