In the quiet community of Fallston, Pennsylvania, a grim discovery on November 20, 1977, marked the beginning of a decades-long mystery. Inside their home, 31-year-old William Adams was found shot to death by his two young children, aged 7 and 4. His wife, 29-year-old Nancy Adams, was missing. The shocking event left the small borough in fear and a family shattered by the violent loss of a father and the disappearance of a mother.
For years, the fate of Nancy Adams remained unknown, a painful void for her family and a frustrating cold case for investigators. While some reports from 2021 stated that her body was never found, an earlier newspaper article from 1985 indicated that the remains of Nancy Adams were discovered at Brady's Run Park, several miles from her home. This discovery confirmed the tragic end that her loved ones had long feared, turning a missing person case into a confirmed homicide investigation.
The murders of William and Nancy Adams were part of a string of brutal and unsolved killings that terrorized Western Pennsylvania and Eastern Ohio during that period. It wasn't until 2021 that a definitive answer would come in the case. Edward Arthur Surratt, a convicted serial killer and rapist already serving multiple life sentences in Florida and South Carolina for other violent crimes, confessed to the murders of William and Nancy Adams. Surratt, a former long-haul trucker from Aliquippa, had been a suspect in the series of slayings for years. Pennsylvania State Police investigators traveled to the Florida prison where Surratt was incarcerated and obtained his confession to the Adams murders, as well as several others. Due to his existing life sentences, district attorneys in Pennsylvania agreed not to prosecute Surratt for these newly confessed crimes, prioritizing the closure it would bring to the victims' families over another conviction.
