BEAVER TWP., Ohio - A convicted serial killer who confessed to murdering two couples in Beaver Township has now confessed to six slayings in Western Pennsylvania according to authorities.

Edward A. Surratt, 79, is currently serving two life sentences for crimes he committed in Florida and has also been convicted of murder in South Carolina.

In 2007, Beaver Township police said Surratt admitted that in 1977 he killed Linda and David Hamilton at their South Avenue home, as well as Mary and John Davis at their Sharrot Road home.

Linda Hamilton’s body was never recovered. Surratt would only tell authorities that the body was “unrecoverable”.

At the time he confessed to the Beaver Township murders, the Aliquippa truck driver was suspected of killing 19 people throughout Eastern Ohio and Western Pennsylvania in 1977 and 1978.

Some of his alleged victims were shot, others were beaten to death. Many of the women were raped.

Surratt was finally caught in Florida after tying up a man and raping his wife and daughter in front of him.

On Wednesday, members of the Pennsylvania State Police Criminal Investigation Assessment unit announced that they traveled to the Raiford Correctional Facility in Florida and interviewed Surratt.

It was at that prison that investigators say Surratt implicated himself in four unsolved homicide investigations involving the deaths of six people in 1977 and 1978,

Two of those cases were in Beaver County, Pennsylvania.  William and Nancy Adams were murdered in November 1977. John Shelkons was murdered in January 1978.

In addition, police say confessed to the December 1977 murders of Guy and Laura Mills in Bedford, Pennsylvania, and the killing of Joel Krueger in McConnellsburg.

District attorneys in each county agreed not to prosecute Surratt for the cold-case homicides due to his life sentences in other jurisdictions.

 “PSP investigators never stopped seeking justice for the victims of these terrible crimes and their families,” said Lieutenant Colonel Scott Price, deputy commissioner of operations for the Pennsylvania State Police. “We hope that the confessions announced today will help bring some semblance of closure to the victims’ loved ones.”

Surratt was also a person of interest in a Boardman cold case.

Back in 2007, 21 News spoke with then Boardman Township Police Chief Jack Nichols who said that he was hoping that Surratt would admit to the 1978 murder of Katherine Filicky at her Hitchcock Road home.

Former Boardman lieutenant John Rosensteel detective says Surratt's proximity from Filicky's home the night of her murder put Surratt in the center of the crime.

"Eddie Surratt on the evening that we suspicioned Mrs. Finicky was murdered was given a traffic violation from one of our patrol officers," Rosensteel said.

Surratt was pulled over by Boardman police driving at night without headlights around the area of Santa Fe Trail and Route 224.

"Fast forward now to the next day when Mrs. Filicky's body was found," he said. 

Rosensteel said given Surratt was being investigated in Pennsylvania for homicides and there were no other suspects in Filicky's murder, it makes him the target and hopes for a confession.

"Closure for the family and personally, yes, I would like to know that the suspicions I've held all these years are validated," he said.