On the night of July 19, 1971, twenty-four-year-old Rita Curran, a second-grade teacher at Milton Elementary School, stayed home alone at her first apartment on Brookes Avenue in Burlington, Vermont. By 1:30 that morning, a roommate found her gone.

Rita came from a large Irish Catholic family in Milton. She was taking graduate classes at UVM and working a summer job, her whole life still opening in front of her. Burlington police questioned hundreds of people and chased hundreds of tips, but the case went cold. For decades a rumor tied it to Ted Bundy, born in that same city. Rita's parents passed away without ever hearing a name.

The answer sat in an evidence box the whole time: a single cigarette butt. In 2023, genetic genealogy, confirmed to 97 percent by a half-brother's sample, named neighbor William DeRoos, who lived two floors above and whose wife had given him an alibi. He was long gone, and the science cleared Bundy for good.

This is the full story. From Rita's life, through that summer night, the fifty-one years of silence, the DNA revolution, and the discarded cigarette butt that finally ended the wait.

Cases of America tells the stories of the forgotten victims who finally received justice. Every case on this channel went cold until a breakthrough changed everything. Subscribe for in-depth documentaries on the cases everyone thought would stay buried.

SOURCES:
Burlington Police Department - official announcement identifying William DeRoos through genetic genealogy.
State of Vermont / local law enforcement statements - confirmation that Ted Bundy was excluded by DNA.
VTDigger - reporting on the fifty-one-year Rita Curran cold case and its resolution.
Burlington Free Press - coverage of the case, the family, and the Brookes Avenue investigation.
People - national reporting on the genealogy breakthrough and the DeRoos alibi.

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