The days & weeks that lead up to Christmas can be a magical & cozy time of the year; settling in to watch a holiday movie while sipping hot cocoa as the lights from the Christmas tree glow in the background. However, within the magic, there’s always a little chaos, hustle & bustle involved that comes with finding that one special gift for the family member who seems impossible to buy for, the extra baking, cooking, party hosting & spending can lead to a tailspin of stress.
In this particular story, as an Iowa family was getting ready for the excitement of Christmas, they were left devastated & baffled by the murder of their 18-year-old daughter. The family went on an unrelenting quest to solve this case & it was the victim herself who had been the one to help solve her own murder four decades later.
On Wednesday, December 19, 1979, 18-year-old high school senior, Michelle Martinko, headed over to the Westdale Mall in Cedar Rapids, Iowa to pick up a coat that her mom had placed on layaway. The coat was a gift for Michelle & she went to the mall with $186 to pay it off, but ultimately made the decision that she didn’t want the coat afterall.
Michelle Martinko was born on October 6, 1961 to parents Albert & Janet & she was the younger of two daughters. Janelle was Michelle’s big sister by twelve years & the two were very close despite the large gap in age. Michelle served as Janelle’s flower girl when she married her husband, John Stonebraker. The road to Michelle’s birth was not an easy one for Janet as she suffered five miscarriages & was 44-years-old when Michelle was born.
The Martinko family viewed Michelle as their miracle baby & Janelle was thrilled to be a big sister. At age 12, Michelle was diagnosed with scoliosis, a curvature of the spine which resulted in her wearing a brace that went from her neck to her hips. Adolescence can be challenging in itself, but with the brace in place, Michelle felt very different & self-conscious at a time when a child only wants to fit in. On top of this, the brace made it difficult for Michelle to easily move around so it proved to be a very challenging period of time.
At age fourteen, Michelle was finally able to remove the brace which was in a way, symbolic, as Michelle seemed to come into her own at this point & everything shifted. Suddenly, the gorgeous blond with hair reminiscent of Farrah Fawcett, began catching the boy’s eyes, something she was completely unaware of.
Shortly after the brace came off, Michelle was at a roller rink with her friends when she caught the eye of 16-year-old Andy Seidel, who was one year older. The two went on to date for two years before they broke up because Michelle wanted freedom in her life. She wasn’t ready to be in a committed relationship & according to her friend, Andy did not take the breakup very well.
After she moved on from Andy, he continued to monitor her every move. He wanted to know where she was, who she was dating, constantly coming to her friends for information. Michelle’s brother-in-law John felt that he just wouldn’t go away.
In 1979, Michelle was a senior at Kennedy High School in Cedar Rapids where she excelled in her classes as well as her extracurricular activities. When she was a sophomore, she made the twirling or baton squad which was an amazing accomplishment. During halftime at football games, Michelle would be out on the field, spinning her baton alongside her fellow squad members. She also sang in the Kennedy’s women’s choir & Concert Choir & was part of the theater program.
After graduation in the spring, Michelle planned to go to Iowa State University to study interior design.
On the evening of Wednesday, December 19, 1979, Michelle was downtown at the Sheraton Hotel for a choir banquet & when it ended, she drove to the newly opened Westdale Mall on the southwest side of Cedar Rapids. Before she drove over, she asked her friend & fellow twirler, Jane Hensen, if she wanted to come with her, but Jane declined since she needed to focus on her homework that night. After learning that Michelle had been murdered, Jane felt disbelief, grief & a sense of guilt that she hadn’t gone with her friend.
Some people that knew Michelle bumped into her while she was at the mall, but no one recalls seeing her after 9 pm when she was last seen standing outside a jewelry store. Her friend & fellow choir member, Tracy Price, ran into Michelle & saw that she was holding the $186 she brought with her to purchase the coat she never ended up buying. Tracy told Michelle to put the money away since she didn’t want her friend to be flashing the cash in the middle of the mall.
