Brian Rooney Convicted in Rape and Murder of Michelle Gardner-Quinn

May 30, 2008

Last week, on Thursday, May 22, 2008, the man charged with the rape-slaying of a University of Vermont student was found guilty of aggravated murder after the jury deliberated barely six hours.  The randomness of the case, as well as the unprovoked, wanton violence involved, left many Vermont residents shaken.

Michelle Gardner-Quinn, 21, of Arlington, Vermont, was majoring in environmental studies when she transferred to the University of Vermont.  She was only a few weeks into the fall semester when she disappeared on October 7, 2006.  For the next six days police and volunteer search teams looked for any signs of the young coed throughout Burlington as well as the neighboring forests and countryside.  Even the lake adjacent to the small city was searched, to no avail.  Michelle had simply vanished, without a trace.

Her partially-clad body, however, was soon found by a hiker.  It had been placed inside a gap between two large rocks in the hiking area at Huntington Gorge, and an attempt had been made to cover it up with leaves.  An examination of her body showed that she had been sexually assaulted, beaten and strangled.  Semen was collected from her body.

"This was a violent, random crime," said Chittenden County State's Attorney T.J. Donovan.  "It scared a lot of people."

According to witnesses interviewed during the investigation, Michelle had been out with friends during homecoming weekend when she disappeared.  At some point during the early morning hours, she became separated from her friends and was attempting to call one of them when her cellular phone's battery died.  She apparently borrowed a cell phone from Brian Rooney, a 37-year-old construction worker and father, at approximately 2:35 a.m., during a random encounter.  The ensuing investigation eventually linked Michelle to Rooney, and police found a videotape of them taken by a jewelry store surveillance camera as the two of them walked up Main Street in Burlington.  Based on the depiction viewed on the tape, she did not appear distressed and it did not seem that she was in any immediate danger—but the time that the videotaped images were taken was the last time she was known to have been alive.

Despite the fact that there were no witnesses, investigators built a case against Rooney using the jewelry store video, inconsistent statements that he had made to the police and others and by using the most damning evidence of all—the fact that...

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Photo credit: Police mug shot

"Devil with Two Faces" Killer, Michel Fourniret, and His Wife Sentenced to Life

May 29, 2008

On Wednesday, May 28, 2008, Michel Fourniret, 66, also known as "the Ogre of the Ardennes," who, along with his wife and accomplice, Monique Olivier, 59, were sentenced to life in prison by a French criminal court for carrying out a horrific series of sex murders between 1987 and 2001, ending a two-month trial in Charleville-Mezieres in northeastern France.  Together the couple was described in court as the "devil with two faces" for the rapes and murders of seven girls and women in Fourniret's demented and perverted quest for virgins as victims.

According to details revealed at Fourniret's and Olivier's trial, Fourniret harbored a sick and unnatural lust for virgins and was actually in prison serving a sentence for sexual assault when he and Olivier made a pact with each other in which he would kill Olivier's former husband if she assisted him in finding virgins that he could victimize.  When Fourniret got out of prison, he did not kill Olivier's husband as promised—but she did help him find virgins.  Their method of operation was fairly simple:  Fourniret would pick out his desired victims, ages 12 to 21, and Olivier would gain their trust and confidence.  Afterwards the girls and young women would be drugged, and then sexually assaulted until Fourniret's depravity was satisfied.  When he was finished with his victims, they would be shot, stabbed with a screwdriver or strangled by Fourniret. Olivier, meanwhile, stood by and watched as her husband carried out his inhuman acts of evil.

In addition to the seven victims for which they were convicted of murdering, the couple also faces charges in at least two other cases including one involving a 20-year-old teaching assistant who disappeared from the city of Auxerre during the early evening of May 16, 1990.  Her nude body was...

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Justice for Linda Damm?

May 28, 2008

Earlier this month, on Monday, May 12, 2008, the brutal and bizarre Lafayette, Colorado murder case of 52-year-old Linda Damm came to a close with the sentencing of Linda's 16-year-old daughter, Tess.  Here's how the sad, but twisted, tale of butchery played out some 15 months earlier.

According to the prosecution's case, Tess had a turbulent relationship with her mother, who had been battling a drinking problem for some time.  Tess complained on an Internet blog site that her mother was a "raging functional alcoholic" and that her own life was "falling apart and deteriorating."  According to the postings, Linda had lost her job and sometimes became violent.  Other family members admitted that Linda's drinking problem had hindered her ability to "properly care for herself and her daughter."

In what appeared to be an act of desperation to get her mother out of her life, Tess turned to her live-in boyfriend, Bryan Grove, 17 at the time, for help.  At a meeting at a restaurant on February 3, 2007, Tess and another friend told Grove "how much they hated Linda," according to a police affidavit.  Grove in turn asked Tess if she wanted him to "take care of Linda for her," and Tess allegedly replied yes.  The following day, while Tess went on a drive with a friend, Grove went to Linda's ordinary two-story house where he allegedly became embroiled in an angry confrontation with her during which she purportedly told him that she blamed him for causing many of the problems in her house and with her daughter.  At one point he purportedly grabbed her by the throat and pushed her onto a bed where he choked her into unconsciousness.

Afterward he stabbed her in the neck with a small knife so inhumanly that it became stuck and...

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Tess Damm's Photo Courtesy of Boulder County Jail