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It was around 7.30 p.m. on the night of July 19, 1971, and Paul Robinson was waiting outside his girlfriend Carrie Duane's workplace to pick her up after her shift. It was a Monday night, but still early, so after stopping back into their apartment to change clothes, they headed off to the quirky Harbor Hideaway restaurant in Burlington to grab a bite to eat.
Around 11:15 p.m., Paul and Carrie were still enjoying themselves at the bar and decided to invite their other roommates, Rita Curran and Beverly Lanphur, out for a drink. Paul called back to their apartment and Beverly picked up. Rita was asleep in the bedroom that she and Beverly shared, so Beverly went off to meet her two other roommates for a nightcap without Rita. By 12:30 a.m., Paul was ready to call it a night, so he and Carrie paid their tab and headed for home.
Beverly decided to linger a bit longer at the bar. When Paul and Carrie got back to their apartment, they noticed that Rita's door was open just a bit, but they didn't hear their roommate up and about. They stayed up for a while longer waiting for Beverly to get home and then the three of them sat in the living room chatting before calling it a night. Carrie and Paul went to their bedroom while Beverly headed to the room she shared with Rita.
Before Carrie and Paul could even settle into bed, they heard Beverly say from across the hall, something is wrong with Rita. Those words began a homicide investigation that would become Vermont's oldest and coldest case until 2023, when a renewed investigation and advancements in DNA technology finally closed the case of 24-year-old Rita Curran.
I'm Kylie Lowe, and this is part one of Rita Curran's story on Dark Down East. 24-year-old Rita Curran was born in Brooklyn, New York to her parents Thomas and Mary Curran on June 21st, 1947. She was one of three children, her brother and sister also named Thomas and Mary. The Curran family later moved to Burlington, where Rita attended Mount St. Mary's Academy, a private Catholic girls' school.
According to the Vermont Standard, the Currans were a well-known family. Rita's father worked at the IBM facility in Burlington, and he and his wife owned a diner and rental cabins on Arrowhead Mountain Lake. After earning her degree at Trinity College in 1969, she became a second-grade teacher at Milton Elementary School. During the summertime, though, Rita took classes at the University of Vermont and worked part-time as a chambermaid at the Colonial Motor Inn.
Rita moved out of her parents' house and into her first apartment soon after her 24th birthday in 1971. She lived at home her entire life up until that point. She had started perusing the classified ads in the Burlington Free Press newspaper, and she found an ad looking for a temporary roommate for the summer.
Rita's sister Mary told ABC 22 in 2021 that the apartment seemed to be a good fit. Rita would be sharing a room with another girl, and a third woman had the second bedroom in the apartment.
Though media sources at the time say those were the only three people who lived in the apartment, investigative documents state that there was a man also living in the unit who shared the second bedroom with one of the girls. He and Carrie were described as a couple in a 2023 supplementary report by the Burlington Police Department.
Bill Porter reported for the Rutland Daily Herald in 1971 that Rita didn't know her roommates prior to moving in with them, and she hadn't become close friends with them in the short few weeks she lived there. She was typically a shy person, and still spent most of her free time with her family and hometown friends back in Milton, about 25 minutes away.
When she wasn't working or studying, Rita loved singing and was part of several choirs and quartets throughout the years. Rita was part of a barbershop quartet in Burlington, and she had practiced with that group earlier in the night on July 19, 1971. After practice, she went home, put her hair up in curlers and changed into her pajamas and housecoat, ready to settle into bed.
Sometime after she fell asleep, after her roommate Beverly left to join the others at a bar, Rita Curran was attacked. The Burlington Fire Department's ambulance crew was the first to respond to the call at 17 Brooks Avenue in Burlington, along with Officer Richard Garrow of the Burlington Police Department.
The two ambulance crew members told the officer that the woman inside was deceased. Garrow called for backup. It was about to be a long night.
In Garrow's report, he stated that he found the body of 24-year-old Rita Curran nude and lying on her back with her clothes between her legs. Her face was swollen and bloodied. He quickly secured the room and awaited the arrival of detectives who would process the scene. He'd stand guard at the room for hours as three detectives from the Burlington Police Department began the initial investigation.
