A suspect has finally been named in the 51-year-old cold case murder of a Burlington, Vermont woman — but the effort is all in vain. That’s because the man believed responsible for the horrifying slaying of Rita Curran is no longer alive. According to officials in Burlington, the one and only suspect in this decades-old case is a man named William DeRoos, who would be 83-years-old right now, if he hadn’t died in 1986. in San Francisco. Now the case is being closed with no actual closure — or justice — for the slain woman or her loved ones. To add insult to injury, it doesn’t look like an arrest will be made of the woman who lied and protected the rapist and killer for more than 50 years.
Cold case investigators say that the second wife of William DeRoos lied and covered for the man after he raped and murdered Rita Curran. She finally came clean with police at some point, admitting that he asked her to lie for him so that he wouldn’t be suspected in the woman’s death. The night of the murder, which took place over a half a century ago, DeRoos and his wife got into an argument, which led to him leaving their home. It was that night that he encountered the victim. William DeRoos allegedly sexually assaulted and killed the woman before returning home to his wife. Detectives had questioned the couple multiple times over the course of the past 51 years, but they both lied repeatedly, furthering justice from the grasps of his victim’s family.
While this woman might have been a victim of DeRoos herself, it’s absolutely despicable that she’d cover for the man knowing that a woman in her neighborhood had been assaulted and murdered on the night that her husband left their home. It’s not logical to believe that she spent all those years not realizing that her husband was involved, for if he was innocent he wouldn’t have brought up the murder and asked her to cover for him in the first place. In order for justice to be had by the victim’s family all these many years later, it’s only fair to arrest the woman who lied and covered for the killer — if she’s still alive. While she may not have had a direct hand in the murder, she did directly cover for a man who got away with it.
Chelsea Hoffman is a true crime writer with over a decade of professional writing experience. She is best known for her coverage of missing people including the tragic disappearance of Madeleine McCann as well as the heartbreaking cases of Dylan Redwine, Heather Elvis and many others.
