The Cedar Rapids community finally received closure on Thursday after a jury convicted Jerry Lynn Burns for the 1979 murder of 18-year-old Michelle Martinko, a case that haunted investigators and residents for nearly four decades. The verdict, delivered after just three hours of deliberation in a Davenport, Iowa courtroom, marked the end of a relentless pursuit that spanned generations of law enforcement and leveraged cutting-edge forensic technology to solve one of the state’s most infamous cold cases. Burns, now 65, showed no visible reaction as the jury pronounced him guilty of first-degree murder, while the victim’s family and friends exhaled in collective relief.
The case began on December 19, 1979, when Martinko, a striking high school senior with big blonde hair and a bright future, attended a concert choir banquet before heading to the newly opened Westdale Mall in Cedar Rapids. The mall, just two months old at the time, was the place to be, and Martinko joined friends there before leaving shortly before its 10 p. m.
closing time. In the dark Iowa winter night, she walked to her car, parked facing a certain direction in the lot, and got inside. Prosecutors say her killer sneaked up, opened the door, and climbed in, unleashing a brutal attack that left her stabbed and cut 29 times.
The crime scene was horrific, with retired detective Harvey Denlinger recalling that he had never seen anyone stabbed that many times. The overkill suggested a personal connection, leading investigators to initially focus on Martinko’s ex-boyfriend, Andy Sidell, who was possessive and had run into her at the mall that night. Sidell provided an alibi through his mother, but suspicion lingered for years, even as police cleared other males in her life, including former boyfriend Mike Wrick, who was at college over 100 miles away at the time.
The case went cold after a couple of years, with leads drying up and the community living in fear.
For decades, the murder remained an open wound in Cedar Rapids, a city of 110,000 that had its All-American image shattered. Every year on December 19, local news would feature a segment on Martinko, keeping the tragedy alive. Her sister, Janelle Stonebreaker, who was 12 years older and had Michelle as a flower girl at her wedding, described her as a miracle baby born after their mother suffered five miscarriages.
Michelle also overcame scoliosis, wearing a brace from neck to hips from age 12, but blossomed into a confident young woman with long blonde hair reminiscent of Farrah Fawcett.
The breakthrough came in 2005 when Detective Doug Larrison, who had gone to high school with Martinko, reopened the case. He discovered that blood scrapings from the gear shift of her car had been sent for DNA testing years earlier but never followed up. The results revealed male DNA, likely from the killer cutting himself during the struggle.
Larrison then sent Martinko’s dress, stored in evidence, for further testing and found a spot of blood with a full male DNA profile matching the gear shift. This crucial evidence was a needle in a haystack, but it gave investigators a target.
Larrison submitted the DNA to CODIS, the national database of convicted offenders, but got no hit. Over the next decade, he collected DNA from over 100 people, including Sidell, who voluntarily provided a sample and was cleared, and other friends and family, all eliminated. By 2015, Larrison was burned out and handed the case to Matt Denlinger, Harvey Denlinger’s son, who had grown up hearing about the murder.
Matt Denlinger embraced the challenge, using advanced DNA technology to create a suspect profile through Parabon NanoLabs, which produced a snapshot image of a white male with blonde hair and blue eyes.
The image generated hundreds of tips but no solid leads until 2018, when the Golden State Killer case highlighted genetic genealogy. Denlinger sent the DNA to Parabon again, which used a public database called GEDmatch to find a distant relative of the killer. This led to Brandy Jennings in Vancouver, Washington, a second cousin once removed.
Denlinger spent months building her family tree, using genealogical records, birth and marriage certificates, and gravestone data, eventually narrowing the suspects to three brothers in Iowa: Donald, Kenneth, and Jerry Burns.
Investigators collected DNA from the brothers without their knowledge, following one to lunch for a straw, grabbing a toothbrush from another’s trash, and spotting Jerry Burns at a pizza restaurant where he drank sodas through a straw. Lab results cleared Donald and Kenneth, but Jerry’s DNA was an exact match. The probability of it being someone else was one in 100 billion, a staggering figure given the world’s population of 8 billion.
Denlinger was speechless, realizing the 38-year-old case was finally breaking.
On December 19, 2018, exactly 39 years after the murder, Denlinger approached Burns at his business in Manchester, Iowa, using a hidden camera in a coffee mug. He confronted Burns with the DNA evidence, but Burns claimed he didn’t know how it got there, though he acknowledged visiting Westdale Mall with his family. During the ride back to Cedar Rapids, Burns made comments about blocking out traumatic events, which Denlinger interpreted as a veiled admission.
Burns was arrested and charged, 𝓈𝒽𝓸𝒸𝓀𝒾𝓃𝑔 his family, who insisted he was a loving husband and father with no criminal record.
The trial in February 2020, moved to Davenport due to pretrial publicity, featured testimony from Martinko’s friends and ex-boyfriends, including Sidell, who said they parted on good terms. Prosecutors faced challenges with a 40-year-old case and a suspect with no obvious connection to the victim, but they relied on the DNA evidence. Defense attorney Leon Spies argued that DNA could have been transferred innocently, noting that Burns worked at a Buick dealership that might have serviced Martinko’s car, but the prosecution countered that her dress, which also contained his DNA, never went to a dealership.
A jailhouse informant, Michael Allison, testified that Burns made a disturbing comment about taking him to the mall if he kept winning at cards, which disgusted Allison. The defense called a molecular biologist who suggested transfer was possible, but the jury rejected that theory. After three hours of deliberation, they returned a guilty verdict, prompting tears of joy from Martinko’s family and friends.
Harvey Denlinger, now retired, expressed pride in his son for solving the case while he could still appreciate it.
The conviction brought an end to a saga that had gripped Cedar Rapids for generations, but questions linger about whether Burns was involved in other crimes. During his interview, he randomly mentioned Jodi Huisentruit, a news anchor kidnapped from a parking lot in Mason City in 1995 and never found, though no evidence links him to her case. For now, the focus remains on Martinko’s legacy, with friends and family celebrating her life rather than her death.
As prosecutor Nick Maybanks noted, the case was not about how she died but how she lived, and her fierce fight against her attacker ultimately helped solve her own murder by leaving his DNA behind.
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