Edward Walton was born in Wilkes County, Georgia, near a small town historically referred to as Pistol (possibly Delhi). Details about his early life are scarce, but he claimed his first act of violence was killing a horse in 1890. From there, his trajectory spiraled into a life of drifting crime and false identities.

Throughout his adult life, Walton roamed from state to state using various aliases such as Frank Harris and Frank Johnson. He lived by deception, often posing as a peddler or manual laborer. Police would later describe him as massive in stature, quiet in temperament, but volatile and dangerous beneath the surface. 

In 1902, he married a woman named Edith Hanna in Joliet, Illinois. Their marriage quickly dissolved, and she left him. But two years later, in a fit of possessive rage, he tracked her down to 81 South Peoria Street in Chicago, shot her, and fled. She died without regaining consciousness.

Walton then roamed the Midwest and Southwest under assumed names. He participated in robberies and manipulated women into false relationships

Edward Walton’s first confirmed murder occurred in 1896 in Blossburg, Alabama, when he killed and robbed a man. Although Walton later confessed to this crime, authorities could never confirm whether it truly occurred, there were no police reports or missing persons matching the case.

In August 1904, after his estranged wife Edith Hanna refused to return to him, Walton murdered her in cold blood at her home in Chicago. Despite everyone around her knowing he was the shooter, Walton managed to flee and evade capture, moving to New Mexico under the alias Frank Harris, then to Gallup as Frank Johnson.

By 1906, Walton was in Youngstown, Ohio, where he helped rob a stranger. Later that year, in Shippenville, Pennsylvania, he shot a man named Marion Blue multiple times, claiming he feared an ambush. Blue eventually died months later from his injuries, making it another death attributed to Walton.

Soon after, Walton formed a relationship with a woman named Mamie Gill from Virginia. They posed as husband and wife and lived in Steubenville, Ohio, lodging at the home of a Mrs. Brown. During a trip to Crow Hollow, the couple quarreled constantly. On November 16 or 17, 1906, Walton beat and kicked Gill to death during a fight. He admitted later that he had worn heavy shoes and accidentally kicked her in the heart. Afterward, he carried her body half a mile and dumped it in a riverbank thicket, where it was likely washed away.

Walton fled the state once again. His final known victim was Beulah Martin, a woman he approached in Gypsy, West Virginia, on March 3, 1908. After she refused his sexual advances, he attacked and murdered her. A posse of 400 people pursued him into the hills. He held them off for two days from inside a barn, even injuring three men in the process. The standoff ended only when Sheriff Flanagan threatened to blow up the barn with dynamite, forcing Walton to surrender.

After his arrest, Walton confessed not just to Martin’s murder but to four others. His spree stretched across five states, involving aliases, interstate travel, robberies, and brutal killings, many of which had gone unpunished for years.

He was sentenced to death by hanging. On July 17, 1908, at the time of his execution, witnesses noted that he appeared calm but emotionally shaken. He had been baptized in jail and reportedly showed signs of remorse. As Warden Dawson activated the trap door, Walton fell unconscious even before the rope fully tightened. He died instantly, his neck and a vertebra broken. His body was confirmed dead by Dr. Boone and later buried, likely in the prison cemetery.