EP. 255 - VIRGINIA: A COLD CASE SOLVED AFTER 29 YEARS: THE MURDER OF ROBIN WARR LAWRENCE

For two days, two-year-old Nicole didn’t understand why her mother wasn’t getting up. She was hungry. Lonely. And her doting mom was just lying there, unmoving, her eyes staring at nothing. Nicole had no idea that her mom, Robin Warr Lawrence, was gone. When her body was finally discovered, no one had any idea who would have wanted to kill her. For nearly 3 decades, Robin’s loved ones waited to find out who had taken her life. When the answers finally came, they came from the mouth of her killer himself. - Sources:https://docs.google.com/document/d/1eTYeCoYyxm58DXXdoFbHQyWHlWbcH9iKGIefFcQToW4/edit?tab=t.y2yayotxnlcb Listen to our new show, "THE CONSPIRACY FILES"!: -Spotify - https://open.spotify.com/show/5IY9nWD2MYDzlSYP48nRPl -Apple Podcasts - https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-conspiracy-files/id1752719844 -Amazon/Audible - https://music.amazon.com/podcasts/ab1ade99-740c-46ae-8028-b2cf41eabf58/the-conspiracy-files -Pandora - https://www.pandora.com/podcast/the-conspiracy-files/PC:1001089101 -iHeart - https://iheart.com/podcast/186907423/ -PocketCast - https://pca.st/dpdyrcca -CastBox - https://castbox.fm/channel/id6193084?country=us - Stay Connected: Join the Murder in America fam in our free Facebook Community for a behind-the-scenes look, more insights and current events in the true crime world: https://www.facebook.com/groups/4365229996855701 If you want even more Murder in America bonus content, including ad-free episodes, come join us on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/murderinamerica Instagram: http://instagram.com/murderinamerica/ Facebook:https://www.facebook.com/people/Murder-in-America-Podcast/100086268848682/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/MurderInAmerica TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@theparanormalfiles and https://www.tiktok.com/@courtneybrowen Feeling spooky? Follow Colin as he travels state to state (and even country to country!) investigating claims of extreme paranormal activity and visiting famous haunted locations on The Paranormal Files Official Channel: https://www.youtube.com/c/TheParanormalFilesOfficialChannel - (c) BLOOD IN THE SINK PRODUCTIONS 2026 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Speaker 00

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• 0:45Speaker 01

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• 1:15Speaker 02

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• 1:45Colin Brown?

  Warning: The following podcast is not suitable for all audiences. We go into great detail with every case that we cover and do our best to bring viewers even deeper into the stories by utilizing disturbing audio and sound effects.

• 1:57Courtney Brown?

  Trigger warnings from the stories we cover may include violence, rape, murder, and offenses against children.

• 2:03Colin Brown?

  This podcast is not for everyone. You have been warned.

• 2:06Courtney Brown?

  For two whole days, no one had heard from Robin Lawrence. Her husband was away, and call after call to her house went unanswered. So on Sunday, November 20, 1994, Robin's best friend Lori drove over to her house to check on her. The newspapers had piled up at the front door. Lori knocked. She rang the bell, but no answer. So from there, she went around to the back of the house. There, the screen on one of the windows had been cut, a long slit straight down the middle. Seeing this, Lori was frightened, but she knew she had to go inside. When she crawled through the window, the house was quiet. She called out, first Robin's name, then her little girls. And after a moment, she heard a sound.

• 2:51Courtney Brown?

  Two-year-old Nicole came walking down the hallway. She was still in her pajamas, a pacifier in her mouth. Lori picked her up and started towards Robin's room. With every step, the dread grew. And when she finally reached the doorway, she saw the blood. This is the story of Robin Lawrence. I'm Courtney Brown.

• 3:10Colin Brown?

  And I'm Colin Brown.

• 3:12Courtney Brown?

  And you're listening to Murder in America.

• 4:12Colin Brown?

  Robin WARR was born on November 23, 1956, in Ithaca, New York, but she grew up about an hour north in Syracuse. Her parents, Robert and Jesse War, had both grown up in Memphis, Tennessee, in the years of Jim Crow, a time and a place where they couldn't sit at the front of a bus, where they could only go to the zoo on Thursdays. Robin's father had served in World War II, and eventually, the family had settled in Syracuse. And there, Robert became the first Black common counselor in the city's history, serving from the late '60s into the '70s. Robin's home life was stable, and from the time she was small, she loved to draw. At nine, she'd already won a drawing competition at the Everson Museum, an art museum in downtown

• 4:56Colin Brown?

  Syracuse. It was the first of several prizes she'd be awarded over the next few years. She graduated from Nottingham High School in 1974, then headed to Carnegie Mellon, where she earned a degree in fine arts. Not long after, she landed a commission most artists only dream of. She was asked to design the very first medal for the Martin Luther King Jr. Nonviolent Peace Prize. And the first person to ever receive it was Rosa Parks. For the Wars, this was personal. Rosa Parks was the woman who, in Montgomery, had refused to give up her bus seat, the spark that helped bring down the very system Robin's parents had been raised under. And now, the War's own daughter, the artist, had designed the medal placed in Rosa Parks' hands.

• 5:41Colin Brown?

  From a childhood at the back of the bus to that, for Robert and Jesse War, no commission could ever have meant more. It was the medal Robin would be best known for. But it wasn't the only one. For Robin, art wasn't just commemorative medals and medallions for a number of corporations and institutions. Her work struck in metal, passing into the hands of people who'd never know her name. She'd done the rare thing most artists never get to do: she'd built a life out of what she did best.

• 6:09Courtney Brown?

  Robin was a tall, athletic woman with dark hair and a friendly smile. And she truly made the most of her life. She skied, swam, played golf, and she danced, taking modern dance classes well into adulthood. She was an artist to her core, a painter and a graphic designer. Her loved ones said she was "a gentle soul who loved animals," and she had a way of putting people at ease and making them feel special. Her niece Lauren was just eight when Robin died, but she remembers her aunt clearly saying, quote, "She always made me feel so loved, and she helped me express myself," end quote. Ask anyone who knew Robin, and you heard the same thing: she was one of the good ones.

• 6:51Courtney Brown?

  By the mid-1980s, Robin was living in Connecticut, in a marriage that was already coming apart. And in 1986, while she was visiting a mutual friend in Washington DC, she met a man named Ollie Lawrence. They spent the whole weekend together, biking and playing tennis and getting to know each other. Ollie would remember it as a fun couple of days. He thought Robin was beautiful, but she was married, and soon enough, the weekend came to an end, and Robin went back home to Connecticut. However, the following year, Robin's marriage ended in divorce. It was 1987. She was still in her early 30s, and she was looking for a fresh start. As luck would have it, her friend Lori Lindberg wanted a fresh start too.

• 7:34Courtney Brown?

  So together, Robin and Lori decided to start a new chapter and move to Washington DC. The two had met years earlier in dance class back in Connecticut, and now they were roommates, starting over in a new city. Robin landed a job at Merchant's Tire over in Manassas, where she became their Director of Advertising. And it wasn't long before she and Ollie picked up right where that weekend had left off.

• 7:59Colin Brown?

  Ollie was a soft-spoken man with a mustache and brown eyes. A successful executive who had rise to become Vice President of Human Resources at US Air, he'd been through a divorce of his own. So when things between him and Robin turned serious, they didn't rush to the altar. Instead, they bought a house together on Resika Lane in Springfield, a green-frame home tucked onto a quiet, wooded cul-de-sac about halfway between his office and hers. They'd live together first, before making anything official. And before long, over a dinner at a restaurant in downtown Washington, he asked her to marry him. And on New Year's Eve in 1989, they did just that. Right there in the living room of the house on Reseca Lane,

• 8:43Colin Brown?

  in front of an intimate gathering of family and friends. Red ribbons ran the length of the foyer. Deep red poinsettias filled the room. Robin wore a blush-colored brocade jacket and a chiffon skirt, a scarf draped at her neck. Ollie wore a black tuxedo with a gray paisley bowtie, a red rose pinned at his lapel. There was music, laughter, and the clink of glasses. Robin's mother Jessie never forgot the sight of them that night and later said, "It was very lovely, very touching. They just seemed to be bubblingly happy."

