Closing the Cold Case of Robin Lawrence | Full Episode

When you’re dealing with a 30-year-old cold case, it seems like there’s not a lot of hope. It’s a great photo of Robin, but look what happened in the Robin Lawrence case. Something sparked it that nobody ever expected, that just caught everybody off guard.

Her husband, Olly, had been trying to reach Robin all weekend. Olly was out of the country.

Who else was in the house?

Nicole, her baby.

Well, Olly contacted me. He said, “Would you mind going over to the house and checking on her?”

And I was like, “Yeah, sure.” There’s no answer at the front door, so I went around to the back.

So when you go around to the back deck, what do you notice?

That the window screen is cut. That was the first time I thought, “Oh my god, something is wrong here.” I had to climb in through the window, and Nicole comes, you know, down the hall. Her eyes were just so big and her little face was just… there’s no expression on it. I’m going down the hall and I can see into the master bedroom, and I can see on the wall these large splatters and swaths of blood. I was terrified, and I went and I called the police.

There was a very, very violent attack on Robin. She was stabbed 49 times. It looks like a personal attack. It looked like Nicole had been kind of roaming around the house. Clearly, she had been in that room with her mom. It’s hard to think about. It’s like a horror movie, but it’s not a movie; this is our family, this is our lives, this was Robin’s life.

I did think that maybe it was someone she knew. That always kind of sat with my mind, like, who did she know that could have done this?

Here’s the photo of the washcloth where the key piece of evidence is a washcloth that they find in the bathroom, and it has blood on both sides. I knew that we had a really strong DNA profile, which obviously stood out. So detectives just kept waiting to get that phone call from the lab saying that we have a match. And unfortunately, that call never came. And then just another year would go by, and another year would go by.

So you switch tracks and try what we call genetic genealogy, and that was becoming really big at that time. That’s when we turned to the help of a volunteer, and she said, “Genealogy is a hobby of mine. I dabble in it on the side. I’d be willing to do this case for free when I have spare time.”

I knew it was going to be a needle in the haystack, but I thought it was worth trying. 6, 7, 8, 9, 10 generations away from even these people. And I think it’s August of 2023, she sends me an email. She says, “I think I found someone of interest.”

What happens as you start looking into him?

Well, we find out computer programmer up in New York, married to a defense attorney, two kids in high school, nice house in the suburbs, not so much as a speeding ticket on his background.

I am a serial killer who’s only killed once.

So here’s the crime scene pictures. There’s a bunch of contact sheets in here. You can tell it starts from the pictures from the outside of the house and then moves in.

To the cold case detectives, Melissa Wallace and John Long of the Fairfax County Police Department, began reviewing Robin Lawrence’s murder case in April of 2021.

That’s like your worst nightmare. Here’s the bedroom; obviously, her body’s here, but you can…

They were struck by the sheer violence of the attack on the 37-year-old mother. It looked brutal.

See, is that blood on the book?

That’s the reason why you tell your loved ones to make sure that your doors are locked at night. He is the boogeyman.

On November 20th, 1994, Robin’s friend, Lorie Lindberg, had entered her home to check on her and saw blood on the bedroom walls and Robin’s 2-year-old daughter, Nicole, wandering around. Alarmed, Lorie called 911 and then rushed the little girl to the hospital. Although Nicole did not appear hurt, she had undergone a liver transplant after she was born and her health was fragile.

Because of course, she’s taking immunosuppressive medications. I mean, this is life-saving medication she needs to have it, ’cause you don’t know how long she’s been in that house by herself, right?

Lead crime scene detective, Mark Garmin, was one of the first on-site.

This is what we determined to be the entry point to the home.

According to Detective Garmin, who photographed the evidence, the intruder came through that window off the back deck, the one Lori had used to get inside. He entered the house the same way.

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

Tell me the state that Robin was in when you saw her.

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.

He says signs of a struggle were obvious in the room.

This is the phone that was on the floor near Mrs. Lawrence. The phone cord was cut. She was assaulted in the bed and then fought her way out of the bed and… um… continued to fight and struggle.

Garmin says one of the first things that stood out were bloody tissues scattered around the house and near Robin’s body. He believes it was Robin’s daughter, Nicole, who left them behind, trying to help her mother.

Even at that age, kids know what blood is and blood’s come from wounds and cuts, and they know that mom puts tissues on them or band-aids. I think she was trying to stop the blood.

And there was another heart-wrenching discovery: empty baby bottles had been left around her mother’s body.

