True Crime with Kimbyr - Part 2: He "Just Wanted to Kill'" But Left The Baby Behind | The Murder of Robin Lawrence

Episode Date: March 30, 2026

The story continues in True Crime with Kimbyr as we dive deeper into Robin Lawrence’s case. Part 2 examines the painstaking investigation that spanned decades, the forensic breakthroughs that finally identified her killer, and the emotional toll on a daughter who endured unimaginable trauma. How did detectives piece together decades-old evidence to deliver justice? With empathy and meticulous research, True Crime with Kimbyr reveals the shocking twists, courtroom revelations, and the ripple effects of a crime that haunted Springfield for nearly 30 years. This is the gripping conclusion fans won’t want to miss. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Her funeral took place on November 26, 1994. Just days... Own it all. Pay off your home, travel for life, drive a Ferrari. In celebration of the world premiere of the Monopoly, big board buck slot machine by aristocrat gaming, Yamava Resort and Casino at San Manuel is giving one person a $1.6 million dream package. The biggest prize in Yamava's history.

Club Serrano members can earn daily instant prizes and secure a spot in the finale May 29th. Don't pass go and own it all. Only at Yamava, celebrating its 40th anniversary. You win? Details at yamava.com must be 21-20. Please gamble responsibly. Monopoly is a trademark of Hasbro. Hasbro is not a sponsor of this promotion. After what would have been her 38th birthday, family and friends gathered, heartbroken,

bewildered by the senselessness of everything that happened to her. The funeral program said, will always remember your smile. And it had a picture of Robin smiling brightly. But no one would get to see her to say their goodbyes. Robin's injuries had been so severe that the casket had to remain closed. And that was devastating to our loved ones. They were desperate to have one final look, one hug, one touch. And Robin's father, he bravely stood up during the service, and he led everyone in singing

this little light of mine. It was beautiful. It was heartbreaking. And it was deeply painful all at once. Yet as Robin's older sister Mary sat there grieving, she also couldn't and shake this chilling thought, that perhaps Robin's killer was right there among them, quietly watching unnoticed.

And investigators were on that same track. And as the funeral ended, the war family was left grilling. They were hoping that police were quickly going to uncover who could commit such an unspeakable act of violence against Robin. But with every passing day, it became increasingly clear that the answers were not going to come easy, and justice was going to take longer than anyone ever imagined. I told you, this was a complicated crime scene,

more so because we're talking about the early 90s. Today, DNA technology is much more advanced, and answers can come very fast, much faster. Their first step was interviewing Robin's husband. Now, they did let him have a moment, go to the funeral, settle back in, and then two days later, he was at the police station being hammered,

with questions. They were able to confirm Ollie's flight information. He was already gone before Friday evening. He was nowhere near Fairfax, Virginia, when Robin was killed. But he wasn't in the clear, not just yet, because he drops a bombshell on them. It kind of makes me sick. And fine, it doesn't mean that he wanted his wife dead, but he was cheating. He was cheating on this amazing woman, and it makes you think, who's good enough out there where they're partner doesn't have an ongoing relationship with a mistress, and in this case for over a decade. It was a woman that Ollie met before Robin even came into the picture. Her name was Marva, and sure. She might have been with him when he was single before he met Robin, but then he was a

married man, and she was still messing with him. And that seemed like a key factor in Robin being out of the picture, because investigators were sure. Ten years or longer, that's not. not just a fling. That's a serious relationship of its own with another woman. That's time. That's investment. So how does Marva feel about being second to Robin? After all those years, by Ollie's side, as in side chick. That's one way to put it, right? But that's a full-blown relationship. So there was one way to see if Ali had his wife killed. Look at his bank records. Was there a sum of money that maybe went between his account and someone else's like his mistress? or was there money taken out of his account suspiciously as cash?

Was it now unaccounted for? Well, guess what? This was a dead end. There was no clue within any of Ollie's financials that showed a money exchange. So now they move on to Marva herself. And they find out some very interesting information. Sure. Ollie was on a supposed business trip.

