A Missouri mother was finally able to recover her murdered son’s remains after she drained the pond where his body had been dumped seven years ago.
Connie Goodwin, 57, along with her family from Poplar Bluff, Missouri, took on the task of pumping out the unnamed pond after local authorities failed to complete the job they started in 2017.
They were looking for Edward Goodwin, 32, who was murdered by childhood friends after a drug deal went awry in 2015.
In November 2017, the Butler County Sheriff’s Department drained part of the pond and found partial remains of Connie’s son, enough to convict Eldrid Smith and Rickey Hurt for his murder.
But when the case was closed, the sheriffs weren’t done pumping out the pond and the Goodwins left their relative’s remains to rest.
A battle ensued over the next five years, as the Goodwins were given several reasons why the job could not be completed.
“There was always a reason. Either from other crimes or from the weather,” Connie said.
“We kept pushing and pushing to get that water out. It’s not the family’s responsibility to do that.’
Coroner Jim Akers (left) and son Gage, 22, (right) carefully remove Edward Goodwin’s remains—along with the cinder blocks used to weight his body—from the swamp and place them in a kayak while Connie Goodwin (back) watches on
Connie Goodwin, 57, gazes out over the partially drained pond where the body of her murdered son, Edward Goodwin, 32, was dumped in 2015
Connie Goodwin (left) couldn’t rest until the remains of her son, Edward Goodwin, (right) were found in the pond they’d been dumped in after he was killed by childhood friends over a drug deal gone wrong
Connie told the Riverfront Times that her family drained the pond themselves with rented machines after five years of delay by the local police.
It was a considerable undertaking, with an estimated pond measuring about 90 feet by 140 feet with a depth of about four feet.
Last fall, the sheriff’s department had come back again to try to drain the pond, but had failed to bring the water level down enough to find the remains.
There had been two other attempts that had brought the water level down significantly from its peak two years ago, but not enough to find Edward.
So Connie, along with her husband and her grandson, Gage, 22, who is Edward’s son, rented a pump pit over the weekend and finished the job herself.
They got to work pumping up the water at 8:30 a.m., and about two hours later, they had reduced the pond size enough to see what looked like bones sticking out of the silt.
Connie then called Butler County coroner Jim Akers, who came to the scene and confirmed that the remains were those of Edward Goodwin.
‘[Local police] pumped it out to where it was only a few feet after it was completely pumped out, but you’ve got all the sediment, all the mud,” Akers said of the first attempt to find Edward’s remains.
When the level of the pond had finally drained to the point where the family could see bones, they carefully placed them on a kayak
The kayak with Edward’s remains was pulled to shore by a rope attached to the kayak
The pelvis and femurs they recovered were enough to prosecute Smith and Hurt, who were convicted and are now in prison for the murder.
Butler County Sheriff Mark Dobbs said in 2015 that “there was resentment over previous drug dealings between Ed Goodwin and the group that eventually attacked him.”
Edward had known the couple since elementary school and had started working together after graduation.
Connie described the son whose remains she had to recover from the unnamed pond as “a hard worker who made some bad choices, but was a good person.”
They had found skeletal remains, but the thick mud was still two and a half feet deep and “when you stand in it, it’s like you can’t move,” Connie said.
Edward’s remains were in the middle of what used to be the pond, where the mud would likely be even thicker and deeper, Akers warned the excited family.
They found Edward’s remains tied with wire to cinder blocks that had been used by his killers to sink his corpse to the bottom of the pond.
Gage and Akers carefully lifted the cinder blocks and skeletal remains into a kayak, which Connie pulled ashore with a rope.
‘It was a sad day. It was also a joyous day because we were able to take our son home with us,” Connie said.