The murder of Karen Lee Spencer

The case was solved through the accounts of people who knew the suspect, not through forensic evidence, and it never reached a court. In 1972, Fairfax County police gave polygraph tests to some young people in the neighborhood and identified several persons of interest, among them James "Jimmy" Edwards, then 16, who police said was believed to be Karen Spencer's boyfriend and who denied involvement. He died on August 23, 1997. In summer 2018, two independent acquaintances told Cold Case Squad detectives that in the early 1990s Edwards had confided in them that he killed a girl and buried her in a field when he was a teenager. FOX 5 reported that police felt they needed more before naming him. On June 26, 2019, the department publicly appealed for information about Spencer and Edwards and said it was re-examining evidence, and FOX 5 reported that police were having clothing and other items from the scene tested; the public statements do not report the results. After a FOX 5 segment, several people came forward, including a man who told police he saw Edwards on the night of the murder crying, with scratches on his face, according to FOX 5. Over the year and a half after summer 2018, police said, detectives received additional tips that supported the acquaintances' account along with earlier investigative findings that implicated Edwards, and other persons of interest were disqualified based on exculpatory information. In December 2019 the Fairfax County Office of the Commonwealth's Attorney determined that there would have been enough evidence to arrest and prosecute Edwards had he been alive. Police announced the case solved on April 1, 2020, and now consider Edwards the killer. Because he died in 1997, he was never charged or tried.