Slaying That Haunted Family for Decades Now Linked to Racism
[This story previously aired on November 7, 2020. It was updated on August 7, 2021.]
In the early hours of Dec twenty, 1979, the body of 18-year-old Michelle Martinko was institute in her car in the parking lot of a mall in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. She was stabbed multiple times. The murder baffled investigators for several generations. CBS News Correspondent Jamie Yuccas explores the unrelenting quest to solve one of Iowa'southward well-nigh haunting cases and how Michelle Martinko may have helped them solve her ain murder.
A HORRIFIC SCENE
Just earlier Christmas in 1979, every single police officeholder in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, was called to work on the horrific murder in the parking lot of Westdale Mall -- including, now-retired Detective Harvey Denlinger.
Harvey Denlinger: I had never seen everyone stabbed that many times. ... Something like that was unheard of around here..
Michelle Martinko, an xviii-year-old loftier school senior, had been found violently stabbed in the front seat of her car. Her killer was unknown, confounding generations of investigators.
Harvey Denlinger: We couldn't come upwardly with anything … and we just kept plugging away.
Jamie Yuccas: How old were you?
Det. Matt Denlinger: I was 5 years quondam.
Jamie Yuccas: Do yous recollect the case?
Det. Matt Denlinger: No, not from when I was little.
Matt is Harvey's son.
Det. Matt Denlinger: Merely every unmarried year on December. 19th … the local news would have a Michelle Martinko segment … So, information technology was really difficult to miss the severity of it.
2006 NEWS Study: Michelle Martinko was a bright eyed, blonde … 27 years agone her life was cut short …
Decades after, Matt — now a detective himself — joined the investigation into Michelle Martinko'southward murder 36 years afterward his male parent had begun working the same case.
Det. Matt Denlinger: Wouldn't it be something if I could detect our suspect and my dad is still alive?
And as he dug into the thick files, the son went to his father to help him brand sense of it all.
Det. Matt Denlinger: I wanted someone to talk to nigh information technology and I wanted someone that really understood it.
The crime had stunned this modest metropolis of 110,000.
Tracy Price: It scared the hell out of us.
Tracy Price went to loftier school and sang in the choir with Michelle.
Tracy Price: Information technology just hit me similar a brick … Why? [shakes caput]
Mike Wyrick [Shakes head]: It was simply shocking.
Mike Wyrick had dated Michelle in high schoolhouse, and says her murder shattered the city'due south All-American image.
Mike Wyrick: If that could happen and the person wasn't caught, anything could happen.
Janelle Stonebraker is Michelle's big sister — 12 years older. Michelle was the bloom girl at her wedding ceremony. She and her hubby John say goose egg could accept prepared them for the horrible news they got the morning time after Michelle was killed.
Janelle Stonebraker: Nosotros simply hugged and nosotros couldn't believe she was gone. … my dad was very stoic nearly it, but he was angry. My mother was just brokenhearted [emotional].
It was a devastating blow to parents who had been through then much with Michelle already.
Janet Martinko had suffered five miscarriages and was 44 years old when Michelle was born.
Janelle Stonebraker: Information technology was dandy, I mean, information technology was merely so exciting when my sister was born … and she was the "miracle infant."
When she was 12, Michelle was diagnosed with scoliosis, a curvature of the spine. She had to habiliment a caryatid that went from her neck to her hips.
Janelle Stonebraker: She felt very unlike, very self-witting. She couldn't motion effectually like other kids could movement around, and then that was a tough period.
Just at age 14, she was able to shed the brace and then, Janelle says, everything changed for Michelle.
Janelle Stonebraker: Farrah Fawcett was in with the hair and my sister e'er had the long blond pilus. Then, she thought, "OK, I can practise the hair."
John Stonebraker: Michelle was blissfully unaware of all this attending she was getting from men.
She caught the eye of Andy Seidel, who, at 16, was a yr older than Michelle.
Gail Dawson: We met him roller skating.
Michelle's friend Gail Dawson remembers him.