Numerous items in Rita and Beverly's room were collected and bagged as evidence, including hairs clutched in Rita's hands, fingernail scrapings, Rita's torn nightgown and housecoat, the bedsheets and bedspread, and hair curlers, among other items found at the scene that had hair, blood, and biological matter on them.
As detectives and the medical examiner were analyzing the scene and marking the outline of Rita's body on the floor, they found a cigarette butt laying under Rita's elbow. It was a Lark charcoal filter tip cigarette. It looked as if the cigarette had burned out there at the scene and hadn't been crushed, stomped, or butted out in any way.
Detectives noted that ash from the cigarette was found on the floor between her body and right arm. That cigarette butt was collected and bagged as evidence. It was obvious to the detectives that whatever happened to Rita, whoever did this to her was not met without a fight. Rita's hair curlers, which she was known to wear to bed, were strewn about the room. The curtains had been torn from the rods and her bed was pushed away from the wall.
Though petite and just over 100 pounds, Rita challenged her attacker and fought for her life. The area surrounding the house was examined for any clues as to where the perpetrator entered and if by force. The driveway, which had a sandy section, didn't show any noticeable footprints. According to the report by Detective Richard Beaulieu, it appeared that no one had walked on that section of the driveway since the rainstorm the day prior.
The grass in the yard, though long and wet from the rain, didn't show any tracks or trampled areas where someone might have stepped. While they were surveying the outside of the building, detectives found that a window to the apartment near the front door was unlocked, but it was pretty difficult to open.
Detectives also inspected what they called a shed. Based on the description of its placement and a photo I found in a 1971 newspaper clipping, I don't think that word shed is referring to a freestanding structure on the property, but rather an enclosed vestibule off the back door of the house. Inside this shed area was a trash can, tipped over and the contents strewn over the floor.
There was another empty trash can in the shed that was bent in the middle. One detective noted that it looked like someone had stepped on it. Detective Lieutenant Richard Beaulieu noted the trash cans in his report, though he also wrote that the value of the trash cans as it related to the investigation was unknown at the time. As Beaulieu turned back to the house, he could see that the door between the kitchen and the shed had blood on it in two places.
The roommates went with the detectives back to police headquarters to be interviewed and provide signed statements about the events of that night. Their stories were the same as the preliminary statements they'd given to the first officer on the scene. One of the roommates, Paul, returned to the apartment building around 6.45 in the morning after giving his statement. He wanted to talk to the detectives still on the scene.
Detectives used the opportunity to ask Paul a few more questions, particularly about the trash cans in the shed area. Paul told them that he'd actually used one of the trash cans to prop open the storm door of their apartment the night before. Detectives asked him why he would do that, why leave the door propped open, and he said he didn't know why and gave no reason for it.
But Paul went on to explain that their apartment was never locked, not the front or back doors. A chain lock was dangling off the front door. Detectives asked Paul why the lock was broken, and he said it had been that way for a while. They never used it. Lieutenant Beaulieu had a few more questions for Paul. He wanted to know who in the apartment was a smoker and what brand of cigarettes they smoked.
Paul told the detectives that as far as he knew, Rita and her roommate Beverly didn't smoke. Paul and Carrie, however, did smoke, usually Salem, Benson & Hedges, and occasionally Winston's. The detective doubled down on the cigarette topic, wanting Paul to be certain that Rita and Beverly didn't smoke.
Paul was sure of it. He had never seen either of the girls smoking a cigarette. Based on the numerous reports from the multiple officers, detectives, and technicians at the scene, it seems they made careful and thorough work of processing the bedroom and collecting evidence. A detective collected a soil sample from the basement to compare it to dirt found in Rita's room. They removed a section of the door that contained a large spot of blood, as well as a section of linoleum flooring.
The floor in the bedroom where Rita was found was processed for latent fingerprints. The FBI was even brought into the investigation early on to assist in processing all the evidence.
Local investigators hoped thorough analysis and testing of that evidence would tell them something, point them in the right direction of the suspect responsible for one of the most horrific scenes they'd encountered in their careers. Witnesses, too, would be crucial in learning more about what happened inside that bedroom. Officer Garrow was released from his guard duties at the bedroom door around 7 a.m. on July 20th and then began conducting a canvas of the other units in the building.
