Decades-old DNA evidence and a commercial genealogy database helped police solve the 1971 murder of Rita Curran, Burlington’s oldest cold case, authorities said Tuesday.
An upstairs neighbor, William DeRoos, strangled the 24-year-old schoolteacher while she was alone in her Brookes Avenue apartment, Burlington acting Police Chief Jon Murad announced at a press conference, flanked by members of Curran’s family. DeRoos, who left Burlington and became a Buddhist monk in Thailand, died in San Francisco in 1986 of a morphine overdose.
If he were alive, Chittenden County State’s Attorney Sarah George said, he’d be charged with aggravated murder. “Today, William DeRoos would be 83,” Murad said. “But there is not a cop in this building who would not happily put handcuffs on him.” DeRoos was linked to DNA from Curran’s torn-open coat and a cigarette butt found next to Curran’s bloodied body.
The identification of DeRoos was a made-for-TV conclusion to a case that has long provoked intrigue, including a theory that Vermont-born serial killer Ted Bundy was behind the murder.
Curran’s family remained involved in the investigation over the decades, and published newspaper notices on the anniversaries of her death.
“We’re so thankful for this day,” her sister, Mary Campbell, said.
Curran and DeRoos did not appear to have known each other, according to an investigative report released Tuesday by detective bureau commander James Trieb. DeRoos had recently moved into the top floor of her apartment house with his then-wife.
Last year, detectives sent DNA samples for analysis by a company using new genetic genealogy methods. The technique taps DNA submitted to commercial ancestry research companies to find potential matches. It helped authorities identify the notorious Golden State Killer in 2019, and has since been popularized through the ABC show, “The Genetic Detective.”
CeCe Moore, the “genetic detective” herself, analyzed the Curran case DNA.
“It only took a few hours to narrow it down to William DeRoos,” she said by video.
Both DeRoos and his wife at the time, Michelle, had been interviewed by investigators after the murder. They’d said they were home that night but hadn’t heard anything unusual. After the analysis linked DeRoos to the scene, Burlington detectives interviewed DeRoos’ ex-wife again in California. She revealed new information: DeRoos had actually left their apartment following an argument on the night of the murder, but later instructed her to lie to police about his whereabouts. The cops might use his criminal record in California, where he’d served time for robbery, to pin the killing on him, DeRoos told her at the time.
Burlington police said they do not intend to charge DeRoos’ ex-wife, who has since changed her name, for misleading investigators in 1971. Det. Cpl. Thomas Chenette said he doesn’t think the woman knew or suspected her then-husband was the killer.
“I think she lied at the time because she was young, she was naive, she was recently married and she was in love,” Chenette said.
Burlington police said the breakthroughs followed their decision in 2019 to revamp how they approached the case. Rather than leave it assigned to a single detective, they convened weekly team meetings. The idea was to treat the case as if the murder had just been committed, Trieb said.
Previous attempts to compare DNA from the cigarette butt to an earlier suspect list and through law enforcement databases of known offenders yielded no matches. Last year, using a set of data from FamilyTreeDNA and GEDmatch that users had granted permission for law enforcement to access, Moore identified five people who shared significant DNA with the crime-scene sample. She quickly traced those individuals to the paternal and maternal sides of DeRoos’ family and located public records confirming his address at the time of the murder.
Police subsequently obtained a DNA sample provided by DeRoos’ living half-brother. The separate analysis identified a 97 percent probability that the suspected killer and DeRoos’ half-brother were half-siblings, Burlington police said.
Rita’s brother, Tom Curran, said Tuesday that their late parents, strong Irish Catholics, had leaned on their faith to process their loss and the lack of an explanation for it that persisted beyond their deaths.
“I don’t think so much about the guy who did this,” he said, “as I do about Rita and my parents, what they went through.”
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