INVESTIGATIVE DECEMBER 2025
QUARTERLY
A Publication by the International Homicide Investigators Association (IHIA)
PRESIDENT’S MESSAGE
Chief Deputy Frank Losat Hillsborough County Sheriff's Office
WHAT’S INSIDE THE IQ:
Dear IHIA Members, As we come to the close of 2025, I want to take a moment to reflect on the year behind us and express my sincere appreciation to each of you for your continued dedication to the International Homicide Investigators Association and to the profession we proudly serve. This year has once again demonstrated the importance of collaboration, education, and perseverance in the face of increasingly complex investigative challenges. Across the globe, IHIA members continue to do extraordinarily difficult work—often under intense pressure and scrutiny—while maintaining the highest standards of professionalism, integrity, and compassion for victims and their families. Your commitment does not go unnoticed. Throughout 2025, IHIA remained focused on its core mission: supporting homicide investigators through world-class training, meaningful professional connections, and timely investigative resources. From our conferences and specialized training programs to our publications, webinars, and member forums, we have worked to ensure that IHIA continues to be a trusted resource for investigators at every stage of their careers. I also want to thank our Board of Directors, committees, instructors, corporate partners, and volunteers who give so generously of their time and expertise. Your leadership and service are the backbone of this organization. Additionally, we are grateful to our host agencies and partners who helped make this year’s events successful and impactful. As we look ahead to 2026, IHIA is well positioned to continue expanding its reach, strengthening its training portfolio, and fostering collaboration across agencies and disciplines. The challenges facing our profession will continue to evolve, but so will our commitment to ensuring investigators are equipped with the knowledge, tools, and support they need to succeed.
Letter from President Frank Losat Updates from the Desk of the IHIA Executive Director Steve Lewis IHIA Membership Giveaway and Store Cold Case Solved Through Innovative DNA Analysis: Paper Bags Placed on Victim’s Hands Lead to Serial Killer Longitudinal visibility of MRI findings in living victims of strangulation New Year, New Trainings Upcoming Regional Training Opportunities Marketing Opportunities
On behalf of IHIA, I wish you and your families a safe, peaceful, and restorative holiday season. Thank you for your service, your professionalism, and your unwavering commitment to justice. I look forward to continuing this important work together in the year ahead. Respectfully,
Frank Losat Frank Losat President International Homicide Investigators Association
DECEMBER 2025 | PAGE 01
FROM THE DESK OF THE IHIA EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR STEVE LEWIS Dear IHIA Members, As we close out 2025, I want to sincerely thank our members for making this year both successful and memorable. With more than 3,000 active members worldwide, IHIA continues to grow as a trusted professional association dedicated to supporting homicide investigators and allied professionals. Throughout 2025, IHIA facilitated 26 training events across the United States, Canada, Guam, and Hawaii, delivering instruction to more than 1,200 investigators. These efforts reflect our commitment to providing practical, high-quality education that directly supports investigators in the field. To further strengthen this mission, IHIA hired a second Training Director, allowing us to expand training capacity and better serve our membership in 2026 and beyond. Looking ahead, IHIA’s educational priorities for 2026 are being shaped directly by member survey feedback. Our surveys identified a strong demand for expanded instruction in Digital Forensics, Overdose-Related Death Investigations, and the Role of Criminal Analysts in Homicide Investigations. In response, these subject areas are being added to IHIA’s current training curricula, ensuring our programs remain relevant, timely, and aligned with the real-world challenges faced by today’s investigators. We are also proud to host the 2026 IHIA Annual Training Symposium in New Orleans, which will bring together investigators, analysts, instructors, and partners from across the globe for advanced training, collaboration, and professional networking. On behalf of the IHIA staff and leadership, thank you for your continued trust and engagement. We are honored to serve this membership and look forward to working alongside you in 2026 as we continue advancing our shared mission. Wishing you and your families a safe, peaceful, and restorative holiday season. Respectfully,
Steve Lewis Executive Director International Homicide Investigators Association
DECEMBER 2025 | PAGE 02
UP TO DATE IHIA MEMBER GIVEAWAY STAY FOLLOW THE IHIA SHARE YOUR EXPERIENCE ON SOCIAL MEDIA ENTER GIVEAWAY
We’re kicking off 2026 by highlighting the voices that make IHIA strong - our members. Share a short quote about your IHIA experience, a training you’ve attended, or a professional goal you’re focused on in 2026 for a chance to win: One FREE registration to the 2026 IHIA Annual Training Symposium OR Exclusive IHIA swag Submissions may be featured on IHIA social media, newsletters, or promotional materials.
