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A jury on Thursday found a 67-year-old Stafford County man guilty in the 1986 rape and murder of a Drug Enforcement Administration agent’s wife working late one night at a real estate office in Stafford County.
“It took the efforts of numerous law enforcement agencies, lab technicians and prosecutors, but justice was served this afternoon with a guilty verdict in Stafford County Circuit Court,” the Stafford County Sheriff’s Office said in a news release.
Harrison was indicted for Lard’s murder in March 2024 after forensic evidence collected nearly 40 years ago was matched with Harrison’s DNA.
The evidence also linked Harrison to the 1989 murder of Stafford teen Amy Baker in Fairfax County, authorities said. Police believe 18-year-old Baker, who had just moved with her family from Falls Church to Stafford County, ran out of gas along Interstate 95 in Springfield the night of March 29, 1989, on her way home from visiting an aunt. Her body was later found in the woods nearby, sexually assaulted and strangled.
Harrison’s jury trial started on June 16 and ended Thursday with jurors finding him guilty on charges of second-degree murder, abduction with intent to defile, rape, aggravated malicious wounding and breaking and entering with intent to commit murder, rape or robbery.
He faces sentencing Oct. 10.
On Nov. 14, 1986, Jacqueline Lard was abducted from Mount Vernon Realty’s office on Garrisonville Road, beaten, sexually assaulted and strangled. Her body was dumped on the railroad tracks along U.S. 1 at the Fairfax-Prince William County line.
Lard, 40, was murdered while her husband was on a DEA mission in Costa Rica. Her 13-year-old daughter and 7-year-old son were staying overnight with family friends. She was scheduled to work that night, a Friday, until 9 p.m., when the office closed.
After her murder, a regional task force was established to help find the killer and physical evidence was carefully collected, but the case eventually grew cold.
“This meticulous collection of evidence would ultimately provide the suspect’s identification 37 years later,” the sheriff’s office said in a release last year.
Stafford Detective D.K. Wood “would not let the case go idle” and explored a new technology, forensic investigative genetic genealogy, to help identify the killer.
Wood worked with Parabon NanoLabs, a company providing DNA phenotyping, which identifies the physical characteristics of an unknown suspect. Forensic genetic genealogy uses genealogical databases and research to find a match.
The analysis of the DNA linked the murder of Jacqueline Lard to the unsolved 1989 murder of Amy Baker in Fairfax County, the sheriff’s office said. Stafford County and Fairfax County detectives then joined forces, and on Dec. 14, a family name for the suspect was identified.
Detectives then obtained a search warrant for Harrison’s DNA. It was a match in both murders.
“We hope this conviction today helps bring some closure to the Lard and Baker families,” the sheriff’s office said.
