Cigarette butt identifies suspect in 1971 Vermont teacher strangulation

Authorities announced Tuesday that the murder of a Vermont teacher more than 50 years ago was solved when they linked a discarded cigarette butt to a suspect who later became a Buddhist monk.

According to Interim Burlington Police Chief John Murad, 24-year-old Rita Curran was strangled in 1971, and suspect William DeRos died in San Francisco 15 years later.

Murad told reporters that authorities were able to identify DeRus as a suspect through a combination of genetic genealogy, DNA testing, and a recent conversation with the man’s ex-wife.

According to Murad, the murder of this woman cast a stain on our city and destroyed her family. “They’ve been waiting for justice for 50 years.”

Rita Curran died on July 19, 1971.

According to Jim Tribe, head of detective services at the police department, Curran’s roommates found her dead in their apartment on July 19, 1971.

DeRos resided two floors above Curran with his wife, although Trib claimed he was never treated as a suspect at the time. According to Trib, Derus and his wife Michelle gave an alibi in an interview with police the day after the murder, saying that they were at home on the night of the murder and did not hear or see anything.

Authorities investigating the case in 1971 found some evidence, including a cigarette butt, which was crucial to the decision before the case was dropped, Trib said.

According to Trib, Curran’s right-hand man found the object and sent it in for DNA testing in 2014. A male DNA profile was found, but Trib said there were no genetic matches in the country’s law enforcement collection.

To openly look for clues to the identity of the killer, Trib said the police partnered with Parabon NanoLabs, a genetic genealogy company that combines historical research with genetic analysis.

The company’s chief geneticist, CC Moore, told NBC reporters on Tuesday that she was able to eliminate DeRoos from a list of potential suspects in a short period of time using a public database.

After the discovery, detectives re-interrogated DeRos’s then-wife, who reported that they had an argument that evening on July 19, 1971, and that he had fled. According to Trib, he returned after she went to bed and later told her to tell the police that they had been at home all night.

Thomas Chenett, one of the police officers who spoke to her, said Tuesday he doesn’t think Michelle, who married DeRos two weeks before Curran’s death and now goes by a different last name, knew about the murder.

Because she was young, impressionable, recently married and in love, Shenette said, “I think she lied at the time. She didn’t want him to get him into trouble for a crime she didn’t think he committed.

Below is a tweet from the official NBC account confirming the news:

DeRos fled to Thailand to become a Buddhist monk after being murdered, according to Trib, and left his wife behind. He was back in the country by 1974 and was residing in San Francisco when, according to the new wife he married, she told the authorities that he was a guru named Dutch.

The woman claimed he had a violent propensity and once strangled her and stabbed a friend in what Tribe said was an unprovoked assault. Derus was detained in connection with the stabbing, Trib said, but it was not immediately clear whether he was charged in the subsequent incident.

According to authorities, the woman left DeRoos, who died in 1989 from a heroin overdose in a San Francisco hotel.

Cigarette butt identifies suspect in 1971 Vermont teacher strangulation

A sample strongly correlated with DeRos’s DNA was found in additional DNA testing on a jacket Curran wore on the day of the murder, Trib said.

Murad stated that while no charges would be filed, the state’s attorney for the area stated that there was strong evidence that DeRos killed the victim.

Sibling Curran told reporters on Tuesday that he was praying for both his parents and Rita, noting that he “doesn’t think as much about the guy who did this to Rita as I do about Rita and my parents — what they went through.” . ”

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texasstandard.news contributed to this report.

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