Virginia Newspaper Reporter Found Dead Inside Her Burning House: Who Killed Sarah Greenhalgh?

Mar. 15, 2025

Sarah Greenhalgh in 1990.Photo:Douglas Lees

Douglas Lees

• Reporter Sarah Greenhalgh was found dead in her Virginia home in 2012

• Police named a suspect - the “bat-sh– crazy boy” she wrote about in a Facebook post hours before her brutal murder - but have made no arrests in the case

• Her family and friends are still fighting for justice

Vivacious, outspoken and always looking for adventure, longtime reporter and photographer Sarah Greenhalgh loved few things more than digging into a good story.

“She loved being a part of what was going on in the world and telling people about it,” says her mother, Sara Lee Greenhalgh, 95, about her daughter, who traveled to Africa at 12 — alone — to spend a month with a school friend and as an adult drove a red Jeep with the license plate, “Carpe Diem.”

So it was odd when Greenhalgh, 48, failed to show up for her job as a reporter atThe Winchester Starin Winchester, Va., on July 9, 2012, considering how busy she said she was going to be the next morning.

“Going to be sleeping with the window wide open,” she wrote on Facebook at 11 p.m. “Now if bat-sh– crazy boy would just leave me alone … will get some much needed rest because tomorrow is Monday and I got a ton of work to do.”

Tragically, that morning, firefighters found Greenhalgh dead inside her charred rental house in the tight-knit community of Upperville, in the heart of horse country.

At first it seemed like Greenhalgh had died in the fire. But something more sinister was at play.

Greenhalgh’s story is featured in “A Story to Die For,” one of two back-to-back episodes in the season premiere ofPeople Magazine Investigates,on Monday, Oct. 28, on Investigation Discovery at 10/9c and streaming on Max. It will also be featured in this week’s issue of PEOPLE, on newsstands Friday.

Firefighters at Sarah Greenhalgh’s house in 2012.Mark Grandstaff

Mark Grandstaff

Chillingly, her face and torso were covered with debris in the room — a sign to detectives that her killer knew her well.

For more about Sarah Greenhalgh’s unsolved murder,subscribe now to PEOPLEor pick up this week’s issue, on newsstands Friday.

Armed with that key piece of information, “The first, most important part was finding out who she was talking about when she talked about batsh– crazy boy,” says retired Fauquier County Sheriff’s Office Sgt. James Hartman.

That “boy” turned out to be John Kearns, then 50, an auto body worker, who was dating Greenhalgh before her death and who had been seen arguing with her the night before, police said.

Sarah Greenhalgh burned house in 2012.

On the evening of July 8, 2012, Greenhalgh drove to Kearns’ Gaineville apartment to see him. Neighbors heard the two yelling at each other during a heated argument. Another woman was coming over, he told her, according to the affidavit. He didn’t want to “get into trouble” if she saw Greenhalgh there, so he told her to leave.

Upset, at about 10 p.m., Greenhalgh emailed Kearns, saying she had always been there for him. And in what some perceive as a threat, she wrote that “based upon what he had told her, she could ‘go away for 25 to life as an accessory’ due to her knowledge of his admissions of wrongdoing to her,” the affidavit says, without providing further details.

No evidence of arson or the “violent struggle” that Greenhalgh was in before her tragic death was found on his person or in his Jeep, the affidavit says.

Kearns, 62, of Virginia, has never been charged. He declined to comment to PEOPLE.

Still Seeking Justice

More than a decade after the murder of the tenacious reporter her colleagues called a “force of nature,” police still have not made any arrests.

But Greenhalgh’s fellow reporters never gave up on her.

Though they no longer work atThe Star, “we continue to cover the case and try to create accountability to get the case prosecuted,” says Greenhalgh’s former fellow reporter, Melissa Boughton, referencing herself and former fellow reporter Rebecca Layne. “We are pretty dogged on that front.”

Sara Lee Greenhalgh.Investigation Discovery

Investigation Discovery

So dogged that in 2018, afterfighting in court to get the affidavit and court documents unsealed,Boughton drove from North Carolina to Virginiathe day they were unsealed“to make sure they couldn’t be sealed again before they were released,” she says.

Greenhalgh’s father, the late criminal lawyer and Georgetown University Law School associate dean William Greenhalgh, died before she was murdered.

source: people.com