• 9:15Courtney Brown?

  Three years into the marriage that happiness grew. Robin and Ollie had a daughter named Nicole. But Nicole's start in the world was a frightening one. As an infant, she needed a liver transplant, a major surgery for a baby who'd barely begun her life. And a transplant isn't a one-time fix. It's the start of a lifelong routine. To keep her body from rejecting the new organ, Nicole would need an anti-rejection medication every single day, on a strict schedule, for the rest of her life. Especially in the early years. That meant frequent checkups and blood draws, and a close watch on every fever. Because the very drugs protecting her liver also left her more vulnerable to infection.

• 9:59Courtney Brown?

  Skip too many doses, the body can turn on the organ, keeping it alive. For Robin and Ollie, that became the rhythm of raising Nicole. The medication, the appointments, the monitoring. But it was all worth it. Nicole was the light of their lives. And luckily, she made it through.

• 10:17Colin Brown?

  By the fall of 1994, Robin and Ollie had been married almost five years, and they'd built a beautiful life together. They were two people who'd gone through a divorce, settled now into a home of their own on Reseca Lane, with a two-year-old daughter, Nicole. They were past the worst of her medical scares, and she was growing healthily. They liked the simple things. Fixing up the house, weekends in the yard, dinners at home. Inside, the walls were hung with Robin's own paintings, vivid and full of color, along with the African masks she loved. It was the home of an artist. And it was, in every ordinary way, a very good life. And they expected to grow old in it.

• 10:56Courtney Brown?

  There was a lot to look forward to. It was the week before Thanksgiving. In a few days, the whole family would pack up and drive north to Connecticut for the holiday. Robin's birthday was right around the corner too, and her father was already planning on one big dinner to celebrate both at once. A house full of family, the people she loved, all in one place. Robin was excited for the celebration. But first came an ordinary Friday, November 18th, 1994. That morning, Ollie was up early for a flight he had to catch. US Air was sending him down to the Bahamas on business, and he headed out before the sun was even up. Robin got out of bed soon after, fed Nicole, and greeted their nanny who walked through the door.

• 11:41Courtney Brown?

  Soon after that, Robin drove to her job at Merchant's Tire in Manassas. It was a normal day. Phones ringing, coworkers stopping by her desk. And when the workday was done, there was still a full evening ahead. Robin came home and took Nicole out to run some errands. The two did a little shopping as the November light faded. Around 6:30, she dropped the nanny off at the metro station to head home for the night. And after that, it was just the two of them, Robin and Nicole. By the time they pulled onto Reseca Lane, it was dark out. Robin carried Nicole inside and flipped on the lights. And from there, they completed their normal evening routine. Dinner, a bath, zipping Nicole into her pajamas.

• 12:24Courtney Brown?

  Before long, Nicole was asleep, and the house went quiet. Outside, the whole cul-de-sac had gone still. A quiet Friday night in one of the safest corners of Northern Virginia. Nothing bad ever happened there. But sometime that night, someone came to the house on Reseca Lane, and Robin Lawrence would not live to see the morning.

• 12:48Colin Brown?

  Down in the Bahamas, Ollie was trying to reach his wife. On Friday night, he called the house. It rang and rang with no answer. He figured Robin was already in bed, or maybe stepped out for a bit. He told himself he would try again later. Saturday, he called again, but still nothing. And it's there where he begins to worry. It wasn't like Robin to be out of touch like this. So he called Robin's close friend, Lori Lindberg, and told her he couldn't get a hold of her. That weekend, Lori tried calling Robin too. A friend's call about her upcoming birthday. "What are we gonna do for your birthday?" she asked on the voicemail. But she never heard back.

• 13:30Courtney Brown?

  That night, the worry pushed Ollie to do the only other thing he could do, from a thousand miles away. He called Fairfax County 911. Here is part of that call.

• 13:41Speaker 05

  My name is Ollie Lawrence, and I'm away on business, and I haven't been able to reach my wife over the last couple of days. I'm just concerned and wondering whether someone could maybe go by there and see if, you know, there isn't something unusual.

• 13:59Courtney Brown?

  But Ollie was about to learn that his location in the Bahamas made that welfare check more complicated.

• 14:05Speaker 06

  Okay, sir. Usually the process is if you're calling from a different location than where your family is, we have to let you go through the Bahamas police.

• 14:13Speaker 05

  Oh, please don't ask me to do that.

• 14:16Speaker 06

  Well, all you have to do is call them up, sir, and that's procedure here.

• 14:20Courtney Brown?

  What Ollie didn't know, what none of them knew, was that the only person still alive inside that house was his two-year-old baby girl, Nicole.

• 14:29Colin Brown?

  By Sunday morning, Ollie still hadn't heard from Robin. He needed someone to go to the house and lay eyes on her. And from a thousand miles away, the only person who could was a friend. So he called Lori again. "Would you mind going over to the house and checking on her?" Lori agreed.

• 14:47Courtney Brown?

  She brought a friend with her, a woman named Carlin, and the two of them drove over to Reseska Lane. From the street, the green-framed house looked exactly the way it always did. Nothing out of place, quiet, ordinary. But when they reached the front door, they saw something concerning. The newspapers were piled up on the steps. Nobody brought them in. Still, Lori stepped past the papers and knocked on the door. They waited for a few moments, holding their breath, hoping to see the door fly open, Robin greeting them with that familiar smile. But nothing. They knocked several more times. However, there was no sign of Robin. Not willing to give up just yet, they made their way around back, looking for a way into the house. And there, on one of the windows,

• 15:32Courtney Brown?

  they saw that the screen had already been cut, a long slit, straight down the middle. Lori's heart was pounding. Everything in her wanted to turn around and call someone. But her friend Carlin was steady. "We're going in," she said. After a little work, they got the window open. Together, they took a deep breath and climbed through. As they stood inside the Lawrence family home, the house was dim and silent. The family room and kitchen opened up in front of them. Off to the left, a hallway ran down towards the bedrooms. They started calling out, "Robin, Nicole," no one answered. And then down the hall, something moved. A small shape slowly coming towards them. It was Nicole, Robin's little girl.

• 16:14Courtney Brown?

  She was two years old, still in her pajamas, a pacifier in her mouth. She wasn't crying, she wasn't making a sound. She just walked towards them, her eyes huge, her face blank. They didn't know it at the time, but Nicole had been alone in that house for two whole days. Upon seeing her, Carlin scooped her up and told Lori, "You go find Robin." So Lori went. She slowly walked down the hall, towards the primary bedroom at the end. The door was open, and before she even reached it, she could see inside. Blood spattered across the walls. It pooled on the floor, dark and long-scented ride. She was completely overcome with fear. She didn't go inside the room.

• 16:59Courtney Brown?

  She couldn't bring herself to take one more step forward. Instead, she turned on her heels and ran back to Carlin and Nicole. The three of them left the way they came in, back through the window. From there, Lori quickly ran to the house next door, where a man was working in his garage. She struggled to find the words before uttering, "I need to call the police." Soon after, the first officers pulled up to Reseska Lane. Behind them came the crime scene detectives. One was Mark Garmin. A quick look around the exterior of the home showed him exactly how the killer had gotten in. The back deck, the window with the slit screen, the same window Lori had climbed through to find her friend. As Garmin stepped into the house, he walked down that same hallway towards the primary bedroom.

