RIVERSIDE, CA — An in-depth news article published Thursday provides previously unreported — and disturbing — details of a cop’s lies, the terror-filled last moments of his victims, and the haunting, unanswered questions for those who are left to pick up the pieces.
What is known is that Sharie and Mark Winek, and their 38-year-old daughter, Brooke Winek, were brutally murdered on Nov. 25, 2022, in their Price Court Riverside home by an out-of-state deputy deadly obsessed with Brooke’s 15-year-old daughter.
The Los Angeles Times published Thursday’s article based on new information it obtained through legal documents, written messages, security camera footage, and official accounts as well as interviews with Sharie and Mark’s surviving daughter, Mychelle Blandin, her family, her parents’ neighbors, and her lawyers, according to the news outlet.
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Austin Lee Edwards, 28, a deputy from the Washington County Sheriff’s Office in Virginia, tricked Sharie into letting him into her home early on that violent morning after Thanksgiving, the Times report reveals.
According to the report, Edwards showed up at her door around 9 a.m. and said he needed to speak to her 15-year-old granddaughter about something that happened at her school.
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It’s unclear whether he flashed his badge.
Sharie was understandably nervous. Was her granddaughter in trouble? Was this “detective” going to take her away?
What Sharie didn’t know is that Edwards had been casing her home for hours.
Sharie called her other daughter, Blandin, who was out shopping nearby. Blandin tried to calm her mom, but neither suspected that Edwards had any sinister plans, the reporting shows.
The 15-year-old was out with her sister and their mother at the time, so Edwards waited at the home to “interview” the girl as part of the “school investigation,” according to the Times.
Brooke dropped her youngest child off at Blandin’s home while she and her teen daughter returned to their Price Court home. The 15-year-old stayed outside while her mother went in first to meet with the “detective,” the Times reported.
But there was no “school investigation.” Instead, the lawman turned the family home into a horror. He bound and gagged Brooke’s parents and put bags over their heads. They likely died of asphyxiation, according to the Times report. Sharie was 65 years old, and Mark was 69.
Brooke got into a physical altercation with Edwards, and he slashed her throat with a knife, the news outlet reported.
Edwards then started a fire in a downstairs bedroom using gasoline he brought with him. The family’s bird and three dogs died in the blaze.
At some point during the slayings, the 15-year-old girl went inside the house to see what was taking her mother so long. She spotted her grandmother, bound and gagged with a bag over her head — still moving, according to the Times. What else the girl saw was not reported.
Edwards, dressed in a tan trench coat, a black fedora and carrying a black duffel bag and a plastic bag, kidnapped the teen at gunpoint. He fled with her in his red Kia Soul.
It was a laid-out plan. Edwards had been “catfishing” the girl online, pretending he was just 17 years old.
The child was his obsession, but Edwards actually spent Thanksgiving with his girlfriend in San Diego. They had been together for five years after meeting online, according to the Times.
Edwards’ Thanksgiving “vacation” was short. He needed to get back to Virginia, he told his girlfriend.
Instead, he drove to Riverside.
After the slayings, authorities caught up with Edwards and the kidnapped teen in the Mojave Desert where the Virginia lawman exchanged gunfire with local police. The ordeal ended when Edwards fatally shot himself. The girl escaped gunfire injury and was rescued by authorities.
For Blandin, there are so many questions because Edwards had a documented history of mental health problems. In a 2016 incident, he was detained for psychiatric evaluation after cutting himself with a knife and threatening to kill his father.
Edwards’ gun rights were stripped as a result of the case yet he somehow managed to get hired by two Virginia law enforcement agencies.
On July 6, 2021, Edwards entered the Virginia State Police Academy. He graduated on Jan. 22, 2022, as a trooper and was assigned to Henrico County, within the Richmond Division, according to a statement from Virginia State Police.
Edwards resigned Oct. 28, 2022, and started as a patrol deputy with the Washington County Sheriff’s Office on Nov. 16, 2022. He had started orientation and was assigned to the patrol division at the time of the Riverside killings, according to the sheriff’s office.
After the slayings, Virginia State Police attributed Edwards’ hiring to human error.
Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin ordered the state inspector general to investigate the matter.
In its investigation into Edwards, the Times also found he had solicited nude photos from an underage girl he met online in 2014; she was 13 and he was 20.
Blandin intends to sue Virginia officials over lax hiring protocols.
In a news conference following the murders, Blandin told reporters gathered in Riverside, “This horrific event started with an inappropriate romance between a predator and child. This was an adult who traveled across the country to kidnap a 15-year-old girl, my niece … and devastate our family. He took an oath to protect, yet he failed to do so. Instead, he preyed on the most vulnerable.
“Nobody could imagine this crime happening to our family, especially one day after Thanksgiving,” the grieving woman continued. “We had all just celebrated the Thanksgiving blessing. We recounted many blessings. Little did I know it would be the last time my husband and I would see my sister and parents alive.”
Blandin wants key questions answered, she told the Times:
“We want to know why this person was able to get hired not by one but two agencies, and given a firearm when he couldn’t legally buy one. “Where’s your checks and balances?”
Read the full Los Angeles Times story, “He faked an investigation. Then the ‘detective’ killed her family and abducted her niece”
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