Jurors on Thursday found a 67-year-old Stafford County man guilty of the 1986 rape and murder of a Drug Enforcement Administration agent’s wife who was working late one evening 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 to Harrison’s DNA.

The physical evidence also connected Harrison to the 1989 murder of Stafford teen Amy Baker in Fairfax County, authorities said. Police believe 18-year-old Baker, who recently moved with her family from Falls Church to Stafford County, ran out of gas on Interstate 95 in Springfield the night of March 29, 1989, as she was driving home from visiting an aunt. Her body was found later in the woods nearby, sexually assaulted and strangled.

Harrison’s jury trial began on June 16 and concluded on 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 will be sentenced Oct. 10.

On Nov. 14, 1986, Jacqueline Lard was abducted from the office of Mount Vernon Realty on Garrisonville Road. She was 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 killed 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 due to work that night, a Friday, until 9 p.m., when the office closed.

After her murder, a regional task force was formed to help in the search for the killer and physical evidence was carefully collected, but the case eventually went 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 began to look at a new technology, forensic investigative genetic genealogy, to assist in identifying the killer.

Wood worked with Parabon NanoLabs, a company that provides DNA phenotyping, which describes the physical characteristics of an unknown suspect. Forensic genetic genealogy uses genealogical databases and research to make a connection.

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.