They did confirm that through his company. He was on business in the Bahamas. But that didn't stop him from Macon. inviting Marva along to go with him. Yeah, he did that. But instead, for some reason, she stayed back home. And her home is in Washington, D.C., less than 30 minutes from the Lawrence's residence.

That's interesting. Why didn't she want to go on this little rendezvous with her lover that weekend? Was it because she needed to be closer to Robin to orchestrate her murder? Or to even committed herself? Because she doesn't have an alibi, not one that could be confirmed by anyone,

because Marva said she was at home that night, all by herself, hanging out and watching TV. That's not solid. So she and Ollie are still prime suspects. So now it's time to put the heat back on Ollie. He's called back in for more of an intense interrogation, and they don't hold back. The detective told Ollie that Robin was butchered, that was his words,

and that this was a crime of a lot of passion, just the way she was killed. and passion equals someone that had a reason to kill her. Ollie stayed calm. His voice was steady. He was respectful, and he was confused. He said he certainly didn't know of anyone with that much anger to hurt her like this. He doesn't know anyone capable of doing that. But the thing is, the investigators had done their homework.

They had spoken to a lot of people who knew Robin. They knew that she could be bossy. She was described as Domineering at her work. She got things done. And she got them done her way. The way that she wanted them was what she got. And they wondered, was she like that at home? But Ali said no.

That he thought that was environment, meaning she had to conduct herself in a certain way when she was working. And then they decided to cut him off and point blank asked him if he thought Marva could do something like this. He repeated, I cannot imagine anyone I know that could have done something like this including Marva. But if Marva and Ali wouldn't break, there was something that could break the case wide open,

that washcloth. No, I explained DNA was not advanced. But if you had two samples, the DNA from the victim and blood or DNA from the scene, you could compare them to one another and find out, are they the same? If they are, came from the victim, if not, you would possibly have a perpetrator's evidence. They got the blood,

evidence from that washcloth they found in the attached bathroom from Robin's house, and they then requested Marva and Ollie's DNA for comparison. They were also testing it against Robbins to rule her out. This may seem straightforward in having the one-to-one match, but this was not an easy process back then. It could take months or even years to conduct these kind of DNA analyses. So it was a waiting game. And I can imagine how hard that was for Robin's entire family, possibly believing that her own husband, the father of their granddaughter, could have done this. Robin's loved ones were shocked to learn about the affair as well. They could not believe that he had been cheating on her. But they also didn't believe that he would be capable of harming Robin this way.

Both Mary and Bobby said that Ollie was not that type of person who would commit such an act like this. Everyone who knew and loved Robin was stunned. They were stunned to find out that her life wasn't as picture perfect. They were stunned that she was no longer here and taken away so violently. In not her workplace, the shock was just as profound as it was with her family. The company's vice president of administration told the news that they were baffled by everything in this case. He said no one at the company could understand why such a horrific tragedy had happened to Robin of all people. Craig actually learned about her murder from the radio. Can you imagine finding out something like this when you're

just driving along, listening to music, and then the news comes on and says, someone you know has been killed? When he got to work, all of the details were slowly coming into focus, and all day, their phones were ringing with calls from concerned friends asking if the reports were true. The company even offered counseling to their employees, and her colleagues were working very closely with the police department as this investigation continued. They finally were able to establish a clearer timeline. They believed. that Robin had been killed sometime around 9.30 p.m. on Friday, November 18th, and that her body had been discovered two days later.

And all I could think about was little Nicole, being there alone for all that time. But while they're awaiting DNA results, the detectives then decide to widen their search. They were looking for criminals or police reports from nearby areas in the recent past, someone who possibly didn't have an alibi for the night of the 18th. and they learn about a local man with the last name, Pavlik. And there had been reports of this man looking into women's windows

and watching them undress. And this happened right in Robin's neighborhood. So they wondered, had his behavior escalated? It was a window at the back of her home that had been tampered with and entered through. Could this man have seen Robin home alone, quietly been watching her, entered through this unlocked window

and attacked her. But remember, Robin was fully closed. However, that doesn't mean that a perpetrator didn't have a plan to violate her, and maybe he never got that far. So the investigators obtained Pavlik's DNA through discarded trash, and they were hoping that this was finally going to crack their case. But now they had to wait on those DNA results as well, and it wouldn't be until February 1996 when the results came back from the lab.

