Post by Graveyardbride on Feb 18, 2023 13:02:24 GMT -5
Rita Curran’s Killer Identified and it Isn’t Ted Bundy!
It’s been 51 years since 24-year-old Rita Curran was raped and murdered in her ground-floor apartment in Burlington, Vermont, and now DNA testing has revealed the name of her assailant ... and it isn’t Ted Bundy!
Acting Police Chief Jon Murad announced his department will hold a press conference Tuesday, February 21, at 10 a.m to discuss the particulars. Unfortunately, there can be no charges because the killer is dead.
Rita Curran taught second grade in Milton, Vermont, 12 miles north of Burlington, and lived at home with her parents. But in the summer of 1971, while taking courses at the University of Vermont, she took a job as a chambermaid at the South Burlington Colonial Motor Inn, and shared an apartment with two other women in an old Victorian home on Brooke Avenue. Of interest, the motel was located near the former Elizabeth Lund Home for Unwed Mothers, where Ted Bundy was born. (The lovely Victorian Italianate mansion at 346 Shelburne Road wherein Louise Cowell gave birth to Ted was demolished in 1970.)
On the night of Monday, July 19, 1971, Rita got home around 10 o’clock after practicing with the barbershop quartet she had joined. At approximately 12:30, her roommates, Beverly Lamphere, 24, and Kerry Duane, 19, returned and sat in the living room talking with Paul Robinson, a close friend. They all assumed Rita had turned in for the night until Beverly entered the bedroom the two shared and discovered the petite brunette lying naked on the floor.
The autopsy revealed Ms. Curran had been sexually assaulted, severely beaten about the face and head, and died of manual strangulation. Several defensive wounds were noted, indicating she had fought her attacker.
Neither the front nor back doors of the apartment had been locked that night, however, the victim’s blood at the rear entrance indicated the intruder had exited via the backdoor. Police determined early on that robbery was not a motive because Ms. Curran’s purse, containing cash, was found on the bedroom floor, and her late-model car was parked on the street in front of the residence.
While the young schoolteacher was the first murder victim, she wasn’t the first, or last, woman attacked in Burlington during this time period. In October 1968, a 21-year-old University of Vermont student was assaulted in the Kappa Alpha Theta sorority house at approximately 4:30 in the morning. The assailant had gained access through an unlocked basement door.
On the night of May 13, 1971, just three months prior to the murder of Rita Curran, a 20-year-old woman was sexually assaulted in a parking lot behind the JC Penney Store on Cherry Street. The suspect was described as a man in his early 20s around 5'7" in height. Two months later, on July 11, a 20-year-old woman was beaten and raped in her Pine Street residence. She estimated her assailant was no more than 16- or 17-years-old and around 5'8".
Additionally, during the time the assaults were taking place, several women in Burlington reported mysterious hang-up and heavy-breathing calls, and in fact, according to her roommates and co-workers, Ms. Curran had received several such calls herself.
Known sex offenders and numerous other men were questioned, and many submitted to polygraph examinations, however, no viable suspect was identified.
In 1980, The Stranger Beside Me by Ann Rule was published and the author, who had a habit of seeing serial killers behind every bush and making connections based on nothing more than her overactive imagination, decided Ted Bundy killed Rita Curran. While there was no evidence Bundy was in Vermont at the time of the murder, he had traveled to the city of his birth at one point, ostensibly to check the records maintained by the Elizabeth Lund Home for Unwed Mothers. Apparently, “someone” in Burlington by the name of Bundy was bitten by a dog around July 20, and this was all Ann Rule needed to declare Ted Bundy Rita Curran’s killer.
Some, including Mary Campbell, Rita’s sister, accepted Rule’s convoluted reasoning. Shortly before Bundy was executed in Florida on January 24, 1989, Ms. Campbell sent a telegram asking that he confirm or deny his involvement in her sister’s death. Although he did not directly reply, shortly before he was led to the electric chair, Bundy emphatically denied committing any murders in the state of Vermont.
Sources: The Barre Montpelier Times-Argus, February 17, 2023; WPTV News, February 17, 2023; Libbi Farrow, MyChamplainValley, July 26, 2021; Cold Case New England, June 13, 2022, and The Burlington Free Press, July 21, 1971.