• 17:44Courtney Brown?

  Then he stepped inside. And immediately, he could tell that Robin put up a hell of a fight. As you know, blood helps tell a story, and it appeared as if the attack took place while Robin was lying in bed. Upon waking up and realizing what was happening, Robin and her attacker struggled around the room, leaving crimson-red blood spatter all around. Her body was found on the floor of her bedroom. The phone laid right beside her. The cord cut. There was a deep gaping wound in her neck, wounds on her back, her legs, and on her hands, in what Garmin called the "unbelievable amount of defensive wounds." It was clear that Robin had grabbed a blade with her bare hands, trying to stop it.

• 18:26Courtney Brown?

  But it was the smaller things around the room that Garmin couldn't shake. There were bloody tissues scattered across the floor and around Robin's body. As it turns out, these were not left behind by Robin's killer. As detectives looked at the scene, it was heartbreakingly clear that after Robin was murdered, two-year-old Nicole had stumbled into her mommy's room. There, on the floor, she found her bloodied and unmoving. Nicole was too young to understand death. She only knew that her mommy was hurt and that she wouldn't get up. So she had done the only thing a baby knows how to do. She brought her mommy some tissues to try and clean up the blood. Detective Garmin would later say, "Even at that age, kids know what blood is, and that blood comes from wounds and cuts.

• 19:11Courtney Brown?

  And they know that mom puts tissues on them, or Band-Aids. I think she was trying to stop the blood." End quote. Also near Robin's body were empty baby bottles. In the two days that Nicole was left alone with her mother's body, she didn't eat or drink anything. Detective Garmin believed that when Nicole got hungry, she brought the empty bottle to her mom's body, hoping that she would get up and feed her. It was the most heartbreaking scene they had ever worked. And from the very beginning, all the signs were pointing to the fact that Robin was murdered by someone close to her. She'd been stabbed forty-nine times. This type of overkill is usually seen with someone who has an intense personal rage towards the victim.

• 19:53Courtney Brown?

  Even further, there were no signs of sexual assault, and there was nothing of value missing from the home. There was cash still in the bedroom. There was jewelry. None of it had been touched. In fact, nothing in the house was taken at all. This was no burglary, no crazed sexual predator. Meaning whoever killed Robin Lawrence had come into that house to do one thing: to murder her. All the detectives said the same thing: "We do not believe that this was a random attack." Now, something else detectives noticed was that the killer did not leave behind a single fingerprint. Not on the window, not in Robin's bedroom, or any room within the house. But one piece of evidence would catch their eye.

• 20:35Courtney Brown?

  In the bathroom, hanging on the shower door was a washcloth. Detective Garmin noticed it right away. He said, "A small brownish stain." There was blood on both sides of the cloth, and there was a real possibility it wasn't Robin's. The detectives suspected that it was the killer's blood. In a struggle that violent, attackers can sometimes hurt themselves, either by the victim fighting back, or even the knife slipping in their hands, slicing it. As the detectives examined the washcloth, they were pretty confident it was the killer's. They collected it and put it in an evidence bag. But this was 1994. DNA technology was still in its early days, so they had no way to put a name to it, not yet.

• 21:19Colin Brown?

  The same day that Robin's body was found, her best friend Lori got Nicole to a hospital. Two days alone in that house had left her dehydrated. But the real danger was the one you couldn't see. For two days, no one had given Nicole the medication that kept her body from rejecting the liver keeping her alive. The daily doses her parents had given her without fail since she was a baby. But somehow, against all odds, she pulled through. Again. But at the hospital, there was still one more thing Lori had to do. Someone had to call Robin's parents. The officers asked her to do it, so Lori picked up the phone and dialed the number. Lori would later say that when Robin's dad answered the phone, she said something along the lines of "Robin's dead."

• 22:04Colin Brown?

  A sentence that was almost impossible for her to say aloud. But what came next was even more heart-wrenching. Robin's mom was listening to the phone call, and in that moment, all you could hear was wailing. Lori described it as a primal anguish. She would later say, "That's probably the most horrible thing that's happened to me, is calling." After the phone call ended, Robin's father then had to tell the rest of his children that their sister was gone. His daughter Mary and his son Robert Jr. For Mary, the words "wouldn't land" is real. "After the words 'Robin is dead,' it was like a nightmare," she said. "Your world shattered."

• 22:45Courtney Brown?

  And almost immediately, the questions began. The police came to the family with the one they always ask: Did anyone have a reason to hurt Robin? A grudge? An enemy? Anyone at all? To Mary, the answer was obvious. Of course, the answer is no. Robin was loved by everyone. They couldn't think of anyone who would want to hurt her. So, police wanted to talk to the person closest to Robin. Her husband, Ollie, who was rushing back home as fast as he could. As we mentioned, he had spent the weekend in the Bahamas, on a business trip, away from home just as everything came apart. By the time the news reached him, Robin was already gone. When he landed at Washington National, Fairfax County detectives were there waiting for him. But they didn't take him home.

• 23:29Courtney Brown?

  They took him straight in for questioning. And there, as it sank in that the wife he had kissed goodbye days earlier was dead, stabbed in their bedroom while their little girl sat alone in the house, Ollie Lawrence broke down and cried.

• 23:43Colin Brown?

  In the days that followed, the family gathered to bury Robin. The service was held on a Saturday afternoon at the Pope Funeral Home in Forestville, Maryland. And the people came. Family who'd traveled down from Connecticut and New York, friends and coworkers from Merchant's Tire, the people who'd known Robin as an artist, a dancer, a neighbor. They came to mourn a young woman taken in the one place she should have been safest: her own home. But none of them could see her one last time. The casket stayed closed. There would be no open-casket goodbye. Not after what had been done to her. Robin's sister Mary said, "That was hard for me, because I never got a chance to see her one last time. I always wanted to be able to say goodbye and see her."

• 24:28Colin Brown?

  Afterwards, Robin was laid to rest at Washington National Cemetery. And in place of flowers, the family asked for something that said everything about who they were, even then. Donations to help children with liver transplants. Children like the little girl Robin had left behind.

• 24:46Courtney Brown?

  In the weeks that followed, the house on Reseska Lane was more than Ollie could bear. He couldn't go back. He and Nicole moved out right away, to Alexandria, a dozen miles away. And within sixteen days of Robin's murder, he put the house up for sale. He would later say, "I really struggled with going back." But for Robin's parents, it was the opposite. The house wasn't something to flee. It was the last place their daughter had lived, and they felt that being inside of it kept them close to her. They had come down from Connecticut the night she was found, and while in town, they stayed in Robin's room, all the way into December. Before they finally went home, they did one last thing for her. They went into Robin's bedroom and made it up the way she would have wanted it.

• 25:30Courtney Brown?

  A new comforter and paisley pillow shams, as if she might still come home to it. It was their goodbye. Jesse said, "I had the sense that I wouldn't come back. It was all just very silent."

• 25:42Colin Brown?

  In the meantime, investigators turned to the person they so often turned to first: the husband. Two days after the funeral, detectives interviewed Ollie. He told them where he'd been the weekend Robin was killed. The Bahamas, all weekend, nearly a thousand miles from Reseska Lane. And they didn't just take his word for it, they flew down and checked for themselves. He'd been on the flight he was supposed to be on, he'd been at the hotel he was supposed to be at. The alibi held. In addition, investigators figured from the beginning that Ollie did not likely kill his wife. In fact, near Robin's body, there were hairs. Hairs that didn't belong to Robin or Ollie, longer than either of theirs. But even so, they kept him on the suspect list.

• 26:27Colin Brown?

