In the 1970s, John Addis was one of Alaska’s finest. The law enforcement officer was recognized as one of the state’s foremost experts on crime scene investigation. In the 1990s, he put his police prowess to use in crime scene evasion, becoming a fugitive, accused of murdering his girlfriend. Just as he had been an adept lawman, Addis also proved proficient at evading his former colleagues.

The twisted saga of John Addis stretches across four decades and two continents, beginning in the 1970s in Alaska and ending over 5,700 miles away in Guatemala.

John Addis

In the 1970s and early ‘80s, as a member of the Fairbanks, Alaska, Police Department and later as a state trooper, John Addis used his skills to help solve several murders, including identifying a serial killer. He was greatly respected and generally liked by his fellow officers, but he was also eccentric. Fellow state trooper Jim McCann said Addis was excellent at his job but was not a “people person.”

Addis’ career was progressing, but his personal life, and he himself, were disintegrating.

Good at His Job but Not With People

By 1982, Addis and his wife Jodi had four children, but the eleven-year marriage was unraveling. After years of physical and emotional abuse, she divorced him. In addition to the abuse, Jodi says her former husband sought to control every aspect of her life by not letting her work, drive a car, or socialize without him.

Addis abruptly quit his job as a state trooper in December 1982, erroneously telling people he was beginning a career change by enrolling in medical school.  He soon married a Fairbanks police dispatcher named Sarah. The couple moved to Florida, but, after suspecting him of having an affair, Sarah left him after five months, returning to Fairbanks.

Addis stayed in Florida and soon married again. He and wife #3, a Sarasota pharmacist named Toni, had a daughter together in September 1985. Shortly thereafter, he nearly choked the new mom to death. Toni soon divorced him.

After alienating his second and third wives, Addis then began redirecting his ire toward his first wife.

Addis with Wife Jodi and Two of Their Children

In 1987, after several months of Jodi’s fighting her former husband over visitation rights to their children, Addis abducted them, telling them their mom had died. He initially took the kids to his native Michigan where he partook in several robberies. After approximately a year on the lam, he and the children were tracked to Kalispell, Montana, where the fugitive fibbing father’s luck ran out; he was arrested while working out at a gym.

For the kidnappings, Addis was sentenced to one year in prison. He was paroled in October 1989, after serving nine months. The former cop was soon a fugitive again after breaking the terms of his release and dropping from sight.

John Addis had proven he was good at two things: being a policeman and manipulating women. In the ensuing decade he continued the latter while hiding from the former.

Cop Turned Criminal

Now being sought by his former Alaska colleagues on the parole violation, Addis stayed off the radar for five years before resurfacing in Las Vegas in 1995. He was working in a World’s Gym as a personal trainer under the name John Edwards, an identity Addis was later found to have stolen from a man in Sarasota, Florida, where he had also worked in a gym.

At the Las Vegas gym, John Addis, alias John Edwards, met thirty-nine-year-old Joann Albanese, a divorced mother of two daughters, sixteen-year-old Brittany and nine-year-old Amber. After a few training sessions, the two began dating; after a few weeks, Edwards moved into Joann’s home. He continued his lying ways, telling his latest fling he had no children and had never been married.

Brittany and Amber were initially excited as they saw the joy in their mom’s eyes. The happiness, however, was short-lived as Joann’s buff new beau soon became controlling and possessive of her and frequently berated her in public.

By whatever name he was using, John Addis was still manipulative. The initially charming personal trainer was also trained at deceiving people.

Joanne Albanese was enduring the same kind of torment as the other women who had been close to John Addis, but she would pay a far greater price.

Joann Albanese and John “Edwards”

Joann left work at the MGM Grand Hotel at 4:30 p.m. on Saturday, August 19, 1995. She told family members she was going to end her relationship with “John Edwards” at dinner that evening.

The following evening, Brittany and Amber returned to their mother’s home after spending the weekend with their father, Tom. They were surprised their mom was not there and became alarmed when they found her purse and jewelry scattered across her bedroom floor.

After Joann did not arrive at work the following day, Brittany reported her missing. Police found John Edwards had also failed to arrive for work at the gym. Investigators were initially not worried and felt Joann may have had a change of heart and that the two had reconciled and taken an impromptu trip. Two more days passed, however, with no sign of either.

Four days later, on August 27, Joann’s car, a 1993 Honda Accord, was found two-hundred-fifty miles away in the desert area of Little Hells Canyon, outside of Prescott, Arizona.

