Jerry Lynn Burns was finally arrested in October 2018 for the murder of Michelle Martinko, that took place 39 years prior. LEON SPIES: The state's scenario here is that Jerry Burns, a married man with two young children at home, leaves, drives to Cedar Rapids, Iowa, in the night, leaving his wife and children behind . Jerry retired from the Army National Guard and retired as a Master Plumber. or. The man charged with killing Michelle Martinko 39 years ago is not a suspect in the death of his wife or disappearance of his cousin, according to investigators. Could Jerry Burns have committed murders other than Michelle Martinko's? [26] He was not able to provide an explanation for why his DNA would have been present at the crime scene. Born in 1953, Jerry Lynn Burns grew up in Manchester, Iowa, and graduated from West Delaware High School in 1972. More than 40 years after Jerry Lynn Burns stabbed Michelle Martinko to death, a family and a community has closure. 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. [39], Last edited on 20 February 2023, at 04:20, "Michelle Martinko's murder 'haunted' the Cedar Rapids community for 40 years. In December 1979, Martinko, a high school senior who was on the twirling squad at Kennedy High School in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, went to the recently opened Westdale Mall after her choir banquet at school to buy a new winter coat. Burns denied any involvement in the murder. 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. But the software he used allowed him to review history and activity only to January 2018. Be the first one to comment on this story. On December 19, 2018, exactly 39 years after Martinko's murder, the police confronted Burns and arrested him after his DNA matched the one found on Martinko's clothes. Grab your popcorn & get comfy as we dive into some dusty old cases revitalized thanks to genetic genealogy (& a bit of good ol' fashioned detective work! Jerry knew he was called to be a preacher at the age of 13 and after many years of arguing with God. At the time of her death, police had found Martinko stabbed to death in her car in a local mall parking lot. He was born in Hundred, WV on April 24, 1930, a son of the late Robert Lee and Rebecca Taylor Merriner. "I am thrilled for her sister, Janelle, and wish her parents were alive to see this," Michelle Martinko's high school friend, Elizabeth Laymon, told The Des Moines Register. During this difficult time and as the justice system runs its course we ask that our privacy be respected.. Mail, proper postage prepaid, addressed to Jerry L. Burns, No. Burns seemed to have a 'fetish for these violent, sexual themes, Cedar Rapids police Investigator Jeff Holst testified. [14] Burns's cousin, Brian Burns, went missing on December 19, 2013 and has not been found. [2][16] At 2a.m., since Martinko had still not returned home, her father reported her missing. Pat was a member of St. Mary's Catholic Church, and enjoyed quilting, collecting teddy bears, gardening and farming with her husband. Jerry Lynn Burns' DNA sample was collected from a plastic straw he drank soda with. Police found impressions from rubber gloves inside and outside the car, indicating that the assailant had likely planned his attack and hoped to escape unidentified. I am a brokenhearted mother.. He had followed them and secretly recovered their DNA. In a brief interview with the Cedar Rapids Gazette in 1980, Janet said of her daughter, She loved music. When the police executed a search warrant for Burns home and office, they found a computer search history that included blonde females, assault, rape, strangulation, murder, abuse and rape of a deceased individual, and cannibalism.. While these occurrences sounded suspicious, the police didn't believe Burns had anything to do with them. Works at Target Distribution Center. [9] She was last seen almost 9p.m. outside of a jewelry store in the mall. The first piece of progress in the case came in 2006 when a sample of the suspect's DNA from Michelle Martinko's car was submitted to a lab for processing, police said. Teen Michelle Martinko was stabbed to death in 1979. Cases previously considered unsolvable have been getting their answers, & Joseph DeAngelo's arrest (EAR/GSA/ONS) is proving to be just the first of many getting resolved. [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. And he said he couldn't talk about it," Michael Allison said, who shared a cell with Burns starting in September 2019. 