As Tracy chatted with Michelle, she found out that her friend was a little anxious & had been nervous about going to the mall by herself. During their conversation, Michelle elaborated that she felt like she was being followed.
When 2 am rolled around & Michelle’s parents realized she still hadn’t come home, they were understandably worried & contacted the police who quickly went out to search for Michelle.
At about 4 am on Thursday morning, officers located the Martinko’s family car, a 1972 tan Buick, parked at the northeast corner of the mall near JCPenney. They were horrified when they approached the car & found Michelle’s body in the front seat. She was covered & blood, having been stabbed & cut 29 times. Rubber glove impressions were located on the outside of the car, in the dirt & inside the car in the blood. Because the killer wore gloves, they left no fingerprints behind. There was no blood on the outside of the car or the pavement nearby & to investigators, the attack seemed very rage-filled & personal.
Michelle wore a black, spaghetti-strap dress to the choir banquet on the night she was murdered. In order to keep warm, she also donned a rabbit fur coat. Investigators found bloody rabbit hair strewn around the car, Michelle was lying on her back, slumped over the passenger seat, leaning against the door of the Buick.
She had parked the car a distance from the mall entrance & it’s likely that as she climbed into the car to head home, she started it & allowed it to warm to rid the frost from the windows. It’s theorized that before she managed to put the car in drive & pull away, she was likely taken by surprise when someone yanked her car door open, pushed her over & climbed into the car before attacking & killing her.
Charles Jelinek was the captain of the CRPD at the time & had been one of the first responding officers to the scene that night. He was tasked with breaking the horrific news to Michelle’s family. Janelle later said that nothing could have ever prepared them for the devastating news that they received on the morning after the murder. She recalls that her dad tried to be very stoic about it, angry that someone would have hurt his little girl. Meanwhile, Janet was brokenhearted & grief-stricken, unable to comprehend that her daughter was gone in such a horrific & violent way.
Detective Harvey Denlinger was called to the scene & recalls that he had never seen anyone stabbed that many times before. It was a case that was unheard of in the area of Cedar Rapids & the small city of 110,000 was stunned by the murder.
The medical examiner determined that Michelle had died sometime between 8 & 10 pm on Wednesday night. The exact murder weapon has never been recovered & was not able to be determined, but the medical examiner knew that it was a sharp-pointed object, possibly a knife. All of the stabbings were to Michelle’s face, neck & chest & her hands were covered in defensive wounds as she tried in vain to fight off her attacker. There was no robbery & Michelle had not been sexually assaulted. The money she had taken to the mall remained on her & she also had a bag of items she’d purchased, untouched, in the backseat.
Detectives were left to grapple with who killed Michelle & why. It was clear that the killer had approached her car prepared since they had the forethought to bring rubber gloves to conceal their identity. It’s possible the person had the intention of sexually assaulting Michelle, but she may have fought her attacker off, preventing the assault as the slice wounds to her hands & arms proved that she had fought hard.
Detectives interviewed Michelle’s classmates as well as employees of the Westdale Mall in hopes of establishing a timeline prior to her death. One witness recalled seeing her at 9 pm in a shop & saw that Michelle left the store alone.
Police learned that Michelle’s ex, Andy, had actually bumped into her at the mall that night & he was brought in for questioning. He told investigators that shortly after the mall closed, he was home, which is something his mom also confirmed. Police were aware that his mom could be potentially protecting her child with a false alibi.
Mike Wyrick had also dated Michelle in high school & was shocked when he heard about her murder. Mike was also a suspect at one point as investigators were basically tasked with eliminating every male that knew Michelle. Mike was 100 miles away at college & despite this fact, he remembers the moment when detectives questioned if he was telling them everything he knew. At that point, they laid out the photos from the crime scene, something that he can never forget.