  In the back of detectives' minds, they began to wonder if Ollie somehow orchestrated his wife's murder. With him in the Bahamas, he would have had the perfect alibi to get someone else to do it. But throughout their investigation, detectives learned more information that raised their suspicions of Ollie.

• 26:44Courtney Brown?

  As it turns out, for fourteen years, on and off, the grieving husband had been having an affair with a woman named Marva Jean Boyden. She worked in employee relations at the airline, the same human resource division that Ollie ran. The affair had spanned his entire marriage to Robin, five years of it. And suddenly, the case looked very different. Here was a husband living a double life, a wife stabbed over and over in what looked like a jealous rage. And a husband out of the country when it happened, with a clean alibi and not a drop of blood on him. Two investigators, who already believed that Robin was killed in a personal attack, it was almost too neat.

• 27:26Courtney Brown?

  Maybe Ollie hadn't held the knife himself, but maybe he didn't need to. Instantly, both Ollie and his mistress became investigators' prime suspects. But through all of it, Ollie kept telling them that they had the wrong guy. He was frustrated. He repeated to the detectives that while everyone was staring at him, "The real murderer is getting further and further away." But from here, investigators started looking into his mistress, Marva Jean Boyden. They discovered that before Ollie's trip to the Bahamas, he actually asked her to join him that weekend. However, Marva said no. Tracing her whereabouts, detectives learned that on November 18th, the day Robin was killed, Marva spent the day at a work seminar in North Carolina, four hours away.

• 28:11Courtney Brown?

  People from her work reported that she was there, but it was just a one-day seminar, and Marva admitted that later that night, she came back home to Virginia and spent the rest of the evening watching TV, all by herself. Which wasn't a good look. Marva had no one that could confirm her whereabouts on the night that Robin was brutally murdered. Marva had also known for weeks that Ollie would be away, that Robin would be home alone. And to investigators, she had the motive. So, they went back to Ollie. If anyone would know what Marva was capable of, it was the man who had spent fourteen years with her. But his answer didn't point to Marva. It pointed away from her.

• 28:51Colin Brown?

  Do you think Marva could have done something like this?

• 28:54Speaker 05

  I cannot imagine anyone I know that could have done something like this, including Marva.

• 29:00Colin Brown?

  For months, investigators continued to look into the couple. Soon enough, 1994 turned to 1995. Winter turned to spring, and spring turned to summer. And the entire time, investigators couldn't seem to shake the fact that Marva was responsible. Finally, by August of 1995, they got a warrant for two vials of her blood and twenty hairs from her head. All of it to test against the blood and hair found at the scene. But in 1995, getting those results back would take months, sometimes longer. In the meantime, investigators kept their eye on both Marva and Ollie. Ollie stayed a suspect, the husband, the man with the secret. But he never stopped insisting the affair had nothing to do with Robin's death.

• 29:44Colin Brown?

  And Robin's own family believed him. Of course, the affair had blindsided them, but not one of them ever thought he was capable of killing her, and he even passed a polygraph. While they continued waiting for the DNA results, detectives dug into Robin's life. A secret boyfriend, a jealous ex, anyone at all. But there was no one. The detectives even turned to the neighborhood. They pulled the police reports from around Resika Lane, looking for anyone who didn't fit. And it was in that search where a name came up. A man who'd been caught before looking into other people's windows. They were able to get a warrant for his blood, too.

• 30:23Courtney Brown?

  The DNA results on the bloody washcloth took a whole year to come back. And when it finally did, the detectives compared it against every suspect they had. Ali, Marva, the peeping Tom from the neighborhood. But to their dismay, none of them matched. The long hairs near Robin's body never matched anyone either. Just one more thing in the case they couldn't explain. Every single suspect that had come across their desk had been ruled out. Every lead had run dry. There was no one left to look at. Detectives started to think that maybe they were wrong. Maybe Robin wasn't killed by someone she knew, or someone that had a vendetta against her. Maybe it was random. But with no other leads, they couldn't say. And so, the case went cold. Years would pass.

• 31:07Courtney Brown?

  Robin's little girl Nicole was forced to grow up without her mom. And like many cases, the headlines eventually stopped. The detectives who worked it were reassigned. And sadly, life moved on without answers. But as the years passed, the detectives who worked Robin's case never gave up hope. They knew that year after year, DNA technology was growing stronger. And considering they had the suspect's DNA, they hoped that one day, it would give them answers.

• 31:35Colin Brown?

  Towards the late 90s, that hope was reignited. Because the FBI officially launched the National DNA Index System, which allowed police departments all over the country to compare DNA profiles of convicted felons. If Robin was killed at random, then it was more than likely her killer's DNA would be somewhere in that national database. So, they uploaded the DNA profile from the blood they found on that washcloth, and waited for a match. But sadly, it never came. Whoever killed Robin Lawrence had never been arrested. He wasn't in the system. His blood was sitting right there in a Fairfax County Evidence Locker, and it pointed to a man who had no criminal record at all. For investigators and Robin's loved ones, it was heartbreaking.

• 32:20Colin Brown?

  In the years right after the murder, her family did everything a family could do. They put up rewards. They continued speaking to the media, trying to keep her name out there. And in the beginning, everyone believes that the answer is coming. That any day now, the phone will ring, someone will talk, the case will break open. But for Robin's family, that didn't happen. And they watched as the world just moved on.

• 32:45Courtney Brown?

  Every November, as everyone gathered with family and celebrated for the holidays, Robin's loved ones couldn't ignore that empty seat at the table. Before they knew it, five years had passed. Then 10, and then 20. And by then, that hope they had in the beginning was long gone. Throughout those years, the topic of Robin's murder became so painful that her loved ones couldn't even talk about it anymore. Who was only eight years old when she was murdered, told CBS that she stayed close with Robin's daughter Nicole. But Nicole rarely spoke about her mom, saying, quote, "I didn't want to ever bring it up because I didn't want to make her anxious, or make her nervous. It was better just left unsaid." End quote. Sadly, Robin's mother eventually passed away, without ever knowing what happened to her

• 33:30Courtney Brown?

  daughter. Over the years, it was so difficult for her family, because from the beginning, detectives had been confident that Robin knew her killer. They told her family that outright. So for decades, on top of their grief, they had to live under a terrible shadow. The idea that the person who did this was close to them. Someone they knew. Maybe even someone who had come to mourn Robin. Her sister Mary never forgot the thought that came to her at the funeral, looking out at all of those grieving faces. She thought to herself, "Robin's killer could be in this room with us." However, they had no idea how wrong that was. Because the answer wasn't in that room. Her killer wasn't anyone she knew. Anyone they knew.

• 34:12Courtney Brown?

  For all those years, it had been sitting in a Fairfax County Evidence Locker. The killer's own blood, with no name attached. Blood that matched no one in any database. But decades after Robin's murder, her ice cold case would finally begin to warm up.

• 34:28Colin Brown?

  In 2019, investigators turned to a technique called genetic genealogy using public ancestry sites. Now, the innocent people on these sites will send in a saliva sample. The company will then take your DNA and use it to help you build your family tree. It will tell you your family's origins, it can help you find lost cousins, or even long-watched siblings who share your DNA. And even though it's unlikely a killer would ever participate in something like this, because the last thing they want is for their DNA to be linked to their name, there are other workarounds that have helped solve crimes. You see, as these ancestry sites started to grow in popularity, criminals all over became fearful. Because it didn't matter if they didn't upload their DNA.

• 35:09Colin Brown?

