Suspect’s words played at trial

RUTLAND, Vt. - “If I did it, I deserve to die.”

Murder suspect Brian Rooney´s spontaneous remark to a police officer - as he sat handcuffed to a wall in a holding cell on the day of his arrest - was played for a jury yesterday as prosecutors wound down their case against the man accused of raping and killing a University of Vermont student from Arlington, Va.

Awaiting a detective who was going to question him, Mr. Rooney motioned to Burlington Police Officer Dan Merchand and told him: “I really don´t know what happened. Honestly, I don´t remember that night … If I did it, I deserve to die.”

A black-and-white video shot from a surveillance camera in the cell was played in court after Officer Merchand testified about the exchange.

Mr. Rooney, 37, is charged with aggravated murder in the 2006 slaying of Michelle Gardner-Quinn, a 21-year-old environmental studies major, who happened upon him on a downtown Burlington street and borrowed his cell phone to call a friend.

The two were recorded by a jewelry store´s surveillance camera, walking side by side up Main Street. Six days later, Miss Gardner-Quinn´s battered body was found at Huntington Gorge in nearby Richmond, Vt., where Mr. Rooney lived.

Mr. Rooney has pleaded not guilty.

Prosecutors say DNA evidence taken from semen found in her body matches Mr. Rooney´s profile. Ther defendant’s attorney contends that the sample was too small to be reliable and that the Vermont Forensic Laboratory has a history of mistakes.

Yesterday, Vermont Forensic Laboratory Director Eric Buel defended his laboratory´s work against attacks by defense attorney David Sleigh, acknowledging that evidence had been lost in one case and contaminated by an analyst in another, but that he knew of no errors on the Rooney case.

Mr. Buel said the lab, which handles about 2,000 cases a year, acknowledged to its accrediting body in 2006 that it had violated its own chain-of-custody policy but that it had never lost its accreditation.

In a session yesterday in which Mr. Rooney´s ex-wife, an ex-girlfriend and a former roommate testified, it was a witness who didn´t take the stand who drew the most attention.

Mr. Sleigh told Judge Michael Kupersmith that he had taken a sworn statement before the trial from a former waitress at the Burlington pub Ri Ra, where Mr. Rooney had been drinking the night Miss Gardner-Quinn disappeared. The woman told Mr. Sleigh that Mr. Rooney had cuts on his hands when she saw him - before he met up with Miss Gardner-Quinn.

Mr. Sleigh said he had subpoenaed the woman to testify, but she did not come to court. Judge Kupersmith said he planned to issue the woman a citation for contempt of court. Her name wasn´t released.

Also yesterday, ex-roommate William Welcome, 35, of Winooski, Vt., testified that Mr. Rooney came to visit him in the days after Miss Gardner-Quinn´s disappearance, while under police surveillance. Mr. Welcome, who said he has known Mr. Rooney for about 17 years, said Mr. Rooney was normally chipper and always in a good mood, but on that day, he was “antsy, nervous” as he peered out the window at unmarked police cars outside.

Mr. Rooney was following TV news coverage of the case. When a TV report showed the image of him walking beside Miss Gardner-Quinn past the jewelry store, Mr. Welcome recognized the man in the image.

“I asked if it was him. First, he said no. I said: ’It looked like you.´ Then he said yes, it was him,” Mr. Welcome said.

Mr. Rooney told Mr. Welcome that he walked down the street with the woman but that they parted ways and that he had nothing to do with her disappearance, Mr. Welcome testified.