A Fairfax grand jury indicted defendants in three murder cases, two of them from the 1990s and the third involving an au pair in Herndon.
Trial dates for all three will be set on April 18, according to Commonwealth’s Attorney Steve Descano.
“I’m extremely proud of the work that Fairfax County investigators have done in these three cases,” Descano said. “These indictments are evidence of Fairfax County’s commitment to the pursuit of justice and our steadfast support to families of victims. No matter how long it takes, individuals who commit such violent acts in our county will be found and face accountability for their actions.”
1991 Murder in West Falls Church
Jose Lazaro Cruz will be tried for the April 30, 1991, murder of his wife in West Falls Church. He went on the run after the stabbing death of 24-year-old Ana Jurado, a mother of three young children, who was found lying on Cofer Road, police said. Jurado’s daughters at the time were 7 months old and 3 years old and living in the U.S. Her son was 4 and in El Salvador.
Nearly 33 years later, Fairfax County police announced his arrest. Lazaro Cruz had fled to El Salvador, eventually remarried and had another family, and was picked up when he tried to enter Costa Rica from Nicaragua.
“This really isn’t a traditional cold case. It was solved virtually right away,” said Fairfax County Police Chief Kevin Davis in January, when he announced the arrest.
1994 Murder in Springfield
In another cold case that took 29 years to solve, the grand jury indicted Stephan Smerk. In 2023, he willingly confessed when cold case detectives talked to him in Niskayuna, New York, police said.
Smerk, a software engineer, will go on trial for the November 20, 1994, murder of Robin Lawrence, a 37-year-old mother found dead inside her Springfield home. At the time of the murder, her 2-year-old daughter was in another room.
Back in 1994, the case stumped detectives. Lawrence had been stabbed and slashed repeatedly, and they had no suspects. They collected DNA at the scene and developed a DNA profile that had no match, at the time.
In 2019, the police enlisted the help of Northern Virginia–based Parabon NanoLabs. The DNA technology company specializes in DNA phenotyping and genetic genealogy analysis. Those processes can predict what somebody looks like and find people who are related.
Parabon created a composite sketch of a suspect using that DNA and developed a family tree.
“For three years our detectives worked with that family tree to try to put things together. Ultimately, that led them to Stephan Smerk,” said Eli Cory, Fairfax County’s deputy chief of police for investigations, during a 2023 news conference.
Detectives went to the upstate New York town where Smerk, a father of two, lived. They talked to him when he was taking out his trash. Chief Kevin Davis said Smerk willingly submitted to a DNA swab, and after they left his home, Smerk called the cold case detectives and went to the police station, where he told detectives details about the killing he committed while stationed out of Fort Myer. Davis said Smerk did not know the victim.
“This was really a randomly selected act,” Cory said. “There was no connection between the two of them.”
2023 Murder in Herndon
In the third grand jury indictment, Juliana Peres Magalhaes will go on trial for the 2023 murder of Joseph Ryan in Herndon.
The au pair from Brazil worked for Christine and Brendan Banfield. Police in February 2023 came to their Herndon home for a report of a man shot and a woman stabbed. Ryan had been shot in the upper body and Christine Banfield stabbed in the upper body. Ryan died at the scene.
No one has been charged in connection with Banfield’s murder.
Feature image, stock.adobe.com
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