  If anyone who shared DNA with them used one of these sites, investigators could easily find them through what's called familial DNA. So, in 2019, two of Fairfax County's cold case detectives, Melissa Wallace and John Long, decided to reach out to Parabon Nano Labs. Together, they took the DNA profile from the washcloth found in Robin's home, and uploaded it to the public ancestry sites. And it almost didn't work. The matches that came back were faint. Very distant cousins who shared an ancestor with the killer from seven generations back. Now, someone who lived that far back can have thousands of descendants walking around today. And according to Detective Wallace, Parabon gave us a solvability rate of zero on the

• 35:53Colin Brown?

  case, and essentially said, "You do not have the time nor the money to get it moving forward." And now for a brief ad break. Observe. The North American Dad. 50's. Great polo collection. He enters his vehicle information on Carvana. An offer appears in minutes. Remarkable. He squints, reads it again, smiles and says, "Dang, that's a good offer." The highest form of approval.

• 36:38Colin Brown?

  No haggling, no hassle, no one called him "boss." He's still on the couch. Astonishing. Sell your car today on carvana.com. Pickup fees may apply. I do things all the time to try to save myself some time. But most of the time, when I try to save time, I end up messing something up, and having to spend more time fixing my mistake. I mean, I'm multitasking all the time. I'm a pretty forgetful person, so I start doing one thing, and then something else comes up, and I start doing the other, then I forget about the first thing. And Courtney and I even save time, like using delivery, subscription services for some of our household items. But we all have our own time-saving hacks for everyday life.

• 37:20Colin Brown?

  But if you're a business owner, how can you save time hiring? ZipRecruiter. ZipRecruiter has a new feature that quickly lets you see the most interested, qualified candidates first. So you save time by meeting the right people faster. And right now, you can try it for free at ziprecruiter.com/mia. ZipRecruiter's powerful matching technology finds qualified candidates quickly. Candidates can tell you in their own words why they're interested in your job. And it's no wonder that ZipRecruiter is the number one rated hiring site based on G2. Courtney and I have hired a lot of different people in a lot of different roles over the last few years, and ZipRecruiter has helped make finding those candidates easy. So save time and meet great candidates sooner with ZipRecruiter.

• 38:04Colin Brown?

  Four out of five employers who post on ZipRecruiter get a quality candidate within the first day. Try it for free at ziprecruiter.com/mia. That's ziprecruiter.com/mia. Meet your match on ZipRecruiter. In life, there are things that are too good to be true. Time shares, those pop-ups that say you want a free iPhone, the Nigerian prince that wants to give you money. But you know what's not too good to be true? Mint Mobile with their premium wireless plans, and start at just $15 a month. All Mint Mobile plans come with high-speed data and unlimited talk and text delivered on the nation's largest 5G network. You can even bring your current phone and your number, and choose from three, six, or 12-month plans to say goodbye to a monthly bill.

• 38:47Colin Brown?

  So ditch overpriced wireless with Mint Mobile. It's so easy. Just sign up online and get three months of premium wireless service for 15 bucks a month. Seriously, I know plenty of people that use Mint Mobile in my life. It is significantly cheaper than other carriers, and oftentimes, they get better service than I do with who I'm signed up with. So, if you're looking to make the switch, Mint Mobile is a great place to start. To get your new wireless plan for just 15 bucks a month, go to mintmobile.com/america. That's mintmobile.com/america. Cut your wireless bill to 15 bucks a month at mintmobile.com/america. That's it, there's no catch. $45 upfront payment required, equivalent to $15 a month. New customers on first three-month plan only.

• 39:31Colin Brown?

  Speeds slower above 40GB on unlimited plan. Additional taxes, fees, and restrictions apply. See Mint Mobile for details. Anyways, y'all, let's get back to the show.

• 39:47Courtney Brown?

  The case could have ended right there. Wallace and Long could have closed the book and moved on. But there was someone willing to do the impossible part for free. A volunteer, an amateur genealogist named Liz, who worked cases like this in her spare time. She would later say, quote, "Genealogy is a hobby of mine. I dabble in it on the side," end quote. Now Liz said that she knew from the beginning that Robin's case was not going to be easy, saying, quote, "I knew it was going to be a needle in a haystack," end quote. And it was a monster of a haystack at that. The DNA told her that the killer was about half Eastern European and a quarter Irish, with some English, Italian, and Scandinavian in the mix. It also gave her a list of cousins, fifteen hundred of them.

• 40:32Courtney Brown?

  And not first cousins or second cousins. It was like sixth and seventh cousins. There were fifteen hundred distant strangers. And somewhere in the tangle of all their family trees was one man, a killer. Even Liz wasn't sure she could do it. Parabon Labs told her that the solvability rate was zero. But still, she told herself, quote, "It was worth trying."

• 40:56Colin Brown?

  While she worked, Parabon built something else out of the DNA, a composite of Robin's killer, a computer's best guess at the killer's face. The detectives still believed Robin had known the man who killed her. So they took that face to the people who knew Robin best, her family, her friends, the people she worked with. And they desperately hoped someone would recognize him. Maybe he was the mailman, a coworker, someone from the neighborhood. But no one knew the face. Detective Wallace even set up a video call with Ollie and held the image up to the camera. She said, "I was really hoping that when Ollie saw that, he would go, 'Oh, my gosh, that looks exactly like so-and-so.'" But Ollie just looked at it and said, "That doesn't spark my memory at all. Looks like nobody I know."

• 41:41Colin Brown?

  And so the investigation stalled again.

• 41:45Courtney Brown?

  But Liz kept working on the list, fifteen hundred cousins, one branch at a time. She traced some of them up into Canada. There, she found two separate family trees, who were both genetically tied to Robin's killer. But interestingly, these two families weren't related to each other at all. They shared no DNA. And that's when Liz realized, if she could find the single place those two trees touched, one marriage somewhere back in time that joined them, then she could find the killer. So she searched, and eventually, she found it. Liz would later say, quote, "What I found was this woman on this tree married this man on this tree, and that was it. That was the aha moment.

• 42:27Courtney Brown?

  That's when I realized that he is a descendant of this couple right here," end quote. After a little more digging, Liz believed she finally found him. It took her three and a half years to get to this moment. But finally, in August of 2023, she sent the detective an email. It read, quote, "I think I found someone of interest." She would later say, quote, "I felt like this was really him. I didn't know for certain, but I believed it was," end quote. And his name was Stephen Smirk.

• 42:58Colin Brown?

  Immediately detectives started looking into him. But on paper, he didn't seem like their guy. Stephon Smirk was a computer programmer, living an ordinary life upstate in New York. He was married to a defense attorney, had two kids in high school, and a nice house in the suburbs. He had nothing on his record, not even a speeding ticket. And there was nothing, nothing at all, tying him to Robin Lawrence. Even Detective Wallace doubted it was him. She remembered thinking to herself, "There's no way this is our guy." Then they pulled his old high school yearbook. There was Stephon Smirk at sixteen years old. They then pulled up the composite sketch Parabon had built from the killer's DNA, the same sketch the detectives had carried around for years, the one no one had recognized.

• 43:43Colin Brown?

  But there, holding it up to the screen, they couldn't ignore the similarities. On September 7th, 2023, detectives Melissa Wallace and John Long drove up to Niskiuna, New York, to a house on Niskiuna Circle. They didn't have enough to arrest anyone, but what they did have was the name off a volunteer's family tree and a need for one thing, a sample of Stephon Smirk's DNA. Once they had it, they could officially compare it to the blood on that washcloth. So they walked right up to his front door. Moments later, Stephon opened the door. And that was when they told him, "We're detectives from Fairfax County, Virginia, we're looking into a cold case from the 90s. Do you mind if we come in and talk to you?" Stephon stepped to the side.

• 44:27Colin Brown?

  "Sure," he said, inviting them right in.

• 44:30Courtney Brown?

