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A discarded cigarette discovered close to the physique of a 24-year-old Vermont faculty trainer in her house practically 52 years in the past helped lead investigators to an upstairs neighbor who they are saying strangled her after having a struggle along with his spouse, police stated Tuesday.
Burlington Police stated DNA proof collected from the cigarette butt and dogged investigative work led authorities to the person they are saying killed Rita Curran inside a 70-minute window on a July evening in 1971.
The suspect, recognized as William DeRoos, who was 31 on the time, had left his house that evening for “a quiet down stroll.” After he returned he instructed his spouse of two weeks to not say that he had been out.
Because the investigation was renewed in 2019, detectives re-interviewed DeRoos’ former spouse, and he or she instructed them he had left their house for a short interval inside a window of time when Curran’s roommates have been out of her Burlington house.
“We’re all assured that William DeRoos is answerable for the aggravated homicide of Rita Curran, however as a result of he died in a lodge room of a drug overdose he is not going to be held accountable for his actions, however this case will likely be closed,” Burlington Police Detective Lt. James Trieb, the commander of the Detective Companies Bureau, stated throughout a Tuesday morning information convention.
After Curran’s dying DeRoos, who was recognized to some as a guru, moved to Thailand and have become a monk, however he later returned to the US. In 1986 DeRoos died of a drug overdose in San Francisco, police stated.
Curran’s mother and father died with out studying who had killed their daughter, however the sufferer’s brother and sister attended the occasion held at Burlington police headquarters.
“I do not suppose a lot in regards to the man who did this as I do about Rita, my mother and father and what they went by,” Curran’s brother Tom stated throughout the occasion. “I pray to Rita and I pray to my mother and father.”
Within the early morning hours of July 20, 1971, Burlington police have been referred to as to the Brooks Avenue house after Curran’s roommate arrived residence to search out her physique of their shared bed room.
Police say Curran resisted fiercely, however she was strangled. The homicide shook Burlington.
The case remained open and investigators by no means let it go, however in 2019, Trieb and a workforce of detectives, officers, technicians and others started working the case as if it had simply occurred.
A key piece of proof was a cigarette butt that had been discovered close to Curran’s physique. In 2014, earlier investigators had despatched the butt and different proof off for DNA evaluation. The check did compile a DNA profile of whoever had smoked the cigarette, nevertheless it didn’t match any samples in DNA databases compiled by legislation enforcement.
The detectives who picked up the case in 2019 contracted with a DNA testing firm and the samples have been in contrast with genetic materials submitted to business DNA testing firms by members of the general public. Final August, Burlington detectives have been instructed the pattern, which had been traced by family members on either side of DeRoos’s household, was pointing at DeRoos, regardless that he had no DNA profile on document.
Detectives then decided DeRoos and his spouse Michelle had been residing upstairs on the time of Curran’s dying. That they had spoken with investigators after Curran’s dying, however on the time they stated that they had not seen or heard something.
DeRoos and his spouse, who not makes use of the identify DeRoos, left Vermont shortly after Curran’s dying. Their marriage ended after DeRoos went to Thailand. DeRoos married once more after transferring again to the US.
In a current interview, DeRoos’s ex-wife, who lived with him in Burlington and now lives in Eugene, Oregon, instructed investigators she had lied about her husband leaving their house that evening. Burlington detectives later interviewed a subsequent spouse who instructed them DeRoos had a penchant for sudden outbursts of violence.
Detective Thomas Chennette, who interviewed DeRoos’s first ex-wife, stated Tuesday he did not consider she knew he had killed Curran, however was defending him as a result of he had a felony document.
“I feel she lied on the time as a result of she was younger. She was naive. She was newly married. She was in love,” Chennette stated.
Now-retired U.S. Sen. Patrick Leahy, who was the Chittenden County State’s Lawyer when Curran was killed and went to the crime scene that evening, attended the Tuesday occasion. Requested if he felt the case would ever be solved, he stated that he had hoped it could.
“I need to admit after 20 and 30, 40 years I figured it by no means would. … It was a horrible factor,” he stated.
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