MEMBERS WORLDWIDE REP THE
GEAR
The IHIA is the world’s largest and fastest growing organization of homicide and death investigation professionals. The non-profit organization represents the largest network of homicide professionals and practitioners ever assembled. Shop official IHIA The IHIA has representatives in every U.S. state gear and support the and nations on six continents. mission. Visit our online store for apparel, accessories LEARN MORE and more!
DECEMBER 2025 | PAGE 03
COLD CASE SOLVED THROUGH INNOVATIVE DNA ANALYSIS: PAPER BAGS PLACED ON VICTIM’S HANDS LEAD TO SERIAL KILLER The 1987 homicide of Rhonda Marie Fisher in Douglas County, Colorado was solved after a comprehensive case review and novel DNA testing. The investigation demonstrates the critical importance of preserving all evidence, particularly unconventional sources such as paper bags used to protect trace evidence on a victim’s hands at crime scenes. Subsequent DNA testing of the paper bags ultimately linked one of Colorado’s most prolific serial killers to Rhonda's murder, adding to his documented pattern of targeting vulnerable women. Case and Victim Background On April 1, 1987, the body of 31-year-old Rhonda Marie Fisher was discovered along Highway 105 south of Sedalia in rural Douglas County, Colorado. Rhonda, a white female standing 5'02" and weighing 130 pounds with blonde hair and blue eyes, had been strangled and sexually assaulted before her nude body was left along the roadway. She was identified by her fingerprints. Rhonda was last seen on March 31, 1987, around 7:00 PM by a male acquaintance who reported dropping her off near a grocery store in Denver, approximately 35 miles north of where her body was found. This male acquaintance had allowed Rhonda to stay in his apartment for approximately two weeks prior to her death and he contacted the Douglas County Sheriff’s Office after she was found and reported that he was the last person to see Rhonda alive. Rhonda was struggling with alcohol and substance abuse, and she had turned to sex work.
However, no illegal drugs or alcohol were found in her system during autopsy and subsequent toxicology results. Rhonda also had a young son, but he had been removed from her custody due to her lifestyle, and he was eventually placed in foster care and then adopted. His current whereabouts are unknown. Evidence Collection and Initial Investigation The crime scene investigation revealed several critical pieces of evidence. The victim's body showed clear signs of ligature strangulation. Investigators also noted that at least one of Rhonda's hands appeared to have been secured with handcuffs or a similar restraining device, and she had bruises and abrasions on her arms and back. Following standard protocol, paper bags were placed over Rhonda's hands to preserve potential evidence under the fingernails and on the hands themselves. Her body was then transported to the funeral home (a common practice in the 1980s) for a thorough examination, and a medical examiner determined the cause of death to be asphyxiation due to ligature strangulation. The initial investigation focused on Rhonda's male acquaintance. He agreed to a polygraph examination, and the examiner concluded that his truthfulness could not be verified. However, no physical evidence linked him to the crime. Another potential suspect was serial killer Vincent Groves, who was believed to be active in the Denver metro area between the 1970s and 1980s. However, there was no evidence linking him to the crime, and the case went cold and remained unsolved for decades. DNA Testing In 2017, the Sheriff's Office requested DNA testing on evidence from the case, submitting swabs from Rhonda’s body as well as fingernail scrapings from both hands. The results were disappointing.