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. Jerry Lynn Burns, 64, was charged with first-degree murder and is scheduled to appear Thursday in Linn County Court. [2][4][27], In pretrial hearings, Burns' attorneys claimed that police needed a search warrant to gather his DNA from the discarded straw, but the judge determined that discarded property cannot reasonably be considered private. On May 29, 2020, Burns' attorneys filed a motion asking for a new trial, claiming his constitutional and . Visitation for Jim will be held on Monday, March 13, 2023 from 4:00PM until 6:00PM at the Peacock Family Chapel. Jerry Burns' mugshot and a family photo of Michelle Martinko. [2][3][4] Burns was arrested and, on February 24, 2020, was found guilty of first-degree murder in the death of Martinko. The new technique, started this year with the "Golden State Killer," has identified over two dozen suspects. According to KWWL, at the sentencing, Stonebaker said that Burns stole those 39 years and many more from a sweet smart, talented girl who never got her chance at college, a career, marriage, children and by now, even grandchildren.. Log In. This sounds like a serial killer. The murder of Michelle Martinko in the parking lot of Cedar Rapids' Westdale Mall has some eerie connections to the Huisentruit case. On February 24, 2020, after three hours of deliberation, the jury found Jerry Lynn Burns guilty of first-degree murder. 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. Yet they had a DNA match linking the Manchester man to the Cedar Rapids teenager, slain in 1979 outside the Westdale Mall. Would love your thoughts, please comment. Derek Chauvin's ex-wife . He was around 25 when he killed Martinko in 1979. Burns originally refuted every charge of involvement in this crime during interrogation by claiming he was unable to provide the authorities with a "plausible explanation" for why his DNA was found at the crime site. The next day, she was found stabbed to death in the mall parking lot. [18][19], Controversy arose five months after the murder, after a woman who was driving by the mall parking lot in the early hours of December 20 came forward with information. Updated on: August 4, 2021 / 2:29 PM The medical examiner later determined that she died between 8 p.m. and 10 p.m. She had not been robbed or sexually assaulted, and defensive wounds were found on her hands, indicating she fought back. wife was deter mined to be a distant cousi n to many of the Subject's more . Questions have been raised as to whether Jerry was involved in any other murders or missing person cases. . Jerry Burns, of Manchester, is led into a courtroom at the Scott County Courthouse in Davenport for closing arguments in his murder trial in February 2020. 2. Denlinger told him authorities would come back to talk to him after they got the results of the DNA test. 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. Burns' defense team objected to the wording of one of the prosecution's questions, which they claimed implied unequivocally that Burns' blood had been at the scene. New comments cannot be posted and votes cannot be cast, Science & criminal justice teamed up in 2018 to start cracking cold cases! In her ruling, Judge Fae Hoover said the . 39 years later after the murder, a person named Jerry Lynn Burns was arrested in Manchester, Iowa, and charged with first-degree murder. Jerry Lynn Burns, 64, was arrested on Wednesday after police said he was linked by DNA from blood found on Michelle Martinko's clothing and elsewhere in the car at the crime scene. During the trials, Burns was found to contradict his own statements. The detective, Denlinger, told me that he believes Jerry Burns has been reliving the murder in his fantasies ever since, but they have never been able to tie him to any other homicides. Almost 40 years later, with the help of DNA Technology, the culprit was nabbed and justice was finally served to Martinko and her grieving family. He was also ordered to pay $150,00 in restitution to Martinkos estate, according to KWWL. Family and friends of Jerry Burns are seated in the courtroom at a sentencing hearing for Jerry Lynn Burns at the Linn County Courthouse in Cedar Rapids on Friday, Aug. 7, 2020. "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. "Murder at the Mall: The Michelle Martinko Case," reported by "48 Hours" contributor Jamie Yuccas, airs on Saturday, August 7 at 9/8c on CBS. On the way, Burns continued to talk. [11] They described a white man in his late teens or early 20s, around six feet tall and weighing 165175 pounds, with brown eyes and curly brown hair. Jerry Lynn Burns. Dr. Obrecht Learns if She's a Bone Marrow Match for Willow Plus, Nikolas' Whereabouts Are Revealed. At long last, in 2018, Jerry Lynn was caught and blamed for the teen's manslaughter and, in spite of the fact that it had been a very long time after the wrongdoing, the once cool case is right now a subject of discussion on A&E's executioner cases. And the crucial link is a man named Jerry Burns. He lived in Manchester at the time of his arrest in 2020 and owned a powder coating business in the city. [26] When the DNA sample was tested, it matched the blood sample found at the crime scene. The wait ended Monday, when a jury convicted Jerry Lynn Burns of first-degree murder in the 1979 stabbing death of 18-year-old Martinko. Roberta Williams' Phantasmagoria, a group of 39 people. The company also produced approximations of how the man would have aged in the years since the crime. While that tip did not yield any new leads, it did cause Det. 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