CNN
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Greater than 50 years after Rita Curran’s roommate discovered her strangled to demise in her room, police in Vermont say they’ve recognized the killer utilizing DNA discovered on a cigarette butt and Curran’s clothes.
Investigators recognized William DeRoos, a person who lived in Curran’s Burlington condo constructing, because the particular person accountable with the assistance of advances in DNA expertise and genetic family tree, police in Vermont’s most populous metropolis introduced Tuesday.
DeRoos died of a drug overdose in San Francisco in 1986, police stated. The case is now closed.
On the evening of the July 1971 killing, DeRoos, who lived along with his spouse two flooring above Curran, had a combat along with his partner and left their condo to “settle down,” in accordance with a Burlington police investigation report.
Curran, 24, was later discovered lifeless, severely crushed after apparently having put up a “vicious battle,” a detective wrote on the time. Investigators at the moment are “unanimously sure” DeRoos was accountable, the report launched Tuesday says.
However when investigators questioned DeRoos and his spouse the following morning, the couple stated they’d been collectively all evening and didn’t hear or see something. After police left, DeRoos advised his spouse in the event that they have been questioned once more, she mustn’t admit that he had left the condo “or they’d go after him” as a result of he had a legal historical past, police stated throughout a information convention Tuesday.
A break within the case lastly got here in 2014 when a DNA profile was extracted from a cigarette butt that had been discovered subsequent to Curran’s physique, Detective Lt. James Trieb stated on the information convention. Although the profile was submitted to a nationwide legal database for DNA, he stated, no matches have been made. That meant the particular person with that DNA seemingly by no means had genetic materials entered into the database, presumably as a result of the particular person didn’t have a felony conviction.
In 2019, Trieb reopened the case and determined to take a brand new method.
As an alternative of getting a single detective work the chilly case alone – the division’s standard technique – he handled the crime as if it had simply been dedicated, bringing in a staff of detectives and skilled technicians to assessment and focus on it, his investigation report says.
The staff started retesting proof, Trieb stated, and determined to investigate the cigarette DNA utilizing genetic family tree – a course of that makes use of DNA databases for family tree analysis to determine doable relations of the particular person whose DNA is unmatched.
An outdoor genetic family tree skilled then concluded that the cigarette DNA had sturdy connections to relations of DeRoos, each on the paternal and maternal sides.
“She was sure that it was William DeRoos” who put his DNA on the cigarette, the police report says.
Investigators then discovered a residing half-brother of DeRoos who was prepared to offer a DNA pattern, and that pattern bolstered the conclusion that the cigarette DNA belonged to DeRoos, the report says.
Lastly, investigators discovered that DNA left on Curran’s ripped home coat additionally matched the DNA on the cigarette butt, the report reads. Investigators re-interviewed his then-wife, who admitted that she had lied about DeRoos’ alibi.
On the information convention, appearing Burlington Police Chief Jon Murad stated the day was “crammed with combined feelings.”
“In the end, these feelings are ones of reduction, of satisfaction for me (and) for this division, however largely of gratitude to a household that has been via an unbelievable ordeal for greater than half a century,” he stated.