Gail Dawson: At that place was this flashy, sports car guy, you know.
Michelle and Andy were together for two years, so broke up. Friends say she didn't want to be in a committed human relationship—and Andy apparently didn't accept information technology likewise well.
John Stonebraker: Later they bankrupt upwards, he wanted to know her every move, who she was dating, why she was dating that particular person. He would talk to her friends … he just wouldn't get away.
Police force learned Andy had run across Michelle at the mall that fateful dark. They brought him in for questioning.
Jamie Yuccas: Did he take an alibi?
Det. Matt Denlinger: Andy did have an excuse—Andy was at habitation soon later on the mall closed … and his mom provided an excuse. The problem with Andy's alibi though is that moms would say a lot to protect their children.
Gail Dawson: Every male that knew her was a suspect they had to articulate.
Jamie Yuccas: You must have been a suspect?
Mike Wyrick: I was.
Mike Wyrick was questioned as well. And fifty-fifty though he was more than 100 miles away at college when Michelle was murdered, police knew he had also dated her.
Mike Wyricyard: All of it was a little intimidating. Information technology was hard. It was scary.
Mike says the constabulary were tough on him.
Mike Wyrick: At one signal they thought that I wasn't telling them everything, and they laid the crime scene photos out in forepart of me. And it was hurtful.
Mike was never considered a serious doubtable considering he was not in Cedar Rapids at the time of the murder — just Andy was. And Andy's behavior at Michelle's funeral only reinforced many people's suspicions nigh him.
Gail Dawson: He was about in the casket. He was so emotional. He had his arms around her, and he was merely sobbing …he said to me— "I have to know who she loved when she died. …Did she beloved me, or did she love Mike? Who did she love when she died?"
But police had no hard evidence pointing to Andy Seidel. He left Cedar Rapids before long after high school and joined the Navy.
Gail Dawson: There's a big amount of u.s.a. that were convinced that he did kill her.
John Stonebreaker: I idea information technology was just a matter of time before he was arrested and charged.
Janelle Stonebreaker: At that place was no one else. There really wasn't some other suspect.
BLOOD THE KILLER LEFT BEHIND
As constabulary investigated those closest to Michelle Martinko looking for potential suspects, they were likewise looking at the possibility that Michelle may take been killed outside the mall by a stranger.
Tracy Price: She was out there, and she was looking for a coat that her mom had put on layaway for her for Christmas, and she was gonna pay information technology off.
Michelle had a $186 with her to pay for the coat, merely ultimately decided she didn't want it. Tracy Price had encounter her at the mall that night and gave her a protective alarm when he saw her property the cash.
Tracy Cost: "Put that away," y'all know … "don't be flashing money out here in the centre of everybody. "
Tracy just learned later on that Michelle was a fiddling anxious that night.
Tracy Cost: She was nervous about going out to the mall by herself and that she told someone she felt similar she was being followed.
Jamie Yuccas: You didn't notice anybody watching her, paying close attention her?
Tracy Price: I never got that feeling.
Michelle headed to her car in the dark.
Jamie Yuccas: So, she was parked pretty far away.
Det. Matt Denlinger: Yes, she was parked a ways out here. … I remember she gets in, I retrieve she turned that car on past herself and was warming it upwards to become the frost off the windows … and I think in that moment before she puts information technology in drive and leaves, he'southward at the door, pops it open up, pushes her over and climbs in.
Jamie Yuccas: Sounds like a robbery?
Det. Matt Denlinger: On the surface it would audio like a robbery, only she did take the cash on her, it wasn't taken. She did have a bag with some items she had purchased in the back seat, those weren't taken.
Jamie Yuccas: So, is it a sexual assault?
Det. Matt Denlinger: It very well could have been the plan.
Although the autopsy showed she was not sexually assaulted, Michelle had defensive slice wounds on her hands and trunk.
Det. Matt Denlinger: You have to assume that pretty much any motive you tin think of was a possibility and that Michelle decided she wasn't gonna allow that to happen. She fought.
Whatever the motive, the assailant had come prepared.
