Melissa Lambert initially wasn’t crazy about the idea of getting a dog.
She and her husband already had their hands full in Waynesboro, Pa., with three young children, ages 3 to 8. A dog would bring even more work.
But then Lambert met Edgar, a Treeing Walker Coonhound, who turned up at the local humane society shelter where Lambert regularly brought her girls to play with the animals.
Lambert was irresistibly drawn to him, and the family adopted the 4-year-old, who had previously spent his life on the streets and was once labeled by a shelter in West Virginia as “unadoptable.”
Months later, the Lamberts are hailing Edgar as a hero for scaring off a a man who police say was looking for a child to abduct when he broke into the Lamberts’ home in Franklin County through a first-floor window in the early hours of April 28.
Police arrested a suspect the next day who reportedly told investigators he had been trolling the neighborhood for weeks prior, looking for young unsupervised children.
Police charged the suspect, Thomas Dewald, 20, in connection with the abduction of a 4-year-old girl from her bed in the same area April 25. He locked that girl into a wooden box, but she escaped the next morning after he went to work, according to court documents.
Since that girl had gotten away, Dewald was back on the prowl, police said. But Edgar wasn’t about to let anything happen to the three little girls in his newfound home.
The Lambert family had arrived home about 1:20 a.m. Sunday April 28 after attending an out-of-town funeral. The Lambert parents carried their three girls to bed and then quickly fell asleep themselves, with Edgar in their room, where he normally slept.
About two hours later, Edgar, normally a pretty laid-back dog, “started losing his mind,” Thom Lambert said. “It was pure rage.”
And Edgar wouldn’t stop, even when Thom Lambert tried to calm him down.
That’s when Thom Lambert heard footsteps scurrying across his kitchen floor downstairs. Thom Lambert bolted downstairs to see a window and his kitchen door open. They were both locked when the Lamberts went to bed. They had made sure of it because they were aware of the abduction of 4-year-old Gemma Moats from their small township just a few nights prior.
When Thom Lambert saw the door open, just like the door was left open at Gemma’s house after she was abducted, his heart sank. He grabbed two kitchen knives and darted back upstairs to check his girls’ bedrooms.
They were still safely tucked in bed. He shepherded the girls into his room with his wife. He handed his wife a knife and went back downstairs.
Thom went downstairs and cleared each room alone with his knife as he called 911. The police soon arrived and helped him clear the house a second time, just to make sure no intruders were hiding inside the home.
When Thom explained to police how Edgar had gone nuts, barking and growling, the police had a hard time believing him, he said.
“Edgar was just there on the floor sleeping while the cops were clearing the house with their guns drawn,” Thom Lambert said. “And the cops are like, so this is the dog that you’re saying went nuts?”
Thom Lambert believes Edgar fell back asleep because he knew his work was done.
Thom Lambert said he had heard Edgar bark aggressively like that one time before: the night Emma Moats was abducted. Thom Lambert believes the suspect was skulking across the Lamberts’ property before he decided to go to Gemma’s house. The police confirmed his suspicions, Thom Lambert said.
And that’s what makes his blood run cold. The fact that the suspect may have been at his property and saw that they had an 80-pound dog in the yard, but he still came back three nights later to take his chances.
“He was really drawn to take one of our kids,” Thom Lambert said. “Just saying it out loud makes me feel like I got punched in the [groin] and the stomach at the same time.”
Police told the Lamberts that the suspect said he paused initially inside the Lamberts’ home after he heard the dog barking. He weighed whether he should just wait for the dog quiet down or flee. Police told the Lamberts that the suspect decided to scram after hearing the anger in Edgar’s barking.
“He told the police he knows how dogs bark, and the difference between ‘hey,’ and ‘I’m going to hurt you,’” Thom Lambert said, and the burglar quickly deduced that Edgar fell into the latter category.
Edgar’s behavior that night was in stark contrast to how he typically acts with his family, which is loving, if a bit lazy. The Lamberts used to joke about how the dog would see a mouse running across the floor of the 200-year-old farmhouse where they live and barely blink an eye. He certainly wouldn’t get up and chase it.
“He doesn’t seem like a guard dog,” Thom Lambert said. “That’s just not in his wheelhouse.”
But Edgar knew when it was time to flex his muscle.
“It’s so damn impossible right now to think we got this dog for any other reason than it was meant to be,” Thom Lambert said. “Everything had to happen in just the right way for him to be there at that moment.”
In the days after the crime, the Lamberts tried to say strong in front of their girls, who weren’t aware at the time that an intruder was inside their home. But the reality of what could have happened, what might have happened, if Edgar hadn’t woken up and scared the intruder off, makes the Lamberts “see stars and feel like they’re going to throw up,” Thom Lambert said.
“When you hear more details about what happened, it’s horrifying to consider,” Thom Lambert said. “But the intruder’s mission failed and he was quickly apprehended. So I consider that a win.”
One of the most damaging comments about the ordeal was how the suspect tried to portray himself to police as if he was “saving” children from “deplorable conditions,” Thom Lambert said.
Dewald told investigators he took Gemma because of the poor condition of her home, but left the Lamberts’ children because their home was “acceptable,” according to court records.
“But we all know that’s complete B.S.,” Thom Lambert said. “Bounding a little girl with tape and locking her in a wooden box? Those are supposed to be good living conditions? He can say what he wants but we know he came to our house to take one of our kids and he got run off by our dog. That’s what I’d like the focus to be on right now, the fact that our really awesome dog saved our girls.”