Yes, over a year later, that's a year later. quite a waiting game, but it was devastating news. None of the samples matched. Not Ollie, not Marva, not the man peeping in windows, not even Robin. So everyone had been cleared by this forensic evidence. The only good news was that that blood wasn't Robbins. That meant that it was an unknown person's DNA, someone who didn't belong there, someone who had cut themselves in the process of hurting Robin. By this point, Codis was in full swing, so investigators thought for sure they were going to get a match by putting this profile into the system.

But to their surprise, it did not bring up a match. Now granted, Cotas had just been started in 1990, and slowly every state was sending in samples from felony crimes. So maybe this perpetrator just wasn't in there yet. But it could also mean that whoever did this, had no prior criminal history. And that was a terrifying realization. It felt like this killer had just vanished,

leaving behind only more questions. But life had to move on. It was painfully slow for Robin's family. Ollie actually relocated to Connecticut with Little Nicole, and he withdrew emotionally. But there were suspicions and whispers continuing about him. So many unanswered questions that strained his bond, with Robin's family.

And that made healing even more difficult, almost impossible. As Nicole was growing up, no one dared to speak about what happened to her mother. Her father, her uncles, even her cousins, they just kept quiet. It was as if Robin's murder was unspeakable. It was an event that haunted them so much, they couldn't even talk about it.

I had to think that personally for me, I think telling a little girl that her mommy was that's hard enough. It's something that a child won't understand. She was two. And then when they're three and four, and maybe five, it's like at five, I think there can be a concept of death, but I don't truly think a child will understand. They can understand that mommy's never going to come back. Mommy's gone. But I don't think it's even when maybe they're 10 that they can truly grasp the severity of death, the finality of it all, especially when someone has been murdered, which I don't think is that healthy to explain to a child until they are ready.

So I can see how that would be very hard. But not only months had gone by, I'm talking about years and years. And years turned into decades. And the once promising leads, they did go completely cold. Robin's family had lost hope. By the time Robin's mother, Jessie, passed away in 2018. Her sister Mary sadly accepted the idea that her sister, murder might never be found, that it would never be solved.

24 whole years later, that's a lifetime. Justice seemed very distant, almost like it would never come. And Robin's memory felt trapped in this unresolved and heartbreaking limbo. You would think by now, with so many years that had gone by, this killer would have struck again. And then they would get a hit in codis. But there was still nothing. But don't think that Robin's case had disappeared from investigation. because a new cold case team had taken over,

not only her case, but hundreds of others. They even had this wall in their office that said, gone but not forgotten, where they would put a picture of each victim up with their information to keep them in front of them, in front of their face and in their minds. There were two lead detectives on the case, John Long, who was called JD and Melissa Wallace.

And if you caught my very last video, I feel like I'm going to be a little bit of a broken record, but we're going to be hearing this more and more. As the years go by, we're going to be talking about phenotyping and investigative genetic genealogy. If you don't know what these are, phenotyping is basically like a composite sketch that's made electronically, but it's actually made by putting in a DNA profile into a system that spits out somebody that probably looks similar to the person that has that DNA. This can help tremendously. It will give the public a face of a killer. The system can determine things like someone's eye color, their

complexion, their hair color, and their ethnicity, and where their family dissented from, the family's ancestry. Now, taking it one step further, we have investigative genetic genealogy. It's kind of a mouthful, especially when you get up races like I do. This takes time, but it takes someone's DNA profile and a genealogist look for matches in DNA databases that allow law enforcement to access them. The two biggest ones are Jedmatch and Family Tree DNA. And now there's a new one that's been formed by a nonprofit by CC Moore and it's called DNA Justice. I'm about to put all of my DNA into these databases myself. I will link them below in case you are like me and want to submit your DNA so that it could possibly solve a case like this one. We don't want that to happen.

