Co-ed was sexually assaulted, strangled and beaten, cops say

By  Seamus McGraw

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October 25, 2006

BURLINGTON, VT (Crime Library) —Brian Rooney, a thrice-accused sex offender, already jailed on those unrelated charges, has been charged with aggravated murder in the beating and strangulation death of 21-year-old University of Vermont co-ed Michelle Gardner Quinn.

Brian Rooney

Rooney, a 36-year-old contractor who has admitted to police that he accompanied Michelle as she walked along Burlington's Main Street in the moments before her Oct. 7 disappearance, was linked to the slaying after matched a spot of his blood found on his jeans with a semen sample taken from Michelle's body. Last week, a source erroneously told Crime Library that DNA tests had shown the blood sample to have been Michelle's.

The arrest came just days after Rooney was ordered to submit DNA samples to investigators.

An affidavit filed along with the charges shows that authorities had Rooney in their sights as a possible suspect within a day of Michelle's disappearance. Authorities first learned about him when a friend of Michelle's, Thomas Lang, told them he had received a cell phone call from Michelle not long before she vanished and called back hours later, after it was clear that Michelle was missing. Lang told authorities that he spoke with Rooney for about four and half minutes, and that Rooney told him he had no idea where Michelle had gone.

Lang later told authorities that Rooney's answers seemed "a little" evasive, but Lang chalked it up to the after-effects of a long night of drinking.

Lang said Rooney called him back a short time later, and said he had a vague recollection that Michelle had mentioned that she might have called a cab for the short ride back to her dormitory.

Video still of Rooney and Gardner-Quinn walking

The next day, as the hunt for the still missing co-ed heated up, investigators questioned Rooney, and after they decided that his answers to their questions were unsatisfactory, he quickly emerged as the prime suspect.

In the meantime, the search for Michelle continued. It ended on Oct. 13 when her body was recovered in a rocky gorge not far from Rooney's hometown of Richmond some 15 miles from Burlington.

An autopsy conducted on her body revealed that she had been strangled and beaten with a blunt object and there were also signs of sexual trauma, according to authorities.

But authorities decided to wait for DNA results before charging Rooney with Michelle's slaying. In the meantime, he was charged with lewd and lascivious conduct with a minor, and with sexually assaulting a teenage girl in the late 1990s.

While he was in jail on those charges, authorities unearthed more allegations, and last week added charges that he had sexually assaulted a former girlfriend and had made an unsuccessful attempt to solicit her murder.

Michelle Gardner-Quinn

In the meantime, investigators remained mum about their probe into Michelle's death, waiting until the DNA results returned linking Rooney, authorities claim, with a probability of one in 240 quadrillion before charging him with murder.

Rooney is scheduled to be arraigned at 10:30 a.m. Thursday at Chittenden District Court in Burlington.

Arrest Affidavit for Brian Rooney in the Murder of Michelle Gardner-Quinn

Information Release 10-25-06 PM

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