Edna Iona Hall was a 37-year-old waitress and mother from Bullitt County, Kentucky, known for her resilience and dedication to her family. Born Edna Ione Stivers on April 2, 1915, she was raising her children in the communities bordering the sprawling Fort Knox military installation. Her life was one of hard work, centered on providing for her family in the post-war years of the early 1950s.
On the evening of May 15, 1953, Edna was working at a roadhouse near the Army base.
Among the patrons that night was Harvey John Collins, a 27-year-old soldier stationed at Fort Knox for artillery training. Collins, a decorated Marine veteran of World War II who had fought at Iwo Jima, appeared to be an upstanding serviceman. After getting into a fight with a man who had escorted Edna, Collins offered to drive the waitress home. It was a gesture that seemed kind, but it masked a brutal intent.
Instead of taking her home, Collins drove to an isolated road near the military reservation. There, he made aggressive sexual advances toward Edna. When she firmly rejected him, he flew into a rage. Collins kicked her out of his car, beat her mercilessly, and stabbed her in the head with a screwdriver. Though grievously injured, Edna was still alive. Collins then forced her into the back of his car. When his vehicle became stuck in the sand, he even flagged down a passing motorist for help, all while his dying victim lay in the back.
Once his car was free, Collins drove deeper into the woods. He dragged Edna from the vehicle and forced her into an abandoned foxhole. There, in the darkness, he buried her alive, covering the makeshift grave with dirt and a piece of sheet metal. He then returned to his barracks at Fort Knox and burned his blood-stained clothing in a furnace, confident he had erased all evidence of his crime. Edna Hall was reported missing, but with no immediate leads, her disappearance became a local mystery.
For eight months, Edna’s family and friends waited for any news. Their hopes were tragically extinguished when her body was finally discovered in the shallow grave where her killer had left her. Despite an investigation by the FBI, the case went cold. Collins was questioned about her disappearance shortly after it happened but was cleared when some witnesses mistakenly claimed to have seen Edna after the night she went missing. He was eventually transferred to Fort Sill, Oklahoma, and later received a dishonorable discharge from the Army after stealing a plane and crashing it in a suicide attempt.
The break in the case came nearly two years later and hundreds of miles away. In March 1955, Collins was arrested in Washington state for the murder of a gas station attendant and a savage sword attack on a motel owner and her husband. During interrogation by the FBI, he not only confessed to the crimes in Washington but also admitted to killing Edna Iona Hall back in Kentucky. He provided investigators with chillingly accurate details about the murder that only the perpetrator could have known.
Given the strength of the case in Washington, Kentucky prosecutors agreed to waive their charges against Collins on the condition that Washington seek the death penalty. At his trial, Collins was found guilty of first-degree murder. On December 3, 1957, Harvey John Collins, a man who had been both a decorated war hero and a brutal serial killer, was executed by hanging at the Washington State Penitentiary. His last words were reportedly, "I ask forgiveness for everything I've done." For the family of Edna Hall, the execution brought a final, somber end to a case that had begun with a mother’s terrifying final moments in a lonely wood in Kentucky.
