Updated at 4:19 p.m.
Burlington police say they have closed out one of the state’s oldest cold cases, a crime that shook the city more than a half-century ago, pinning the death of 24-year-old Rita Curran on a neighbor whose wife had provided an alibi at the time of the killing.
At a Tuesday morning press conference, authorities said the use of DNA had helped them determine that William DeRoos was the person who murdered Curran. The school teacher was found dead by her roommate at her Brookes Avenue apartment on July 20, 1971. DNA from a discarded cigarette butt found at the scene proved critical in solving the case, authorities said.
The announcement, held at the Burlington Police Department’s North Avenue headquarters, featured prosecutors, a scientist, Curran’s family members and retired U.S. Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt. At the time of Curran’s death, Leahy was Chittenden County’s state’s attorney.
Two siblings of Rita Curran — brother Tom Curran and sister Mary Curran Campbell — spoke at the press conference and praised the work of law enforcement and other organizations in helping to solve the case.
Campbell recalled a meeting she had three years ago with acting Burlington Police Chief Jon Murad, who pledged to get to the bottom of the case.
“We’re happy that the chief’s word came to fruition,” she said, later adding, “a little bit of Irish luck” helped out as well.
Murad said DeRoos, who was then 31, lived upstairs from Curran with his wife at the time of Curran’s murder. Married for only two weeks, DeRoos and his wife, Michelle DeRoos, had a quarrel on the night of the murder and DeRoos “left for a cool-down walk,” Murad said.
Shortly after the killing, DeRoos’ wife gave police an alibi for her husband, according to Murad.
“Five decades later, she gave our detectives a different story: the truth,” Murad said.
Asked if she would face criminal charges, Murad replied, “Lying to the police is not a crime.”
He added, “It is not helpful. It is something that we hope the trust in a police department can prevent and limit.”
Burlington Police Detective Cpl. Thomas Chenette said at the press conference he did not believe that Michelle DeRoos knew of William DeRoos’ involvement in the killing at that time.
“I think she lied at the time because she was young. She was naive. She was newly married. She was in love,” he said, adding that she also knew he had a criminal record.
William DeRoos later traveled to Thailand, where he lived for several years as a Buddhist monk. He died of a drug overdose in San Francisco in 1986, at the age of 46, according to Murad.
“We have cause to believe that he continued to hurt people, to be a dangerous person, although there is no evidence of anything as horrific as his murder of Rita Curran,” Murad said.
The death of the Milton Elementary School teacher, which took place near the University of Vermont campus, was ruled a homicide at the time by the state’s chief medical examiner. She had been beaten, sexually assaulted and strangled, according to police.
“She was a teacher and a singer, and a giver, and she was loved,” Murad said of Curran. “The random violence of her murder left a stain on our community, and it devastated her family.”
The case had remained open and unsolved for 51 years.
News stories at the time of Curran’s death said she had returned from a barbershop quartet practice after 10 p.m. on July 19 and was last seen alive around 11:20 p.m. That’s when her roommates went to a restaurant, leaving the doors unlocked as they usually did, according to initial reporting on the case.
The roommates returned around 12:30 a.m., and after sitting in the living room talking for about an hour, one of them discovered Curran’s body in her bedroom around 1:30 a.m., according to initial police reports, which said she was found with her curlers in her hair.
At the time of her death, Curran had worked part time as a maid at the Colonial Motor Inn in South Burlington, near the Elizabeth Lund Home for Unwed Mothers, where the notorious serial killer Ted Bundy was born.
That connection had many thinking Bundy should be considered a suspect, although he lived on the West Coast at the time. Curran’s sister wrote a letter to Bundy before he was executed in 1989 and received a letter back from the FBI saying he did not deny it or acknowledge it.
DNA from the cigarette butt collected at the crime scene more than 50 years ago yielded a DNA profile a few years ago, but it didn’t match any DNA profiles in law enforcement databases, according to James Trieb, a lieutenant for the Burlington Police.
Burlington police, with the help of CeCe Moore, chief genetic genealogist at Parabon NanoLabs, Inc., were able to use “open source” genealogical websites to help trace the DNA profile from the cigarette butt to DeRoos, Trieb said.
“This case is a fantastic illustration of the power of investigative genetic genealogy to narrow down the pool of suspects to just one person,” said Moore, who spoke at the press conference by video. “This case was over 50 years old and it only took a few hours to narrow it down to William DeRoos.”
But, Moore said, she was a bit confused by the finding because she wasn’t aware of DeRoos’ Vermont connection at that time. Then she discovered that a public marriage license stated that he had been married in Burlington two weeks before the murder.
“Even more shocking was his address that was documented was the same building as Curran,” she said. “This was really an incredible find and it tied him very solidly to the place of the crime at the time of the crime.”
Also, police said they discovered through DNA Labs International that Curran’s housecoat from the night of the murder also had traces of DeRoos’ DNA.
Murad said while no criminal charges could be filed against DeRoos since he died, the police did present paperwork for Chittenden County State’s Attorney Sarah George to review and she found probable cause for the offense of aggravated first-degree murder.
George said following the press conference that she believed that, had DeRoos been alive and charged, she could have gained a conviction.
“It really impressed me how much they did at the time considering how much they knew,” she said of the initial investigators on the case.
Leahy, the Chittenden County state’s attorney at the time of Curran’s death, said following the press conference that he always hoped the crime would be solved at some point.
“I must admit after 20 and 30, 40 years, I figured it never would,” he said.
Correction: An earlier version of this story inaccurately described the amount of time William DeRoos spent in Thailand.
