Michelle Gardner-Quinn Missing UVM Student(BODY FOUND)

[Jacqueline]

http://www.amw.com/missing_persons/recovered.cfm?id=41043

[Jacqueline]

http://www.amw.com/missing_persons/recovered.cfm?id=41043

Klaas...there is a picture of Brian Rooney in link above. I can't be sure, but I think it could be the same Brian Rooney you found from inmates pen pal website....What do you think?

[klaasend]

http://www.amw.com/missing_persons/recovered.cfm?id=41043

Klaas...there is a picture of Brian Rooney in link above. I can't be sure, but I think it could be the same Brian Rooney you found from inmates pen pal website....What do you think?

Nope, looks like a different Brian Rooney:

[Jacqueline]

http://www.amw.com/missing_persons/recovered.cfm?id=41043

Klaas...there is a picture of Brian Rooney in link above. I can't be sure, but I think it could be the same Brian Rooney you found from inmates pen pal website....What do you think?

Nope, looks like a different Brian Rooney:

Thanks...Seeing it side by side I agree....

[klaasend]

Hikers discover body of missing student near Huntington Gorge

By Adam Silverman
Free Press Staff Writer

October 13, 2006
Hikers found the body of missing University of Vermont senior Michelle Gardner-Quinn on Friday beside a previously unexamined dirt road in Richmond, and police said they believe the 21-year-old had been kidnapped and killed.


Police identified their main suspect as Brian Rooney, 36, of Winooski — the man whose cell phone Gardner-Quinn borrowed early Oct. 7 — and arrested him, for the time being on unrelated sex charges.

The discovery came as a devastating end to a weeklong search for the pretty, brown-haired native of Arlington, Va., even as authorities and loved ones grew to believe that outcome was more likely with every passing day.

“We all just can’t believe it’s happening,” said family friend Gail Fendley of Falls Church, Va. “I just can’t imagine why someone would want to hurt Michelle. I just don’t understand. I just don’t understand.”

Gardner-Quinn vanished shortly after 2:34 a.m. Oct. 7 as she walked back to her dormitory at University Heights after a night socializing downtown with friends. Her parents, in town for UVM’s Family Weekend, reported their daughter missing when she didn’t arrive for dinner as planned that night.

Her cell phone ran out of batteries as she tried to call several friends, so she approached a random man and asked to borrow his phone. That man, Burlington Police Chief Thomas Tremblay said Friday, turned out to be Rooney. Surveillance images from a Main Street jewelry store show Gardner-Quinn and Rooney walking with each other away from downtown.

A Winooski business owner said Friday he saw police at Rooney’s apartment on Malletts Bay Avenue this week and asked him about the investigation and cuts on his hand. Rooney replied he lent his cell phone to the missing girl but “didn’t remember anything after that,” said John Barton, owner of Walt’s Game Room.

Rooney’s brother said he cannot believe the allegations.

“My brother would never hurt a woman,” said Rikki [asi: cq: ] Rooney, 38, of Iowa, who said his sibling is the father of three daughters.

Detectives early this week identified Brian Rooney through phone records and, without naming him, said he was the focus of the investigation. Authorities questioned him repeatedly through the week; they also interviewed dozens of people he knows. Those interviews yielded the charges on which Rooney was arrested Friday, Tremblay said: sexual assault and lewd and lascivious conduct with a child.

Rooney, who worked in construction, was arrested peacefully in Hardwick, said Attorney General Bill Sorrell, and later jailed at the Chittenden Regional Correctional Facility in South Burlington. He is scheduled to be arraigned Monday in Vermont District Court in St. Johnsbury on the sex charges, Tremblay said.

During a somber news conference early Friday evening at Burlington City Hall, Tremblay said he was unsure when Rooney might be brought to court in Burlington to face charges related to Gardner-Quinn’s slaying.

“The investigation takes a significant turn now,” Tremblay said. “It’s almost like a new investigation starts.”

Police scheduled a news briefing for this afternoon [asi: saturday: ]to share preliminary results from the Chief Medical Examiner’s Office, which is working to determine how and when Gardner-Quinn was killed and whether she was sexually assaulted.



A SCRATCHED HAND

Rooney, whom police described as a Richmond resident, most recently lived across the street from Walt’s Game Room. Rooney stopped by the business several times this week, and Barton asked him about cops going in and out of Rooney’s apartment.
“He told me he was being interviewed by the police because he was the guy who lent a cell phone to the college girl who was missing,” Barton said.