In searching Edwards’ belongings at Joann’s home, police were struck by an odd finding: a duct-taped shut wallet. Inside was an Alaska driver’s license with a photo of him but bearing the name John Addis. Also found was an Alaskan certification card showing he was trained in Crime Scene Investigation.

Police concluded Joann Albanese had not had a change of heart and had attempted to end her relationship with John Addis, alias John Edwards. They believe an argument ensued in her home that evening, probably resulting from her intention of ending the relationship. In a fit of rage, Addis is believed to have killed Joann, put her body in her car, and drove to the desert where he disposed of her vehicle and her body, although the latter had not been found.

Joann Missing; Addis Hiding

Three years later, in October 1998, a hunter discovered human remains one mile from where Joann Albanese’s car had been abandoned in a remote region of Yavapai County in the Arizona desert. Dental records identified the remains hers. An autopsy could not conclusively determine how she had been murdered, but the coroner stated the most likely cause was strangulation.

John Addis had nearly strangled his third wife to death; he had succeeded with prospect number four.

Joann Is Found Strangled to Death

Another arrest warrant was issued for John Addis, this time charging him with murder. The former cop who once hunted killers was now an accused killer urgently sought by this former colleagues.

With Addis’s law enforcement and forensics background, authorities feared their prey would be hard to nab and that any woman who became close to him was in grave danger. They were right on both counts.

Cop Turned Killer

Addis was tracked to Guadalajara, Mexico, in 1997, where he had lived under the aliases John Elwars and John Stone. The forty-seven-year-old fugitive was dating twenty-six-year-old Laura Padilla; as with Joann Albanese, Addis had met her at a gym; this time it was a Gold’s Gym.

The couple had left the area before police learned of their living in Guadalajara. Investigators’ hearts sank when they questioned Laura’s family and learned she had fallen in love with and had run off with Addis. For the next nine years, there was no trace of the American fugitive and his Mexican girlfriend.

On October 18, 2006, the bodies of a woman and two young girls were found in Chiapas, Mexico, approximately 1,500 miles south of Guadalajara. They had been dead for several days from carbon monoxide poisoning.

Mexican authorities positively identified the woman as Laura Padilla and the two girls, ages seven and four, as her daughters. It is believed that Addis fathered the children.

Laura Padilla

The family was believed to have been living in Chiapas for several years where Addis, using the alias Charles Peterson, had passed himself off as a Canadian patriate teaching English and tennis. Authorities also found that Addis had created additional fake identification cards.

On October 16, two days before the bodies of Laura Padilla and her daughters were found, Guatemalan police found the body of a man in a hotel room in Guatemala City, five-hundred-seventy-five miles south of Chiapas, Mexico. Five days later, after learning of the discovery of the bodies in Chiapas, fingerprints identified the man as John Addis.

Investigators from the Unites States, Mexico, and Guatemala believe that on October 14, 2006, four days before the bodies of Laura Padilla and her daughters were discovered in Chiapas, Addis fled across Mexico’s southern border into Guatemala where he checked into a hotel room where his body was discovered two days later.

Mexican and Unites States investigators initially believed Addis had committed suicide after killing his Mexican family. An autopsy, however, determined he had died of a heart attack.

I have not been able to find which country performed the autopsy: the United States, Mexico, or Guatemala.

Another Country;

Another Killing

Despite the fingerprint identification, one investigator says he believes it is possible the intelligent and crafty former homicide detective could have faked his death.

The investigator does not have any company and is not saying Addis did so, but he also does not believe it is beyond the realm of possibility.

It Couldn’t Be . . . Could It?

Joann Albanese knew John Addis as John Edwards. He and the real John Edwards were born within several months of one another and were the similar height and weight.

John Addis is believed to have stolen John Edwards’ identity around 1994 when Edwards was a member of the Workout Fitness Center in Cape Coral, Florida. Addis worked at the Cape Coral Parkway Club where he sold memberships to the fitness center.

The real John Edwards was initially suspected of murdering Joann Albanese.

One John Pilfers Another John’s Identity

https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/158534840/joann-hedvie-albanese# 

https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/235968821/laura-liliana-casillas_padilla

SOURCES:

• America’s Most Wanted
• Anchorage Daily News
• “Ghost: The Story of One Man’s Descent onto Murder and Madness” by Glenn Puit
• Las Vegas Review-Journal
• Unsolved Mysteries