DNA analysis and genetic genealogy helped solve the murder of Rita Currant that occurred more than 50 years ago.
(CNN) --
More than 50 years after Rita Curran's housemate found her strangled to death in her bedroom, Vermont police say they have identified the killer based on DNA found on a cigarette butt and Curran's clothing. .
Investigators identified William DeRoos, a man who lived in the same apartment building as Curran in Burlington, as the person responsible for the events, police in Vermont's most populous city announced Tuesday.
According to authorities, this was made possible by advances in DNA technology and genetic genealogy.
DNA analysis and genetic genealogy helped solve the murder of Rita Currant, which occurred more than 50 years ago.
DeRoos died of a drug overdose in San Francisco in 1986, according to police, so the case is closed.
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On the night of the murder in July 1971, DeRoos, who lived with his wife two floors above Curran's, got into a fight with his spouse and left his apartment to "cool off," according to a Burlington police investigative report.
Curran, 24, was later found dead, badly beaten after apparently putting up "fierce resistance," a detective wrote at the time.
Investigators are now "unanimously certain" that DeRoos was responsible, according to the report released Tuesday.
But when investigators questioned DeRoos and his wife the next morning, the two said they were together all night and hadn't heard or seen anything.
After the police left, DeRoos warned his wife that if they were questioned again, she was not to admit he had left the apartment "or they would go after him" because he had a criminal record, police said during a news conference. this Tuesday.
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The case finally broke through in 2014 when a DNA profile was extracted from a cigarette butt found next to Curran's body, Detective Lt. James Trieb said at the news conference.
Although the profile was submitted to a national criminal DNA database, he said, no matches were found.
That means that person's DNA was probably never entered into the database, possibly because the person did not have a felony conviction.
The building where Rita Curran and William DeRoos, her alleged murderer according to police, lived on different floors in 1971. (Credit: Vermont State Police)
In 2019, Trieb reopened the case and decided to take a new approach.
Instead of having a detective work the cold case alone, the department's usual strategy, he treated the crime as if it had just been committed, bringing in a team of detectives and expert technicians to review and discuss it, his investigative report says.
The team began re-analyzing the evidence, according to Trieb, and decided to analyze the DNA from the cigarette using genetic genealogy, a process that uses DNA databases for genealogical research to identify possible relatives of the person whose DNA does not match. match.
An outside expert in genetic genealogy then concluded that the DNA from the cigarette had strong connections to relatives of DeRoos, both on his paternal and maternal sides.
"It was certain that it was William DeRoos" who left his DNA on the cigarette, the police report says.
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Investigators then found a living half-brother of DeRoos who was willing to provide a DNA sample, and that sample bolstered the conclusion that the DNA in the cigarette belonged to DeRoos, the report says.
Ultimately, investigators found that the DNA left on Curran's torn coat also matched that on the cigarette butt, according to the report.
Investigators again questioned his then-wife, who admitted that she had lied about DeRoos's alibi.
At the press conference, Burlington Police Acting Chief Jon Murad said the day was "filled with mixed emotions."
"Ultimately, those emotions are relief, pride for me (and) this department, but most of all gratitude to a family that has been through an incredible ordeal for more than half a century," he said.
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