Special Agent William Hagmaier. Family grieving As subsequently related by Curran's brother, Tom, he and his parents didn't have "social workers and specialized grievance counselors." They had the confessional and the rosary beads, he said, adding, "We were an old-fashioned, strong, Catholic family." Former Senator Patrick Leahy, who was county prosecutor at the time of the murder, said he'd seen many gruesome crimes during his time as prosecutor but Rita Curran's family stayed in his thoughts for years after their daughter's murder. Identification of murderer A major factor that enabled the case's eventual resolution was the "careful collection and preservation" of items found in the crime scene. In 2014, the Burlington police department sent for DNA analysis all the evidence collected in the crime scene, including the cigarette butt. According to Burlington's acting police chief, Jon Murad, the department "never stopped seeking" justice for the victim's family. While the tests did compile a DNA profile of the person who had smoked the cigarette, it didn't match any DNA in databases compiled by law enforcement agencies across the country, possibly because the person didn't have a felony conviction. In 2019, a new team of detectives picked up the case. Detective Lt. James Trieb, instead of having a single detective work the case alone, per the department's usual strategy, decided the police would treat the crime "as if it had just been committed," and brought in a team of detectives and expert technicians to review and discuss it. The team began re-testing evidence, and sent the cigarette butt for DNA analysis using "genetic genealogy," the process that uses genealogical DNA tests in combination with traditional genealogical methods, to infer genetic relationships between individuals. An outside genetic genealogy expert then concluded that the cigarette DNA had strong connections to relatives of William DeRoos (the person living near the victim's apartment who had been questioned by detectives and claimed an alibi) on both his paternal and maternal sides. Investigators found a living half-brother of DeRoos who willingly provided a DNA sample, and his sample bolstered the conclusion that the cigarette DNA belonged to DeRoos. Finally, the DNA left on Curran's ripped house-coat also matched the DNA on the cigarette butt. As the police found, DeRoos and his wife had left Vermont soon after the murder and had separated, and DeRoos had moved to Thailand where he became a Buddhist monk. Interviewed once again by