But if someone commits a violent crime and they are being investigating, in this manner, you could help. But in 2019, the leader, Parabon Nanolabs, offered their services to the cold case team on Robbins case. The first step was making that computerized composite sketch that I was telling you about. And the detectives on this case were thinking that they were going to look at the computer

and they were going to say, oh my gosh, it's one of our many suspects from over the years. But that's not what happened. It was shocking. because the face looking back at them was this clean-cut, blonde-haired, blue-eyed Caucasian man. Didn't look like anyone in Robbins' orbit. They showed the family this picture,

and no one knew who this was. He looked so ordinary to me. When I looked at him, I was like, I think anybody could know somebody in their life or somebody that they have met that looked similar. Nothing stood out. And it seemed like a lot of work for a lot of nothing. but the cold case team doesn't want to give up.

They go back to Parabon and they're like, is there anything else we can do? And they say yes, they can upload the DNA profile to their system that has access to the databases that I just mentioned. And if they put it in their system, they can get a hit on a relative. Now, I learned this from my research on my last video,

that they're usually looking for a 40% match. But in this case, the hit they got was so minute. I'm talking distant, distant, distant, Distant relative, more like 10 generations away. That is not a clear match. That would take a lot of work. Because you had to connect that distant relative forward, forward, forward, forward,

until you made it to that person in that photo. And unfortunately, as promising as this was that they had a match, they did not have the money or the manpower to link this relative's DNA to the killers. They just couldn't do it. I mean, they knew that they were related, but that's all they got.

However, they got really lucky as well. There was someone working at the police department that wanted to get used to doing this type of work. This person wanted to remain anonymous, so they only gave their first name, which was Liz. She had just started dabbling in genetic genealogy on the side, and she wanted to strengthen her skills. So she said she would take it on as a hobby,

something that she did on the side. When I told you this wasn't going to be easy, she took three years investigating a list of over 1,500 distant cousins to finally identify the person that she thought could be Robin's killer. Imagine working on a project for three years. I mean, wow, I give her so much credit. She found this guy who would have been 22 years old back in 1994. And at that time, this person was stationed at an army base in Fort Meyer Arlington. Virginia. That was only 25 minutes away from Robbins' home. And this person had a name, Stefan Smirk. It seems so random yet so connected because, I mean, this person was in close proximity to where the murder occurred. That alone is huge. It's not like you're pulling up someone's name and then they end up being across the country in 1994. No. We're talking a 25-minute

drive. So just to see what this Stefan guy looked like and whether they could match it to like the phenotyping composite that was done on the computer, they do some digging, they pull up a yearbook picture, and also a driver's license photo. And when I first looked at them, I didn't really see it. But when they were put up next to the electronic composite, I was like, wait a minute, that hair line was almost exact. And then I went down to the lips, and I was like, oh my gosh,

even the lips looked the same. I didn't really think it looked like the license photo because the guy had dark hair, but then you know how hair is. It gets darker over time. But this was close enough for the cold case team to believe they might have a match. That must be such an exciting feeling to know, I might have found the killer after all these years.

So the first thing they did now that they have a real photo, not just the composite sketch from the electronic system, they reached back out to Robin's family and her close friends and her loved ones, and they have them look at the pictures to recognize who this was. and they talked to Mary, she said, I don't know who that man is. Then they reached out to Robbins now adult daughter Nicole to put them in touch with her father.

He had moved to France by this point. So they had to do a Zoom meeting. They showed him the photos. The only thing he could possibly think of is that maybe this was someone who worked with Robin. Because the reason that she turned down going to the Bahamas with him was because she had a project deadline.

But the thing is, It wasn't one of her coworkers. Because as I explained, this man was stationed in the army. So they dug deeper into his records from the military, and there was nothing suspicious. He was now currently working as a computer programmer. He had gone back to school. He was out of the military. But none of his experiences in the military were negative at all.

He didn't have a criminal record. And this man was now 51 years old. They found out he was living in a home on country club drive, in Schenectady, New York, to be exact. And this was a really nice area. Upskill, suburban, four-bedroom, three-bathroom house, two-story home with a white picket fence out front and a nice pool in the back. Could this be the house of a killer?