He stated in his report that no one answered the door of the second floor unit. However, the third floor tenants were home and spoke briefly to the officer. William DeRues and his wife, Michelle DeRues, were the third floor tenants. They told Officer Garrow that they didn't hear anything unusual overnight. Mrs. DeRues said she had been awake at 1 a.m. and assured the officer that she didn't hear or notice anything of concern.
Meanwhile, chief medical examiner Lawrence Harris performed Rita Curran's autopsy. Dr. Harris found that Rita Curran's cause of death was asphyxia by manual strangulation. She'd been severely beaten and sexually assaulted. The manner of death was labeled a homicide.
Given the timeline of Rita's roommates leaving and returning to the house, it was estimated that she was killed between 11.20 p.m. on July 19th and 12.30 a.m. on July 20th, a mere 70-minute window. As detectives worked to develop a victimology for Rita Curran, that narrow time frame would become an important consideration in the investigation.
Proximity to the crime scene was considered a key part of Rita Curran's victimology. And so, detectives returned to the apartment building and immediate neighborhood several times to speak with residents about what they may have seen or heard on the night of July 19th. Three days after the homicide, a Vermont state trooper knocked on the second and third floor apartment doors of Rita's building again.
The second floor tenants were home this time, but the four women weren't able to provide any information of value to the investigation. William DeRues and his wife Michelle were home on the third floor as the officer knocked on their door for a second time, asking for any details about the night Rita was killed just two floors below them. But again, the husband and wife said they were both home and they didn't hear or see anything. The investigation continued around the clock.
The Burlington Police Department dedicated as much manpower as possible to find the person responsible for the attack. The community was reeling at the viciousness and apparent randomness of it all. Brooks Avenue was an otherwise quiet area adjacent to the UVM campus, but the illusion of safety in Burlington dissipated with Rita's murder. Nerves were set on edge.
The Bennington Banner reported that police were fielding a wave of reports of prowlers and peeping toms, all that had occurred in the weeks leading up to Rita's murder, but had initially gone unreported. Stuart Perry reported for the Burlington Free Press that female tenants in an apartment on Loomis Street, just one block from Brooks Avenue, reported receiving strange phone calls in the early hours of the morning that summer.
When they answered, it was just silence, and then the caller hung up. Those same women on Loomis Street caught a man trying to open their front door late one night. When one of the women checked to see who was there, cracking the door as far as the chain lock would allow, the man took off, jumping over a porch railing and running through the backyard to get away. It was unclear at the time if these incidents had anything to do with Rita's murder.
Over a hundred people were interrogated as part of the initial investigation, at least three of them submitting to polygraph tests as investigators developed a suspect list. The list had over a dozen names on it in 1971. In a 2023 supplemental report on the case by Detective Lieutenant Trebe, he explains that this list was compiled based on circumstantial facts such as suspicious behavior, close proximity to the crime scene, tips, and other information.
but those suspects did not develop into any real progress in the case.
Rita Curran was laid to rest on Friday, July 24, 1971, at St. Anne's Cemetery following a Catholic funeral and mass at St. Anne's Church in her hometown of Milton, Vermont. Eric Loring reported for the Burlington Free Press that nearly 300 people attended the service, including several plainclothes police officers.
The date of her funeral was also the day that state's attorney Patrick Leahy, now U.S. Senator Leahy, announced a blackout on any further news relating to Rita Curran's murder. Unless new information was cleared through his office or Burlington Chief of Detectives Richard Beaulieu, it wouldn't be released to the public. Quote,
We have developed some new and encouraging leads, but I can't say any more than that. It will be handled in secrecy, end quote. The blackout was a move that disappointed Rita's family for some time. Her sister Mary told ABC 22 in 2021, quote, I don't know why there was a blackout, but it was disappointing as a family to not have her in the news every day, end quote.
With that media blackout, little was reported to the public or even the family throughout the years. The media attention that did come in the year after Rita's killing was empty of any real details. A headline in the Burlington Free Press stated, Nothing new in murder case. Other articles grasped at any nebulous story starters that floated their way.
Lieutenant Beaulieu confirmed in that same publication in August of 1971 that they were in touch with authorities in Yarmouth, Massachusetts, who had apprehended a drifter named Charles Manning, who had admitted to killing 19 women. But it was unknown if Manning had been in Burlington around the time of Rita's murder.
