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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...
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.
Burlington Police DNA evidence collected from the cigarette butt and dogged investigative work led authorities to the man they say killed Rira Curran within a...