Cold Case 1982: Wendy Lou Stark

Wendy Lou Stark was a 20 year old student of the University of Maryland.  She worked in Rockville and it is believed that she was on her way to work on April 9, 1982, when she was randomly targeted and abducted from the parking lot of the Hillandale Shopping Center after she made a stop at the Zayre's Store at approximately 4:00 p.m.  She was sexually assaulted at an unknown location.  At approximately, 9:00 p.m., it appeared that in an attempt to break free from her assailant, she managed to get out of the car in which she was forced as a passenger.  While she was trying to enter a home on Mitcher Street just north of Kensington, she was shot and killed.   

In 1982 the technology did not exist for the type of DNA testing that can be conducted today.  Recently, Montgomery County Police DNA analysts determined that a 1982 evidence sample was suitable for testing by the improved technology now available.  The DNA sample was entered into the Combined DNA Index System (CODIS) and it matched the DNA profile of Gerald Anderson Abernathy who was a convicted offender serving a life sentence for kidnapping and murder in North Carolina.  Abernathy died when he was 66 years old of lung cancer in October of 2007 while still in prison. 

In 1983 while in the process of developing a suspect, it was learned that Abernathy had escaped from a Virginia jail in 1981 and was hiding in Kensington, Maryland, at the time of Stark's murder.  He left the area the day after the murder and was arrested in Pennsylvania five days later as a fugitive from Virginia and DUI.

Gerald Anderson Abernathy