Julie Ann Burton Edwards, a 41-year-old White woman, lived with her husband, Matthew Edwards, and their three young children in the Prices Corner area near Wilmington, Delaware. Friends remembered Julie as a devoted mother whose greatest happiness came from her children. She had graduated from Page High School in Franklin, Tennessee, and pursued several small-business ventures while raising Jacob, Brinley and Paxton.
At approximately 7:53 p.m.
on Monday, July 9, 2018, Delaware State Police responded to the Edwards residence in the 2700 block of Ferris Road. Inside the home, troopers found five people dead from apparent gunshot wounds. The bodies were located upstairs and included Julie, Matthew, six-year-old Jacob, four-year-old Brinley and three-year-old Paxton. The Delaware State Police Homicide Unit began investigating while the Delaware Division of Forensic Science performed autopsies to establish the causes and manners of death.
The investigation determined that Matthew, 42, had fatally shot Julie and all three children before shooting himself. Autopsy findings led authorities to classify the deaths as a murder-suicide by gunfire, with Matthew’s fatal wound ruled self-inflicted. Julie and the children were therefore treated as homicide victims, while Matthew was identified as the person responsible for the killings. Police did not publicly announce evidence that another attacker had entered the home or participated in the deaths.
People who knew the family described the news as almost impossible to comprehend. One of Julie’s friends said she never imagined such violence occurring in the household. Another acquaintance said Julie had recently worked hard to lose weight, improve her health and spend active time with the children, but any suggestion that this caused marital tension remained personal speculation rather than an officially established motive. Authorities did not release a definitive explanation for why Matthew killed his family.
There were no arrests because the sole identified suspect, Matthew Edwards, died at the scene by suicide. His death eliminated the possibility of filing criminal charges or bringing him to trial, and no accomplices were publicly identified. Consequently, the case produced no prosecution, plea, verdict or criminal conviction. The official investigation instead concluded with the forensic determination that Matthew killed Julie and their children and then took his own life, leaving the family’s relatives, friends and community to mourn five deaths without a courtroom proceeding.
