Last . Copyright 2023 CBS Interactive Inc. All rights reserved. . [7] Martinko was the younger of two daughters of Albert F. Martinko and Janet Martinko (ne Zillig). Viewers also wondered if there was a connection to the disappearance of Burns' cousin, Brian Burns. CEDAR RAPIDS - Police investigators couldn't find evidence that Jerry Burns and Michelle Martinko knew each other. [10][11] She was also a talented performer, joined the twirling squad as a sophomore, and performed in choirs and theater productions. While these occurrences sounded suspicious, the police didn't believe Burns had anything to do with them. A Felony. "It looks personal, it's a lot of stab wounds, it's overkill," said lead Detective Matt Denlinger of the Cedar Rapids Police Department. Later that day, her body was discovered in her family's car. At the time of his arrest, Burns ran a powder-coating business called, Advanced Coating Concepts. (Supreme Court No. "I cried a lot and I looked out windows all hours of the night," Martinko's mother, Janet Martinko, told Cedar Rapids' CBS station in 1987. [2] That narrowed the suspects down to a set of three brothers, who had grown up in Manchester, Iowa. She was seen inside the mall by friends and coworkers because Martinko worked in the mall. He was arrested Wednesday on the exact day Martinko was last seen alive. "That was big, national news," said Denlinger. [14] Burns's cousin, Brian Burns, went missing on December 19, 2013 and has not been found. Denlinger had found the needle in the haystack. Her father died in 1995 and her mother died in 1998. [9] The killer left no fingerprints, which led police to believe they had worn gloves. Vikings Ring of Honor Coach Jerry Burns passed away Wednesday at the age of 94. Last week, a police investigator explained how using a public genealogy database - called GEDmatch - led to Burns being identified as a match to the DNA evidence found on Martinko's dress and gearshift of her car, where her body was found Dec. 20, 1979. Burns' attorney, Leon Spies, also argued in his suppression motion that the computer evidence is irrelevant because it's from 2018 - 38 years after Martinko's death. People around him considered him to be a professional but everything fizzled out shortly after. Like all the cases I cover, Michelles was solved using forensic genealogy, which led police to Jerry Lynn Burns. An obituary for Burns' wife, Patricia, says that she died in June 2008 at the age of 55 . Jerry Lynn Burns was finally arrested in October 2018 for the murder of Michelle Martinko, that took place 39 years prior. After the arrest this week of Jerry Burns in the 1979 killing of 18-year-old Michelle Martinko, an Iowa city is left shocked, saddened, and skeptical. Burns is accused of killing Cedar Rapids teenager Michelle Martinko in 1979. Linn. After Burns arrest, several viewers questioned whether Burns could be a suspect in the death of his wife, Patricia, in 2008. What began to turn the case around was the emergence of DNA as a forensic tool for crime fighting in the late 1990s. The murder of Michelle Martinko occurred in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, on December 19, 1979. After weeks pursuing a wide range of possible blood relatives, Parabon helped him narrow the search down to three middle-aged brothers in Iowa who would have been young men back in 1979: Ken, Don and Jerry Burns. 1, 2021 3:52 pm608d ago, Caleb McCullough Health Care and Medicine Jun. His ex-wife, Patricia, committed suicide in 2008, and his cousin Brian Burns astonishingly disappeared. His cousin, Brian Burns, went missing on the 19th of December 2013. Jim was born on April 20, 1933 in Walsenburg, Colorado to Geraldine Hudson McAlpine and Victor Paul Hudson and passed away on February 24, 2023 at his home in Amarillo, Texas with his family by his side at the age of 89. [26] He was not able to provide an explanation for why his DNA would have been present at the crime scene. The results were entered into the Combined DNA Index System (CODIS), the national DNA database, but no matches were found. On Wednesday, after weeks of "planning and strategizing," investigators interviewed and arrested Burns for first-degree murder, Jerman said. He then contacted a member of a third branch, and a DNA test determined that they were first cousins with the killer. Kayla Lemieux, the transgender high school teacher in Canada, has been put on paid leave after pictures emerged of her dressed as a man proving she does not wear the prosthetics all the time. Court is scheduled to begin at 2:30 p.m.. Updated Sep 20, 2022 at 3:27pm. The Gazette is Iowas independent, employee-owned source for local, state, and national news coverage. And he had the daunting task of trying to figure out who that could be, armed only with an unidentified sample of blood DNA. [35] On May 29, 2020, Burns' attorneys filed a motion asking for a new trial, claiming his constitutional and state rights were violated and that the court made a mistake in overruling the request for evidence to be suppressed. The murder of Michelle Martinko in the parking lot of Cedar Rapids' Westdale Mall has some eerie connections to the Huisentruit case. GEDmatch returned one person who shared DNA markers with the suspect in Martinko's murder, and it determined her to be likely the killer's second cousin once