In 2025: paper bags untouched for 38 years just solved a murder
Today in True Crime
by CaseBond · Source-backed daily true-crime history
July 6, 2026
In 2025: paper bags untouched for 38 years just solved a murder
For nearly four decades, the murder of Rhonda Marie Fisher sat unsolved inside a Douglas County, Colorado case file that had grown to thousands of pages. Then, in December 2025, investigators cracked it — using DNA extracted from the interior surfaces of two paper bags placed over Fisher's hands at the scene in 1987.
Fisher was thirty years old when she was found dead in rural Douglas County in 1987. From the first hours of the investigation, responding officers made a decision that would prove consequential nearly four decades later: they placed paper bags over her hands before she was removed from the scene, a standard forensic precaution intended to preserve trace evidence on the skin's surface. That routine step would ultimately break the case.
The death generated thousands of pages of accumulated material over the years — reports, witness statements, forensic analyses, and administrative memos that grew as the investigation aged without resolution. Detectives worked the case through the late 1980s and 1990s but were never able to identify a suspect. Without a match, the file gradually transitioned from active to cold, remaining officially open but effectively dormant.
When the Douglas County Sheriff's Office Cold Case Unit reopened the investigation in 2024, detectives confronted the full weight of that accumulated documentation. To manage it efficiently, the office deployed Tranquility AI's TimePilot evidence analysis platform, a tool designed to help investigators organize, search, and cross-reference large case files. Working systematically through almost forty years of material, the team identified items that might yield new results under modern forensic analysis.
Among those items were the original paper bags.
Forensic scientist Shane Williams explained at a December 2025 news conference that the rationale for testing them was based on the mechanics of evidence transfer: when the bags were placed over Fisher's hands at the scene, any biological material on her skin — skin cells, sweat, trace contact from a struggle — could have transferred to the bags' interior surfaces. Protected inside an evidence locker for nearly forty years, that transferred material might still carry a viable DNA profile.
It did. Laboratory technicians successfully extracted usable DNA from the bags' interiors. The Douglas County Sheriff's Office described the result as "exceptionally rare," noting that "obtaining a viable DNA profile from paper bags nearly four decades old" was a testament to the meticulous evidence preservation carried out by the original investigators. That profile was then run against CODIS, the FBI's national index of DNA from convicted offenders, arrestees, and crime scene evidence compiled across the country.
The comparison returned a match: the DNA corresponded to Vincent Darrell Groves, a name already connected to multiple other homicide investigations. Authorities identified Groves as one of Colorado's most prolific serial killers. Fisher's 1987 murder was now linked to three additional homicide cases associated with him. A cold case file that had sat for decades was solved.
The Fisher case has since been cited in law enforcement circles as a demonstration of what meticulous evidence preservation makes possible across time. The investigators who bagged Fisher's hands in 1987 could not have foreseen that their procedural step would one day provide the key to identifying a serial killer. They followed protocol. The evidence waited.
What the case also illustrates is the unglamorous infrastructure of cold case work: years of file review, forensic re-examination, database queries, and AI-assisted document analysis that rarely generate headlines but occasionally produce breakthroughs. The deployment of TimePilot to manage decades of accumulated documentation represents one piece of that infrastructure — modern tools applied to preserve the investigative thread that time would otherwise sever.
For Rhonda Marie Fisher's family, the December 2025 announcement ended nearly four decades of uncertainty. For investigators and forensic professionals nationwide, the case stands as a reminder that evidence worth keeping is worth keeping meticulously — and that the technology to unlock its secrets may not yet exist at the moment of collection.
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Sources used/checked for this issue
- Sheriff's office: 1987 cold case murder solved, linked to one of Colorado's most prolific serial killers, KKTV — "Sheriff's Office: 1987 Cold Case Murder Solved," KKTV, December 2, 2025. https://www.kktv.com/2025/12/02/sheriffs-office-1987-cold-case-murder-solved-linked-one-colorados-most-prolific-serial-killers
- Colorado cold case murder from 1987 solved with DNA from paper bags on victim's hands, CNN — "Colorado cold case murder from 1987 solved," CNN, December 3, 2025. https://www.cnn.com/2025/12/03/us/colorado-cold-case-murder-rhonda-fisher-hnk
- Authorities solved 1987 cold case murder, linked to one of most prolific serial killers, KWCH — "Authorities solved 1987 cold case murder," KWCH, December 2, 2025. https://www.kwch.com/2025/12/02/authorities-solved-1987-cold-case-murder-linked-one-most-prolific-serial-killers
- Cold case solved after DNA from paper bags on victim's hands identifies serial killer, Police1 — "Cold case solved after DNA from paper bags," Police1. https://www.police1.com/police-products/investigation/cold-case-solved-after-dna-from-paper-bags-on-victims-hands-identifies-serial-killer
Today in True Crime by CaseBond — 2026-07-06