Despite Andy’s alibi, he did remain a suspect & his behavior during Michelle’s funeral only intensified suspicions. Onlookers watched as he nearly climbed into the casket, sobbing as he embraced Michelle’s body, asking others, I have to know who she loved when she died… Did she love me, or did she love Mike? Who did she love when she died?
Many believed that Andy was the person who killed Michelle & hoped that it was only a matter of time before he was arrested. There were no other suspects whatsoever. However, after high school Andy left Cedar Rapids to join the Navy & he eventually had his DNA tested which cleared him from the case. In the meantime, he had lived within the community for upwards of 27 years being viewed as a killer.
The community of Cedar Rapids went on in fear after Michelle’s murder, knowing that her killer was still free. Her fellow baton twirlers wondered if a killer could be in the stands, watching them as they performed. As teen girls closed up shop at their places of work, they walked to their cars in the dark, wracked with fear of who could potentially be lurking in the shadows. Many asked a co-worker or a member of security to walk with them to their cars.
In June 1980, six months after Michelle was murdered, authorities released a composite sketch based on two witnesses who were questioned under hypnosis. The sketch depicted a man in his late teens to early twenties, about six feet tall, with dark, curly hair. In the beginning, tips did start to come in as a result of the sketch, but this fizzled out & a $10,000 reward was offered for any information that could lead to an arrest.
By 1986, seven years after Michelle’s death, the case had grown ice cold. Investigators had grown frustrated, Michelle’s family even moreso. Investigation into potential leads had been exhausted & her family believed that they had hit a dead end, fearing her killer would never be brought to justice. Albert Martinko filed a lawsuit against the mall, arguing that they failed to provide reasonable security on the night their daughter was killed.
The case went as high as the Iowa Supreme Court, but on September 17, 1986, the courts ruled in favor of Westdale Mall. Albert passed away in 1995 & Janet followed in 1998, sadly without the knowledge of who was responsible for their daughter’s death. At the time of their deaths, Andy Seidel had yet to voluntarily give his DNA sample, thus clearing him from the case. It’s very likely that they went to their graves believing he was the killer. Janelle & John acknowledge their sorrow toward Andy as well, realizing he was a victim as well as so many people pointed their fingers at him over the years.
However, after the passage of over two decades, the case thankfully regained life. In 2005, a classmate of Michelle’s, Detective Doug Larison, was in charge of the case. Larison & Michelle hadn’t been very close though he had been deeply affected by her murder. Being a classmate & now a detective, he felt a responsibility to for once & for all, solve this case. By this point, 26 years had passed & DNA technology had come a long way since 1979.
As Larison perused Michelle’s case file, he realized that years earlier, another detective had sent blood scrapings from the gear shift of the Buick, out for testing, but no one had followed up on the results. It was at this point that he realized that they had useful DNA to work with. Larison came across the lab report that proved that not only did they have the DNA, but it was specifically from a male. It’s likely that her killer cut himself during the frenzied attack, the knife slipping & piercing their glove-clad hand. They also had DNA from the black dress Michelle had been wearing. When the dress was sent to the lab for testing, a spot of blood on the dress had a full male DNA profile which was consistent with the male profile found on the gearshift.
At this point in time, detectives had all the necessary lab work, they just needed the suspect who was a match. The sample had been uploaded into the Combined DNA Index System (CODIS), the national DNA database, but sadly, there were no matches to anyone within the massive government file & the years continued to tick by. Cedar Rapids police officers had obtained DNA samples from over 100 different people as well, none which were a match.
In November 2013, Robert Riley, a Kennedy High School alumni who remained in Cedar Rapids, created a Facebook group called Michelle Martinko Cold Case 1979. It was here that people shared & discussed the case with the goal of finding out who Michelle was as a person. The group discussed evidence in the case & proposed their own theories of who her killer could potentially be. According to Riley, the police have told him that the Facebook group is probably one of the biggest sources of active leads.