removed. Jerry Lynn Burns, 64, of Manchester, was arrested and charged with first-degree murder on Wednesday, nearly 40 years after the brutal murder of 18-year-old Michelle Martinko in the parking lot of Westdale Mall on December 19, 1979. Martinko, an 18-year-old high school student, was found stabbed to death in her family's car in the parking lot of a local mall, where she had gone to buy a new coat. Jerry Lynn Burns. UPDATE: Trial set for Iowa man accused in 1979 killing of Michelle Martinko . Ken and Don were not a match but Jerry Burns' DNA was a match, to an almost perfect scientific certainty. The trial for Jerry Lynn Burns, who's been charged with first-degree murder in the 1979 killing of Michelle Martinko, will begin at 9 a.m. Oct. 14 at Linn County Courthouse, according to online court records and the Des Moines Register. Your login session has expired. Would love your thoughts, please comment. The police never received the information, and the woman did not contact police until months later, when they reissued a call for any information connected to the murder. He stated that Burns' DNA could have been at the scene due to secondary transfer (such as skin cells transferring to an article of clothing when someone brushes up against another person), although he clarified that it was not his opinion that this was the case with Burns' DNA. They . His ex-wife, Patricia, committed suicide in 2008, and his cousin Brian Burns astonishingly disappeared. 19, 2018. Glad you are liking it! Allison also recounted a time when Burns tried to tear down a cellmate's bunk bed because he was snoring too loudly. And the crucial link is a man named Jerry Burns. He previously co-owned a truck shop and worked for John Deere. Allison says Burns threatened him one day after a winning streak. The Delaware County Sheriff's Office says Brian Burns remains an active missing person case but, at this point, has no link to his cousin. The defense also requested the trial be moved out of Linn County based on the amount of attention the case had received over the past four decades, as well as "pervasive and prejudicial pretrial publicity". Denlinger said he intentionally chose that day to interview Burns because it was the anniversary of Martinko's death. Might be nothing, but Jerry has a cousin who went missing in 2013 and it has become a cold case and Jerry's wife committed suicide in 2008. On the eve of December 19, 1979, an 18-year-old high school student named Michelle Martinko was discovered dead in her family's car outside a mall in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. On August 7, 2020, Burns was sentenced to life in prison without parole. Homerline, a soft-spoken woman who enjoyed teaching Sunday School, did everything possible to avoid attention. The police considered the murder personal in nature based on the manner of death, according to Little Village magazine. Do Not Sell or Share My Personal Information. Cutting-edge DNA technology was used to solve the cold case. [2][5] Her hands bore defensive wounds, which police said to indicate that she had fought back against her killer. Jerry Lynn Burns was finally arrested in October 2018 for the murder of Michelle Martinko, that took place 39 years prior. 39 years later after the murder, a person named Jerry Lynn Burns was arrested in Manchester, Iowa, and charged with first-degree murder. He was sentenced to life on August 7 without the possibility of parole. "I talked to myself and didn't know what to do Then you have to pray.". She claimed to have seen two cars in the lot, one of which was Martinko's, and a man standing next to the open driver's side door of Martinko's car. Jerry knew he was called to be a preacher at the age of 13 and after many years of arguing with God. Burns had previously been married to Patricia Burns, who died in 2008 from suicide. Works at Target Distribution Center. Visitation will be held from 5 This "tragic case" had been "haunting this community for 39 years," Cedar Rapids Police Chief Wayne Jerman said Wednesday. The 55 year-old Delaware County man was last seen on December 19, 2013 - 34 years to the day of Martinko's murder. They then started to locate all the people that they had originally interviewed in the investigation and collected DNA samples from over 100 different people. [29] The judge determined the search history was not usable in the trial due to the decades of time separating the murder and the searches. He may be one of the relatively rare "one and done" killers that we have learned about now that we have vastly improved DNA analysis technology. In 2012, while serving a life sentence for an unrelated attack, the man died in prison from colon cancer. Reporter covering state and federal courts. The police used the information to create a partial DNA profile. Prosecutors played a covertly recorded interview that investigators conducted with Jerry Lynn Burns in December of 2018. The new technique, started this year with the "Golden State Killer," has identified over two dozen suspects. 