The produce stand was the Melan- choly Killer’s last known place of em- ployment. Investigators suspect he made his way around the country on foot or by hitch-hiking and by living off the mon- ey he already had to his name. They are unsure if he ever worked another odd job but said it’s possible he took cash off his victims following the murders that would come. Dwyer’s arbitrary string of jobs in the towns he inhabited could be attributed to his desire to keep moving, but they could also be ascribed to his academic troubles early in life. THE FORMATIVE YEARS Although Dwyer is known as a poet and, by some, an intellectual, he struggled in school for many years as a child and young adult. At first, it seemed as though Dwyer led a perfectly normal, if not privi- leged, life. Born on February 23, 1973, in St. Louis, Missouri, Edgar Lee Dwyer lived with his mother and father in the state- ly house with a white picket fence on Maple Tree Drive. It was a place where neighbors shared recipes, and children were free to roam without fear. Dwyer was smaller than most of the neighborhood boys and was described as a bookworm by many who knew him as a child, but he did not shy away from playing games with the other children. According to Mary Cheever, a class- mate of Dwyer’s who lived three houses away, Dwyer was just like many of the other children. He played sports. He played tag. He was just a normal kid who did normal kid stuff. Looking back though, Cheever did re- member Dwyer having a dark side. “One day, Edgar was throwing rocks at a stray cat that got stuck up in a tree,” she said. “He said he was trying to scare the cat down, but now that I think about it, he did enjoy himself that day, torturing the cat with stones.” Cheever said that until she heard about his arrest, she had always regarded his be- havior as that of a typical young boy. At home, Dwyer seemed to have the perfect family life. His father, Ethan, was a doctor who preferred to be near his family, so he worked out of an office in a convert- ed wing of the house. Dwyer’s mother, Elizabeth, would have preferred her hus- band to be a surgeon, but seemed con- tent to help with his small practice. She used her accounting skills by balancing the books, paying bills and making sure patients paid their bills on time. But that all changed on a cold winter night when Dwyer was only 12 years old. On their return trip home from a hospital function, Ethan and Elizabeth were killed when their new sedan hit a telephone pole. Though investigators ruled their deaths to be an accident, neighbors of the Dwyers claimed that was the night Dr. Dwyer killed himself and his wife. “They would argue all the time, often in front of neighbors,” Cheever remem- bered. “My parents would talk about how drunk Mrs. Dwyer would get at the block parties, and then she’d belittle him about being short or about their financ- es. Apparently, they were in severe debt, though I didn’t understand any of it at the time.” Cheever remembers her own mother’s quip upon learning about the death of the Dwyers. “My mother got off the phone and looked my father and said, ‘Well, he fi- nally did it.’” Whether it was a suicide or an ac- cident, Edgar Dwyer’s life was turned completely upside down. Suddenly an orphan, he was sent to live with his mother’s sister Kate Osborne, her husband, Benjamin, and their two teen daughters in Chesterfield, Missouri. It was Kate who pushed for Edgar to take the extra room in their base- ment, while her husband and daugh- ters thought he would be better off living with other family members out of state. “My father was a hard man, and my sister and I knew adding Edgar into that mix would not be good for our family,” Francine Osborne, Dwyer’s cousin, said. “At first it wasn’t bad, but my father was controlling, and Edgar was defiant, so it was only a matter of time before tempers exploded.” “My father was a blue-collar steak-and-potatoes type of guy,” Fran- cine added. “Edgar had a sort of creepy side. I’d find him hiding in my closet when I had a boyfriend over … he was just weird.” The former straight-A student began to struggle in school and seldom played with the children in his new neighbor- hood. “He would just spend his days locked in his basement bedroom; I guess he went to a dark place and never came out,” Francine said. The only time he ever spoke up was when he would get into a fight with her father, she remembered, mentioning that it was usually about taking out the trash or going to school. After one particularly terrible fight, Dwyer filled a backpack with clothes, threw his notebooks in an old briefcase and left the Osborne home for good. He was 18 years old. From there he would go on to British Columbia, and eventually Los Ange- les, before beginning his murder spree in Seattle. FBI agent Reardon wrote his bestsell- ing book, “Catching the Poet,” about his experience hunting down the notorious Melancholy Killer, but even today, much of Dwyer’s life is still a mystery. Reardon admits that very few killers disclose everything, because withhold- ing information makes them feel more powerful. He said because of Dwyer’s time in Canada and Los Angeles it’s very possible that there may be even more victims of the Melancholy Killer. A POET’S DEADLY JOURNEY TWO DAYS AFTER THE BODY WAS FOUND, DWYER STOPPED BY THE PRODUCE STAND TO PICK UP HIS PAY.