In the meantime, as time continued to pass, Detective Larison started to get worn down by the case so he approached his supervisors & Matt Denlinger was brought in as a replacement. Incidentally, Denlinger’s own father had been one of the first to respond to the scene of Michelle’s murder. Now the younger Denlinger was officially on the case, serving as lead detective in 2015, 36 years after Michelle’s murder.
Denlinger focused on the DNA sample as by this point, technology had only continued to progress. He decided to reach out to Virginia’s Parabon NanoLabs to see if they could get more information; maybe the perpetrators eye color, hair color or race.
He was told by the lab that they could create a picture of a potential suspect from the DNA sample. When the results came back, Denlinger was impressed. The image was striking & put a face to what was previously a phantom. With it, he learned that the suspect was likely a white male with blond hair & blue eyes.
With this new information, a press conference was held & various images were released. Since investigators couldn’t pinpoint the suspect’s age or how he styled his hair, they created different looks & age-progressed images of what the killer may have looked like in both 1979 & 2017. Despite the passage of time, residents of Cedar Rapids were determined to help get justice in Michelle’s case.
As the images were released, the tip line flooded in with hundreds of calls. Because of the sheer volume, Denlinger admits that his mind was a bit muddled, unsure of where to start first.
In the meantime, it was 2018 & the infamous Golden State Killer, Joseph DeAngelo, was finally arrested & charged with a terrifying spree of rapes & murders that occurred across California in the 1970s & 1980s with the use of genetic genealogy. The case was massive news as residents of California had lived in absolute terror during the time this faceless madman had somehow evaded the police. By the time DeAngelo was arrested in 2018, he was 74-years-old. The man is responsible for at least 13 murders, 51 rapes & 120 burglaries across California between 1974 & 1986.
As soon as Denlinger heard the news of the arrest, his mind immediately went to Michelle’s case & the idea of utilizing genetic genealogy, which is the charting of DNA from one family member to another. With that, Parabon was ready to test the DNA sample yet again.
Parabon searched a public national database called GEDmatch, which contains individuals who voluntarily submitted their own DNA in order to trace their personal family trees.
In July 2018, a report came back indicating that the DNA sample was a match to a relative of the killer. It brought them to a woman in Vancouver, Washington, Brandy Jennings, who was an office manager & a single mom as well as the second cousin once removed from the murderer.
With Denlinger’s focus on Brandy, he spent the next several months building her family tree all the way up to her great-great-grandparents with the help of genealogical records, birth records, gravestone records & anything available to them on the internet. As more of her blood relatives provided their DNA, the puzzle pieces started to fall into place.
As they continued to progress, Denlinger reached back out to Parabon who recalibrated things. With this, they indicated that the best odds were three brothers who live in Iowa, right back to where Michelle was murdered, only twenty minutes away.
By October 2018, the family tree that Detective Matt Denlinger had painstakingly put together was finally narrowed down to three brothers, Donald, Kenneth & Jerry Burns. Investigators came up with a plan to collect DNA samples from the brothers without their knowledge to see if they were a match.
They trailed one brother as he headed to lunch & confiscated the straw he drank from. They took the second brother’s toothbrush from his garbage & the third brother was followed to a pizza restaurant & they watched as he drank two cups of soda from a glass with a straw.
The three samples were sent to the lab & one was an exact match; the DNA from Jerry Burns, the third brother investigators had tailed to the pizza restaurant. As Denlinger looked at the sketch created from the DNA sample from Parabon in comparison to a younger Jerry Burns, he saw that the images were very similar to one another.
Now that investigators finally had their match, they began to try to find a connection between Burns & Michelle. They also looked into his past & found that he was the opposite of what they would expect from a cold-blooded killer. He had a clean record, he was a respected businessman who had a wife & three kids. He lived a quiet life in the town of Manchester, an hour north of Cedar Rapids. He owned Advanced Coating Concepts, a powder coating business. At the time of Michelle’s murder, he would have been 25-years-old.
