FREDERICKSBURG, Va. โ The past 35 years have not been easy for Mark and Sue Baker. Their daughter, Amy, was strangled to death in 1989. On Tuesday, they got the news they had been waiting for. Cold case detectives had made an arrest in their daughter's case.
"I thought I'd be dead. That I'd die before I knew," said Sue Baker, Amy's mother.
The Bakers say on March 29, 1989, Amy called them to tell them she was going to head back home to Stafford County.
"She called and said she was on the way back. I think it was a Monday. I told her to wait until after rush hour and head on back," said Mark Baker, Amy's father.
Hours went by, but they didn't hear from her.
"I waited and I knew she should have been home," said Sue Baker. "She would not, have not called us to tell us she was staying with somebody else. She just wouldn't have," she added.
They called police, but since she was 18, they say the officers told them they couldn't do much yet.
Police say Amy began driving toward home around 8:30 that night. Around 9:55 p.m., a Virginia State Trooper saw Amy's vehicle along the road, near the exit ramp from I-95 to Backlick Road in Springfield.
The next morning, after seeing it in the same spot, the officer had it towed. There was no sign of Amy.
Her mother told WUSA9 that after getting frustrated by the way police were handling her daughter's disappearance, she decided to go look for Amy herself.
On March 31, Sue Baker says she and a family member went to search near where Amy's car had been found.
"Went walking into the wood area. That's how we found her. I knew it was her. I was close enough that I knew that I saw her," Sue Baker said.
The Bakers tried to stay hopeful that there would be justice. But the days turned into months. Months turned into years. Years turned into decades.
"I would call them [the police], email them, text the poor detectives to death," Sue Baker said.
This week, the Bakers got the call they had been so desperately hoping for, after more than three decades.
"The detective called and said they wanted to come down. Being the anniversary of the murder and Amy's birthday, we figured they wanted to set up another dog and pony show," said Mark Baker
He says four officers came to their home and said, "They got him."
"We wanted to laugh, to cry, to do a high five. Thirty-five years, and for the other lady it was 38. It's just amazing," he said.
On Tuesday, the Stafford County Sheriff's Office announced an arrest in the brutal murder of Jaqueline Lard.
On Nov. 14, 1986, Lard, 40, was working at Mount Vernon Realty in the 300 block of Garrisonville Road. She was last seen as the business was closing at 9 p.m. However, Lard never made it home that night.
Police say the next morning, employees of other businesses in the area were preparing to open for the day and discovered a crime scene at the realty office which indicated a horrific struggle. Lard and her car were both missing.
The day after discovering the crime scene at the realty office, police say two kids playing in a wooded area near Railroad Avenue in Woodbridge discovered a body buried beneath a pile of discarded carpet. Stafford detectives joined Prince William detectives and the FBI to process the scene and identified the deceased as Lard. The evidence collected would ultimately provide the suspectโs identification 37 years later.
Lard's missing car was found abandoned in Fairfax County on Dec. 18, 1986, leading to the recovery of additional evidence.
Police said DNA evidence linked the same suspect to Baker's murder.
In 2021, the Fairfax County Police Department says Cold Case detectives submitted their evidence to DNA Labs International, resulting in the development of a DNA profile.
Uploading that profile to the Virginia state database revealed a link between Bakerโs death and the ongoing homicide investigation of Lard in Stafford County, according to FCPD.
According to police, by utilizing Parabon NanoLabs and the Virginia State Policeโs Unsolved Violent Crimes and Cold Cases Analytical Support Team, detectives analyzed genetic genealogy. Through this, they say they were able to identify Elroy Neal Harrison, 65, of Stafford, as the suspect.
Harrison was indicted by a Stafford County Grand Jury on Monday for the first-degree murder, abduction with the intent to defile, and aggravated malicious wounding of Jacqueline Lard as well as breaking and entering with the intent to commit murder. He was arrested at his Stafford County home on Monday and placed in the Rappahannock Regional Jail without bond.
He hasn't been charged in connection to Baker's death, but her parents say they believe, from what detectives have told them, that this is the first step toward getting justice for Amy.
"I want to see him not ever see the light of day again," said Baker.
To be clear, this is not closure for the Bakers.
"That's not a word I use. It's like putting a top on a box. You can't do that when it's your child," said Sue Baker.
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