She was 15 years old. He told her she was 17, just a few months before she turned 18. She met on Instagram during the summer of 2022.
The girl, who lived with her mother, younger sister and grandparents in Riverside, kept their “relationship” a secret from her family. They would send messages through Instagram and talk through Discord, an instant messaging platform that allows voice calls.
He showered her with gifts, sending her jewelry, groceries, money and gift cards. He paid for her UberEats and DoorDash deliveries and helped her buy birthday gifts for her friends, telling her that she had a good job that she could pay for them.
But then he became clingy, even aggressive. He was pressuring her to send nude photos of herself, which made her feel uncomfortable. Right after Halloween, she broke up with him.
She blocked him on Instagram, but he still found a way to send her a suicide letter.
In reality, the “guy” he had been talking to was a 28-year-old Virginia sheriff's deputy named Austin Lee Edwards. And on Black Friday, a few weeks after the teenager broke up with him, he drove to her Riverside home and killed her mother, Brooke Winek, 38, and her grandparents, Mark Winek, 69, and Sharie Winek, 65. set fire to his house before kidnapping the teenager at gunpoint. After becoming involved in a shootout with police, Edwards shot himself with his service weapon and died, according to police. The teenager was physically unharmed.
Gruesome new details about the incident are coming to light through a federal lawsuit the 16-year-old and her adoptive mother filed Friday against Edwards' estate; the Washington County Sheriff's Office in Virginia, which employed him at the time of the murders; Washington County Sheriff Blake Andis; and Det. William Smarr, the investigator who reviewed Edwards' employment application at the agency.
The lawsuit alleges violation of his Fourth Amendment rights, false imprisonment, negligent hiring, assault and battery, among other charges. Scott Perry, the teen's attorney, said the damages amount to at least $50 million.
The filing is the second lawsuit by a Winek family member against the Sheriff's Office: Mychelle Blandin, the surviving daughter of Mark and Sharie Winek, filed suit last year, alleging negligent hiring practices and seeking more than $100 million. dollars in damages. The lawsuits hinge in part on a Times report detailing how police hired Edwards despite his troubling mental health history.
In February 2016, Edwards was arrested by Abingdon police in Virginia after cutting himself and threatening suicide and his father, who told police the incident was sparked by Edwards' problems with his girlfriend, The Times reported. . The incident led to two custody orders, Edwards' stay in a psychiatric facility and a court's revocation of his right to bear arms, which were never restored.
Mychelle Blandin looks at photos of her mom, dad and sister, who were victims of a triple homicide in Riverside that authorities say began with a “catfishing” case involving Blandin's niece.
(Jason Armond / Los Angeles Times)
Perry argues that Edwards should never have been hired and that the sheriff's office failed to interview most of Edwards' references or conduct a proper background check. If they had, they would have discovered the mental health orders, the lawsuit claims.
“The Washington County Sheriff's Office gave Austin Lee Edwards a gun, a badge and covered him with the authority of the law,” Perry said in a statement. “He used these things to access the Winek home and commit these atrocities. “We will demonstrate that a proper investigation into Edwards’ background would have prevented this tragedy.”
The teenager and her adoptive father declined interviews for this story. The Washington County Sheriff's Office did not respond to requests for comment.
According to the Times' review of Edwards' personnel file, which includes his job application, Smarr decided not to interview Edwards' father, who was listed as a reference, because of their “close family relationship,” the detective wrote. Smarr spoke with Edwards' previous employer at Lowe's, but was unable to locate two of Edwards' personal references or his two neighbors.
Smarr also sought background information from the Virginia State Police, where Edwards had worked for nine months before resigning and running for Washington County. But Smarr was rebuffed by a sergeant there, who said he didn't feel comfortable answering whether Edwards had gotten into trouble, had been reprimanded or had been subjected to an internal investigation.
In addition to Smarr, the lieutenant and captain of the Washington County Sheriff's criminal investigation division signed Edwards' employment application, as did his personnel director and chief deputy, according to the filing.
“Edwards has no criminal record or civil problems, his past and current employers speak positively of him, as well as his references,” Smarr wrote. “I think Edwards is hireable.”
The latest lawsuit also answers some lingering questions about the crime, including how Edwards met the teen, why he decided to kill her family and where he planned to take the teen after kidnapping her. Here is an account of what happened during that fateful Thanksgiving holiday weekend, taken from the lawsuit and previous reporting by The Times.
