BURLINGTON, Vt. — A discarded cigarette that was collected during an initial murder investigation helped law enforcement solve the murder of a school teacher in Burlington, Vermont, 51 years later.
Burlington Police Department identified the suspect as William DeRoos who was 31 years old at the time of the murder of school teacher Rita Curran, The Associated Press reported.
Curran was found strangled to death by her roommate in their shared bedroom, the AP reported.
Police named DeRoos the suspect thanks to evidence officers collected during the initial investigation in July 1971, including a cigarette butt, according to the AP.
The cigarette butt was among the evidence sent off for DNA analysis in 2014, according to the AP. The analysis was able to compile a DNA profile of whoever smoked the cigarette but at the time, it did not match any samples in any databases.
Police in a news conference on Tuesday said that DeRoos had left his apartment that night to take a walk after an argument with his wife, according to the AP. When he went back, he told her to not tell anyone that he had left. DeRoos’ apartment was in the same complex as Curran’s.
Authorities believed that DeRoos had killed Curran within a 70-minute window, the AP reported.
Investigators reopened the cold case in 2019, interviewing DeRoos’ now-former wife in the process. The AP said that she told detectives that he left their apartment for a short time.
Following Curran’s murder, DeRoos moved to Thailand, and became a monk, according to the AP. He eventually returned to the United States and died of a drug overdose in San Francisco in 1986.
Curran’s parents both died without knowing what happened to her, according to the AP.