Nearly 40 years after a woman was found dead on the side of a road in Douglas County, investigators have identified a suspect: one of Colorado’s “most prolific serial killers.”

A passing driver found Rhonda Marie Fischer’s body down an embankment in the 3500 block of South Perry Park Road, south of Sedalia in rural Douglas County, on April 1, 1987, according to the sheriff’s office .

Fischer, who was 31 at the time of her death, had been sexually assaulted and strangled, investigators said.

Back then, Douglas County detectives investigated multiple acquaintances with whom Fischer had been staying in the weeks leading up to her death and several “serial offenders” active in the Denver area, but no arrests were made, Sheriff Darren Weekly said in a Tuesday news conference .

Now, 38

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