Det. Matt Denlinger: They plant rubber glove indentations on the outside of the car in dirt. They found them inside the automobile in blood … information technology was clear that the person was trying to conceal their identity.
Investigators had no fingerprints, no witnesses and few leads. Although they had a blood-soaked crime scene, Deoxyribonucleic acid technology was all the same years abroad.
Det. Matt Denlinger: It's frustrating -- by 1986 this case is sitting on water ice, it'south that cold … no one can remember of annihilation more to do at that point.
Michelle'due south family was even more frustrated.
Janelle Stonebraker: Information technology seemed that everyone had been looked at.
John Stonebraker: Nosotros thought the case was pretty much expressionless in the water.
It would take virtually 2 decades, only the instance would come alive again. In 2005, Detective Doug Larison was in charge. Coincidentally, he had gone to high school with Michelle. Although they weren't close, her murder had deeply afflicted him.
Jamie Yuccas: So that had been on your heed since you were eighteen years old -- how do nosotros get this solved.
Det. Doug Larison: Correct. … I felt a responsibility toward my classmates actually to get this case solved.
In the years since Michelle'south murder, DNA had emerged as a forensic tool.
Det. Doug Larison: Applied science changes, scientific discipline changes. … So, I wanted to continue and move the case forwards.
And Larison did only that. He was reading Michelle'due south file when he discovered that sometime earlier, another detective had sent blood scrapings found on the gearshift of the car out for testing. But nobody had followed up on the results.
Jamie Yuccas: And information technology just stays in the file until somebody finds it?
Det. Doug Larison: And it can get lost in the file.
Jamie Yuccas: … and until somebody sits down and reads the file do they go, "Oh wow, we have DNA. "
Det. Doug Larison: Those different investigators don't necessarily network with one other.
But Larison plant that lab written report, and it showed that not merely did the gearshift have DNA, merely it was male person Deoxyribonucleic acid.
Det. Doug Larison: He had probably cutting himself and that'due south how his Deoxyribonucleic acid and his blood got mixed with her blood in the gearshift selector.
Larison and then sent Michelle's wearing apparel -- which had been safely tucked away in an evidence locker -- to the lab for further testing.
Jamie Yuccas: What did they observe?
Det. Doug Larison: A spot of blood on her dress with a full male DNA profile. And it was consequent with the male Deoxyribonucleic acid profiled on the gear shift selector.
Larison had identified a crucial slice of evidence.
Det. Doug Larison: I think it's only common sense that that'southward probably your killer right in that location.
Detectives had the lab piece of work. Now, all they needed was the suspect.
Det. Matt Denlinger: Nosotros know nosotros need just one person. Nosotros merely need to get lucky. Yous know -- have the sunday smoothen on united states merely ane twenty-four hours when we find i person that matches that.
But it would take many days -- more than a decade. And information technology wasn't luck -- it was cops who wouldn't quit until they finally narrowed in on one very surprising suspect.
Janelle Stonebraker: And then, we -- oh boy, this is it— we take finally gotten down to the wire on this.
SEARCHING FOR A Doubtable
In America's heartland, for friends similar Tracy Price who saw Michelle Martinko the final night of her life, for ex-boyfriend Mike Wyrick, and for shut friend Gail Dawson, Michelle'south murderer left a mark on all their lives.
Tracy Cost: Every ceremony, it goes through your head.
Mike Wyrick: We were all victims in a way.
Jamie Yuccas: Your innocence was stolen.
Mike Wyrick: Yeah, exactly.
Gail Dawson: Then the fear set in. .. You lot're scared. You're afraid to go places.
The killer had vanished. But by 2005, investigators were onto something new: science and that male DNA profile on Michelle's wearing apparel and the Deoxyribonucleic acid from the claret on her automobile'southward gear shift.
Jamie Yuccas: Would information technology exist fair to say y'all found a needle in a haystack?
Det. Doug Larison: I think there's a lot of needles in a lot of haystacks in this example.
