What we know about Jerry Burns and the woman he's accused of killing 40 years earlier
Dec 19, 2019/ updated Feb 17, 2020
Four decades ago, 18-year-old Michelle Marie Martinko was found stabbed to death in the family's car in the parking lot of a Cedar Rapids mall.
Exactly 39 years after her death, police took a Manchester man into custody after matching his DNA to blood found at the crime scene.
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Detectives found no weapon or fingerprints to identify a suspect and said Martinko had not been robbed. Based on the number of stab wounds — particularly to the young woman’s face — police considered the homicide personal in nature.
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Using newer technology, Cedar Rapids police last year created profiles from
DNA procured from case evidence in 2006. Investigators said the man who stabbed Martinko cut his hand and left blood behind on her clothes and on the gear shift knob.
In one of those profiles, authorities said there were fewer than one in 100 billion unrelated individuals who would have had the same profile.
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Jerry Burns
At the time of his arrest, Burns had been living in Manchester, a town of about 5,000 people 45 minutes north of Cedar Rapids, for longer than Martinko's case had been cold.
Burns, who would have been 25 at the time of Martinko's death, said he could not offer a "plausible explanation" for why his DNA was found at the crime scene, authorities said at the time of his arrest.
"The community is in shock, his friends are in shock, his family is in shock. I feel bad for the victim’s family because they’ve been wondering every day of their life what happened to their daughter," Russ Wright, who served Burns nearly every day at a local BP gas station, said last December. "I also feel bad for, you know, his current family and friends because … now they have to go through all this as well."
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Burns owns a powder-coating company, Advanced Coating Concepts, in Manchester.
He previously co-owned a truck stop near town. He built a new home on land his parents once farmed and constructed a gas station and convenience store near where he lived. Several residents lauded his professionalism and business savvy when
speaking with the Register last year.
Burns' arrest prompted a round of whispering about two of his family members.
Burns' wife, Patricia, died by suicide in 2008. His cousin, Brian Burns, vanished Dec. 19, 2013 — exactly 34 years after Martinko was killed.
Delaware County Sheriff John Leclere said authorities "don't have any reason to suspect (Burns) in either case."