On December 19, 2018, it was exactly 39 years to the day that Michelle had been brutally murdered & it was this day that Denlinger specifically chose to interview Burns at his business in Manchester, Iowa. It was his goal to rattle the man to the core.
Detective Matt Denlinger: Hey, how are you today? Jerry, my name’s Matt with the Cedar Rapids Police Department.
As the conversation began, Denlinger used a hidden camera that had been placed inside a coffee mug & kept his fingers crossed that he could get a confession.
Denlinger: The reality is we have your DNA at the crime scene & so we know you were there that night this happened .. How would we get your DNA at the crime scene there, Jerry?
Jerry acknowledged that he had been to the mall with his family in the past, but he couldn’t remember when. When Denlinger asked him what happened on that specific night, Burns denied having any idea. Throughout the interview that lasted over an hour, Burns continued to accept work-related calls & text messages, showing no emotion & maintaining that he had no recollection of committing the crime.
Despite his denial of having any involvement in Michelle’s murder, the DNA evidence was enough to make an arrest for the murder of Michelle Martinko.
On the car ride back to Cedar Rapids, a camera was rolling inside the police car when Denlinger felt that Burns started to reveal something of significance. Denlinger asked him if he thought it was possible that he murdered Michelle & he just doesn’t remember. Burns told him that it was absolutely possible to block things from your memories.
The fact that Burns didn’t give any plausible explanation as to why his DNA was inside Michelle’s car gave him the gut feeling that they had the right guy.
Michelle’s sister Janelle & her husband John were elated when they heard the news of the DNA match, believing by that point that the killer might never be caught.
On the other side of the coin, the Burns family were in utter shock, believing that there was no way that their dad could possibly have been capable of murder. According to Jennifer & Donald Burns, their father was always there for them as they grew up.
A CRPD investigator was tasked with combing through Burns’ computers. On his business computer, evidence was found regarding searches for blond females, assault, rape, strangulation, murder, rape of a deceased individual & cannibalism.
Leon Spies served as Burns’ defense attorney & argued the fact that there was zero connection between Jerry & Michelle. He also referred to his client’s recorded interview with Denlinger & the fact that he didn’t flat out dispute how his DNA could have possibly been in Michelle’s car & said that no one can ever predict how a person will react when they’re caught out of the blue like that.
After more than four decades had gone by since Michelle was murdered, her accused killer went to trial in February 2020 where he pleaded not guilty. The trial was held in Davenport, Iowa an hour away from Cedar Rapids because of the media attention the case received.
Prosecutor Nick Maybanks knew that there were generations of people that grew up knowing Michelle’s story & he felt a responsibility to do her & the town justice.
Several of Michelle’s friends as well as ex-boyfriend & former suspect, Andy Seidel, were called to testify. Andy indicated that he & Michelle were on good terms when they last interacted. He explained that they’d simply grown apart as they moved toward adulthood so there was no reason to part ways in a negative way.
Mike Wyrick, also Michelle’s ex-boyfriend, had a hard time with his testimony since it brought all of the painful memories back into focus.
Despite the fact that they had solid DNA evidence, the prosecution still had a difficult task. They needed to tell a forty-year-old story about a suspect who has absolutely no criminal record in connection with this heinous, personal crime. The Burns family maintained that they could not fathom that the man that they knew & loved could be capable of such a horrible crime. Yes, the DNA was there, but there was still no connection between Jerry & Michelle. Both Jennifer Burns, Jerry’s daughter & Don Burns, Jerry’s brother, felt that it was impossible. They mentioned the fact that they couldn’t remember what they did last week, how was Jerry to know what he did forty years ago.
Prosecutor Maybanks knew that science does not lie & there was a one in 100 billion chance that the DNA could be somebody else’s; since there are only eight or so billion people in the world, the case hinged on this critical piece of evidence.
As the state’s case was coming to an end, Maybanks called in a new witness, Michael Allison, a drug offender who had gotten friendly with Jerry during his time behind bars.