And they find out he's married with two children, so could this be Robin's killer? And there's more. His wife is a literal defense attorney. His kids are in high school. Could this be the killer? It didn't make sense. Where was the connection to Robin and all this?

And I'm sure his wife was very surprised, the surprise of her life when sheriffs came to their door from Fairfax Police, to talk to Stefan about a murder case from 1994. Stefan was polite. He wasn't nervous at all. He invited the officers right inside, and they proceeded to talk about how they were interested

in getting his DNA. And he said, sure. They couldn't believe it. And for argument's sake, let's just say he is the killer. He's probably been thinking all of those years that they were going to become knocking at his door at some point. And his wife, a criminal defense attorney, while she clearly works on cases very similar to Robbins,

he would know how all this works. And maybe he thought that he didn't leave any DNA behind. Because remember, this wasn't a case where seminal fluid or anything like that was found on Robin's body. Or maybe this wasn't that. killer at all. They walked away with a swab of his DNA and left behind one of their business cards and said, if you have any questions or concerns, let us know. And they go back to their hotel room, going to fly out the next day and get that DNA and see if it was a match to the blood on that pink

washcloth that was left in Robin's bathroom two decades earlier. And I was thinking, if this was the killer, how shocked would they have been that they tracked him down? Right. I feel like This is going to be the case for so many horrific crimes. They're committed. The killer is free, just going about his life, because DNA hasn't caught up, but DNA doesn't lie. Well, I don't always want to say that, because I've been doing some research about DNA lately,

but for this instance, DNA doesn't lie. Technology's gonna get ya. You can be sure of that. But Detective Wallace and Long get back to their hotel room. They're gearing up to head back to Virginia so that they can deliver the DNA swab to the lab when Detective Melissa Wallace gets a phone call. And it was kind of eerie because Stefan was on the other end and he said,

where are you? And just thinking that that could be the killer and he was saying those words kind of freaked her out. But on the other hand, they wanted, of course, know what he wanted. Did he have something to say? And just to let you know I should have probably said this. I know I was talking about how they came to talk about a murder, but they didn't let him know that. They let him know they needed his DNA. They said it was connected to a case they were working on,

but they did not give him details. And that's why this phone call was so important. Because Stefan told Detective Wallace that he was at the local police station, and he wanted to go ahead and make this a lot easier by turning himself in. She was shocked. She said, for what? And he said, for the murder. And I caught chills when I first heard this.

And once they all sat down at the police station, Stefan was completely calm and direct. He knew he wasn't going anywhere. He said he had no intention of seeing the free world again anytime soon, if ever. The first thing they wanted to know was whether he remembered anything about the victim. And he said, yeah, she was an African-American woman.

And that was all he could remember. And I was like, wow. No, Robin was much more than that. But then everything about November 18th started pouring out. Stefan explained he was in his barracks. He had been drinking a lot that day, and I'm going to pause. Because just because I'm telling you this and he's saying this does not mean that that excuses what he's about to say later.

Because this is going to get deep. But he starts out by saying that something inside of him, as he put it. But then he stopped. He said, no, this is going to be hard to explain, but that he knew he was going to to kill somebody. But why Robin? Well, it turned out that Stefan's friends lived right next door. And that's how he was familiar with this neighborhood to begin with. But despite knowing this area, he then claimed he had never seen Robin before, never met her. Nothing like that. You can decide whether you believe that or not after you hear everything. And I'm going to give you my thoughts as well.

He just said that he gains access to her house through the backsliding door. It was actually the window, but okay. And what was chilling was that he admitted that he noticed that she had a baby in one of those rooms. You evil monster. But that was so important because, remember, the detectives hadn't even had a chance to turn over that swab. They didn't know if his DNA matched Robin's bathroom with the washcloth.

But by him giving that fact, the case that there was a baby there, they believe they were sitting face to face with Robin's killer. He said he went into her bedroom holding a cold steel tonto knife, which is a fixed blade tactical knife. And she got scared when she saw him. Of course she did. He said she jumped out of bed and got on her knees. And the investigators who initially came to that scene were right about one thing. Robin did try to reach for her phone. And he said he cut the line right away. And what he said next, the words that he chose were just so dehumanizing and disgusting. He said, I cut her up pretty good. Like he was proud of what he did.