  But right away, something was off. Because Stephen Smirk didn't react. No surprise, no fear, no confusion, nothing. Two detectives had just traveled a thousand miles to his door to ask about a thirty-year-old murder, and his face didn't move. Now Wallace had done this a hundred times, and it never went like that. She would later say, quote, "When we're asking for DNA, the conversation typically takes a solid forty-five minutes. People generally have a lot of questions like, 'What do you mean someone in my family has committed a murder? Who was killed?'" There was not a single question from him. We were in and out of his house in five minutes with his DNA. Consent form signed, swab taken, packaged up. That was it, end quote. On the drive back to their hotel,

• 45:15Courtney Brown?

  I'm sure doubt sunk in for the detectives. If Stephen Smirk really was their guy, he wouldn't have given up his DNA that easily. The detectives walked into their hotel room, and had barely sat their bags down, when suddenly, the phone rang. It was Stephen Smirk. He told the detectives this.

• 45:33Speaker 05

  "I'm at the police department to turn myself in."

• 45:35Courtney Brown?

  Wallace wasn't sure she heard him right. "Turn yourself in for what?" she asked.

• 45:41Speaker 05

  "I'm here to turn myself in for the murder."

• 45:44Courtney Brown?

  But there was a problem. Smirk was standing outside the police station, and the doors were locked. He couldn't even get in to confess. So Wallace told him exactly what to do. "Okay, we're gonna hang up. I need you to call 911 and tell them that you're here." And after they hung up, that's exactly what he did.

• 46:02Colin Brown?

  "911, the address of your emergency."

• 46:05Speaker 05

  "I'm actually here to turn myself in for a cold case crime."

• 46:09Colin Brown?

  "You're here to turn yourself in?"

• 46:11Speaker 05

  "Well, they collected DNA, so it's only..."

• 46:13Colin Brown?

  "Okay, what's your last name?" Back at the hotel, Detective Wallace ran down the hall to John Long's room, pounding on his door. "We gotta go to the police department," she told him. "He's turning himself in." From there, they called the local police. And soon enough, Stephon Smirk was sitting across from them in an interrogation room. But before they could even get started, Stephon was the one who spoke first. "Where do you want to start?" he asks.

• 46:38Speaker 06

  "You've come here to turn yourself in for a 1994 murder."

• 46:41Speaker 05

  "Yeah, it was 100% intentional. I am the serial killer who's only killed once."

• 46:47Courtney Brown?

  It almost seemed too good to be true. The detectives couldn't believe what they were hearing. But they also had a problem. Their DNA results weren't back yet. And people confessed to things they didn't do all the time. So before they let themselves believe him, they needed Smirk to tell them things only the killer would know. They were just about to ask him, when Smirk butts in with a question of his own.

• 47:10Speaker 05

  "Can you remind me your name again? Can you say that?"

• 47:14Speaker 06

  "I can. Do you remember anything about the person?"

• 47:16Speaker 05

  "She was African-American."

• 47:17Speaker 06

  "Okay."

• 47:18Courtney Brown?

  That's all he remembers. He took a woman's life, stabbed her dozens and dozens of times. And thirty years later, the only thing he can remember is the color of her skin. Slowly after that, the rest comes out. According to Smirk's confession, on the night of November 18th, 1994, he'd been drinking. He was twenty-two years old, a soldier stationed at Fort Meyer in Arlington. That night, he says, he wasn't himself.

• 47:44Colin Brown?

  He tells them that he was drinking and using a stimulant called efedrine. He said, "Something inside me said that. It's hard to explain. I knew that I was going to kill somebody. I did not know who I was going to kill. It was like this overbearing thought in my brain that I just had to kill somebody."

• 47:59Courtney Brown?

  So he got in his car and drove. But he wasn't driving aimlessly. He knew exactly where he was going, out to a west Springfield neighborhood, where his friends lived. He knew the area, but he also lived far enough away that no one would suspect him. So that night, he pulled right up to his friend's house. And that's when he spotted the green-framed home, tucked onto a quiet wooded cul-de-sac on Rosescu Lane, Robin's house. As it turns out, Robin lived directly next door to his friend's house. And for a moment, he just sat in the dark, thinking about what he was about to do. He didn't know who lived there. He didn't know what awaited him inside. But still, he got out of his car and walked forward.

• 48:42Speaker 05

  "I never met this person before, or seen her or anything."

• 48:46Courtney Brown?

  A total stranger. For thirty years, Robin's family had been told that she must have known her killer. And here he is saying the opposite. He had never laid eyes on her in his life. But on that dark street in Springfield, Smirk pulled a ski mask down over his face. He slipped his hands into a pair of leather gloves. And then he crept into Robin's backyard. He had everything he needed for this moment, including a steel Tonto knife. Holding it, he stepped up onto the back deck. At one of the windows, he used a knife to cut through the screen, a long slit, top to bottom. Then he slid the blade back into the sheath, took hold of the sliding glass door, and forced it open. Within moments, he was standing inside Robin's home. The house was silent.

• 49:30Courtney Brown?

  He stood there for a moment, letting his eyes adjust to the dark. Then he drew the knife again, and slowly walked down the hallway. Up ahead, there was an open door. Inside, a baby was sleeping. He kept going past Nicole's room, to the door at the end of the hall, the primary bedroom. He opened the door to see Robin asleep in her bed. She was all by herself, her husband over a thousand miles away. Smirk stepped closer, and hearing the movement inside her room, Robin woke up. Standing there at her bedside was a man wearing a ski mask, and holding a knife. Startled and terrified, she got up off the bed and down on the floor, begging for her life. But Smirk would not show even an ounce of mercy. Robin knew what was ahead.

• 50:14Courtney Brown?

  Hoping to save her life, she quickly reached for her phone. But in an instant, he took it from her and cut the cord. The line went dead in her hand. And it's there where Smirk began stabbing her over and over and over again. In his confession, he told detectives, quote, "I cut her up pretty good," end quote. And then he said this.

• 50:35Speaker 05

  I did everything that taught me in the military. You can't do that.

• 50:38Courtney Brown?

  He makes it sound quick, almost tidy. But the scene in that bedroom told a different story. As the knife came down, Robin clawed at his face. She pulled at his hair. She did everything she could to escape him. But Smirk was close behind, stabbing her over and over again. Robin's blood spattered around the room as she fought for her life. And soon enough, she couldn't fight anymore. After several stab wounds to the neck, Smirk took a fistful of her hair, and he cut her throat. But even then, he didn't stop. He kept going, stabbing at her over and over again. In those last moments of her life, I'm sure Robin's thoughts were with her two-year-old daughter in the other room. The fight that she put up wasn't just for her, but for Nicole too.

• 51:23Courtney Brown?

  And horrifically, as Smirk stood over her, stabbing her forty-nine times, Robin took her last breath.

• 51:31Colin Brown?

  Sitting in this interrogation room, detectives are finally hearing the confession they had waited decades for. But they still had a few questions.

• 51:39Speaker 05

  Did you injure yourself at all during this? Did you cut yourself? Not that I can, uh, remember. I know she clawed, she clawed at my face. I had a little bit of a scar here. I was worried that maybe she had some DNA underneath her, her finger, or something like that. But I didn't. I wasn't aware of that. Um, but it was a lot of blood. And I, I, I don't remember that. If I did go into the bathroom, it would have been to look at what she did to my face.

• 52:14Colin Brown?

  And there it was, the bathroom, the washcloth. The wound Robin had given him with her own hands. He'd been worried about the wrong evidence, and just handed Wallace to write one. For the first time, she knows exactly how his blood ended up on that washcloth.

• 52:31Courtney Brown?

