Sara J. Stanley, a 38-year-old White woman from Mineral, Virginia, was killed on July 31, 2022, after a night that turned from uneasy dread into sudden violence on West 8th Street. Deputies were called to the 300 block for reports of gunfire, and the scene they stepped into felt fractured—neighbors hearing shots, vehicles tearing away at speed, and blood left behind where someone had fallen.
A set of keys with a lanyard bearing Stanley’s name was found, shell casings were recovered, and a backpack stained with blood sat among signs of a struggle. A K-9 tracked the scent trail to an unused tool shed on the property, where Stanley’s body was discovered inside.
In the days leading up to the shooting, the relationship between Stanley and Chad Allen Grooms had deteriorated into threats and fear, fueled by drugs and control. According to later court findings, Grooms had pushed Stanley into delivering crack cocaine for him, and when the transaction went wrong—drugs used up before payment, with some taken from Grooms’s own supply—his anger sharpened into something colder. He turned to a lifelong friend, Richard Buckner, to obtain a 9-millimeter handgun for him, a workaround because Grooms, as a convicted felon, could not legally buy one.
The tension erupted on July 29, 2022. Grooms contacted Stanley over Facebook Messenger, then arrived at her home and smashed a window. He shouted demands for his drugs, forced his way inside, and struck her hard enough to cut her chin before another person intervened. The next day, Stanley’s fear was no longer private—she asked a friend to come over because she didn’t want to be alone, spoke about kicking Grooms out, and left his belongings out on the porch as if drawing a line she hoped would hold.
That night, after Stanley was dropped off at home, a sound like a gunshot—or a car backfiring—split the air. Messages went unanswered. Earlier that evening, court testimony later revealed, Grooms had told Buckner he intended to kill Stanley over the stolen drugs. Buckner and Grooms’s brother, Stacy, waited outside as Grooms went into the house. Stanley ran out screaming, and Grooms shot her several times at close range. One of the shots killed her instantly.
In the moments after, the focus shifted from rage to concealment. Grooms told Buckner and Stacy they had to get rid of the body, and the three men carried Stanley to the nearby shed and left her there, tucked out of sight—until the neighbor’s 911 call brought police and the dog that led them straight to the outbuilding. While the community learned only that a woman had been killed and found in a structure on the property, the case continued to build quietly in the background.
After the killing, Grooms tried to outrun both suspicion and evidence. Investigators later described how he repeatedly searched the internet for information about himself, Stanley’s death, and the police investigation, changed his phone number multiple times, and downloaded a police-scanner app. He also looked up ways to erase traces, including researching black spray paint and how much it would take to cover a champagne-colored 2000 Buick Regal—then painting the car black. He fled the state, traveling to Maryland, but was located and arrested in Baltimore and brought back to Virginia.
Even from jail, the effort to make things disappear continued. Recorded calls captured Grooms pressing his brother to get rid of the Buick. Stacy and Buckner reached out to a mechanic and tow-truck driver, Corey Houchens, who agreed to scrap the vehicle, with Buckner signing over the title. When police first questioned Buckner months later, he denied any role and gave an alibi, then later recanted it. He said he was afraid the Grooms brothers would kill him if he told the truth, but he eventually disclosed what he knew—including how the body had been hidden in the shed—details investigators said were corroborated by evidence recovered from Grooms’s phone.
Grooms was indicted on a cluster of felony charges tied to the shooting and its aftermath: first-degree murder, use of a firearm in the commission of murder, possession of a firearm by a convicted felon, concealing a dead body, and conspiracy charges related to concealment and the destruction of evidence, along with a felony destruction-of-evidence charge. At a March 2024 jury trial in Louisa County Circuit Court, Stanley’s friends and Buckner testified to the escalating fear, the threats, and what happened that night. The jury convicted Grooms on all counts, and the court imposed a sentence of life in prison plus additional years, with part of that time suspended.
Grooms appealed, arguing the evidence was insufficient and challenging certain testimony and prior-acts evidence admitted at trial. In a December 30, 2025 decision, the Court of Appeals of Virginia affirmed the convictions and left the life sentence intact, dismissing his challenge to the felony destruction-of-evidence conviction on procedural grounds while otherwise rejecting his claims of trial error.