A sexual assault of a woman living less than a mile away from Brooks Avenue in the months following Rita's death was investigated for any connection to her case, but police found no evidence the same perpetrator was responsible. An attack of another UVM student while she slept in her bed was also assessed for connections to Rita's murder. But again, police found none. The year of 1971 would come to a close without answers for Rita Curran and her family.
A $3,000 secret witness reward was announced in the Burlington Free Press, and several more reminders of that reward were printed in 1972. But the one-year anniversary of Rita Curran's murder would come and go without any public progress in the case. In fact, over 50 anniversaries of her death would come and go.
Rita's father Thomas passed away in 1991 and her mother in 2002, neither knowing who stole their daughter's life. Though her siblings and other family members stayed hopeful decade after decade, staying what they called current strong for one another and for Rita, by year 50 in 2021, that hope had all but expired.
On the 50th anniversary of Rita's murder, her siblings gave a statement to reporter Liz Murray of the Burlington Free Press. They said, quote, "'Fifty years is a long time to grieve, a long time to hope. The 50-year mark confirms that a resolution in our lifetime to Rita's murder is not going to happen. As a family, in our prayers, we will never give up our deepest private hope.'"
Rita's story has a home in our family legacy forever. We recognize that over time, memories fade, evidence ages, the perpetrator may be dead. Interest in this story wanes. For 50 years, the Burlington Police Department has worked every lead they have ever received and have been very compassionate to our family. We know Rita's death did not happen in a vacuum.
Somebody somewhere knows what happened that night on July 19th, 1971, and they will take that information to their grave. May God have mercy on their soul. End quote. To echo Rita's family, 50 years is a long time.
The detectives, the state's attorney, all investigators who worked the case in the 70s had either moved on or passed away. And memories of witnesses had undoubtedly faded in the half century since Rita Curran's life was so brutally ended. But a crucial part of the case did not fade.
The evidence, so meticulously collected and carefully stored all those years, sat waiting until a day that modern scientific methods could reveal who had been in Rita's room that night. In 2019, the Burlington Police Department's Detective Service Bureau reactivated the unsolved cold case of Rita Curran. Detective Bureau Commander Lieutenant J.T. Trebe was prepared to take a new approach for the longstanding homicide case.
As he states in his 2023 supplemental report, he would treat the crime like it had just been committed. Detective Trebe pored over the case files, reviewed the existing evidence, studied the victimology, and along with his team, which included all detectives and both ID techs, established a new path forward for Rita Curran's case, with over 50 years in forensic science advancements to help.
The primary focus of the renewed investigation would be the forensic evidence, as minimal testing had been conducted with it throughout the years. The team was hopeful that new DNA testing and genealogy research would yield a suspect in this case and give Rita Curran's surviving family, whose hope had all but run out, a real chance at answers in their lifetime.
The renewed investigation began with surveying what had already been done in the preceding years. As is revealed in Trebe's report, the case wasn't entirely inactive. In 2014, Detective Jeff Beerworth was working Rita Curran's case and he had identified pieces of evidence that could potentially yield DNA information that would have previously been difficult or impossible to extract in earlier decades.
Detective Beerworth had to look outside of the state of Vermont for the advanced DNA extraction and testing necessary to develop a profile from that evidence. On September 19th, 2014, he FedExed the cigarette butt, nail scrapings, and slides containing vaginal swabs to the New York City office of the chief medical examiner for DNA testing. The Lark cigarette butt found underneath Rita's right elbow was of particular interest.
Two of Rita's roommates smoked, but not that brand, so it was likely that someone other than the residents of the household had smoked that cigarette and dropped it or somehow left it in the center of the crime scene, hopefully with extractable DNA still on it. And the New York City OCME was able to obtain a male DNA profile.
The male profile pulled from the Lark cigarette butt was enough to compare to a number of suspects on the list through either direct comparison, CODIS exclusion, or familial comparison. At least 13 suspects were excluded by comparison to the DNA on the cigarette butt. The DNA from the cigarette butt was also compared to the first responders, officers, and detectives who were on the scene, as well as Rita's roommate, Paul.
all were excluded. The DNA profile from the cigarette butt was entered into CODIS, the Combined DNA Index System, but at the time there was no match, meaning that the potential suspect had never been convicted of a felony before or since Rita was murdered, or that his profile had not been entered into the database as of 2014.
