jerry lynn burns why did he do it

Four decades agone, 18-yr-former Michelle Marie Martinko was institute stabbed to decease in the family's automobile in the parking lot of a Cedar Rapids mall.

Exactly 39 years after her decease, police took a Manchester man into custody after matching his Deoxyribonucleic acid to blood found at the crime scene.

Jerry Lynn Burns, 65, is set to face a jury in February, bringing momentum to a example that was left cold for years. If plant guilty of his get-go-degree murder charges, he'll face life in prison house.

Dec. 19, 1979

Police found Martinko's body in her parents' tan 1972 Buick at Cedar Rapids' Westdale Mall parking lot around 4 a.m. on Dec. 20, 1979.

The Kennedy Loftier Schoolhouse senior had driven to the mall afterwards a schoolhouse choir banquet to store for a new winter coat.

At present, her confront and chest had been stabbed at least eight times. Wounds on the teen'southward hands showed she fought her killer.

Detectives found no weapon or fingerprints to identify a doubtable and said Martinko had not been robbed. Based on the number of stab wounds — particularly to the young woman'southward face up — police considered the homicide personal in nature.

The case goes cold

Inside days of Martinko's killing, police force received more than than 200 phone calls and letters from people who wanted to assistance, according to Des Moines Register archives. The police main at the time, Ray Bakery, said the fatal stabbing "outraged the whole community."

Hundreds of people were interviewed and countless leads were followed, police said a yr after the slaying. Equally the investigation slowed, a $10,000 reward was offered.

On June 19, 1980, police force released a composite sketch, developed based on descriptions provided by 2 witnesses, of the man they believed stabbed Martinko. The sketch indicated a white man in his belatedly teens or early 20s, weighing betwixt 165 and 175 pounds, and standing about 6 feet tall.

► More:Iowa community tries to reconcile a cold example arrest and its long history with a neighbor

During the original investigation, detectives compiled a list of more than 80 potential suspects. More than than 60 were tested and cleared.

Investigators later sought the services of a company that specializes in DNA phenotyping, which Cedar Rapids constabulary described as the process of predicting physical advent and ancestry from unidentified DNA evidence.

That visitor, police said, produced portraits for the associated person of interest. Predictions were made for ancestry and facial features, police said.

Then the case went cold.

DNA evidence leads to arrest

Using newer engineering, Cedar Rapids police force final year created profiles from DNA procured from case prove in 2006. Investigators said the man who stabbed Martinko cutting his hand and left blood backside on her wearing apparel and on the gear shift knob.

In ane of those profiles, authorities said there were fewer than 1 in 100 billion unrelated individuals who would take had the aforementioned contour.

Cedar Rapids law and then used Deoxyribonucleic acid genetic genealogical research to narrow the contour "down to a specific puddle of suspects," which included Burns, according to a criminal complaint.

In Oct 2018, Matthew Denlinger, a Cedar Rapids law investigator, saw Burns drink sodas out of a plastic glass with a clear straw. He retrieved it after Burns left it backside, according to search warrants. An analyst at the state crime lab said DNA from the straw matched blood found on Martinko's dress.

Burns was arrested on December. 19, 2018.

Jerry Burns

At the time of his abort, Burns had been living in Manchester, a town of about 5,000 people 45 minutes northward of Cedar Rapids, for longer than Martinko'southward case had been common cold.

Burns, who would accept been 25 at the time of Martinko'south death, said he could non offer a "plausible explanation" for why his DNA was found at the crime scene, authorities said at the fourth dimension of his arrest.

"The community is in daze, his friends are in daze, his family is in stupor. I experience bad for the victim's family unit because they've been wondering every twenty-four hour period of their life what happened to their daughter," Russ Wright, who served Burns most every mean solar day at a local BP gas station, said last December. "I besides experience bad for, you lot know, his current family and friends considering … now they have to become through all this too."

Burns owns a pulverisation-coating visitor, Advanced Coating Concepts, in Manchester.

He previously co-owned a truck stop near boondocks. He built a new home on state his parents once farmed and constructed a gas station and convenience store nearly where he lived. Several residents lauded his professionalism and business savvy when speaking with the Register final twelvemonth.

Burns' arrest prompted a round of whispering about two of his family unit members.

Burns' married woman, Patricia, died by suicide in 2008. His cousin, Brian Burns, vanished December. nineteen, 2013 — exactly 34 years after Martinko was killed.

Delaware County Sheriff John Leclere said authorities "don't accept any reason to doubtable (Burns) in either case."

Searching for justice

In September 1986, the Iowa Supreme Courtroom rejected claims made by Martinko'south father that the shopping heart was negligent because it did non provide "reasonable security" for his daughter, the Register reported at the fourth dimension.

By the time of Burns' arrest, both of Martinko's parents had been gone for decades: Martinko'due south male parent died in 1995 and her mother in 1998.

"One of the areas that continues to tug at my heart," Cedar Rapids' police chief said during a printing conference last Dec, "was (Martinko'southward sister) expressed how distressing their parents passed away without knowing who killed their daughter, Michelle."

Elizabeth Laymon, who was loftier school friends with Martinko, said she vividly remembers the day classmates sobbed afterwards they learned of the stabbing. Laymon said she and Martinko were in a self-defence class together, but added that "no amount of self-defense could accept saved her from that."

During an interview with the Des Moines Annals, Laymon called the arrest "astonishing" news and said she was relieved.

"I am thrilled for her sister, Janelle, and wish her parents were alive to see this," Laymon said. "I am happy Michelle finally gets justice."

Martinko's family unit in a statement concluding Dec credited "the work of several generations of Cedar Rapids uniformed police and detectives in bringing Mr. Burns to justice. From the leadership on downwards, they never gave upward."

Preparing for trial

District Acquaintance Judge Casey D. Jones gear up Burns' bond at $5 million on Dec. 20, 2018.

"This was a brutal, violent, horrendous law-breaking," Linn County Banana Attorney Mike Harris said at the time.

Burns pleaded not guilty in January. His trial was most recently set to begin Oct. fourteen, only was delayed subsequently Burns' defense team requested boosted fourth dimension to review new bear witness and witnesses. Nicholas Maybanks, the Linn County prosecutor handling the case, did not resist the continuance, courtroom records show.

Maybanks as well choose not to resist the defense's request that the trial be moved out of the eastern Iowa county where the alleged crime took identify. Burns' attorneys claimed the case has been surrounded past "pervasive and prejudicial pretrial publicity" and has been in the public middle for the by four decades, court filings evidence.

District Estimate Fae Hoover on December. 9 agreed to move the trial to the Scott County Courthouse in Davenport. Jury selection is still fix to brainstorm Feb. 10.

Anna Spoerre covers criminal offense and courts for the Des Moines Annals. She can be contacted at aspoerre@dmreg.com, 515-284-8387 or on Twitter at @annaspoerre.

Source: https://www.desmoinesregister.com/story/news/crime-and-courts/2019/12/19/jerry-burns-michelle-martinko-accused-1979-iowa-killing/2702680001/

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