Barton said he noticed some cuts on Rooney’s hand while Rooney was sipping a drink and asked him about the injuries.

“I saw scratches on his hand,” Barton said. “He told me he just lent the girl his cell phone and didn’t remember anything after that.”

University of Vermont junior Tommy Lang, who has known Gardner-Quinn since high school, said she called him from Rooney’s cell phone early that morning. Lang called the number back when people couldn’t find Gardner-Quinn the next day.

The man who answered, who said his name was Brian, told Lang he and Gardner-Quinn parted company at the intersection of Main Street and South Union Street, Lang said Friday before learning of the discovery of the body.

“He said he saw her walking up the hill toward UVM,” Lang said.

Rikki Rooney said he doesn’t accept the police allegations against his younger brother, in either the sex-assault cases or the killing of Gardner-Quinn. Brian Rooney was a devoted father who “lives for his kids,” the elder Rooney said. Rikki Rooney said his brother and Gardner-Quinn could have parted ways at the intersection.

“He could have left her alone, and anything could have happened to her,” Rikki Rooney said. “It’s all circumstantial, and I don’t believe a damn word of it.” �


THE SCENE

A group of hikers found Gardner-Quinn’s body at about 1 p.m. in a crevice just over the lip of Huntington Gorge, a scenic locale off Dugway Road in Richmond that is a popular but dangerous summer swimming hole.

Late in the afternoon, after Gardner-Quinn’s body was removed, police escorted reporters to the gorge. Forensic investigators worked in an area about 15 feet off the road near a large rock on the edge of Huntington Gorge.

Investigators on their hands and knees and wearing white gloves carefully pawed through fallen leaves around the rock and beneath a small hemlock tree and taller white ash trees. Other investigators examined areas beneath the rock. White plastic buckets and portable lights were arrayed around them. Members of Colchester Technical Rescue extended ropes over the cliff into the gorge, in case authorities needed to examine anything over the side.

The Vermont State Police mobile crime lab was parked on the road.

Tremblay said “it’s too early to tell” whether Gardner-Quinn was killed at the gorge or somewhere else and then moved.

Earlier Friday, search teams descended on a home on South Union Street in Burlington where construction work was occurring in the back yard and concrete recently had been poured. Yellow crime scene tape was strung around the house, and investigators wearing hip boots covered with mud placed plastic evidence bags in a crime-lab truck.

After a day’s work, though, authorities did not uncover “any evidence of value,” Tremblay said.


‘COMPLETE DESPAIR’

At UVM, sorrow filled the campus community of more than 9,000 undergraduates. Several hundred people, mostly students, mourned together Friday night. They huddled on the campus green for a candlelight vigil to remember their friend, who had transferred to the university at the start of this academic year from Goucher College in Baltimore.

“I’ve walked up that street alone. I think that’s probably what the majority of women are thinking,” Burlington resident Amy deGorgue said. “It could have been anyone.”

University President Daniel Fogel spoke of a campus in a collective state of shock.

“I have just an enormous amount of regret and sorrow and sympathy for Michelle’s family above all, and for her friends, of which she made an extraordinary number in her relatively brief time at the university,” Fogel said in an interview before the gathering.

Annie Stevens, UVM’s assistant vice president for student and campus life, had kept in daily contact with Gardner-Quinn’s parents since their daughter’s disappearance but had not spoken to them Friday. Stevens described the past week on campus as a time of hope and anxiety.

“With each passing day, everybody knew it was getting a little harder,” she said. “Now the campus is just in a place of shock and complete despair.”
http://www.burlingtonfreepress.com/apps/pbcs.dll/frontpage

[Jacqueline]

Wow...this is so sad.

I'm thinking this is the guy, but DNA results will settle any doubts.

So weird how he admits to being with her and lending his cell phone, but can't remember anything else after that...

Poor Michelle and her family.

[mrs. red]

I agree how sad this is.... I hope they get a judge that will throw the book at him.  Vermont has some crack smoking judges... remember it's where they gave the guy 60 days for molesting (and bringing a friend) to molest a 6 year old girl.....

This is just so sad.....

[Jacqueline]

BURLINGTON, Vt. —  The 36-year-old man suspected of killing a University of Vermont student last week is being described by his brother as a devoted parent of three daughters.

