In November 1994, Stephan Smerk fled his Virginia Army barracks with one intent – to kill.
“Something came over me,” Smerk once told cops. “I just had to kill somebody. I can’t explain it to you.”
He made his way to the home of Robin Lawrence and her two-year-old daughter. He didn’t know her. She didn’t know him. But their fates crossed that night as Smerk looked to fill his desire to murder. He broke into the home and found the 37-year-old, who quickly sank to her knees. Smerk drove the knife into her 49 times, killing the mom as her daughter was in the next room.
The soldier fled into the night, leaving the daughter with her dead mom – and it took at least two days for authorities to learn of the murder. They didn’t link Smerk to the crime in the days that followed. The case went cold, and for decades Lawrence’s murder was unsolved. That was until DNA breakthroughs in 2003 allowed cops to link Smerk to his murder.
When officers spoke to Lawrence, he gave a chilling description of who he was. He, in his own words, was “a serial killer who’s only killed once.”
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For almost three decades, the 53-year-old Niskayuna, New York, native had evaded the law until advances in genetic genealogy linked the ex-soldier by DNA to the crime. In a Fairfax County court earlier this month, Smerk was sentenced to nearly 70 years in prison for the Virginia mother’s murder. He was also ordered to pay a $100,000 fine, with Circuit Judge David Oblon calling the murder “among the worst” in the county’s history.
In the courtroom, Smerk turned to almost a dozen of Lawrence’s family members – including her now fully-grown daughter, Nicole.
“All these years I have been a coward living with guilt, shame and self-hatred,” he said. “It is my sincere hope that my arrest and subsequent incarceration bring some closure.”
The father-of-two stated that if it wasn’t for his own wife and children – now aged 17 and 20 – there may have been more victims.
The crime
Smerk said he drank two beers and took a dose of the stimulant ephedrine before he left his barracks at Fort Worth – now known as Joint Base Myer-Henderson Hall – in Arlington, Virginia. The then-22-year-old said he drove his white Chevrolet pickup to West Springfield where he had recently partied and parked at an acquaintance’s house.
There he broke into a neighbor’s home by prying open a sliding glass door with a branch, he told detectives. After walking through to the main bedroom he found Lawrence who had sunk to her knees and pled for her life.
He stabbed Lawrence a total of 49 times using what he described as his “combat training.” Lawrence tried to fight back, clawing at her killer’s face. Smerk also cut the phone cord as she tried to call for help, he confessed.
“I have a little bit of a scar here; I was worried she had some DNA under her finger,” Smerk told detectives in October, according to NBC 4.
When asked about the murder weapon, he said he used the knife to “cut her up pretty good.”
Ollie Lawrence, the victim’s husband, was away on a work trip when the incident occurred. He grew worried after not being about to reach his wife for days, according to a 1994 report from the Post-Standard.
A neighbor testified she noticed the Lawrence household’s back door open on November 20, 1994, and walked into the home. She found Lawrence’s daughter, Nicole, dehydrated but uninjured.
Inching closer to the bedroom, the neighbor saw blood had been smeared across the wall and later said she could not face entering the room.
The victim’s body was found at about 12:30 p.m. that day.
The aftermath
Smerk later told detectives that he tossed the knife into Chesapeake Bay from a bridge before returning to the barracks. He then said he took a shower and threw his clothes in a dumpster.
Investigators gleaned blood samples at Lawrence’s but couldn’t initially tie Smerk to the murder. The case went unsolved for nearly three decades.
Smerk went on to build a picturesque life while Lawrence’s family was left mourning.
Attorneys said in court Friday that he received accolades for his military service, got married—and later divorced—had two children, returned to school, purchased a home and switched career paths to become a senior software engineer earning $120,000 per year.
“After destroying the Lawrence family, he went on to build his own family,” Oblon said before announcing his decision, the Washington Post reported. “It is beyond callous to know that Mr. Smerk left a two-year-old child alone with her freshly dead, bleeding mother.”
As police looked at the cold-case murder, they worked with an outside company, Parabon NanoLabs, which used DNA evidence to identify the suspect’s biological relatives—eventually narrowing their search to Smerk.
Two detectives from the Fairfax Police Department took a trip to Niskayuna, New York, on September 7, 2023, to further their investigation police said. Smerk was putting out the trash outside his home.
Police took a DNA swab from the inside of his cheek and left their business card.
Later that evening Smerk called the detectives and turned himself in to the local police station in Niskayuna. He delivered a full confession in Lawrence’s killing, Police Chief Kevin Davis told CNN at the time.
Commonwealth’s Attorney Steve Descano said in a statement Friday that Lawrence’s murder “scarred Fairfax County for more than 30 years.”
“The pain left by Robin Lawrence’s murder can never fully heal,” he added. “But I hope that today’s sentence will help her loved ones finally close this difficult chapter.”
