A 2019 rape investigation, Kalyn Smith’s 2021 killing and a 2025 assault report eventually pointed Tacoma detectives toward Edwin Newlander.
TACOMA, Wash. — The case against Edwin Lee Newlander did not develop in a straight line from a 2021 homicide scene to an arrest. Investigators say it took evidence collected in three different cases over six years before an unidentified DNA profile became associated with his name.
Viewed chronologically, the investigation reaches back before Kalyn P. Smith was killed. DNA evidence from a woman who reported being raped in Tacoma in October 2019 would later become one piece of the forensic chain. At that time, there was no public indication that the case had anything to do with Smith, who was still alive, or with a second woman who would report sexual assault in 2025. Only after later testing and comparisons did authorities say the profiles from those investigations became connected.
Two years after the 2019 report, police were called to East M Street in Tacoma on the morning of Oct. 12, 2021. Officers found Smith, 30, dead in a ditch near McKinley Park. Court records say a witness had seen a dark SUV and a man near the area but could give only a limited description because of the darkness. The Pierce County Medical Examiner determined that Smith died from asphyxia caused by compression of the neck. Investigators treated the death as a homicide and collected physical evidence from her body.
Among that evidence were fingernail clippings containing male DNA. Investigators submitted the genetic profile to CODIS, the national DNA database system available to participating forensic laboratories. The search did not identify a suspect. The absence of an immediate match did not make the evidence useless; it meant that investigators had a profile without a known person attached to it. The clippings and laboratory results remained part of the case file as the homicide investigation continued without an arrest.
The next major event came in December 2025, more than four years after Smith’s death. A woman identified in court papers as J.H. reported that she had been raped and underwent a sexual-assault examination. Police said DNA obtained in that investigation matched the genetic evidence recovered from Smith’s fingernails. Investigators also connected the profile to DNA from the 2019 rape investigation. The significance was immediate: evidence from three cases that had occurred in different years now pointed to the same unidentified genetic source, according to authorities.
That finding changed the investigative question. Detectives were no longer looking only at who might have been with Smith before she died. They were also examining whether a person linked through DNA to Smith’s case could be connected to reported sexual assaults in 2019 and 2025. The association did not prove that the same person committed every alleged crime, and the cases retained their own facts and legal elements. But the shared profile gave investigators a common forensic thread that had not been available when Smith’s body was found.
In May 2026, investigators interviewed J.H. again and obtained a lead that DNA alone could not provide. She identified one alleged assailant as a man named “Ed” and described him as a white man in his 50s who was short, stocky and balding on top, with longer hair along the sides. Police believed that description fit Newlander. After years in which the genetic profile had no public name attached to it, investigators now had a person they could examine as a possible source of the DNA.
Events moved rapidly after that interview. J.H. was found dead at a gas station on June 9. Authorities ruled her death an overdose. Court documents cited by news organizations said surveillance video showed a distinctive pickup truck associated with Newlander at the gas station within roughly an hour of her death. The available reports do not accuse Newlander of killing J.H., and her overdose should not be conflated with Smith’s homicide. For investigators, however, the vehicle footage was another circumstance they documented while examining Newlander.
On June 16, Tacoma police stopped Newlander while he was driving. Authorities said he discarded a cigarette from the vehicle during the stop. Officers collected it and sent it for forensic testing. The Washington State Patrol Crime Laboratory reported that DNA on the cigarette was linked to the genetic material from Smith’s homicide and the two rape investigations. The testing effectively converted the years-old anonymous DNA profile into evidence police said was associated with Newlander.
The laboratory result did not end the investigation. Detectives interviewed Newlander on Sept. 2 and asked about Smith. According to court records, he acknowledged an encounter with a woman he believed was Smith but denied harming her. Police said his explanation changed as the questioning continued. He first described picking her up and claimed she attacked him before leaving his vehicle. Investigators said he later acknowledged spending time with Smith on several occasions and said that, on the night she died, he drove her toward McKinley Park before she got out.
Police considered portions of the interview significant for reasons beyond the simple acknowledgment that Newlander and Smith had met. Court records say Newlander described clothing that matched what Smith was wearing when she was found. Investigators also focused on the location he identified because Smith’s body was discovered near McKinley Park. At the same time, Newlander repeatedly denied killing her. His statements therefore provide the prosecution with alleged admissions of contact while also giving the defense an account in which the contact ended before Smith’s death.
Newlander was arrested in early September, nearly five years after Smith was found. Public reports differ over the exact charging posture that followed. Law&Crime, The New York Times and People described a second-degree murder charge and said the rape investigations remained open. A Tacoma News Tribune report republished by AOL said Newlander appeared at an arraignment on one count of first-degree murder, two counts of second-degree rape and one count of first-degree kidnapping. The same article also stated that he had not been charged in the rape cases. It reported that a commissioner entered a not guilty plea and set bail at $1 million.
Those differences make the underlying court docket more important than secondary descriptions of the case. Murder in the first degree and murder in the second degree involve different legal elements, and rape or kidnapping counts would substantially change the scope of a prosecution. Without relying on one conflicting account as definitive, what is clear across the reporting is that authorities accused Newlander in connection with Smith’s killing, that he denied harming her and that DNA evidence linked his discarded cigarette to genetic material associated with Smith and the two sexual-assault investigations.
The sequence also shows why the age of evidence does not necessarily determine its usefulness. The DNA associated with the 2019 case existed before Smith’s homicide. The profile from Smith’s fingernails existed for years without identifying a suspect. The 2025 case supplied a new match, the 2026 interview with J.H. supplied a possible name, and the cigarette supplied a known comparison sample. None of those steps, standing alone, tells the whole story alleged by investigators; together, authorities say, they formed the chain that led to Newlander.
That chain will still have to survive courtroom scrutiny. The prosecution bears the burden of proving any filed charge beyond a reasonable doubt. Defense attorneys may examine laboratory procedures, DNA mixtures, possible transfer, the circumstances under which the cigarette was collected, the meaning of Newlander’s statements and any gaps between proof of contact and proof of homicide. Genetic evidence can be powerful, but a criminal case ultimately requires proof of each legal element, not simply proof that biological material is associated with a defendant.
The reviewed sources did not establish a final disposition by Oct. 20. Newlander remains presumed innocent unless convicted. What began as three separate investigations in 2019, 2021 and 2025 has become a single closely watched evidentiary story, but the next decisive stage belongs to the court rather than the crime laboratory.
Author note: Last updated Oct. 20, 2026.