But the former father-in-law of Brian Rooney described him as the scum of the earth.

Rooney is jail on sexual assault charges separate from the investigation into the kidnapping and death of 21-year-old Michelle Gardner-Quinn, whose body was found Friday in Richmond.

Rooney's brother Rikki Rooney of Iowa says their father abandoned their mother who had to raise six children on her own.

But Rooney's former father-in-law Roger Martin of Craftsbury says he made his daughter do things she didn't want to do and is chronically behind on child support payments.Visit FOXNews.com's Crime Center for complete coverage.

[A's Fever]

BURLINGTON, Vt. —  The 36-year-old man suspected of killing a University of Vermont student last week is being described by his brother as a devoted parent of three daughters.

But the former father-in-law of Brian Rooney described him as the scum of the earth.

Rooney is jail on sexual assault charges separate from the investigation into the kidnapping and death of 21-year-old Michelle Gardner-Quinn, whose body was found Friday in Richmond.

Rooney's brother Rikki Rooney of Iowa says their father abandoned their mother who had to raise six children on her own.

But Rooney's former father-in-law Roger Martin of Craftsbury says he made his daughter do things she didn't want to do and is chronically behind on child support payments.Visit FOXNews.com's Crime Center for complete coverage.

Very interesting . . . I wonder what kinds of things?

[klaasend]

Autopsy Being Performed on Slain Vermont Student as Suspect in Custody

Saturday , October 14, 2006
 
BURLINGTON, Vt. — A man authorities are investigating in the case of a University of Vermont senior who was found dead along a ravine was being held without bail on unrelated charges Saturday while an autopsy was performed on the victim.

Brian L. Rooney, a construction worker from Richmond with a record of several arrests, was taken into custody Friday, the same day hikers happened upon the body of Michelle Gardner-Quinn near Huntington Gorge, a popular swimming hole.

Gardner-Quinn had disappeared nearly a week earlier while walking to her dormitory.

The cause of her death had not been released. The autopsy was ongoing Saturday but results would not be released this weekend, said police Lt. Kathleen Stubbing. She said it would likely be at least a week before any charges can be brought in the case.

Meanwhile, a memorial service for Gardner-Quinn was scheduled for Sunday night at the University of Vermont in Burlington.

Rooney, 36, was arrested Friday on unrelated charges of sex abuse elsewhere in Vermont. He was jailed without bail on those charges Saturday, pending a Monday arraignment. He had not been charged in Gardner-Quinn's case, but is considered the prime suspect in her disappearance and death, Police Chief Thomas Tremblay said.

Gardner-Quinn, 21, of Arlington, Va., was last seen alive in the early morning of Oct. 7 as she walked up Main Street after celebrating a friend's birthday at downtown bars.

Authorities said that in a chance encounter she asked Rooney to borrow his cell phone to make a call because the battery in hers had gone dead. She made the call and was seen, on surveillance video from a jewelry store camera, walking alongside Rooney.

Gardner-Quinn was reported missing later that day when she failed to make a dinner date with her parents.

Because of the surveillance video, Rooney had been the focus of the investigation.

Days later, Rooney was seen with cuts on his hands when he stopped at Walt's Game Room, a candy store and pool parlor in Winooski, where he was a regular customer, owner John Barton said Saturday. It was either Monday or Wednesday, Barton said.

"He looked very down and depressed," said Barton, who asked Rooney about police activity at the house where he was staying.

"I asked him what the deal was with the FBI and police and everything going around. He said he was the guy who had lent the missing girl his cell phone," Barton said. "He basically said `I was walking up the street with her and when I got halfway up she went one way and I went the other and I don't remember anything after that."'

Barton said he noticed two or three cuts on Rooney's right hand but thought they may have been suffered on the job because they were scabbed over.

A woman who lives upstairs from the Winooski apartment where Rooney was staying said Saturday he came home drunk late Wednesday and told her he did something wrong with "the girl from the college."

"He came up and he was drunk, crazy," said Amy Stewart, 25.

"He said he did something wrong with that girl. That's all I know. I say `Tell me more, tell me what's going on,' and he said he not going to tell me anymore," she said.

Rooney was charged with sexual assault in Caledonia County, 80 miles north of Burlington, and with lewd and lascivious conduct with a child in neighboring Essex county, where he previously lived, authorities said.