For lead investigator Doug Larison, old prove suddenly had fresh potential. He shipped the blood samples to CODIS, the nationwide database of Deoxyribonucleic acid collected from arrested offenders. If Michelle's murderer had a previous record …
Det. Doug Larison: … CODIS will give us a hit and tell the states who matches the contour.
Jamie Yuccas: So, you transport it to CODIS and what happens?
Det. Doug Larison: Well, we never got a hit.
It was a expressionless end. The DNA from Michelle'due south dress and car did not friction match up with anyone in the huge regime file.
Det. Doug Larison: Then, now we had a job to do.
Starting with locating all the people Cedar Rapids cops had originally interviewed.
Det. Doug Larison: Nosotros collected DNA samples from over 100 unlike people.
Cops had to convince them to have a Dna test.
Det. Doug Larison: It was fourth dimension-consuming.
Mike Wyrick and Tracy Price were tested; both came up negative. At the top of Larison's list was Michelle's sometime boyfriend, Andy Seidel.
Det. Doug Larison: I think he was probably the chief suspect from the very beginning of this case.
Andy Seidel had lived for 27 years with many in his hometown believing he was a killer.
Det. Doug Larison: I said, "listen Andy, if you give us your DNA, and it doesn't lucifer. And so you're eliminated. You lot're cleared". … he voluntarily gave his Dna and he was eliminated.
But whoever ended Michelle'due south life, left a different, only lasting mark on Andy. Michelle'due south parents both died earlier that DNA test exonerated him. They probable went to their graves believing Andy was their daughter'due south killer.
Janelle Stonebraker: I feel really bad about that.
John Stonebraker: Andy was a victim himself because … many many fingers were pointing at Andy.
Larison moved on -- classmates, friends, family unit -- searching for a match with that male person Dna.
Jamie Yuccas: Then, you lot do a hundred people. What comes back?
Det. Doug Larison: Everybody's eliminated. No matches.
It had been 10 frustrating years for Detective Doug Larison.
Det. Doug Larison: I was kind of burned out. And then, I went to my supervisors and said, "I think you need to become somebody to supercede me on this case." … And that's when Matt came in.
Matt Denlinger, Harvey's son, that second generation -- searching for Michelle's killer. In 2015 he took over every bit atomic number 82 detective.
Facts hadn't changed. But Deoxyribonucleic acid engineering science had once once more advanced further, offering tantalizing possibilities.
Det. Matt Denlinger: We've got this DNA profile. How tin can we get more information from it? Tin we discover out eye colour, hair colour, race?
Denlinger reached across the country, to Virginia's Parabon NanoLabs.
Det. Matt Denlinger: And they said, "Aye we know what you're trying to do. And guess what? We can brand a pic of a potential suspect from that Deoxyribonucleic acid sample."
Jamie Yuccas: Did you lot think that could be possible?
Det. Matt Denlinger: No, no. I had no good concept that that was possible. Information technology sounded a chip sci-fi. … But I was ready to try. We had to exercise something.
The portrait was hit. Parabon chosen the technique "Snapshot." It put a confront on a phantom.
Det. Matt Denlinger: What we learned from that is our suspect was probably a white male, blonde hair, blue eyes. And so, we had a press conference.
Investigators had narrowed downwardly the suspect'southward genetics, but they did not know his historic period, or accept a clue as to how he wore his pilus. Then unlike sketches were created, each with a different expect.
A town hungry for justice, searched its retention for a match.
Jamie Yuccas: You go a lot of tip calls?
Det. Matt Denlinger: Nosotros got hundreds.
Jamie Yuccas: Any of them pan out?
Det. Matt Denlinger: It'southward every blonde haired, blue-eyed guy that ever walked the face up of the world and stepped foot in Iowa.
Jamie Yuccas: Are you lot just dislocated?
Det. Matt Denlinger: I was really confused. … And I did not know where to go next.
The answer came from an infamous, simply totally unrelated case: California's so-called "Golden State Killer." Joseph DeAngelo was arrested in 2018, charged with a decades-long spree of serial murder and rape.
