Former Army service member arrested in 1994 cold-case killing of Fairfax Co. mother

Jack Moore | jmoore@wtop.com
September 11, 2023, 4:03 PM

Police in Fairfax County, Virginia, have made an arrest in the cold-case slaying of a mother who was stabbed to death a few days before Thanksgiving in 1994 while her toddler daughter was in the next room.

Stephen Smerk, 51, of Niskayuna, New York, is awaiting extradition to Virginia on second-degree murder charges in the killing of 37-year-old Robin Lawrence, police announced at a news conference Monday.

Fairfax County Police Chief Kevin Davis said Smerk has “zero criminal history whatsoever” and was an active-duty U.S. Army service member living on the Fort Myer Army post at the time of the killing. Davis said there was no apparent connection between Smerk and the Fairfax County mother he’s now charged with killing.



Robin Lawrence, 37, was killed in November 1994. (Courtesy Fairfax County police)

Davis, who called the case a “remarkable story with an extraordinary, unanticipated ending” during the news conference, said detectives used genetic genealogy techniques on decades-old crime scene evidence to develop new leads in the case. And when detectives traveled to upstate New York to follow up on those leads, Davis said Smerk agreed to allow detectives to take swab of his DNA — and then he confessed.

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Jack Moore
Jack Moore joined WTOP.com as a digital writer/editor in July 2016. Previous to his current role, he covered federal government management and technology as the news editor at Nextgov.com, part of Government Executive Media Group.

jmoore@wtop.com