Officials say a discarded cigarette found near the body of a 24-year-old Vermont school teacher nearly 52 years ago helped lead investigators to an upstairs neighbor who they say strangled her in her apartment.
A 52-year-old cold case in Vermont has been solved thanks to DNA retrieved from a discarded cigarette butt left next to the body of the victim, police said.
Officials say a discarded cigarette found near the body of a 24-year-old Vermont school teacher nearly 52 years ago helped lead investigators to an upstairs neighbor who they say strangled her in her apartment. Burlington Police said Tuesday that DNA evidence and dogged investigative work led them to William DeRoos, the man they say killed Rira Curran in July 1971. DeRoos, who was 31 at the time, lived two floors above Curran in a Burlington apartment building. DeRoos died in 1986 of a drug overdose in San Francisco. Burlington Police Detective Lt. James Trieb, the commander of the Detective Services Bureau, says the case will be closed.
Vermont police have named a suspect in the 1971 cold case murder of Rita Curran, a 24-year-old teacher. William DeRoos fled to Thailand after the crime and became a monk.
The case remained open and investigators never let it go, but in 2019, a team of detectives, officers, technicians and others began working the 1971 case as though it had just happened.