Det. Matt Denlinger: That was large news. That was large, national news then … I read the article and it talked near genetic genealogy.
Jamie Yuccas: And yous went "bingo."
Det. Matt Denlinger: I went "bingo." Yep.
Genetic genealogy -- the charting of DNA, from i family fellow member to another – a DNA family tree. Parabon was gear up to examination that same Deoxyribonucleic acid one more time.
Det. Matt Denlinger: They said … we'll use the sample you already gave us for the Snapshot images. I said, "permit'due south do information technology."
Parabon searched a public national database, called GEDmatch, of people who submitted their ain DNA voluntarily to trace their own personal family trees.
Det. Matt Denlinger: And in July 2018, we got a report back from them. They said, "Adept news. We plant a relative of your killer."
Det. Matt Denlinger: Brandy Jennings is our gal in Vancouver, Washington.
Jamie Yuccas: She's the second cousin once removed.
Det. Matt Denlinger: Exactly.
Brandy Jennings, an office manager and single mom, was a distant relative to the male whose DNA was found on Michelle'south bloody wearing apparel and machine.
Jamie Yuccas: So, you lot starting time with her.
Det. Matt Denlinger: Yous start with her.
Denlinger spent months building Brandy'due south family unit tree all the way dorsum to her great-great-grandparents.
Det. Matt Denlinger: Nosotros used genealogical records, birth records, gravestone records, anything we could observe on the cyberspace, anything we could observe to fill in a agglomeration of these unknowns.
As more blood relatives of Brandy Jennings provided their Deoxyribonucleic acid, a genetic puzzle filled in. And the detective reached out to Parabon again.
Det. Matt Denlinger: And they recalibrated things and said, listen nosotros think your all-time odds are these three brothers who live in Iowa.
Iii brothers. All from Iowa. All likely sharing some Dna with the blood found in Michelle Martinko'south automobile. A 38-twelvemonth trail was heading straight dorsum home.
Det. Matt Denlinger: Twenty minutes abroad. I was pretty excited about this one.
ZEROING IN
By October 2018, Detective Matt Denlinger's painstaking ancestry searches had narrowed the suspects down to three brothers in Iowa and all of them were still live.
Det. Matt Denlinger: We immediately started doing enquiry on these iii brothers. They were Donald Burns, Kenneth Burns and … Jerry Burns
Denlinger and his team ready a plan. They would collect Dna samples from the brothers to see if any were a match, and they would do information technology without them knowing.
Jamie Yuccas: Y'all call up one of them is a suspect, you can't tell whatsoever of the iii.
Det. Matt Denlinger: Not only can I not tell whatsoever of the iii, but I was careful who I told in general. … Iowa is not the biggest state in the union. And you never know who knows who.
They followed one brother to tiffin and grabbed his harbinger; for the second, a toothbrush was nerveless from his garbage. And and so the tertiary brother, Jerry …
Det. Matt Denlinger: We drove up to Manchester. And we had already established kind of a blueprint or some locations to try to find him.
Later on a couple of hours, he spotted Jerry Burns at a pizza restaurant.
Det. Matt Denlinger: He drank at least two sodas out of a glass with a harbinger.
All three brothers' samples were sent to the lab. Don and Kenneth were not a match, but the results showed Jerry Burns was an verbal friction match. For Denlinger the bulletin was articulate.
Det. Matt Denlinger: I was definitely speechless. I'grand almost speechless today thinking about it.
Information technology turns out that Parabon sketch of the suspect was very similar to a immature Jerry Burns. But Burns wasn't an obvious suspect.
Det. Matt Denlinger: We are not finding any ... connectedness to Michelle. No connection to that car.
Even more than baffling, Jerry Burns' resume was the opposite of a common cold-blooded killer. He had no criminal tape and was even a respected businessman with a wife and three kids. Denlinger picked a detail day to interview Burns at his business: December nineteen, 2018 -- exactly 39 years to the twenty-four hours after Michelle was murdered.