DECEMBER 2025 | PAGE 04
Human DNA was not detected in the swabs, and an insufficient amount of male DNA was detected in the swab from the scraping of the left hand that was not sufficient for further analysis. The 2017 testing utilized advanced polymerase chain reaction (PCR) technology to analyze short tandem repeats (STRs), representing a significant technological advancement over the DNA testing capabilities available in the 1980s when the crime originally occurred. In February 2025, a comprehensive case review was conducted involving a multidisciplinary team consisting of a cold case detective, a forensic scientist, a crime analyst supervisor/investigative genetic genealogist, and staff from the property and evidence facility. During the inperson review, each item of evidence was viewed and evaluated as a potential source of evidence. The review team recognized the potential value in evidence sources previously overlooked, particularly focusing on the paper bags that had been placed over Rhonda's hands at the crime scene in 1987. This innovative approach to evidence analysis would prove crucial to the case resolution, demonstrating the importance of preserving and re-examining all physical evidence, regardless of how unconventional the source might appear. The following month, personnel from the Douglas County Sheriff’s Office collected a voluntary DNA sample from Rhonda’s male acquaintance. In the immediate aftermath of Rhonda’s murder, he had provided several conflicting statements, and he later refused to participate in an additional interview at the time his DNA was collected. After the collection of his DNA sample, all items of evidence were submitted to the Unified Forensic Laboratory (UFL) for analysis. DNA Evidence from Paper Bags In August 2025, forensic examination began on the brown paper bags. Thankfully, the medical examiner and law enforcement officials had the foresight to retain these paper bags after scrapings were taken from under Rhonda’s fingernails. Each bag was its own item of evidence, and they were not commingled together. Each bag still had the black electrical tape adhered around the opening from when the bag was secured around Rhonda’s wrist at the scene. To collect as many skin cells as possible, each bag was cut down the side and bottom and laid open flat. A sterile cotton swab, moistened with water, was used to swab the entire interior surface area of each bag, concentrating on the portions of paper that would have made direct contact with Rhonda’s wrists. Using a commercially available STR amplification kit, DNA profiles were developed from the cotton swabs. The collection taken from Rhonda’s right wrist had a more complete DNA profile and proved to be the most helpful to the investigation. A DNA mixture originating from three individuals was developed. This DNA mixture included Rhonda and an unknown major male component. The third contributor was a minor component of unknown gender. Using an advanced DNA mixture software, the foreign major male DNA profile was separated from the DNA profile of Rhonda and the minor component. The male acquaintance that Rhonda was residing with was excluded as a potential donor of the DNA mixture. This foreign male DNA profile was entered into the Combined DNA Index System (CODIS) in October 2025.
Three candidate matches were linked together during the CODIS search. These three cases had been previously associated to Vincent Groves, with the DNA evidence originating from 1979 sexual assault/homicide cases. A blood card from Vincent, collected under a search warrant in the early 1990s by another agency, was used to confirm the presence of Vincent on Rhonda’s right hand. Using specialized software to calculate a likelihood ratio, the following statistic was developed and reported in November 2025: “Rhonda Fisher and Vincent Groves are included as potential contributors to this mixture. Assuming the presence of Rhonda Fisher, this mixture is approximately 98 trillion (98E12) times more likely to be observed if it originated from Rhonda Fisher, Vincent Groves, and an unknown, unrelated individual than if it originated from Rhonda Fisher and two unknown, unrelated individuals.” Vincent Groves: Profile of a Serial Killer Vincent Darrell Groves, born April 19, 1954, emerged as one of Colorado's most prolific serial killers. His criminal pattern involved targeting vulnerable women, particularly sex workers and drug users, whom he would strangle manually or with ligatures. Groves had been convicted of second-degree murder in 1982 for the murder of Tammy Woodrum and was sentenced to 12 years in the Colorado Department of Corrections. Unfortunately, he was released on parole in February of 1987—serving less than five years and was released less than two months before Rhonda's murder.
