Police in Vt. Find Body Of Student
Man Questioned in Death Of Senior From Arlington

By Jamie Stockwell
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, October 14, 2006

The body of a missing college senior from Arlington was found yesterday off a rural road near the University of Vermont. Police said that the man with whom she was last seen six days ago was arrested on unrelated sex assault charges and was being questioned about her death.

Burlington Police Chief Thomas Tremblay said the body was tentatively identified as that of Michelle Gardner-Quinn, 21. The body was discovered about 15 miles southeast of downtown Burlington, near a swimming hole popular among college students and residents, Tremblay said.

He said it was not yet known how Gardner-Quinn was killed or when her body might have been left at the spot. Police said they are investigating her death as an apparent kidnapping and homicide.

"We are not done yet," Tremblay said in an afternoon news conference at Burlington's City Hall. "There is still more work to be done."

Gardner-Quinn -- whose disappearance last Saturday was the focus of an intense investigation that fanned across several nearby communities -- was last seen walking from Burlington's downtown area toward campus, about five blocks away.

A surveillance camera captured her walking with Brian Rooney, 36, a construction worker who lent her his cellphone so she could call friends after the battery in her phone died, police said.

Rooney, of nearby Richmond, Vt., has not been charged in Gardner-Quinn's slaying, Tremblay said, although he was being interviewed by detectives last night. Tremblay said Rooney was charged yesterday with sexual assault and lewd and lascivious conduct with a child in Caledonia County, about 80 miles east of Burlington. He declined to elaborate on the charges.

Rooney is to be arraigned Monday on those charges, Tremblay said.

The disappearance and death of Gardner-Quinn was at least the third such incident in the past year involving a female college student. The body of University of Virginia student Elizabeth M. Hafter, 22, was found Oct. 1 along the Blue Ridge Parkway with a single gunshot wound to the head after she had been missing a few days. And in September 2005, Virginia Commonwealth University freshman Taylor Behl was found slain in rural Mathews County. Behl, 17, of Vienna, was found one month after she was reported missing from the Richmond campus.

Yesterday, Tremblay urged anyone with information about Gardner-Quinn's case to call authorities. He said an autopsy was scheduled for this weekend.

After several days with few leads, the investigation quickened midafternoon yesterday. While Vermont State Police canvassed the swimming hole, authorities cordoned off a half-block in a residential neighborhood in Burlington not far from where Gardner-Quinn was last seen.

Using various tools, they dug out an area in the back yard of a house where concrete had been poured this week, according to the Associated Press and Burlington television stations. The house was somehow connected to Rooney, they reported.

Gardner-Quinn, a senior majoring in Latin American studies and environmental science, was reported missing after she failed to show up for a planned dinner with her parents last Saturday. They had traveled to Burlington for parents' weekend at the college.

Gardner-Quinn was a 2003 graduate of H-B Woodlawn Secondary Program, an academically rigorous magnet school at which students have a large say in the curriculum.

Tommy Lang, 21, a University of Vermont senior who grew up with Gardner-Quinn, told the Associated Press yesterday that nothing seemed amiss when she called him from Rooney's cellphone just before her disappearance.

"She sounded completely fine and normal and exactly the way she did when she left us," said Lang, who had been hanging out with Gardner-Quinn and others for a friend's 21st birthday celebration. "There wasn't anything that made me worry or made me suspicious that anything was going on."

Yesterday, after posting numerous optimistic messages online praying for Gardner-Quinn's safe return, friends began leaving messages of mourning.

"Michelle you were one-in-a-million," wrote her friend Elizabeth Oliphant on Facebook.com, a social networking site popular among college students. "I am heartbroken for your family -- they will stay in my thoughts and prayers for a long time. You will be missed dearly."

Gail Fendley, a longtime family friend, said in a telephone interview yesterday that she considered Gardner-Quinn a part of her family. Her son, Ian Willson, 22, had grown up with Gardner-Quinn, and the two had dated in recent years. Yesterday, Fendley sat sobbing inside her vehicle, parked on a street in Richmond, Va., where her son attends college.

"It's not that every life doesn't matter, but this is one who would've made the world a better place," Fendley said. "I just can't imagine how someone could hurt our Michelle."