Det. Matt Denlinger: I wanted to rattle him. I wanted to bring that up during the interview and see if that would do anything to him.
DET. MATT DENLINGER: Hey, how are you today? Jerry, my proper name's Matt with the Cedar Rapids Police Department.
Using a hidden camera inside a coffee mug, Denlinger tried to get a confession.
DET. MATT DENLINGER: The reality is nosotros have your DNA at the offense scene, and so we know you were in that location that night this happened. … How would nosotros get your DNA at the crime scene there, Jerry?
JERRY BURNS: I don't know.
But Jerry best-selling he had been to the mall with his family unit in the past.
DET. MATT DENLINGER: Did you get to Westdale Mall?
JERRY BURNS: Oh yeah. We've gone to Westdale Mall, sure.
Although Jerry couldn't remember when he was at the mall, Denlinger continued to press him.
DET. MATT DENLINGER: Jerry, what happened that night?
JERRY BURNS: I don't know.
Despite Burns' denials, the DNA was enough to arrest him for the murder of Michelle Martinko.
On the ride back to Cedar Rapids, a camera was rolling again -- this time in the police force car, and Denlinger believes Jerry offered something revealing.
Det. Matt Denlinger: Well, he said a few things … about blocking stuff out -- traumatic events.
DET. MATT DENLINGER [in back of police automobile]: Do you recall it's possible this happened and you don't remember any of information technology?
JERRY BURNS [in back of police automobile]: I'm sure something like that would be … Be possible to block out … you block things out of your memories.
Jamie Yuccas: You're a homicide detective. Your gut tells you something. What does your gut say?
Det. Matt Denlinger: My gut told me the 2nd he refused to deny it or requite me a plausible explanation that nosotros had the right guy.
For Michelle's sister Janelle, news of the DNA lucifer and the abort signaled promise and a day she and her hubby John thought would never come up.
Janelle Stonebraker: We were just whooping and hollering, and nosotros were just talking and talking. We were but then excited.
But for the Burns family it all came as a consummate shock. Jerry's daughter Jennifer and his brother Don couldn't believe the human being they know and love could ever be capable of such a gruesome act.
Jennifer Burns: Nosotros did non believe it. This cannot be our dad.
Donald Burns: He couldn't have done it. There was just no way. He was e'er there for his family.
Leon Spies: Circumstances just made it highly improbable from our perspective. First of all, there was no connection between Jerry and Michelle Martinko. None.
Leon Spies is Jerry Burns' chaser. He believes his client'south demeanor during the police interview wasn't out of the ordinary.
Leon Spies: I challenge anybody to predict how any person is going to react, let lone react to beingness caught out of the blue with an investigator trying to attribute them to a horrible, horrible criminal offense. … he did not commit this murder.
In February of 2020, Michelle Martinko's defendant killer went on trial more than than iv decades afterward her murder. Due to the fizz surrounding the example in Cedar Rapids, the estimate granted a venue modify to Davenport, Iowa, an hour away.
NICK MAYBANKS [in court]: The evidence will show that Michelle Martinko was murdered that night past the defendant, Jerry Burns.
Prosecutor Nick Maybanks felt the weight of his hometown on his shoulders.
Nick Maybanks: There'south a lot of optics on this instance. … There are generations that grew up with this story.
And the generation who lived through the horror and suspicion. Several of Michelle's friends were called to bear witness, including Michelle's ex-boyfriend and in one case prime suspect Andy Seidel, who says he and Michelle were on expert terms the last time they saw each other.
ANDY SEIDEL [in court]: There was no reason for us to function ways in a bad way … We just kind of grew apart as we evolved growing into adulthood.
Mike Wyrick was likewise called and had to relive Michelle'south murder all over once more.
Mike Wyrick: This trial was difficult on me. … for a lot of u.s.a. brought it all dorsum into focus in a way that it hadn't been in focus since those early, early days.
From the start, the prosecution faced a number of hurdles. The instance and the evidence were decades old.
Nick Maybanks: Effort to have twoscore years of investigation and condense information technology into a story.
