Murder at the Mall: The Michelle Martinko Case | Full Episode

[Music] on December 19th 1979 Michelle Martino was a 18-year-old High School senior she was impossible to miss she had the big blonde hair she was that striking she was striking just a smart kind nice person she was a member of the concert choir they had a banquet which she attended afterwards Michelle ended up going to the mall so did a bunch of her friends from the choir the mall had just opened it was 2 months old it was the place to be in Cedar Rapids at the time so she would have been parked right in this area yeah she would have been parked facing this direction she left the mall shortly before it closed it closed at 10: p.m. that night you're talking December in Iowa it's very dark it's very dark Michelle walks out and gets in her car this person snuck up on Michelle opened the door and climbed in she was stabbed and cut a total of 29 times this was a real fight it looks personal it's a lot of stab wounds it's Overkill it's always the boyfriend the girlfriend the husband someone really really close to the person did either of you know Andy cidel I knew Andy through Michelle that was her boyfriend I took an instant dislike to Andy he was very possessive of Michelle I believed Andy did it I did not see anything from the men in her life that would give any of them motive to do something like this I definitely didn't see that from Andy sidal the entire police force dedicated time and energy to try to find answers to what happened to Michelle after a couple of years the leads were starting to dry up the case then goes cold yeah we really had given up hope we truly had these guys never gave up the investigation never really stopped I've been through every piece of paper in here probably close to 8,000 pages of reports here the biggest break came in 2005 the DNA was the key we collected DNA from 161 people we were looking for a needle and a hay stack we just need to get lucky it took us 13 years until we had a suspect we immediately call up the lab is this our guy what was the answer yes what are you doing in that moment I don't know what I was doing I was speechless so do you think he just all these years thought he got away with it well yeah cuz he [Music] did [Music] [Music] this tragic case that's been haunting this community for years just before Christmas in December 1979 every single police officer in Cedar Rapids Iowa was called to work on the horrific murder in the parking lot of Westdale Mall I've never seen anybody stabbed that many times including now retired detective Harvey denlinger something like that was unheard of around here Michelle martinko an 18-year-old High School senior had been found violently stabbed in the front seat of her car her killer unknown confounding generations of investigators we couldn't come up with anything and we just kept plugging away how old were you I was 5 years old do you remember the case no not not from when I was little Harvey son Matt but every single year on December 19th Michelle Martino was a bride blond the local news would have a Michelle Martino segment 27 years ago her life was cut short so it was really hard to miss the severity of it decades later Matt now a detective himself joined the investigation into Michelle Martino's murder I love how old this map is 36 years after his father had begun working the same case wouldn't it be something if I could find our suspect and my dad this still alive and as he dug into the thick files the son went to his father to help him make sense of it all I wanted someone to talk to about it and I wanted someone that really understood it the crime had stunned the small city of 110,000 it scared the hell out of this Tracy Price went to high school and sang in the choir with Michelle it just hit me like a brick it was just shocking Mike wrick had dated Michelle in high school and says her murder shattered the city's All-American image if that could happen and the person wasn't caught Anything could happen this one I think is one of our favorite pictures she's sleeping with her dog so cute here we're into the hair stage lots of hair pictures yep Janelle Stonebreaker is Michelle's big sister 12 years older Michelle was the flower girl at her wedding she and her husband John say nothing could have prepared them for the horrible news they got the morning after Michelle was killed we just hugged and we couldn't believe she was gone my dad was very stoic about it but he was angry and my mother was just brokenhearted it was a devastating blow to parents who had been through so much with Michelle already Janet martinko had suffered five miscarriages and was 44 years old when Michelle was born it was great I mean it was just so exciting when my sister was born and she was the miracle baby when she was 12 Michelle was diagnosed with scoliosis a curvature of the spine she had a wear of brace that went from her neck to her hips she felt very different very self-conscious so that was a tough period but at age 14 she was able to shed the brace and then Janelle says everything changed for Michelle ferah foset was in with the hair and my sister always had the long blonde hair so she thought okay I can do I can do the hair you know Michelle was blissfully unaware she bless of all this uh attention that she was getting from men she caught the the eye of Andy Sidell who at 16 was a year older than Michelle we met him roller skating Michelle's friend Gail Dawson remembers him and there is this flashy sports car guy you know Michelle and Andy were together for 2 years and then broke up friend say she didn't want to be in a committed relationship and Andy apparently didn't take it too well after they broke up 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 go away police learned Andy had run into Michelle at the mall that fateful night they brought him in for questioning did he have an alibi Andy did have an alibi Andy was at home shortly after the mall closed and his mom uh provided an alibi the problem with Andy's Alibi though is that moms would say a lot to protect their children every male that knew her was a suspect that they had to clear you must have been a suspect I was Mike wrick was questioned as well and even though he was more than a 100 miles away at College when Michelle was murdered police knew he had also dated her all of it was a little intimidating it was hard it was scary Mike says the police were tough on him at one point they thought that I wasn't telling them everything and they laid the crime scene photos out in front of me and it was hurtful Mike was never considered a serious suspect because he was not in Cedar Rapids at the