Chris Edwards is missing something near and dear to him.
Thieves broke in and took the box containing the ashes of his mother, Gail Edwards.
“What looked like a little jewelry box was actually my mother,” he says.
The gold-colored box with her ashes was sitting on top of the wooden urn of her husband, the late Dallas Cowboys linebacker Dave Edwards. The box had her name and date of death on it.
“Those ashes meant a lot to me,” he says. “I’m sad and angry. I’m just kind of numb to it. You just wouldn’t think somebody would steal an urn.”
The March 20th’s break-in was the third daytime burglary in his Lake Highlands neighborhood in two months. His neighbor’s house had also been burglarized.
A thief knocked on the door. When nobody answered, they punched a hole in the window, unlocked the window and came inside. A neighbor heard the thief and called 911. The thief was described as driving a gold Ford Explorer with chrome-colored hub caps.
The thieves also left behind a piece of candy that stuck to the broken window. Police took DNA and fingerprints.
But it wasn’t until the day after the break-in that Chris Edwards realized his mother's ashes were gone.
"Those ashes meant a lot to me because they were my mother,” he said.
When his parents met, mom was a Braniff stewardess. Dad was already a Dallas Cowboy. They lived in the same apartment complex. The couple married in 1967.
“She was a very loved by all the Cowboys,” he says.
His dad had been nicknamed, “Fuzzy,” by the late Dallas Cowboys quarterback Don Meredith. His dad played in three Super Bowls.
“He was the run stopper,” Chris Edwards said.
He and his brother grew up around the team.
A photo hangs in his house showing teammate’s hugging his dad. It was a photo of the moment he had just made the interception that sent the team to the 1971 Super Bowl.
“The guy was about to run in for the winning touching down and dad nailed him and popped the ball out and jumped on it,” Chris says.
He was there when his dad played in final game in Super Bowl X, ending 13 seasons with the Cowboys.
Gail Edwards died in 2003 after a long battle with breast cancer. Dave Edwards died in December of a heart condition.
Chris Edwards had planned to spread his parents' ashes. He just wants his mom’s remains back so he can pay proper tribute to the both of them.
"Just to have them here next to me, it gave me a little bit of peace of mind,” he says. “Now she’s gone and there’s no telling where her box is. It hurts. It’s painful.”
Anyone with information about the case can contact the Dallas Police Northeast Patrol Station at (214)-670-4415.