And a lot of things about this doubtable didn't make sense.
Jamie Yuccas: What's that like for you? Y'all take a suspect who has no criminal groundwork that we're enlightened of, and this heinous crime that looks extremely personal. You accept no story.
Nick Maybanks: I don't. Yeah. And after he was interviewed, we didn't have much of a story, either.
A story the Burns family unit believes was problematic from the start.
Jennifer Burns: They wanted an explanation of how his Dna got there. Well, how is he supposed to know from 40 years ago? You lot know, I tin can't call back what I did last week every day.
Jamie Yuccas: So, would you say it'due south impossible that Jerry murdered Michelle?
Don Burns: I'd say it is. There'south admittedly no fashion it could have happened.
Jennifer Burns: I don't recollect there's any way that my dad could have washed this.
The prosecution'south example hinged on that one disquisitional piece of show: Jerry Burns' Dna.
Nick Maybanks: We've got the scientific discipline; we got the guy. … There's a one in 100 billion hazard that information technology could exist somebody else's. There's just eight billion people or so in the globe.
But Leon Spies argues the DNA bear witness isn't foolproof.
Leon Spies: There'due south lots of misconceptions virtually Deoxyribonucleic acid … It's non the silver bullet that police enforcement often portrays it to be.
CURIOUS COMMENTS
Equally the state'south case wound down, Prosecutor Nick Maybanks had one final card to play. He called a new witness, Michael Allison, a drug offender who had become friendly with Jerry Burns in jail.
MICHAEL ALLISON: I asked him directly –I asked him, "Jerry did you practise the crime" and he said, "I can't talk about this."
But Burns did say something curious.
MICHAEL ALLISON: He feels like no matter what happens in his case that he wins, because he had the opportunity to be out there with his family all these years.
Allison said Jerry later fabricated some other comment while they were playing cards that disturbed him then much, he volunteered to testify.
MICHAEL ALLISON: He told me if I keep beating him at pinochle, "he was going to accept to take me to the mall." … Information technology disgusted me.
In his defense case, Leon Spies calls only ane witness-- Dr. Michael Spence, a molecular biologist. He says while there is no dubiousness the DNA in Michelle'south car belonged to Jerry Burns, how it got there was another matter.
LEON SPIES: Is it Dr. Spence, a plausible explanation, that the DNA of Jerry could accept come almost past a transfer?
DR. MICHAEL SPENCE: Aye, that's a distinct possibility.
Leon Spies: Every time you come up into contact with something, you're shedding Dna, you're leaving a biological trail of yourself.
Leon Spies: She was in a shopping mall before she was killed, a shopping mall that the Burns family had used … she sat down with a friend at a food court -- a food court that Jerry Burns and his family unit may take sat at.
Simply how did Jerry's Deoxyribonucleic acid cease upward on the Buick'due south gear shift? Jerry'south brother Don Burns believes there could be an innocent explanation.
Don Burns: He worked in the dealership that sold Buick cars. … so there is a possibility that if records evidence that that motorcar went through that dealership, his Dna could be in that auto.
But Det. Matt Denlinger isn't buying information technology.
Det. Matt Denlinger: My question for them would be, did the apparel go to the dealership as well? … This is fantasy globe ... common sense says that's not the case.
Jamie Yuccas: Impossible.
Det. Matt Denlinger: Impossible.
In his final arguments, Prosecutor Maybanks tells the jury at that place was only one mode Jerry Burns' Dna got into that car.
NICK MAYBANKS: At that place was no chance of outside contamination on this dress. We know how it happened and we know who did information technology.
In his closing argument, Spies attacks the integrity of the investigation.
LEON SPIES: Y'all can consider not only the prove merely also the lack or failure of testify produced by the prosecution.
And he tells jurors to consider how unlikely it is that a human being like Jerry could commit a crime like this.