Having kids, when they got hungry, they brought you your baby bottle, and that’s what I’m thinking, Nicole would have taken it to mom.

While investigators processed the scene, officers at the hospital asked Lori to call Robin’s parents. Robin’s dad answered.

I think I said, “Robin is dead.”

But what I remember is… um… Jesse, her mom, must have just been in the overheard ’cause she was just… just wailing. Just a sort of primal anguish that was really horrible. That’s probably the most horrible thing that’s ever happened to me is calling Robin’s father.

Robert Ward Senior, a World War II veteran and now 101 years old, says he tried to forget that call, but one memory has never left him.

My granddaughter was right next to where she was murdered. I’ll never forget that, never.

He had to break the news to his surviving children, including his daughter, Mary Ward Coins, and his son, Robert Ward Jr. After the words, “Robin is dead.”

I… It was like a nightmare. Yeah, you’re just like, “Your world shattered.”

Mary says in those first few days they didn’t have a clear picture of what had happened to their sister. The details were very sketchy and slow to come, and the police asked, “Well, do you know anybody who had a grudge or something against Robin?”

And of course, the answer is no.

Robin was a gifted artist with a fine arts degree from Carnegie Mellon University. After college, she was selected to mold the first medal for the Martin Luther King Jr. Nonviolent Peace Prize, which was awarded to Rosa Parks. That was a big deal. And for my parents who grew up in Memphis, Tennessee, during Jim Crow, and they could not ride in the front of the bus, they could not go to the zoo except on Tuesdays…

It didn’t feel real. It just made me feel angry, like how could he have done that?

The judge found probable cause that Steven Smirk killed Robin and allowed the case to proceed to a grand jury. On April 15th, a grand jury indicted him. But 6 months later, he accepted a plea deal for first-degree murder.

We got guaranteed accountability.

Dano says the agreement ensured Smirk would be held accountable.

We had the challenge of some witnesses passing, other witnesses, their memories uh becoming a little bit cloudy and not as sharp.

Robin’s family, however, say they were disappointed. They wanted him to be put on trial. On March 7th, 2025, Steven Smirk returned to court for sentencing. As part of the mitigation strategy for a more lenient sentence, his attorney, Don Budarak, told the judge that in the early ’90s, Smirk was a troubled young man struggling with alcohol and substance abuse.

He eventually decided, “I’m going to join the military,” thinking that that would be a good choice for him to maybe get his life stabilized.

He said he joined the military so he could kill people. What did he mean by that?

I never asked him what he meant by that. I think it was an idea that if I go, maybe I can take my anger out on this. Maybe this will get me back on the right track.

According to Budarak, Smirk was also crippled with an undiagnosed mental illness. It wasn’t until several years later that he eventually was diagnosed with bipolar 2 disorder. And when you add ephedra and alcohol, he was struggling a lot. The FDA banned some ephedra products in 2004, and Budarak says that was in part because when abused with other substances, they could trigger dangerous psychiatric side effects.

Did Steve Smirk tell you that he ever had hallucinations or heard voices or anything along those lines while taking ephedra?

No, but you have to remember at the time also he had undiagnosed bipolar, so it’s hard to figure out exactly what his mental state was attributable to.

She says by the time investigators came to Smirk’s door nearly 30 years later, Smirk had sought help for his mental health problems and become sober. Burak says her client confessed and waived his right to a trial because he felt genuine remorse.

But over the 30 years, did he think about Robin?

Every day, every day.

He’d think about it. But during his statement to investigators, he doesn’t express empathy or remorse.

He always wanted to accept responsibility. Acceptance of responsibility is one form of remorse.

In the end, the judge sentenced Steven Smirk to the maximum sentence allowed under the plea deal, 70 years, with the possibility of parole.

I think what he got, as long as he never comes out of prison, ever, brings closure for me.

After the sentencing, Olly Lawrence gave a statement to the press.

The Ward-Lawrence family are grateful that justice has finally been done for the murder of our beloved Robin.

Lauren answered a few questions with Robin’s daughter, Nicole, by her side.

As much as it’s a sigh of relief, we still have to live with this. Just doesn’t go away.

She’s strong. She stood next to me and she held my hand. Oh my god, if her mom could see us… um… it was great.

How do you want people to remember your aunt?

I want people to remember her as creative, exuberant, very vocal, caring, a beautiful mother. She just had a light that shined from within.

I feel like she is living through her art because her art emotes.

So when you do look at her art, what do you see?

I kind of see the spirit of Robin, who she was, how she looked at the world, you know, through her eyes. And there was good things, happy things, warm things.