Twenty years before the 1980 murders of two 19-year-olds in Jefferson County, the man who was charged Friday with killing them was considered a suspect in the killing of two 19-year-olds in Portland, Ore., according to news reports.

The (Portland) Oregonian newspaper quoted an FBI spokeswoman in 2002 as saying Edward Wayne Edwards was “considered a prime suspect” in the killings of Larry Ralph Peyton and Beverly Ann Allan, both 19, there in 1960.

On Saturday, Edwards pleaded not guilty in Louisville, Ky., where he was living, to the murders of Tim Hack and Kelly Drew in 1980.

According to newspaper accounts, Edwards escaped from jail in Portland on Dec. 10, 1960, landing him on the FBI’s Ten Most Wanted list on Nov. 10, 1961. For a time, according to reports, he was No. 1 on the list. He was captured in Atlanta on Jan. 20, 1962. He had been jailed in Portland on charges of impersonating a federal officer, firing shots at a residence and turning in false fire alarms.

News reports depict him as being involved in at least 43 armed robberies, including bank robberies, and other crimes across the country in the 1950s and early ’60s.

In a 1971 newspaper account, Edwards denied any involvement in the Portland killings — Peyton was stabbed to death and Allan was later found strangled, according to a Nov. 10, 1961 Oregon Journal story — but admitted to numerous other non-violent crimes.

Jason Pack, supervisory special agent in the FBI national press office in Washington, D.C., confirmed Saturday that the man charged in the Jefferson County murders is the same individual who was on the Ten Most Wanted list in 1961.

Hack and Drew disappeared Aug. 9, 1980, after leaving a wedding reception at the Concord House, a dance hall eight miles east of Johnson Creek. The bodies of the Fort Atkinson-area couple were found three months later. Authorities believe Drew was strangled and sexually assaulted, and Hack was stabbed to death.

According to authorities, during the summer of 1980, Edwards lived with his family at a campground adjacent to the Concord House.

Edwards was arrested based on DNA evidence. Police obtained a DNA sample from Edwards in June, and it was matched on July 8 to semen found on Drew’s pants, which were discovered alongside a road five days after the couple disappeared.

Authorities have refused to say what led them to Edwards but said new technology allowed them to consider more evidence.

Prosecutors charged Edwards with two counts of first-degree murder. He faces life in prison if convicted. He was held on $500,000 cash bond, and a judge scheduled a probable cause hearing for Monday.

— The Associated Press contributed to this story.