By Adele Uphaus
MANAGING EDITOR AND CORRESPONDENT
In November of 1986, David Decatur was just two months into his job with the Stafford County Sheriff’s Office when deputies were called to respond to a crime scene at the office of Mount Vernon Realty in the 300 block of Garrisonville Road.
Employees of the real estate office arrived that morning to find evidence of a brutal encounter and were concerned about the welfare of Jaqueline Lard, a coworker they’d last seen the previous night.
“We saw how horrific the struggle was,” Decatur said. Lard’s body was discovered the following day in a wooded area in Woodbridge.
Richard Ashby was Stafford County Sheriff at the time and Decatur’s boss. Ashby oversaw a comprehensive search for Lard’s killer that involved cooperation with the Prince William County police, the FBI, the Drug Enforcement Administration (where Lard’s husband worked) and “2,300 interviews, 200 suspects, the use of hypnosis on two potential witnesses and a $20,000 reward,” according to a 1987 article from the Washington Post.
But no one was ever charged and the murder of Jaqueline Lard was officially declared a cold case.
“All leads were exhausted,” Decatur said.
Thirty-eight years later, Decatur, now Stafford County Sheriff, was able to close the case. On March 5, the Stafford Sheriff’s Office charged county resident Elroy Harrison, 65, with the first-degree murder of Lard and took him into custody.
Richard Ashby, now long retired, went along with deputies who made the arrest.
“We’ve had four sheriffs now who have worked diligently on this case,” Decatur said. “It’s important for the community to know that we are relentless in our pursuit of justice. We are not giving up.”
Despite going cold, Lard’s case has always had a detective assigned to it, Decatur said. Since 2010, that detective has been D.K. Wood, 30+ year veteran of the Stafford Sheriff’s Office who retired in 2009 and came right back to work part-time solely on cold cases.
Wood was able to solve Lard’s murder thanks to new technology – forensic investigative genetic genealogy – which he began exploring in 2017.
Decades ago, police carefully collected and preserved DNA evidence from both the site of Lard’s disappearance and the site where her body was found. In 2018, the Sheriff’s Office sent some of that evidence to Parabon NanoLabs, a Reston-based company that does DNA phenotyping, which can predict a person’s physical appearance or ancestry using genetic information.
It took five years for Parabon to build out a family tree for the suspect in Lard’s killing, Decatur said, and in 2023, they identified a family name.
In December, the Stafford Sheriff’s Office obtained a warrant to collect DNA from Elroy Harrison and in February, Parabon announced that his DNA matched that of the suspect in Lard’s killing.
Harrison was charged with first-degree murder along with abduction with intent to defile, aggravated malicious wounding, and breaking and entering. He is being held in Rappahannock Regional Jail without bond.
Harrison’s DNA also matches that of the suspect in the cold case homicide of Amy Baker, another Stafford resident who went missing in Fairfax County in March of 1989. Her body was later discovered in a wooded area in Springfield.
In 2021, analysis of the DNA profile of Baker’s killer revealed a link to Lard’s case. At that point, Stafford County and Fairfax County detectives “joined forces, determined to bring this murder suspect to justice,” the Stafford Sheriff’s Office wrote in a press release about Harrison’s arrest.
“Cold Case detectives from the Fairfax County Police Department are working alongside the Fairfax County Office of the Commonwealth Attorney to seek charges against Harrison for the murder of Amy Baker,” the press release states.
With Lard’s case solved, the Stafford Sheriff’s Office has just five cold case homicides left to close. The oldest is from March of 1980 and the most recent is from 2011.
“We’ve been fortunate that we have detectives who are so talented and do such an amazing job,” Decatur said, adding that support from the Commonwealth’s Attorney and the Board of Supervisors helps the Sheriff’s Office do what they do.
Decatur visited with Baker’s family this past weekend along with detectives from Fairfax County.
“It’s nice to know that two families are getting the closure they need,” he said.
