Nearly five years into the investigation of the killing of 30-year-old Kalyn P. Smith, whose body was found in a roadside ditch in Tacoma in fall 2021, investigators made a breakthrough thanks to a cigarette butt tossed from a pickup truck window. According to investigators, DNA from the filter linked 59-year-old Edwin Lee Newlander not only to Smith’s death but also to biological evidence in two rape investigations. Newlander has been charged with second-degree murder. He is being held on $1 million bail and has not yet entered a plea.
On the morning of Oct. 12, 2021, passersby spotted a woman’s body in a ditch near the 3100 block of East M Street, not far from McKinley Park and the Interstate 5 interchange. One witness saw a man near the body and a dark SUV that soon drove away, but the predawn darkness prevented a reliable description of the driver. The Pierce County medical examiner determined that Smith died of asphyxia caused by neck compression. Her body showed abrasions and bruises.
The most important piece of evidence had been within investigators’ reach from the beginning: samples taken from beneath Smith’s fingernails contained a mixed male DNA profile. The profile was entered into CODIS, the federal database that allows laboratories to compare genetic data nationwide, but no matches were found at the time. The case remained among those in which the circumstances of death were known but the suspected killer’s identity was not.
A new lead emerged through another investigation. In December 2025, a woman identified in court documents as J.H. told police that she had been raped twice over a two-day period and underwent a medical examination. In spring 2026, testing showed that her samples were linked to the DNA found beneath Smith’s fingernails, as well as to evidence from a rape investigation first reported on Oct. 21, 2019.
In a follow-up interview with detectives, J.H. described one of the attackers as a man named Ed: white, about 50 years old, short and heavily built, with a receding hairline and long hair on the sides. Police say the description pointed to Newlander. On June 9, 2026, J.H. was found dead at a CFN gas station in Tacoma; her cause of death was an overdose. According to court documents, surveillance cameras captured his distinctive pickup truck in the parking lot within an hour of that time.
On June 16, police stopped Newlander, who reportedly was driving with a suspended license. During the stop, he threw a cigarette out the window. Officers retrieved the butt, packaged it and sent it to the Washington State Patrol crime laboratory. In August, the laboratory reported that DNA from the filter was linked to profiles from the Smith case and two alleged rape cases.
During an interview on Sept. 2, Newlander acknowledged that he knew Smith and had given her a ride from the intersection of Puyallup Avenue and Portland Avenue. According to the account he gave investigators, the woman suddenly attacked him, scratched his face and arms, and bit his thumb, while he merely held her arms before driving away. Details of his account, including his mention of the clothing Smith was wearing, became part of the material presented to the court, but the prosecution’s case rests primarily on the combination of genetic matches and investigative circumstances.
Newlander was arrested on Sept. 3, and at his initial hearing in Pierce County Superior Court, bail was set at $1 million. Second-degree murder carries a sentence of up to life in prison. No separate charges have yet been filed in the alleged rape cases; the investigation continues. For the Smith case, which had spent years as an unnamed file containing a DNA profile, the cigarette butt does not conclude the story, but it has given prosecutors a person whose account of events will have to be tested in open court.
Based on: DNA from cigarette leads to arrest in unsolved Tacoma murder