READ FULL ARTICLE DECEMBER 2025 | PAGE 05
LONGITUDINAL VISIBILITY OF MRI FINDINGS IN LIVING VICTIMS OF STRANGULATION
Exemplary photographic documentation of a strangulation victim. (a) Daylight photography with no visible findings. (b) Cor responding infrared photography showing a hematoma (red circle)
Introduction Various internal injury findings can be identified in the con text of a fatal strangulation as demonstrated by forensic autopsies and indicated by postmortem imaging procedures. These findings may include for example hemorrhages or edema in various soft tissue structures of the neck, lesions of the intimal layer of carotid arteries or fractures of the laryngeal skeleton or hyoid bone [1–7]. However, the vast majority of internal findings have in common that they are not visible in clinical forensic examinations of surviving victims of violence against the neck [3, 8–12]. Therefore, the assessment and reconstruction of violent incidents in living persons with suspected strangulation is severely limited. Currently, strangulation is considered as dangerous to life if there are indications of hypoxia like unconsciousness, muscle tone relaxation or petechial hemorrhages, due to the congestion of the head following relevant and prolonged neck compression [13, 14, 3, 9, 15–18]. However, externally visible findings can be absent even in cases of severe strangulation or they may be visible for a time period of up to one or two days only [16]. This leads to unsatisfactory situations for the forensic assessment of relevant violence against the neck and the reconstruction of the incident. It further points out the necessity to assess additional objective findings, ide ally during a prolonged period after the incident. As initial experiences with magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) of living strangulation victims demonstrated, internal injuries can be identified in addition to the externally visible findings [8, 12–14, 17–20]. he internal injuries in locations directly related to the critical structures of the neck are thereby especially important, e.g. hemorrhages, localized edema and other lesions of vessels,
lymph nodes, salivary glands, larynx, trachea, muscles and other soft tissue structures [14, 17–19, 21]. In most of the studies on MRI in living strangulation victims published so far, the main question was whether MRI can be used to prove relevant violence against the neck [8, 10–12, 14, 17, 18]. In 2007, Yen et al. [14] con ducted the first MRI study on 14 strangulation cases and concluded that adding an MRI examination to the standard clinical forensic examination can generate additional insight by detecting findings, which would not have been visible otherwise. Moreover, in the study of Ogris et al. [12], a lack of correlations between external findings and internal findings identified through MRI was found. Therefore, the authors emphasized that only a clinical forensic examination in combination with an MRI leads to high sensitivity and specificity for the diagnosis of strangulation. Heimer et al. [11] published the study with the largest sample size so far. During six and a half years, they registered 633 living cases of strangulation of which 117 subjects underwent an MRI scan of the neck and the brain. The conclusion was that an MRI of the neck was beneficial for forensic purposes in cases without external findings, whereas an MRI of the brain should only be performed in cases with neurological symptoms. Pivec et al. [8] aimed at developing radiologic diagnostic criteria for the evaluation of living strangulation victims. As the inter-rater agreements of the two radiologists evaluating MRI scans were low to moderate, the authors concluded that experience in forensic radiology is necessary for an optimal evaluation. Furthermore, Christe et al. [17, 18] proposed a scoring system including MRI to assess findings pointing towards danger to life.
READ FULL ARTICLE DECEMBER 2025 | PAGE 06
LEARN MORE
LEARN MORE
LEARN MORE
LEARN MORE DECEMBER 2025 | PAGE 07
NEW YEAR | NEW TRAININGS
NEW TRAINING: Digital Forensics for Homicide & Violent Crime Investigations Digital evidence now plays a role in nearly every investigation—from homicide and violent crime to fraud, narcotics, and missing persons. IHIA’s Digital Forensics for Homicide and Violent Crime Investigations equips law enforcement investigators with essential skills to identify, acquire, preserve, and analyze digital evidence in a forensically sound manner. Through handson instruction, practical case exercises, and real-world examples, attendees will learn best practices for handling mobile devices, computers, cloud-based data, and network artifacts to strengthen investigations and support successful courtroom prosecutions.
