A Niskayuna, New York, man has been arrested and charged with second-degree murder in a 29-year-old case out of Fairfax County, Virginia.

Robin Lawrence, then 37, was found dead from stab wounds in her Springfield residence on the afternoon of Nov. 20, 1994, according to Fairfax County Police. Lawrence’s daughter, 2 years old at the time, was left unharmed in another room, FCPD Deputy Chief of Investigations Eli Cory said at a press conference.

On Monday, police announced that Stephan Smerk, 51, had been arrested as the primary suspect in Lawrence’s death, following a trip by detectives to New York.

Mr. Smerk confessed to the crime, police said, and a warrant for his arrest was subsequently issued. He is currently awaiting extradition to Fairfax County to stand trial.

While a DNA profile was created in the case in 1994, police were only able to obtain a match recently. At the time of Lawrence’s death, Mr. Smerk was living and working as an active-duty service member at the U.S. Army base in Fort Myer near Arlington, Deputy Chief Cory said.

Fort Myer was merged into Joint Base Myer-Henderson Hall in 2005.

Pictures of Mr. Smerk from 1988, when he was 16, and 1998, when he was 26, were compared by detectives to a digital composite based on the DNA in the case by Parabon NanoLabs.

Parabon’s system uses genetic data taken from a DNA sample to predict the appearances of unknown persons. Given that physical characteristics such as hair color are heavily determined by DNA as opposed to environment, the model “accurately predicts genetic ancestry, eye color, hair color, skin color, freckling, and face shape in individuals from any ethnic background,” according to Parabon.

In this case, the DNA evidence taken in 1994 was run through Parabon’s predictive model to create a digital representation of what the suspect might look like. That image was then compared to the real-life photos of Mr. Smerk, police said.

The victim and Mr. Smerk were not known to each other before her death, police said.

“This was really a randomly selected act, there was no connection between the two of them,” Deputy Chief Cory said.

Mr. Smerk does not have any previous arrests on his record and has not been connected to any other offenses.

“We have no reason to believe at the moment that he is suspected in any additional similar crimes, but we leave that open to possibility,” FCPD Chief Kevin Davis said at the press conference. 

• Brad Matthews can be reached at bmatthews@washingtontimes.com.