Nearly 40 years after a passing motorist spotted the nude body of 30-year-old Rhonda Marie Fisher alongside a rural Colorado highway, new DNA evidence has implicated one of the state’s “most prolific serial killers.”
Fisher had been sexually assaulted and strangled, then tossed down an embankment about 35 miles south of Denver on April 1, 1987.
Police questioned everyone from an acquaintance she’d been staying with to “multiple serial offenders” active in the area at the time. Among them were Vincent Darrell Groves and another man, but investigators lacked DNA confirmation so the case went cold.
“Despite an extensive investigation and periodic reviews spanning nearly four decades, the case remained unsolved,” the Douglas County Sheriff’s Office said in a statement, noting that even renewed DNA testing in 2017 hadn’t yielded enough material to identify Fisher’s killer.
Flash forward to 2025, when the office’s Cold Case Unit reopened the inquiry, reviewing all the evidence anew. They also managed to recover DNA from inside paper bags that police had placed over Fisher’s hands at the original crime scene to preserve trace evidence — an “exceptionally rare” feat, Sheriff Darren Weekly told Denver ABC affiliate KMGH.
What wasn’t Fisher’s DNA matched the DNA found in three 1979 murders committed by Groves. Police hold him responsible for at least 12 homicides, an attempted murder and a sexual assault in the Denver metro area between 1978 and 1988. Now Fisher is added to the list, and police suspect there may be as many as 20 victims.
Groves was convicted of murder in 1982, but released from jail less than five years later, “only to commit additional violent crimes,” according to the DCSO. Two more murder convictions in 1988 put him back in prison, where he died in 1996.
“While Vincent Groves cannot be held accountable in a court of law, we hope this long-awaited resolution brings answers and a measure of peace to Rhonda Fisher’s family and friends,” Sheriff Weekly said in the DCSO’s statement. “Rhonda Fisher was a mother, daughter, sister and friend. Her case exemplifies the dedication of DCSO investigators, forensic partners and cold case specialists who continue to work tirelessly, often for years at a time, to bring closure to families who have endured unimaginable waits.”