Allison straight up asked Jerry, Did you do the crime? And Jerry responded, I can’t talk about this. According to Allison, he went on to say that regardless of the verdict, he wins in this case since he’d been given the chance to live over the past forty years, get married, have children.
As Jerry & Allison played cards together one evening, he said something disturbing that pushed Allison to testify. He flippantly told Allison that if he continued to beat him at pinochle, he was going to have to take him to the mall.
The defense called only one witness, molecular biologist Dr. Michael Spence who indicated that yes, there was no doubt that the DNA in Michelle’s car belonged to Jerry, but it was how it got there which was another. He went on to discuss transfer DNA & how each time we touch something, we shed DNA & leave a biological trail of ourselves. Michelle had gone to the food court in the mall & sat down with a friend, a very place that Jerry & his family may have sat.
This still didn’t answer the question, How did Jerry’s DNA get onto the gearshift of Michelle’s car? Don Burns feels it’s a simple, innocent answer, Jerry used to work in a dealership that sold Buicks. However, Jerry’s DNA was also found on Michelle’s black dress which makes it obvious that the DNA was not in the car for an innocent, unrelated reason.
As the case came to an end & defense attorney Leon Spies gave his closing arguments, he told the jury how unlikely it is that a man such as Jerry could or would commit a crime like this:
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 & children behind, armed with a knife, armed with rubber gloves, goes to Westdale Mall on the chance he’s gonna encounter Michelle Martinko, decides to kill her.. & then leaves & drives back home.. Splattered with blood… presumably with a knife wound in his hand.. That’s the scenario the government wants you to believe.
Meanwhile, prosecutor Nick Maybanks told the jury that there was zero chance of outside contamination on the dress, We know what happened & we know who did it.
After three hours of deliberation, the jury came back with a verdict. Jerry Lynn Burns was found guilty of first-degree murder.
Janelle, Michelle’s sister was absolutely thrilled & saw how silent & stunned the other side of the courtroom was, Jerry’s family had no reaction.
Matt Denlinger’s father, Harvey, was so proud; the case began with him & ended with his son.
The residents of Cedar Rapids were so thankful to finally have justice in the case that spanned four decades, but they asked themselves the question, Was Michelle Jerry Burns’ only victim?
During his interview with Denlinger, Burns randomly mentioned a name, Jodi Huisentruit, a blond anchor who was kidnapped near her car in a parking lot in 1995 & never found. Jodi worked in Mason City, Iowa, two hours from where Burns lived & there is no evidence that he knew her. Although there was also no evidence or connection between Burns & Michelle.
Matt Denlinger’s gut tells him that there are probably other victims out there.
Because Michelle Martinko fought her attacker with such intensity, she caused Jerry Burns to cut himself, leaving his DNA on both the gearshift & her black dress, despite the fact that he wore gloves.
Four decades after her young life ended far too soon, her family celebrated her memory & rather than focusing on her death, they focused on her life.
Jerry Burns was sentenced to life in prison without parole & continues to maintain that he had nothing to do with Michelle’s murder.
Before his arrest, Jerry Burns was free for decades, living his life, doing all of the things that 18-year-old Michelle Martinko was robbed of; finishing her education, starting a career, marriage & having a family of her own if that’s what she chose to do. Her life was just starting out when it tragically ended. Michelle’s case touched so many people over so many years & it was a tremendous relief that her killer was finally brought to justice.
References:
- ABC News: The ‘Golden State Killer’: Inside the timeline of crimes
- Iowa Cold Cases: C.R. police seek clues in murder of teenager
- Little Village: Michelle Martinko’s murder ‘haunted’ the Cedar Rapids community for 40 years. Now, her suspected killer is set to go on trial
- CBS News: Young murder victim helps solve her own cold case nearly 40 years later
- CBS News: Michelle Martinko murder case evidence photos