LEON SPIES: The state's scenario here is that Jerry Burns, a husband with two young children at abode, leaves, drives to Cedar Rapids, Iowa, in the nighttime, leaving his wife and children behind, armed with a knife, armed with rubber gloves, goes to Westdale Mall on the take a chance that he's gonna encounter Michelle Martinko, decides to impale her … and then leaves and drives back home ... Splattered with claret … presumably with a knife wound in his hand … that'southward the scenario the government wants you to believe.
The jury begins deliberations on a Monday afternoon. Nerves are on edge.
Janelle Stonebraker: I was not thinking slam dunk … all information technology takes is one juror to have a hung jury.
But just three hours subsequently …
John Stonebraker: I said – "we have a verdict!" We rush into the courthouse, sit down [simulates animate hard], then we wait.
Judge [reading verdict]: We the jury find the defendant Jerry Lynn Burns guilty of the accuse of murder in the first degree.
Guilty. The courtroom was silent.
Janelle Stonebraker: We almost couldn't exhale … it was just amazing, it was fabulous.
Janelle Stonebraker: We were aware of how repose it was on Jerry'southward side and that there was no reaction.
Jennifer Burns: Unfair.
Don Burns: I'd say I was stunned. The verdict came back so fast. I don't know if the jury took fourth dimension to look at the facts.
Jamie Yuccas: What exercise you lot feel in that moment?
Det. Matt Denlinger: Extreme relief … the weight of the world was off my shoulders now.
Harvey Denlinger, the investigator who was at that place at the beginning of the case 40 years earlier, saw his son assistance cease it.
Harvey Denlinger: I'm proud as heck of him.
Det. Matt Denlinger: I actually am proud to become an answer while he can still appreciate it.
Jamie Yuccas: He said today how proud he is of you.
Det. Matt Denlinger: Yes, alright – [tears upward] -- we're gonna have a break.
Finally, there was an answer to the question that had haunted Cedar Rapids for so long. But at that place is a lingering question: was Michelle Martinko Jerry's just victim?
JERRY BURNS: I merely seen something nigh Jodi Huisentruit recently …
In his interview with Denlinger, Burns randomly mentioned the name of Jodi Huisentruit. She was a blonde anchor kidnapped virtually her car in a parking lot in 1995 and never establish. She worked in Mason Urban center, Iowa, two hours from where burns lived —though there is no evidence he knew her.
Jamie Yuccas: Do you lot suspect that Jerry Burns was involved in other crimes?
Det. Matt Denlinger: I don't know the respond to that … my gut tells me at that place's probably something else out there.
Mason Metropolis Police volition non disclose whether they are investigating Burns in the Huisentruit disappearance and his Deoxyribonucleic acid is not connected to any other cases. Simply in Michelle Martinko's instance, she played a unique part in revealing her killer.
Janelle Stonebraker: She fought and then hard that she caused the murderer to cut himself, he left his Dna … and then Michelle helped solve her own murder.
Four decades after Michelle's expiry, her friends, family and generations of investigators get together to celebrate her memory.
Nick Maybanks [at the gathering]: This case isn't but about her expiry it's about her life.
Gail Dawsonorthward: Nick Maybanks worded information technology best, I hateful he said, "it's not about how she died, it's nigh how she lived."
Tracy Price: You tin can't help but wonder, where would life have led her?
Her proper name will exist forever etched in local history, as office of Cedar Rapids' nearly haunting law-breaking.
Jamie Yuccas: you lot've been a prosecutor for 20 years is this the biggest example yous've ever had?
Nick Maybanks: Yeah … every instance you lot desire justice … only a case like this touched then many people over so many years there will never be another one similar it.
Jerry Burns was sentenced to life in prison without parole.
He insists he did not murder Michelle Martinko.
Produced by Alec Sirken, Jamie Stolz and Matthew Goldfarb. Lincoln Farr is the evolution producer. Ken Blum, Doreen Schechter and Michelle Harris are the editors. Lourdes Aguiar is the senior producer. Nancy Kramer is the executive story editor. Judy Tygard is the executive producer.
Jamie Yuccas
Source: https://www.cbsnews.com/news/michelle-martinko-murder-victim-solve-cold-case-40-years-later/
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