  After murdering Robin, Smirk stepped into the bathroom. He examined his bleeding face, where Robin's nails tore into his skin. Off to the side, there was a pink washcloth hanging outside the shower door. He grabbed it and pressed it to his bleeding cheek. He didn't know it at the time, but that very action would lead to his capture decades later. The blood Robin drew would sit on that cloth in an evidence locker for twenty-nine years, until the day it finally gave him up. But Smirk wasn't thinking about that on that November night in nineteen ninety-four. At that point, his main concern was getting out of Springfield. Following the murder, he got back into his vehicle, took off down the road, and headed right back to his army base in Arlington.

• 53:14Courtney Brown?

  Somewhere along the way, he threw the knife from a bridge, down into the Chesapeake Bay. And then he goes home and continues on with life like nothing happened.

• 53:23Colin Brown?

  He told detectives that sometime after that night, he looked Robin up online. He'd wanted to know who she was. He was there when he saw that she was a wife and a mother. But to his luck, he also saw that the police were looking at Robin's husband, his mistress. They were looking everywhere but at him. Smirk also told investigators that in all the years that followed, he told one person about what he had done, an old high school friend. It was a couple months after the murder, and while out at a pool hall in California, Smirk told his friend that he had murdered a woman. The friend didn't believe him at first, but Smirk told him he wasn't lying.

• 54:01Speaker 05

  I don't think he believed me. But I always got the impression, we never talked about it after that. And I never got the impression, and then, I did get the impression on subsequent discussions over the years, when we would talk, that he, he did believe me.

• 54:20Colin Brown?

  But still, that friend never said a word to anyone.

• 54:24Colin Brown?

  Now, as for why he killed Robin, Smirk told detectives that he was highly, highly influenced by demons. Here he is, talking about it at length during his interrogation.

• 54:35Speaker 05

  I'm, I'm highly, highly influenced by demons. Okay. Talk, talk to me a little bit about that. I, um, I wouldn't say I'm possessed, but I'm influenced. I'm a born-again Christian. Well, I was raised a born-again Christian and Baptist. So I don't believe that I can actually be possessed by demons, but...

• 54:58Speaker 05

  There's something came over me. I'm not gonna say it, I have voices in my head. I, I didn't like hear somebody actually talking to me, but it was like this overbearing thought in my brain that I, I needed to, uh,

• 55:11Speaker 05

  I needed to kill somebody. I just had to kill somebody. I, I, I can't explain it to you any other way.

• 55:18Colin Brown?

  He went so far as to explain that those feelings were the only reason he joined the army in the first place.

• 55:23Speaker 05

  How often do you, or had you back then, had those thoughts? All the time.

• 55:30Speaker 05

  It's one of the reasons why I joined the infantry, because I wanted to go to combat.

• 55:35Speaker 05

  To kill people in combat? Hmm, at the time, yes.

• 55:38Colin Brown?

  But despite these concerning comments, he was adamant that Robin was the only person he had ever murdered.

• 55:44Speaker 05

  I've never, I've not killed anybody else. But I...

• 55:55Speaker 05

  I, I, I mean, if I, I could be a serial killer.

• 56:01Speaker 05

  But I want to tell you right now that I, she's the only person that I've killed.

• 56:06Colin Brown?

  Smirk admitted that after Robin's murder, he didn't stop killing because he had a change of heart, but because he had a family to live for, a wife and children who relied on him. However, even then, the darkness within him never went away.

• 56:20Speaker 05

  Um, I'm married, I have kids. I honestly believe,

• 56:29Speaker 05

  honestly believe that if it wasn't for my wife and my kids, I'd probably be a serial killer.

• 56:33Courtney Brown?

  Stephen Smirk went thirty years without facing justice. For most killers by that point, I'm sure they'd assume that they had gotten away with it. But Smirk admitted that he wasn't surprised they came knocking on his door. Recently, he had this feeling that his crime was going to catch up with him. In fact, about a week before, he said he was standing in his kitchen when he had a vision. Two figures, one in blue, one in black. Law enforcement coming to his door.

• 57:00Speaker 05

  So when you guys showed up today, it was like I was waiting for you.

• 57:04Colin Brown?

  As the detectives wrapped up their interview, there was still one question lingering in their minds. Is there anything you'd want to say to Robin's family? Any apology or statement you'd want to give them?

• 57:14Speaker 05

  I, uh, how do I say this? I know you're recording. Yeah, you can say it however you want. I don't feel anything for the family. Okay. Okay, so is there any? I don't have animosity to the feeling, to the family. Okay. I don't feel anything for the family. Okay. I can't say that any other way. Okay, now that's fair. I feel bad that I did it

• 57:44Speaker 05

  because I knew someday my personal freedom would be affected. Sure.

• 57:52Courtney Brown?

  No remorse at all. Stephen Smirck knew that he took the life of an innocent woman. He knew that Robin's two-year-old daughter sat in the home with her mutilated body for two whole days, that Nicole used tissues to try and clean her mommy's wounds, and still, he felt nothing. Detective Wallace would later say, quote, "I think what you see is 100% what you get from him: arrogance, entitlement. He wanted to do it, so he did, and that's it," end quote. Even the confession, she believed, wasn't about guilt. He'd known he was caught, and he wanted to come in on his own terms. Wallace said, quote, "It wasn't because he was sorry. It wasn't because he was tired of running for 30 years. He wanted to maintain control."

• 58:37Colin Brown?

  When the interview was over, Stephon Smirck was placed under arrest and charged with the murder of Robin Lawrence. For the detectives working the case, they felt relieved to finally have answers. But at the same time, those very answers left them with this deep unsettling feeling. Detective John Long said that men like Stephon Smirck are the reason you tell your loved ones to make sure your doors are locked at night. He is the boogeyman.

• 59:01Courtney Brown?

  After the arrest, the first call Detective Wallace made was to Nicole, Robin's daughter. The two-year-old who had been left alone in that house with her mother was a grown woman now. Wallace told her they had found the man who killed her mom. Nicole was stunned, but somehow, she held it together.

• 59:18Colin Brown?

  Ollie got the call, too. By then, he'd built a new life. He was remarried and retired, living in another country. He would later say that upon hearing the news, "I was flabbergasted. You could have probably knocked me over with a feather. After all this time, you have hope, but you also wonder, will they really find someone after 29 years?" But they did.

• 59:39Courtney Brown?

  Robin's entire family was so relieved to hear the news. And more than anything, they wished that Robin's mom could have been around to see it. For decades, her parents had carried the not-knowing through the funeral, through making up their daughter's bed one last time, through the long silence that followed. But the way it outlasted her mother, Jessie, by the time the answer finally came, her father, Robert War, was 99 years old. And luckily, he had lived long enough to hear it.

• 1:00:07Colin Brown?

  About a week after Smirck's arrest, the last piece fell into place. The lab matched Stephon Smirck's DNA to the blood on the washcloth, the trace of himself he'd left behind that night, the one the police had held on to for three decades. The odds it belonged to anyone else were one in more than seven million. After all those years, the blood finally had a name.

• 1:00:29Courtney Brown?

  And there was one more thing, a coincidence that unsettled Robin's family like almost nothing else. The town where the detectives had found Stephen Smirck, Niskiuna, New York, wasn't some distant place with no connection to the people who loved Robin. It was their town, too. Robin's sister, Mary, had lived in Niskiuna for decades. She was there in 1994 when Robin was killed. And she was there still through all the long years the case went unsolved. Her niece Lauren had grown up in that same corner of New York, the same small town. The man who murdered Robin in her Virginia bedroom had been living right where her family had built their lives. He could have been the stranger in line at the grocery store, the car idling at the red light, and no one would have known.

• 1:01:12Courtney Brown?

  For Lauren, it was almost too much to hold. She would later say, quote, "How is this just a coincidence?" She kept circling back to the thought of him right there all that time, saying, quote, "It makes me question a lot. How could I have found him sooner? He was right next to me."