He said that he did everything they taught him in the military, hand-to-hand combat. But he was fighting an innocent woman with a baby right there. This wasn't combat. This was overkill. This was a monster hunting his prey. She was defenseless, yet she still tried to fight. He said he just stood behind her and he kept stabbing. At one point, grabbing her by the hair, and that's when he cut across her neck. It's heartbreaking.

How could he casually explain this step by step? Detective Melissa Wallace was stunned. I mean, she has seen a lot in her career in these interview rooms over the course of so many years, but he was so cold and emotionless, it was unreal to her. Detective Wallace wondered if Stefan remembered hurting himself when he was in there and that he used that washcloth. He said he did not recall ever cutting himself, but then he remembered something that Robin had clawed at his face. And he went into the bathroom to look at what she had done to him. Wow.

He was concerned about her scratching him when she's left in the condition that she was in. And after all that, he went out the same way he came. came in, jumped in his truck, and threw the bloody knife over a bridge right into the water below on his way back to the military base. It was just a normal day for this monster. He just showered, put on some clean clothes, put all the items he was wearing into a garbage bag, and threw it in the trash. What was interesting to Detective Wallace and what she wanted to dive a little deeper into during this interview was what he told her next. He said, he was a sense. He was a sense of serial killer that only killed once. And what he meant by that was that he had an urge to kill.

And that's what made him kill Robin that night. But once he did, the urge would subside for some time, but it was still inside of him. He said that he honestly believes if it wasn't for his wife and kids, he would have become a serial killer. And that's the entire reason he joined the army to begin with, because he had these urges to kill and he thought that he could experience them in a more controlled manner if you will. But he soon found out

that killing people in the military was different. The killing he craved was more personal. Like I said, a hunter in his prey senseless. And he knew he wasn't ever going to get out of prison.

Virginia didn't have the death penalty. They did have life in prison. So he knew that would probably be his sentence. At least he wasn't going anywhere anytime soon. He was where he belonged. And now it was time to alert Robin's family of what had transpired. And they couldn't believe it. It's bittersweet. He's caught. They got him, but that doesn't bring Robin back and it doesn't make it make sense. I told you I wanted you to tell me if you thought he had seen Robin before because I think the fact that his friends lived right next door makes me believe that he saw her. He not only saw her, he watched her. And something about her, maybe it was how beautiful

she was, how happy she was, the fact that she was living in the same upscale neighborhood as a black woman, who knows? It could have been anything, but it triggered him for some reason. It could have been that he tried to say hello to her and she was busy and she didn't give him the time of day. We will never know the real reason he picked Robin. Because you know what? It's not like this house had something particular about it. It's not like he went door to door trying to see if someone's doorknob was open. He had to do more. He had to go to Robin's back portion of the house.

He had to look for some window that was open. He had to cut a screen. It was deliberate. That's what I believe. You can have your perspective. The detectives can have their perspective, and the killer himself can say that it was random. and we can all have her own point of view.

But he later tried to say that he felt compelled to kill because he was driven by his dark urges, but he was fueled by alcohol and ephedrine, which is a dangerous stimulant. And this is a cocktail because you mix alcohol with ephedrine and you get violent side effects.

But the reason doesn't matter. Because the fact is that five days later, test confirmed his DNA was a match. to the blood found in that washcloth. A statistical likelihood of one in seven million. So after nearly three decades of silence, there was no doubt Robin's killer had finally been caught. When Nicole Robin's adult daughter received the news

from Detective Wallace, she could hardly believe what she was hearing. After nearly three decades of unanswered questions of heartbreak, the words that she wanted to hear for so long, We got him. She immediately called her Aunt Mary, Robin's sister, and Nicole barely had to say a word before Mary knew exactly what she meant. When they said they got him, she knew.

