RutlandHerald.com - We Are Vermont

Jury returns guilty verdict against Brian Rooney

5:50 p.m.

The jury has convicted a man of aggravated murder in the 2006 rape and slaying of a University of Vermont student, Michelle Gardner-Quinn.

The case went to the jury this morning, with a prosecutor saying there was "overwhelming proof" to convict him but his lawyer insisting the proof hinges on unreliable DNA evidence and conjecture.

In closing arguments, prosecutor Rosemary Gretkowski told jurors the presence of Brian Rooney's semen in the body of Michelle Gardner-Quinn — taken with undisputed evidence about their happenstance late-night encounter, when she borrowed his cell phone — establishes his guilt.

Defense attorney David Sleigh told jurors there was more than enough reasonable doubt to acquit Rooney, a 37-year-old construction worker who didn't know Gardner-Quinn until he lent her his phone.

The state's case was built on unreliable DNA analysis, evidence of what happened before they met on a downtown Burlington street and conjecture about what occurred between the time a jewelry store's surveillance camera caught them walking side by side and the time she died, he said.

"The truth is that Michelle had the misfortune of bad timing, dead cell phone and uttering the innocent words 'Excuse me, sir, may I borrow your phone' to the wrong stranger," Gretkowski said.

"Michelle had no way to know that the man she sought help from would be the very same man who would decide to take advantage of her situation and make the decision to rape her and then kill her to silence her and then bury her body in order to hide the evidence that he left behind," she said.

Rooney, who pleaded not guilty, is facing a mandatory life prison term.

The trial was moved from Burlington to Rutland — about 70 miles away — amid concerns that intense coverage of the killing made it impossible for a fair trial in Chittenden County. In four days of testimony, jurors saw graphic autopsy photos of Gardner-Quinn and the site where her body was found. They heard from police investigators, laboratory analysts and friends and family of both victim and suspect.

They also heard Rooney say to a police officer, as he sat in a holding cell under surveillance by a camera: "If I did it, I deserve to die."

Witnesses testified that Gardner-Quinn — a recent transfer to the college who was majoring in environmental science — was out with friends on a night when her parents were visiting Burlington for parents' weekend. She got separated from them just before 2 a.m. and was trying to find friend Dorsey Kilbourn when her cell phone died.

She borrowed Rooney's, and called friend Tommy Lang to ask him to call Kilbourn so they could reunite. Lang called the number back moments later.

"''He said something to the effect of 'I guess you want to speak with this beautiful brunette standing next to me' and I said 'Yeah,'" said Lang.

At about 2:35 a.m., the two were seen on the jewelry store surveillance camera walking up Main Street, with nothing apparently amiss.

But Gardner-Quinn was never seen alive after that.

For six days, police chased leads and investigators and volunteers scoured the lakeside city in a hunt for clues to her disappearance.

Finally, on Oct. 13, a hiker found her half-dressed body under some leaves and stuffed into a crevice at Huntington Gorge, about 20 miles away in Richmond. She had been sexually assaulted, beaten and strangled.

Rooney was charged in the killing 12 days later, based on what authorities said was a DNA match that said the semen belonged to Rooney.

"Ask yourselves this: Whose cell phone did Michelle use right before she went missing? Brian Rooney," said Gretkowski. "Who expressed a sexual interest in Michelle Gardner-Quinn? Brian Rooney. And who lived near the Huntington Gorge, where Michelle's body was found? Brian Rooney."

But the state found no eyewitnesses to an abduction or killing, no murder weapon and no physical trace of Gardner-Quinn on Rooney's body, in his red Jeep, in the camper outside his mother's house where he'd been staying or on his unlaundered clothing.

The absence of such evidence, combined with the Vermont Forensic Laboratory's record of making mistakes, add up to reasonable doubt, Sleigh told jurors Thursday in his summation.

"If they're asking you a question, they're admitting they haven't proved their case," Sleigh said, alluding to Gretkowski's questions.

He said the state's scientific experts hadn't proved that the DNA analyzed was from the semen, and that it could have been from skin cells. He said police identified Rooney early on and overlooked other evidence that might have pointed to someone else as her assailant.

"The state's failure — intentional failure — to examine the best evidence available, and doubts about the adequacy of the minuscule DNA collected at a single point, create a reasonable doubt in this case," said Sleigh.

"Their entire case is predicated upon two-tenths of a nanogram in a suspect source of DNA," he said.

There was no other damning physical evidence from what police contend was a violent, intimate encounter, nor was there any testimony suggesting that Rooney destroyed any, he said.

"The police employed all their 'CSI' capabilities. They fumed for fingerprints, they used alternative lights, they used chemicals to look for blood and bodily samples. And they found nothing," Sleigh said.

The seven-woman, five-man jury began deliberating just before 11:30 a.m., and Judge Michael Kupersmith that if they didn't reach a verdict by day's end, they would be sequestered in a hotel before resuming Friday.