48 Hours: Who was Robin Warr Lawrence and what happened to her? Disturbing details of the 1994 case, revisited 

48 Hours on CBS revisits the disturbing murder of Virginia resident and artist by profession, Robin Warr Lawrence, from 1994, that went cold for years before the killer was caught. The recent episode premiered on CBS and Paramount+ on October 25 at 10/9c, offering a detailed overview of the long investigation that ultimately made a breakthrough in September 2023.

Robin was found lying dead in her Springfield apartment in Virginia two days after the incident took place. According to CBS, the case hit a dead end at the time as the evidence retrieved from the crime scene did not find a DNA match in the FBI's database. However, on Sept. 7, 2023, Fairfax County Police got a shocking call from a man named Stephan Smerk, who confessed to the murder of Robin Warr Lawrence.

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What happened to Robin Warr Lawrence? Details from episode explored

The latest 48 Hours episode centered on one of Virginia's most shocking homicide cases, the Robin Warr Lawrence chapter. She was murdered in cold blood in her Springfield residence, and at that time, Robin's 2-year-old daughter Nicole was the only person inside the house.

As seen on 48 Hours, her body was first discovered by her friend Laurie Lindberg two days after the murder, on November 20, 1994. According to Detective Mark Garman's statement to CBS (who was also the first officer to reach the crime scene):

"I had no idea what the scene looked like until I walked around the corner in — into the master bedroom."

He further described the state in which he found Robin lying:

"Very damaged, a lot of knife wounds, severe gaping knife wound in her neck … unbelievable number of defensive wounds on her hands, knife wounds in her back, on her legs."

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How did a cold investigation finally lead to a breakthrough in Robin Warr Lawrence's murder?

According to 48 Hours, the first lead in the case came with "a small stain" of blood on a washcloth found in Robin's bathroom. On further investigation, it was revealed that the brown colored stain was nothing but blood. After DNA extraction, the sample was uploaded to CODIS, the FBI's national database, and, surprisingly, no matches were found.

Though initially all fingers pointed at her husband, Ollie Lawrence (who was reportedly engaged in an extramarital affair at that time), with a lack of evidence, the whole thing turned out to be speculative and inconclusive. Moreover, Robin's family members also did not consider Ollie to be involved with her murder. To quote Mary Warr Cowans (Robin's sister's words), per 48 Hours:

"I never thought that Ollie - that he harmed her."

After a long gap in the investigation, the first major lead came up in 2019 when a DNA tech firm named Parabon NanoLabs used genetic genealogy to trace Robin Warr Lawrence's murderer. To quote the words of Parabon's director of bioinformatics Ellen Greytak, per 48 Hours:

"We take DNA from a crime scene. … We upload it to GED Match and to Family Tree DNA, which are two databases. … And what they give us back is … people in our database … who share DNA with your unknown person."

However, the case went cold once again, leaving "a solvability rate of zero" according to Detective Melissa Wallace's statement to CBS. But thanks to rookie genealogist Liz (who also volunteered for the local police department), she stepped up to help with the investigation.

As per Paraboon's analysis, it was already being suspected by then that the killer had an European origin. Moreover, Liz narrowed it down with her research, saying:

"It was about half Eastern European, about 25 percent Irish. Another 25 percent was a combination of I think English and Italian and Scandinavian."

According to 48 Hours, it further resulted in a list of around 1500 cousins (having shared DNA) who might be distantly related by blood to Robin's murderer. It thus remained a tough case to crack until 2021, when Parabon NanoLabs was brought back on board to construct a facial model (from the DNA data) with the help of forensic artist Thom Shaw and amateur volunteer Liz.

A few more years passed with further digging and research, and Liz eventually found a crack in the case; the name Stephan Smerk came up. Shortly after, detectives Melissa Wallace and Jon Long were informed about the same, and according to the former's statement to 48 Hours correspondent Anne-Marrie Green:

"When … we're asking for … DNA, this conversation typically takes a solid 45 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 collected, packaged up. That was it."

Moments later, Det. Melissa Wallace reportedly got a call from Stephan Smerk, who said that he wanted to turn himself in on grounds of murder. It was later revealed in Smerk's statements that on the night of Robin's murder (November 19940, he was under the influence of a substance and "was going to kill somebody".

So, he was driving around the neighborhood (which was familiar to him) and randomly went inside a house to kill someone (just to fulfill his urge). Sadly, Robin Warr Lawrence was the one inside at that time with her two-year-old baby daughter, Nicole.

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