His stepfather said Saturday he doesn't believe Rooney was involved in Gardner-Quinn's disappearance.

"We've got all the faith in the world in him," said Ronald Skinner, whose Richmond home was searched Tuesday as part of the investigation.

According to court records and interviews, Rooney has had minor scrapes with the law. He had been arrested several times for driving without a license and once for disorderly conduct. He has also had arrests for leaving the scene of an accident and burglary, according to Caledonia County State's Attorney Bob Butterfield, who did not know the ultimate disposition of those charges Saturday.

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,220840,00.html

[klaasend]

Rooney Denies Murdering UVM Student
 
St. Johnsbury, Vermont - October 16, 2006

According to court papers released Monday, 36-year-old Brian Rooney told police he had no role in the murder of Michelle Gardner-Quinn.  

Rooney admitted to police he let the 21-year-old UVM senior use his cell phone as they walked up Main Street in Burlington together. But he told investigators that both of them parted ways at South Union Street. Rooney claims he never saw her again.

The statements about the Gardner-Quinn case were made during questioning of sex crime allegations against him. Rooney will be in Caledonia District Court Monday afternoon to answer to charges he sexually assaulted another woman. The victim claims she was drugged and had a rag stuck in her mouth. He is also charged with lewd and lascivious conduct with a minor in neighboring Essex County. Police say the victim in both cases did not come forward until now because she was scared of Rooney.

Police still believe Rooney killed Gardner-Quinn.

How and when Gardner-Quinn died remains a mystery. Hikers found her body near the Huntington Gorge on Friday, about a week after she disappeared. An autopsy was performed Saturday, but police have yet to give a cause of death.

http://www.wcax.com/Global/story.asp?S=5543163

[Red]

Suspect Brian Rooney in Murdered Michelle Gardner-Quinn case Due in Court on Separate Sex Charge

http://missingexploited.com/2006/10/16/suspect-brian-rooney-in-murdered-michelle-gardner-quinn-case-due-in-court-on-separate-sex-charge/

One question that immediately comes to the forefront is why only now is Brian Rooney being arraigned on the 1998 sex offense charge against a minor? Looking back on events, maybe our society might have been a little more safer if Brian Rooney had either been in jail or had to have registered as a sex offender.


Police are Officially Ruling Michelle Gardner-Quinn’s Death a Homicide

http://missingexploited.com/2006/10/17/police-are-officially-ruling-michelle-gardner-quinns-death-a-homicide/

Police are still looking for several items of Michelle’s, including a silver earring she was wearing. It is described as a sterling silver chandelier type earring. They are also looking for women’s black Converse low-top sneakers, size 8; her Black Puma purse; and her Kyocera Cell phone, which is model KX414.

[Red]

More Charges Brought Against Brian Rooney unrelated to Michelle Gardner-Quinn Murder

http://missingexploited.com/2006/10/19/more-charges-brought-against-brian-rooney-unrelated-to-michelle-gardner-quinn-murder/

For the second time in less than a week Brian Rooney found himself back in court facing charges unrelated to the Michelle Gardner-Quinn murder. However, Brian Rooney remains the primary suspect in Michelle’s murder. The charges faced by Rooney were also a result of the investigation into Michelle Gardner-Quinn’s disappearance.

Earlier this week Brian Rooney was facing charges that he sexually abused and raped a 14 year old girl 8 years earlier.

[Red]

DNA Match of Blood Found on Brian Rooney’s Pants of Murdered Michelle Gardner-Quinn

http://missingexploited.com/2006/10/19/dna-match-of-blood-found-on-brian-rooneys-pants-of-murdered-michelle-gardner-quinn/

There has been a big break in the murder investigation of Michelle Gardner-Quinn. We have a match. A DNA sample taken from the pants of the prime suspect, Brian Rooney, in the disappearance and murder of Michelle Gardner-Quinn has been found to be hers.

The blood was found on the blue jeans of Brian L. Rooney, 36, giving police at least one piece of physical evidence allegedly linking the man they call their prime suspect to the Oct. 7 disappearance of Gardner-Quinn.

[Nut44x4]

VERMONT SLAYING
Man Guilty of Murdering College Student From Arlington

Friday, May 23, 2008; Page B05

A Vermont man was convicted yesterday in the rape and murder of Arlington native Michelle Gardner-Quinn, a committed environmentalist whose disappearance attracted national attention from celebrities and a network of close friends.

