Prosecutors said DNA, blood evidence and a broken knife tip tied Hagen Roberts to the 2020 killing of Cynthia Capps.

VIRGINIA BEACH, Va. — A Virginia Beach judge has sentenced Hagen Lawrence Roberts to life in prison plus five years for the 2020 killing of Cynthia Capps, a 63-year-old woman whose body was found in a toolbox after her husband reported her missing from their home.

The sentence closes the trial phase of a case that turned on a small clue and a large body of forensic evidence. City officials said Roberts, 41, was convicted in November after a three-day jury trial on charges of first-degree murder and stabbing in the commission of a felony. Prosecutors said the killing happened inside or around the Green Cedar Lane home where Roberts rented a room from Capps and her husband, and that the evidence placed him at the center of the attack and the effort to hide her body.

The case began on Oct. 8, 2020, when Capps’ husband called 911 after he said he had taken a shower and then could not find his wife. As he looked through the home, he saw what prosecutors later described as a single drop of blood on the kitchen floor. That discovery led officers to search the residence for Capps and for signs of violence. Police learned that Roberts rented a room in the house. When officers tried to enter that room, they found the door locked and forced their way in. Inside, they found Roberts on the bed. Prosecutors said he appeared to be wet, as if he had recently showered, and had a cut on his right hand wrapped in a black bandana. The search then moved outside, where officers found blood stains in the backyard.

Police soon found Capps dead inside a toolbox, with visible trauma to her head and face. A medical examiner later concluded that she had been stabbed more than 90 times in the head, face and neck. Prosecutors said one of the key pieces of evidence was a metal shard removed from Capps’ skull that appeared to be the broken tip of a knife. Investigators later found a black folding knife with a broken tip in Roberts’ room, and authorities said laboratory testing showed the shard was a direct match. Officers also recovered clothes stained with blood from an outside trash can and documented blood stains throughout the home. DNA from both Capps and Roberts was found on the knife, on the discarded clothes and in blood evidence collected around the property, according to the city’s release. Authorities did not describe a motive in the public summaries released after the conviction and sentencing.

The case stretched across more than five years from the killing to sentencing. A jury found Roberts guilty on Nov. 20, 2025, after hearing the prosecution’s evidence over three days in Circuit Court. On Feb. 25, 2026, Circuit Court Judge Stephen C. Mahan imposed the maximum sentence: life in prison on the murder conviction and an additional five years for stabbing in the commission of a felony. The prosecution was handled by Assistant Commonwealth’s Attorneys Thomas J. Wright and Gordon C. Ufkes. In public statements, Commonwealth’s Attorney Colin D. Stolle said the evidence presented at trial established what happened inside the home and supported the maximum punishment. Roberts, however, continued to deny guilt through sentencing, according to later news reports about the hearing.

The killing left a lasting mark because of both its violence and the way it was uncovered. Investigators said the case moved from a missing-person concern to a homicide investigation almost immediately once officers began processing the home and yard. The detail about the single drop of blood has become the most widely repeated fact in public coverage, but the prosecution’s case did not rely on that detail alone. It rested on the locked bedroom, Roberts’ condition when officers entered, the blood evidence across the property, the knife recovered from his room and the forensic link between its broken tip and the shard removed during the autopsy. Those details helped explain why prosecutors described the evidence as strong and why the sentence request focused on the brutality of the attack and the concealment of the body.

Cynthia Capps was remembered outside the courtroom as a wife and mother whose death stunned people who knew her. Her obituary described her as deeply loved and said she had overcome major obstacles in her life. Public officials have not announced any further criminal proceedings in the case, and no additional defendants were named in the city’s releases. With the sentence now entered, the next likely step is the appellate timetable available in a felony case, though any filing would come through court records rather than the city’s news releases. For now, the case stands as a conviction built from physical evidence, a 2020 emergency call and a search that ended in a backyard toolbox.

Author note: Last updated March 25, 2026.