In the 1980s, two women were found dead. DNA links a man to the murders.

A woman’s body was found in 1986 under a pile of old carpet in a wooded area near a roadway in Northern Virginia. The body of another woman was found in the brush along a Virginia highway in 1989, with a large shirt wrapped around her neck.

For more than thirty years, authorities had been unable to determine who was behind the murders, despite many possible clues.

The police then received a DNA match in February. They used genetic genealogy to arrest the 1986 murder and found a link to the 1989 murder, authorities said.

Elroy Harrison, 65, of Stafford County, Virginia, was indicted Monday by a grand jury for the murder of Jacqueline Lard, 40, the victim found in 1986 in Woodbridge, Virginia, the Stafford County Sheriff’s Office said in a statement on Tuesday. Mr. Harrison’s DNA was also linked to the murder of Amy Baker, 18, the victim found in 1989 in Springfield, Virginia, the Fairfax County Police said in a statement.

Mr. Harrison was arrested Tuesday at his home in Northern Virginia’s Stafford County and charged with murder, kidnapping, assault and burglary, police said. He was being held without bond at the Rappahannock Regional Jail in Stafford, Virginia, according to inmate records. His arraignment is scheduled for April 5, according to court records. A lawyer for Mr. Harrison did not immediately respond to a request for comment Thursday.

Many questions remain about how Mr. Harrison managed to evade police for so many years. Before the murders, he was arrested in 1983 for robbing a bank in Virginia, The Richmond Times-Dispatch reported June 1 of that year.

According to court records, Mr. Harrison was released from prison on June 30, 1986. And after that, no other arrests were reflected in a public records search.

Authorities found Mr. Harrison after Fairfax County Police detectives submitted evidence from Ms. Baker’s case in 2021 to DNA Labs International, a company based in Deerfield Beach, Florida, that specializes in forensic DNA analysis. The company provided a DNA profile for a possible suspect that authorities said matched an analysis done by Parabon NanoLabs, a company in Reston, Virginia, in Ms. Lard’s case.

That profile was uploaded to a state database, which police said showed a link between Ms. Baker’s death and Ms. Lard’s murder investigation. Based on the DNA profile, authorities identified a possible last name for the suspect and later applied for a search warrant for a DNA sample from Mr. Harrison, authorities said.

Ms. Baker’s mother, Sue Baker, 74, said in an interview on Wednesday that learning of the arrest was “surreal.” She and her husband were surprised that authorities were able to link Mr. Harrison’s DNA profile to the two unsolved murders.

“We never thought this would happen,” she says.

According to Fairfax police, Amy Baker went missing on March 29, 1989. After visiting family in Falls Church, Virginia, she went home to Stafford County around 8:30 p.m., but around 9:55 p.m. a Virginia state trooper found her vehicle on the side of the road, police said.

Her family discovered her body on March 31 in a wooded area near Interstate 95 in Virginia, police said.

Her mother said police determined Ms. Baker’s vehicle was out of gas and she had walked onto the highway to a gas station.

“And that’s where she was kidnapped and taken into the woods, and what happened, happened,” she said.

Mrs. Baker died of strangulation by ligation, according to her death certificate.

The previous victim, Ms. Lard, died of ligature asphyxiation, according to her death certificate. Ms. Lard was last seen on Nov. 14, 1986, at a real estate office where she worked in Stafford County, according to authorities. Her body was discovered two days later by two children who were playing in a wooded area near a roadway in Woodbridge, Virginia, police said.

The Potomac News reported on November 19, 1986 that police believed Mrs. Lard had been kidnapped from her office and that she was later beaten and choked. She was reported missing on November 15 after her colleagues found “blood, some clothing and signs of struggle” in their office, the newspaper reported.

It was unclear why both women were targeted. The Associated Press reported in November 1986 that Mrs. Lard’s husband, Ronald Lard, was an agent with the Drug Enforcement Administration, but authorities found no evidence linking Mr. Lard’s work to his wife’s murder.

Relatives of Ms Lard did not respond to requests for comment.

Maj. Shawn Kimmitz of the Stafford County Sheriff’s Office said in a statement Tuesday that his agency “has never given up on this case.”

“Our thoughts and prayers are with the family and friends of Jacqueline and Amy and we hope this arrest can bring them some peace,” Major Kimmitz said.

Sue Baker said she and her family were mentally preparing for what could be a lengthy court process.

“We want this man to stay in prison forever,” she said. “I want to see this man suffer like my family did.”

While the arrest was a welcome development for her family, Ms Baker said she did not feel the ordeal was over yet.

“There is no closure when you lose a child,” she said. “For me, closing is like putting a lid on a pan. We don’t do that.”

Kirsten Noyes And Sheelagh McNeill research contributed.