Jurors in Rutland, Vt., found Brian R. Rooney guilty in the October 2006 slaying of Gardner-Quinn, 21, a University of Vermont student who had a chance encounter with Rooney when she borrowed his cellphone, according to Laurie Canty, manager for Rutland District and Family Court. Rooney, 37, a construction worker and father of three, faces a mandatory life prison term.

Gardner-Quinn, who grew up in North Arlington, disappeared from downtown Burlington, where she had been celebrating a friend's 21st birthday. She bumped into Rooney after she became separated from friends and her cellphone died, court documents said. Her body was found a week later, face-down and in a fetal position near a popular swimming hole. She had been sexually assaulted, beaten and strangled.

Her disappearance triggered a well-publicized investigation. Friends used the popular social networking site Facebook.com to spread information about the case. Her commitment to the environment led singer Sheryl Crow, actress Meg Ryan and Sarah Ferguson, the Duchess of York, to appear in a YouTube video, holding a portrait of Gardner-Quinn and reciting parts of a class essay she had submitted.

After Gardner-Quinn's death, more than 400 people assembled at a memorial at H-B Woodlawn Secondary Program in Arlington, from which she graduated in 2003. A year after the slaying, University of Vermont students had a candlelight march and a memorial hike in her honor.

"I think justice has been served as much as it can be in a situation like this," Rachele Huennekens, a high school friend of Gardner-Quinn's, said after yesterday's verdict. "Michelle's murder is the saddest thing that's ever happened to me. She was a very beautiful person."

Huennekens is communications director for Michelle's Earth Foundation, an environmental group friends and relatives established after her death. Gardner-Quinn, who was a senior majoring in Latin American studies and environmental science, had attended five other colleges before transferring to Vermont. Friends have said her passion for nature and the environment grew from childhood walks in the woods near her home.

Family members, prosecutors and defense attorneys did not return calls late yesterday.

The 12-member jury convicted Rooney of aggravated murder after about five hours of deliberation following a one-week trial, Canty said. Authorities said semen taken from Gardner-Quinn's body matched Rooney's DNA, according to court documents.

Prosecutor Rosemary Gretkowski told jurors in closing arguments yesterday that the DNA match and other evidence established Rooney's guilt, the Associated Press reported. "The truth is that Michelle had the misfortune of bad timing: dead cellphone and uttering the innocent words 'Excuse me, sir, may I borrow your phone?' to the wrong stranger," Gretkowski said.

Defense attorney David Sleigh said that the DNA evidence was unreliable and that the absence of eyewitnesses or a murder weapon added up to reasonable doubt. "Their entire case is predicated upon two-tenths of a nanogram in a suspect source of DNA," he said.

The trial was moved from Burlington to Rutland -- about 70 miles away -- because of intense pretrial publicity.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/05/22/AR2008052203899.html?hpid=sec-metro

[Nut44x4]

Friday, Oct. 17, 2008
Killer gets life for killing Vt. college student
The Associated Press
BURLINGTON, Vt. -- The man convicted of killing a Vermont college student after a chance encounter in Burlington has been sentenced to a mandatory life term with no chance for parole.

Thirty-eight-year-old Brian Rooney was convicted in May of aggravated murder in the 2006 slaying of Michelle Gardner-Quinn.

Judge Michael Kupersmith berated Rooney at his sentencing Friday. Rooney continues to proclaim his innocence, but Kupersmith said the construction worker got what he deserved.

Rooney met the 21-year-old woman from Arlington, Va., when she borrowed his cell phone in downtown Burlington. She was found dead six days later after police and volunteers scoured the leafy, lakeside city.

A hiker found her half-dressed body. She had been sexually assaulted, beaten and strangled.
http://www.macon.com/nation/story/495374.html

AP Photo - In this May 15, 2008 file photo, Brian Rooney appears on the third day of his murder trial in Vermont District Court in Rutland, Vt. Rooney, convicted of killing Vermont college student Michelle-Gardner-Quinn, after a chance encounter in Burlington has been sentenced to a mandatory life term with no chance for parole.

[Nut44x4]

The Trial is currently airing on Tru-tv

[cookie]

The Trial is currently airing on Tru-tv

thanks...will tune in..
Oprah is starting in about 10 minutes with the McCanns appearing...