In addition to the cigarette butt found at the scene and other evidence tested by the NYC OCME, there were other items of evidence that could potentially provide DNA evidence in the case, like Rita's clothing and bedding, as well as sections of wood pulled from the doors that had blood on them. Developing DNA profiles from additional items would be costly, and so detectives were careful to choose items that were more likely to produce usable DNA profiles than others.
They ultimately decided to send the drawstrings of Rita's housecoat and the housecoat itself, a piece of linoleum flooring with a blood smear, underwear, two pieces of wood with blood on them, and part of Rita's nightgown.
The evidence was hand-delivered to a lab in Florida that worked with new DNA extraction techniques like MVAC. As the abbreviated name hints, the simplified description of MVAC is basically a vacuum that extracts DNA.
The cigarette butt remained particularly important to the detectives as it had already provided a usable DNA profile, but with no hit in CODIS, they decided to move on to other methods of familial comparison for that evidence.
It's a technique that has received tons of attention in recent years, both positive and critical, and has been responsible for identifying suspects in several high-profile cases across the country. According to the Department of Justice Global Justice Information Sharing Initiative, familial DNA searching can be utilized when a routine search of a DNA database reveals that no qualifying person's profile matches that of the unknown perpetrator.
With that same DNA profile, it is possible to conduct an independent search to identify potential relatives of the alleged perpetrator. The Department of Justice also mentions the privacy issues associated with this type of DNA analysis.
but notes that the familial search results are only an investigative tool to develop leads. Direct from the DOJ's paper titled An Introduction to Familial DNA Searching, it says, a familial DNA search result is only a lead that is then followed up and investigated until a DNA sample of the suspect is obtained and tested. It is those results, those of the suspect, that are generally used in court.
not the familial DNA match. Detective Trebe and his team researched several labs and ultimately decided to contract with Parabon Nanolabs in Virginia to sequence the DNA from the cigarette butt.
In 2022, the DNA was sent to Parabon Nanolabs for sequencing, and that information was submitted to FamilyTreeDNA and GEDmatch. FamilyTreeDNA is a consumer genetic genealogy product that allows you to swab your cheek and submit your collection kit for analysis to learn more about your genealogy and ancestors.
On FamilyTreeDNA's website, they assure customers that privacy is of utmost importance. Quote, You choose how your genetic information is used and shared with others. We do not share your name or other common identifying information linked to your genetic data with third parties, except as legally required to comply with a valid subpoena or a court order or with your explicit consent. End quote.
GEDmatch is a free genetic genealogy research tool where you can upload your results from a number of genetic genealogy sites like 23andMe, Ancestry, FamilyTreeDNA, and more to conduct deeper family tree research. It's also, as in the case of Rita Curran, a tool for law enforcement to conduct their own familial DNA analysis.
Users who select "Public Optin" on GEDmatch will have their DNA kit compared with kits submitted by law enforcement to identify perpetrators of violent crimes. Parabon Nanolab's chief genetic genealogist, CeCe Moore, performed the genealogy research for Rita's case. The suspect list developed over the last five decades of the investigation was shared with CeCe as she began her analysis.
Several new names were added to that list before it got to CeCe, as the renewed investigation had introduced previously unknown names to the suspect pool. Among the new names was William DeRues, one of the upstairs tenants in the Brooks Avenue building. Lieutenant Trebe felt that his proximity to the crime scene was a compelling reason to add him to the list.
and his name had also appeared in several reports in the original case file, as police had spoken to DeRuze during multiple canvassings of the neighborhood. Trebe wrote in his 2023 report that he felt very strongly that the person responsible for Rita's death would have lived in close proximity to her, given the narrow time frame for the attack. Though DeRuze was never considered a person of interest or suspect in 1971,
He was added to the suspect pool in the renewed investigation. With an updated suspect list in hand, Cece Moore began her careful research and comparison using the genealogy databases. And it didn't take long for her to identify a suspect from that list as a possible contributor of the DNA on the Lark's cigarette butt.
In the next episode of Dark Down East, you'll hear what the DNA analysis and genealogical research revealed, but it was only the beginning of finally closing Rita Curran's cold case once and for all. Part 2 of Rita Curran's story is out right now on Dark Down East. I'm Kylie Lowe. Thank you for listening.