'If I was there, I don't know, Burns told Denlinger. See Photos. physical distance - it was a 2 hour drive to and from mason city to cedar rapids. Get browser notifications for breaking news, live events, and exclusive reporting. [2][16] At 2a.m., since Martinko had still not returned home, her father reported her missing. [11][18] In the year after the killing, the number of people interviewed by police reached the hundreds, and up to 30 people were interviewed under hypnosis. In 2017, Cedar Rapids police said they reached out to Parabon NanoLabs to help build a suspect profile based on the crime scene DNA. Investigators struggled over the years to connect DNA collected at the scene to a suspect. "Do I look like that?" [21] Psychics were also consulted early on in the investigation. People named Jerry Burns. "The family never gave up hope that this case would be solved," Jerman said in a statement Wednesday. Jerry Lynn Burns' DNA sample was collected from a plastic straw he drank soda with. His first wife, Patricia, died by suicide in 2008. Now, the solving of another long-cold casea young blonde woman murdered in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, two hours away may shed new light on Huisentruit's disappearance and presumed murder. Then in 2018, DNA phenotyping company GEDmatch, a public genealogy website that famously helped catch the Golden State Killer, started creating a family tree based on the killers DNA. [2] Once there, she perused the stores and spoke with friends and other people she knew who worked there. The Realm, a group of 34 people. Spies asked if he had consent from Burns to take the lunch straw for testing. On May 29, 2020, Burns' attorneys filed a motion asking for a new trial, claiming his constitutional and . "I was speechless," Denlinger says, recalling the moment the lab told him the results. The family of the man suspected of murdering Michelle Martinko 39 years ago said the arrest came "as a complete shock.". Burns argues the trial court erred in denying his motion to suppress where the warrantless extraction of his DNA profile violated his rights under the Fourth Amendment of the United States Constitution and article I . As reported by CBS News, Burns was not arrested until 2018, when DNA evidence confirmed he was responsible for Martinko's death. He was preceded in death by his wife of 50 years, Joan C. Plum Merriner, who passed away on January 4, 2019. [16] Based on cash found in Martinko's purse, police concluded that she had not been robbed. At the time of the murder, Burns was 25 and lived in Manchester, Iowa. Add newsletters@thegazette.comto your contacts. He was around 25 when he killed Martinko in 1979. Staggering snowfall in California mountains leaves residents trapped for days, SpaceX launches new crew on flight to space station, Garland testifies before Senate panel amid ongoing special counsel probes, Colon cancer rates rising in younger age group, study finds, Firefighter dies battling blaze in downtown Buffalo, mayor says, Several hospitalized after Lufthansa flight diverted to Dulles due to turbulence, Explosive found in checked luggage at Pennsylvania airport, feds say, Prosecution wraps its case at Alex Murdaugh murder trial, Top McCarthy aide, House Oversight chair each met with Ashli Babbitt's mother, Sneak peek: Murder at the Mall: The Michelle Martinko Case, Michelle Martinko, left, and Jodi Huisentruit. The detective looked through the case files and found what he thought to be the murderer's blood. Jerry Lynn Burns faces a first degree murder charge in the killing of Michelle Martinko. New comments cannot be posted and votes cannot be cast, Science & criminal justice teamed up in 2018 to start cracking cold cases! [31] The defense argued that DNA evidence had been mishandled,[31] and that different articles of clothing from the scene should not have been stored together in one evidence bag. KWQC [9] She was fully dressed, and the medical examiner determined she had not been sexually assaulted. This is what eventually helped authorities identify the culprit - Jerry Lynn Burns. jerry lynn burns defendant-appellant. Tests eliminated the other two brothers as suspects, but the DNA from Burns' straw matched the blood found on Martinko's clothing. "I read the article and it talked about genetic genealogy. Jerry Burns. 24. Law enforcement said Burns hasnt been able to explain why his DNA would be at the crime scene, nor does he remember committing the crime. The majority of the search activity and history on Burns' computer was sexually graphic and more 'deviant in nature, said Holst, who investigates sex crimes and internet crimes against children. The organizations filing the brief contend that the collection of Mr. Burn's DNA without a warrant from a discarded straw he used at a restaurant violated the Fourth Amendment, and article I, section 8 of the Iowa Constitution. . But by 2 a.m., her father called the police because she had not returned home. KCRG-TV9: 10PM Newscast, December 19, 2018 Arrest in Michelle Martinko Case, KCRG-TV9 Staff Anchors: Bruce Aune and Beth Malicki Meteorologist: Joe Winters Executive Producer: Aaron Hepker Producer: Ellen Kurt Director: Terri Walter Reporters: Dave Franzman, Forrest Saunders, Chantelle Navarro Photographers: Rebecca Varilek, Jay Greene, Michelle Martinko's Family Speaks to Law & Crime Network About the Jerry Burns Verdict, Michelle Martinko's Family Speaks to Law & Crime Network About the Jerry Burns Verdict #JerryBurns #JerryBurnsTrial #MichelleMartinko, Serial Killers Ex Thinks There Were More Victims. A struggle followed in which Michelle was stabbed and sliced by a knife almost 30 times in a horrific murder that police initially believed had to be a crime of passion. Be the first one to comment on this story. And he said he couldn't talk about it," Michael Allison said, who shared a cell with Burns starting in September 2019. In fact, his father Harvey, now 85, had been one of the original officers on the case 40 years earlier. [2] The police received more than 100 tips following the release of the new images. But he never asked for an attorney, Denlinger said. It was a cold case until 2018, when familial DNA identified a suspect 39 years after the crime who was charged, tried and convicted of her murder.