Using DNA, authorities in Northern Virginia charge a man in the 1986 abduction/homicide of a young woman and identify him as a suspect in a similar cold case.
Jacqueline Lard, of Stafford County, Va., was found dead in woods in November 1986. On Monday, citing old DNA evidence, police arrested 65-year-old Elroy Harrison, charging him with murder and other crimes. On an autumn morning in 1986, his 11th birthday, Edwin Lard awoke in a house with no grown-ups. His mother, Jacqueline Lard, a 40-year-old real estate agent in Stafford County, Va., hadn’t returned from work the previous evening.
“It happened a long time ago and, I mean, it shaped my life,” Edwin Lard, 48, said recently. “I can pretty much look at the majority of things that I’ve done in my life, and I think many of them stemmed from this event.”Based on DNA evidence, a Stafford County grand jury March 4 indicted Elroy Harrison, 65, on charges of first-degree murder, abduction with the intent to defile, aggravated malicious wounding and breaking and entering with intent to kill, authorities said.
Over those years, Edwin Lard grew up to be a Navy medical corpsman and then a paramedic. Lard, who has three daughters and a son, is now the executive director of The DNA did not match any accused or convicted criminals in the FBI’s Combined DNA Index System, known as CODIS.
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