And over the phone, there were so many emotions. There was disbelief, there was relief, there was joy. But then, Robin's family watched that interview that Stefan had given, and they were stunned with the details as they emerged. They were haunted by them, by the cold, emotionless way he recounted the night he took Robin's life. And his total lack of remorse, it was incomprehensible. Mary felt sick when she realized that Robin's beautiful life had ended simply because someone wanted to kill her,

and they decided they were going to do it. That one decision that somebody can make and play God. In April of 2023, a judge formally determined that there was probable cause to charge Stefan Smirk with Robbins. And soon after, he was indicted by a grand jury. Six months later, in the fall of 2023, he pleaded guilty to first-degree murder. And while Robbins family was grateful that justice had finally arrived, they couldn't help feel robbed by the fact that they were not going to confront him openly at a trial.

They wanted to face him. They wanted to look him eye to eye and forced him to understand exactly what he had stolen from their family. His guilty plea meant that they wouldn't get that moment. didn't get that moment and that hurt. Robin's father was almost 100 years old at the time, but he was still sharp as attack. I saw an interview with him and wow, was I impressed. But he never forgot getting the news that his daughter had been killed

and remembering how scared he was for Nicole. He invited news crews into his home as now an old man and showed them beautiful pictures of his family. Ali also spoke out to the media, saying that it has been 30 years of unanswered questions and having to endure that trauma was so much for them to bear. We also got to see Nicole for the very first time since her baby pictures, and she had tears in her eyes standing beside her father that day. But it wasn't over yet.

In March of 2025, during sentencing proceedings, Defon's defense attorney presented mitigating arguments. They revealed that he had struggled with alcohol abuse and substance use in his early adulthood. He had joined the military, hoping that this would stabilize him. His attorneys pointed to his undiagnosed bipolar 2 disorder and ADHD, and I was thinking, okay, how does that excuse anything? Okay, they were mitigating factors, I understand. And they said these conditions were worsened by alcohol and ephedrine. His lawyers emphasized that since the crime, he went to rehab. He was living a sober life. he had voluntarily confessed.

And that suggested remorse, but we know he wasn't remorseful. It seemed very self-serving. And the court saw right through this attempt at sympathy. Fairfax County Commonwealth's attorney Steve Descanto made it clear that Stefan represented the most terrifying kind of criminal, the one hiding in plain sight, whose capacity for extreme violence was going unnoticed for decades.

The judge sentenced him to the maximum allowed under the law and the plea agreement, 70 years in prison. Now, due to Virginia's sentencing laws from 1994, Stefan Smirk would be eligible for parole in 2037. He would be 65 by that point. And for Robin's family, it was satisfying, but it was unsettling. He's behind bars, but he could someday be free. Let's hope not.

When some of Robin's family members got to stand in the same room as him that day, Stefan's physical presence was definitely imposing, and they finally understood just how vulnerable Robin had been in those final, terrifying moments. And hearing his confession played back in court, his detached voice, just recounting such violence without emotion, that was more traumatizing. It was re-traumatizing this family. It made the reality of Robin's final moments so clear to them,

something they could never forget. But that chapter was closed. Scars still left behind, though. Forever. A constant reminder of a beautiful life that was senselessly stolen away. And of course, the haunting realization that sometimes justice is just as hard as the healing.

It's a wound that's never going to close. Nicole was robbed of her amazing, talented, beautiful mother and haunted by the trauma that she was too young to understand, but was impossible to ever forget. Robin had grown up and she grew up without her mother guiding her. Everyone who knew Robin saw her mother in her. Her resilience. And today, Nicole does embody the strength and grace that Robin always carried.

And in remembering Robin, I don't just want us to remember the cruel way that she died. I think it's more important to remember how she lived. She was someone's daughter, a sister, a best friend, a wife, a mother. She was a gifted artist. whose life was marked by extraordinary achievements and unconditional love. She was the kind of woman who left a lasting impression not just because of her talent, but because of who she was. And in that way, Robin's light is brighter than ever.

And I don't want that to fade away. So remember her and remember who she was before this monster took her way. I thank you so much for being here for Robin's story. and I hope to see you in my very next video. Bye.