• 1:01:29Colin Brown?

  In the months after his arrest, Robin's family came face-to-face with Stephon Smirck for the first time. Her niece, Lauren, couldn't get over the size of him, a man who needed two bailiffs beside him. She said, "The first thing I thought was, my aunt didn't stand a chance." In April of 2024, a grand jury indicted Stephon Smirck for the murder of Robin Lawrence. But there wouldn't be a trial. Six months later, Smirck pleaded guilty to first-degree murder. For the prosecution, a plea made sense. The case was 30 years old, witnesses had died, and memories had faded. A trial that far from the crime is never a sure thing.

• 1:02:09Colin Brown?

  But for Robin's family, the plea was a disappointment. After three decades, they had wanted to see him stand trial.

• 1:02:17Courtney Brown?

  On March 7, 2025, Stephen Smirck was sentenced. His defense painted a picture of the young man he had been in 1994: troubled, drinking, using drugs, struggling. They said he had joined the Army hoping to straighten his life out, that he had been crippled at the time by a mental illness no one had diagnosed, something doctors would later call bipolar 2 disorder. He had also been taking Ophedrine, a supplement the FDA would later ban, a decade later for its health risks. The defense argued that mixed with alcohol, the drug could set off dangerous psychiatric effects and leave a young man not fully in control of himself. But by the time detectives knocked on his door, the

• 1:02:58Courtney Brown?

  defense said that Stephen had gotten help. He was sober, he felt genuine remorse, and that he thought about Robin every day.

• 1:03:06Colin Brown?

  Robin's family spoke to the court about what they'd carried since the day she died. Her brother put it in a single sentence. "The impact of the crime has been devastating beyond measure. No family should endure such prolonged suffering." At the sentencing, Smirck addressed Robin's family directly, the first time, saying, "No family should have to wait 30 years for justice for a loved one. I am extremely sorry for the pain and suffering I have caused."

• 1:03:33Courtney Brown?

  But these words were much different than what Stephen had said in his confession. A year and a half before, the man sitting in front of detectives admitted that he didn't feel remorse for what he did. He didn't think about Robin every day, or the suffering he put her family through. When the detectives offered him the chance to say something to her family, he said he felt nothing for them, at all. And to add insult to injury, for the past 30 years, while he walked free, Stephen Smirck got to live a pretty decent life. He was honorably discharged from the Army and went to work as a senior software engineer, making $120,000 a year. He got to play the part of a good husband and father, a family man. The prosecutor, Kelsey Gill, told the courts, quote, "He got to live the

• 1:04:17Courtney Brown?

  life his victim dreamed of living. That's the definition of injustice."

• 1:04:23Colin Brown?

  Fairfax County Circuit Judge David Oblon called the murder of Robin Lawrence one of the worst in Fairfax County history. And from there, he handed down the maximum sentence allowed: 70 years. He also added a $100,000 fine. The judge told the court, after destroying the Lawrence family, he went on to build his own family. It is beyond callous to know that Mr. Smirck left a two-year-old child alone with her freshly-dead, bleeding mother. She never even knew the basics of her mother, such as what made her laugh.

• 1:04:56Courtney Brown?

  Now, 70 years is a very long time. It's likely that Stephen Smirck will die in prison where he belongs. But surprisingly, he is eligible for parole in 2037, when he's 65 years old, which is horrifying because there is a possibility he could be set free one day. You see, in the state of Virginia, they operate under what is called "truth-end sentencing," which makes it to where the inmate has to serve around 85% of their sentence before they can even be eligible for parole. If Stephen fell under this rule, that would mean he would have to serve about 60 years before a parole board would even look at his case. Stephen would be dead by then. But this rule only applies to people who

• 1:05:39Courtney Brown?

  committed crimes after 1995. That's the year that the state of Virginia implemented the truth-end sentencing. Unfortunately, Smirck killed Robin Lawrence 41 days before the cutoff, meaning, if he behaves in prison, a parole board could set him free as early as 2037. Now, do we think that will actually happen? No. But the possibility of it happening at all is horrifying. And the judge in his case seemed to agree. At his sentencing, the judge told the courts that if he is ever released, he will spend the rest of his life on probation, wearing a GPS monitor.

• 1:06:16Colin Brown?

  For Robin's sister, Mary, the sentence was enough. On one condition, she said, "I think what he got, as long as he never comes out of prison, ever, brings closure to me." After the sentencing, Ollie Lawrence spoke for the family, saying, "The War and Lawrence family are grateful that justice has finally been done for the murder of our beloved Robin. But 30 years of waiting doesn't simply close when a sentence is read." Robin's niece, Lauren, standing beside Nicole, said it best. "As much as it's a sigh of relief, we still have to live with this. It just doesn't go away." Nicole was there for all of it. The two-year-old who'd been found wandering that house, dehydrated, carrying bottles to her mother, grown now, standing in a courtroom while the man who

• 1:07:01Colin Brown?

  took her mother was sentenced. Her cousin Lauren said, "She's strong. She stood next to me. She held my hand. Oh, if her mom could see us."

• 1:07:11Courtney Brown?

  Stephen Smirck took so much that night in November of 1994. He didn't just take Robin's life, but every year that should have come after it. Today, Robin would be in her late 60s. She should have watched Nicole grow up. The first days of school, the graduations, the woman she became. Robin should have grown old alongside her family. She should have kept painting and making a difference in the world. Instead, a stranger left his barracks looking for someone to kill, and he chose her door. Stephen Smirck will be remembered as a monster, a man with a quiet house, a clean record, and a 30-year secret. But Robin Lawrence will be remembered for so much more. Her sister, Mary, said

• 1:07:52Courtney Brown?

  it this way, quote, "She just had a light that shined from within," end quote. Robin was an artist, the very first medal for the Martin Luther King Jr. Nonviolent Peace Prize, the one placed in Rosa Parks's hands. That was hers, and her paintings are still here, bright canvases full of color and life. When Mary looks at them, she doesn't just see her sister's work. She sees her sister, saying, quote, "I kind of see the spirit of Robin, who she was, how she looked at the world through her eyes. And that was good things, happy things, warm things."

• 1:08:27Colin Brown?

  For today's episode, we'll be making a donation to the Inova Health Foundation, the same organization Robin's family turned to back in 1994 when they asked that gifts in her memory go to help children with liver transplants, children like her own daughter, Nicole. You can learn more at foundation.inova.org.

• 1:08:50Colin Brown?

  Hey, everybody, it's Colin here. Thank you so much for listening to today's episode of Murder in America. If you guys want to help support the show, please consider joining us over on our Patreon. On Patreon, you can get access to early, ad-free versions of the show, so if you don't like the ads, you can skip all of those and get the clean version on Patreon. And in addition, on some of the higher tiers on Patreon, you can get access to bonus episodes of Murder in America. So, we post two bonus episodes every month. These are episodes that will only ever be posted on Patreon, so if you've already listened to every episode of the show and you want more, especially if you've never signed up to be a patron because there are literally, I want to say, 150, almost 200, episodes

• 1:09:33Colin Brown?

  on there now, if you sign up, you'll get access immediately to a gigantic library of episodes that you've never heard before. So, that's a great way to help support what we do here on the show. Also, don't forget to leave us a five-star review wherever you listen to this podcast. Those five-star reviews really help us grow, and we love hearing from you guys. And we're very close to 100,000 followers on Instagram, so if you don't follow us yet, head over to Instagram and follow Murder in America to see photos from every case that we cover here on the show. Anyways, y'all, thank you so much for tuning in this week. I hope everybody has an absolutely amazing weekend. We'll be back next week with another episode, and, uh, yeah, I'll catch you all on the next one.

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