The teenager celebrated Thanksgiving 2022 with her mother, younger sister, and her mother's boyfriend at Golden Corral. Then, they went to the Moreno Valley apartment where her mother's boyfriend lived and spent the night there.
The next day, Brooke Winek and her daughters went to Starbucks with the intention of going Black Friday shopping with Brooke's boyfriend. When they returned to the apartment, Brooke received a call from her mother, Sharie, who told her to take the call on speaker because they needed to talk about something serious.
Undated photo of Austin Lee Edwards, 28, of North Chesterfield, Virginia.
(Riverside Police Department)
The Times reported last year that Edwards gained access to Sharie and Mark Winek's Price Court home by posing as a detective conducting an investigation involving the teen. After entering the Winek home, Edwards told Sharie to call Brooke and tell her that she and the teen needed to go to the house so he could ask them some questions.
To hide the “investigation” from her daughters, Brooke told them there was something wrong with their phones and they needed to return to their Price Court home to fix them. Brooke then left her youngest daughter with Brooke's sister, Blandin, before heading to Price Court.
The teen recalled that once they got to the house, Brooke put the keys in her purse and told her to wait in the car while she went inside. The teenager noticed that she didn't see her mother's dog in the window, which was unusual because the dog always sat there whenever people visited the house.
After waiting for a while, the teenager decided to enter the house. When he opened the screen door, Edwards grabbed her by the hair and pulled her inside.
At that moment, she thought the man grabbing her was the telephone technician. She didn't realize that he was the man who had deceived her.
He then saw the bodies of his grandmother near the entrance, his grandfather next to the stairs, and his mother lying on the wooden floor. She saw the bags over her head, taped to her neck. Their arms and legs were tied with duct tape.
The teenager began to scream.
Edwards wore a gold star-shaped police badge on his belt. As she screamed, he pointed a gun at her, which also had a star engraved on it.
“Stop yelling,” he said.
She recognized his voice. He was the “guy” she had met online and who she had been talking to for months.
“Are you going to hurt me?” she asked.
“I will if you keep yelling,” he replied.
Edwards grabbed the teenager and dragged her through the house, dousing everything with gasoline from a canister he brought with him and setting the rooms on fire. He also opened the windows and doors to let the flames spread. He then pulled the girl out and forced her to sit in the back seat of her red Kia Soul.
Family photo of murdered victims Brooke Winek, 38, and her parents Sharie Winek, 65, and Mark Winek, 69.
(Winek family photos/Los Angeles Times)
Meanwhile, the Wineks' next-door neighbor saw the house on fire and called 911. Another neighbor, in whose driveway Edwards had parked, also called the police. He called authorities again when he saw Edwards force the teen into his car.
After speeding away, Edwards told the teen to pretend to be his daughter if anyone asked her. She said he would take her back to Virginia. When the girl asked him why he killed her family, he said that if he didn't do it, they would “report him” and he wouldn't have enough time to escape from her.
Edwards also said he was a police officer and that agencies “need to improve background records” because he “lied” during the hiring process. As he continued driving toward his final destination in Saltville, Virginia, where he had recently purchased a house and had blacked out the windows, he kept his hand on his gun. Also in the car with them was the large, bloody knife he used to stab Brooke.
They made two stops during the trip to use the bathroom, but Edwards never let go of the teen's hand. They also made a stop so Edwards could clean up the blood. He told the girl that they would not stop to eat until they left California and that they would drive to Virginia through Las Vegas, New Mexico and Texas. She would have to stay in the back seat, she said, until they got her a change of clothes.
The Riverside Police Department identified Edwards through interviews with neighbors, who provided descriptions of his car and video footage from security cameras. Police determined he was in the Mojave Desert and alerted San Bernardino County authorities, who pursued his Kia Soul.
During the chase, Edwards fired his gun through the rear window of the car, causing the Kia to fill with smoke. The fuel canister, which Edwards had placed in the back seat with the teenager, splashed her with gasoline.
Edwards' Kia went off the road and got stuck on some rocks under a bridge, allowing police cars to catch up.
When police approached, Edwards told the teen to get out of the car.
With nowhere else to go, he pointed his service weapon at himself and pulled the trigger.