[2]. [2] A police spokesman said that "everyone's instinct is to say it was a guy", but they were not sure of the sex of the killer. The woman communicated her information to the daughter of the secretary of the Public Safety Commissioner and believed that it would be passed on to police if it was important. Jerry Burns . A few days later, the Saints fell. A jailhouse informant also testified in the case Tuesday. [1][5][6], Michelle Marie Martinko (October 6, 1961 December 19, 1979) was born in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. "That threw us all off," Allison said about the incident. [1][5] Iowan law mandates a life sentence without the possibility of parole for first degree murder. Her case went cold for decades until DNA testing finally brought her family some peace and put her murderer behind bars. Through his research, he discovered that a woman named Brandy Jennings had uploaded her DNA to a website service to trace her own family history. See if it is.. However, in 2006, a tip came into the Cedar Rapids police department. Jim grew up . State prosecutors also showed a video interview they secretly recorded in 2018, after matching Burns' DNA to the crime scene and getting a search warrant to obtain further DNA. Burns made an initial court appearance via video Thursday morning and said he would fill out an application for a court-appointed counsel. Jerry Burns is still behind bars . Murderer Jerry Lynn Burns was not caught for almost 40 years. Jerry Lynn Burns (born December 23, 1953 [13]) was 25 years old when he killed Michelle Martinko in December 1979. 'As far as I know, I wasn't there.. The victim, Martinko, was an 18-year-old high school student from Cedar Rapids, Iowa, who was visiting a mall to buy a winter coat. Life legacy Wallace Jerry Huggins Funeral services will be Tuesday April 11, 2017 at 1 PM from the Chapel of the Taylor Funeral Home with Bro. Holst said he didn't, but department officials and First Assistant Linn County Attorney Nick Maybanks did consult an expert who specialized in sex offender assessment and treatment to explain what this evidence indicates in this case. 2020 CBS Interactive Inc. All Rights Reserved. She had goals for herself, things she wanted to do with her life, and she would write them down and achieve them., I dont know if Ill ever get over this, Mrs. Martinko added. Lighthouse: The Dark Being, a group of 43 people. Now, her suspected killer is set to go on trial", "Search warrant shows how relative's DNA led police to Manchester man in Michelle Martinko's death", "40 years later: What we know about Michelle Martinko and the arrest that re-opened the cold case", "Jerry Burns found guilty of first-degree murder in the death of Michelle Martinko", "BREAKING: Jerry Burns, convicted of killing Michelle Martinko, officially sentenced to life in prison", "30 years ago: Murder of teen haunts those who knew her", "Distant relative learns her DNA led to arrest in Michelle Martinko slaying", "Friends of man arrested in Martinko murder shocked", "Iowa community tries to reconcile a cold case arrest and its long history with a neighbor", "One-time suspect in unsolved Cedar Rapids homicide dies in prison", "Police collected DNA from dozens while investigating 1979 killing of Michelle Martinko", "UPDATE: Tips coming into CRPD since Martinko press conference", "39 years later, man charged in cold-case killing of high school student Michelle Martinko", "Jury Finds Burns Guilty Of First Degree Murder In Killing Of Martinko", "Trial for Jerry Burns, charged in the 1979 killing of 18-year-old Michelle Martinko, moved out of Linn County", "No delay in trial for man accused of killing Michelle Martinko", "Burns' Second Hearing Focuses on Pornography", "From the crime to conviction, a timeline of events in the murder of Michelle Martinko", "Witnesses describe murder scene in trial of man accused of killing Michelle Martinko in 1979", "Witnesses describe procedure in collecting, storing, and tracking evidence as part of cold-case murder trial", "Jerry Burns defense calls one witness, rests its case after testimony from self-defined forensic DNA consultant", "After denied mistrial motion, testimony in Michelle Martinko murder case concludes", "Iowa man guilty in 1979 killing of high school student", "Lawyers for Jerry Burns file motion for new trial", "Jerry Burns attorney files for new trial", "Burns Files Appeal on Murder Conviction", "Offender Information | Iowa Department of Corrections", https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Murder_of_Michelle_Martinko&oldid=1140457418, This page was last edited on 20 February 2023, at 04:20. 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