WHAT YOU’LL LEARN:
REGISTER NOW | May 19-21, 2026 Hillsborough County Sheriff’s Office Tampa, Florida
Understand the digital evidence landscape and how data is stored, accessed, and transferred Identify, collect, and preserve digital evidence using legal and forensic best practices Conduct basic forensic acquisition of computers, mobile devices, cloud accounts, and removable media Analyze artifacts including communications, location data, deleted files, images, and app history Recognize common encryption techniques and investigative workarounds Apply search and seizure considerations to digital devices Prepare clear reports and present digital evidence effectively in testimony Collaborate with cyber units, prosecutors, and forensic labs for case success
EARLY BIRD SPECIALS
Planning to join us this August for training, connection, and a little bit of fun? Take advantage of these registration specials: IHIA Member Rate (Early Bird): $550 Available through April 30, 2026. Group Rate Special: Buy 4, Get 1 Free Bringing a team? Email ihia@ihia.org to facilitate this promotion and secure your group discount. REGISTER EARLY, SAVE YOUR SPOT AND WE’LL SEE YOU THIS AUGUST!
DECEMBER 2025 | PAGE 08
UPCOMING REGIONAL TRAINING OPPORTUNITIES
DECEMBER 2025 | PAGE 09
UPCOMING REGIONAL TRAINING OPPORTUNITIES JANUARY 26
APRIL 13
FEBRUARY 23
MAY 19
FEBRUARY 24
MAY 19
MARCH 9
JUNE 8
MARCH 23
AUGUST 9
MASS CASUALTY & ACTIVE SHOOTER INVESTIGATIONS COURSE (GRAND PRAIRIE, TX) UNRAVELING MYSTERIES: ADVANCED COLD CASE TRAINING (SAN ANTONIO, TX) OFFICER INVOLVED CRITICAL INCIDENT INVESTIGATIONS COURSE (HOBART, IN) ADVANCED HOMICIDE & VIOLENT CRIMES INVESTIGATIONS COURSE (TUCSON, AZ) OFFICER INVOLVED CRITICAL INCIDENT INVESTIGATIONS COURSE (TACOMA, WA)
2026 COLD CASE CONFERENCE (SAN ANTONIO, TEXAS) OFFICER INVOLVED CRITICAL INCIDENT INVESTIGATIONS COURSE (DECATUR, GA) DIGITAL FORENSICS FOR HOMICIDE & VIOLENT CRIME INVESTIGATIONS (TAMPA, FL) COLD CASE/NO-BODY HOMICIDE INVESTIGATIONS & PROSECUTION COURSE (GRAND RAPIDS, MI) 2026 IHIA 32ND ANNUAL TRAINING SYMPOSIUM (NEW ORLEANS, LOUISIANA)
APRIL 7
OFFICER INVOLVED CRITICAL INCIDENT INVESTIGATIONS COURSE (AUSTIN, TX)
LEARN MORE ABOUT TRAINING OPPORTUNITIES HERE
REGIONAL MARKETING OPPORTUNITIES As a sponsor or exhibitor, you'll have the opportunity to engage directly with homicide investigators from across the world. Strengthen relationships with both individuals and departments while increasing your company's visibility within the law enforcement community. Please contact Steve Lewis at slewis@ihia.org or 540-898-7898.
SPONSORSHIP RECEPTION $2,000
($2,000 exclusive, sponsorship will be shared with non-competing companies if exclusive is not secured)
SPONSORED COFFEE OR SPONSORED BREAKFAST $500/EACH DAY SPONSOR DAY $500/EACH DAY
Be the exclusive sponsor for a day—network with attendees, join them for lunch, and take a few minutes to introduce yourself and share materials. A great way to connect directly with investigators from around the world.
INVESTIGATIVE QUARTERLY NEWSLETTER ADS
The IHIA e-Newsletter is sent quarterly to 10,000+ readers and posted on our members-only website. Advertising space is available in each issue; an ideal way for companies to connect with IHIA members and showcase their products or services. Trim Size: 519 wide x 200 high (in pixels) Static Only Due Date for Reservations and Materials: Rates: 2026 March Issue | Due February 20th $350 | Premium Position #1 $300 | Premium Position #2 $250 | ALL Other Positions
DECEMBER 2025 | PAGE 10