time of the murder but Andy was and Andy's Behavior at Michelle's funeral only reinforced many people's suspicions about him he was almost in the casket he was so emotional he has arms around her and he was just sobb in and he said to me 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 but police had no hard evidence pointing to Andy Sidell he left Cedar Rapid soon after high school and joined the Navy there's a large amount of us that were convinced that he did kill her I thought it was just a matter of time before he was arrested and charged [Music] there was no one else there really wasn't another [Music] [Music] suspect as police investigated those closest Michelle martinko looking for potential suspects they were also looking at the possibility that Michelle may have been killed outside the mall by a stranger she was out there and she was looking for a coat that her mom had put on lay we for her for Christmas and she was going to pay it off Michelle had $186 with her to pay for the coat but ultimately decided she didn't want it Tracy Price had run into her at the mall that night and gave her a protective warning when he saw her holding the cash put that away you know don't be flashing money out here in the middle of everybody Tracy only learned later that Michelle was a little anxious that night she was nervous about going out to the mall by herself and that she had told someone that she felt like she was being followed you didn't notice anybody watching her paying close attention to her I never got that feeling Michelle headed to her car in the dark so she was parked pretty far away yeah she was parked the ways out here I think she gets in I think she probably turned that car on herself and and was warming it up for a minute to get the frost off the windows and I think that in that moment before she puts it in drive and leaves I think he's at the door pops it open pushes her over and climbs in it sounds like a robbery on the surface it would sound like a robbery but she did have 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 so is it a sexual assault it very well could have could have been the plan although the autopsy showed she was not sexually assaulted Michelle had defensive slice wounds on her hands and body you have to assume that that pretty much any motive that you can logically think of was a possibility and Michelle decided she wasn't going to allow that to happen she fought whatever the motive the asent had come prepared they found rubber glove indentations on the outside of the car in dirt they found them inside the car in Blood it was clear that that person was trying to conceal their identity investigators had no fingerprints no Witnesses and few leads although they had a blood soaked crime scene DNA technology was still years away it's frustrating by 1986 this casee is sitting on Ice it's that cold no one can think of anything uh more to do at that point Michelle's family was even more frustrated it seemed that everybody had been looked at we thought the investigation was pretty much dead in the water it would take almost two decades but the case would come alive again in 2005 detective Doug larrison was in charge coincidentally he had gone to high school with Michelle although they were not close her murder had deeply affected him so that had been on your mind since you were 18 years old how do we get this solved right I felt the responsibility towards my classmates actually to get this crime solved in the years since Michelle's murder DNA had emerged as a forensic tool technology changes science changes so I wanted to proceed and move the case forward and larison did just that he was reading Michelle's file when he discovered that sometime earlier another detective had sent blood scrapings found on the gear shift of the car out for testing but nobody had followed up on the results and it just stays in the file until somebody finds it and it can get lost in the file and until somebody actually sits down and reads the file do they go oh wow we have DNA those different investigators don't necessarily network with one another but Lar found that lab report and it showed that not only did the gearshift have DNA it was male DNA he had probably cut himself and that's how his DNA and his blood got mixed with her blood on the gearshift selector larison then sent Michelle's dress which had been safely tucked away in an Evidence Locker to the lab for further testing what did they find a spot of blood on her dress with a full male DNA profile and uh it was consistent with the male DNA profile on the gearshift selector larrison had identified a crucial piece of evidence I think it's just common sense that that's probably your killer right there detectives had the evidence now all they needed was the suspect we know we just need one person we just need to get get lucky you know have the sunshine on us just one day when we find one person that matches that but it would take many days more than a decade and it wasn't luck it was cops who wouldn't quit until they finally narrowed in on one very surprising suspect oh boy this is it we have finally gotten down to the wire on [Music] [Music] this here in America's Heartland for friends like Tracy Price who saw Michelle martinko the last night of her life every anniversary it goes through your head you know here's another year still don't know for ex-boyfriend Mike Wyrick we all were victims in a way well your innocence was stolen yeah exactly then the fear set in and for close friend Gail Dawson Michelle's murderer left a mark on all their lives you're scared you're afraid to go [Music] places the killer had vanished but by 2005 investigators were on to something new science and that male DNA profile in Michelle's dress and the DNA from the blood on her car's gear shift would it be fair to say you found a needle on a hyack I think there was a lot of needles in and a lot of Hy Stacks in this case for lead investigator Doug larrison old evidence suddenly had fresh potential he shipped the blood samples to cotus the Nationwide database of DNA collected from Arrested offenders if Michelle's murderer had a previous record cotus will give us a hit and tell us who matches the profile so you send it to cotus and what happens well we never got a hit dead end the DNA from Michelle's dress and car did not match up with anyone in the huge government file so now we had a job to do starting with locating all the people Cedar Rapids cops had originally interviewed we collected DNA samples from over a 100 different people cops had to convince them to take a DNA test it was timec consuming Mike wrick and Tracy Price were tested both came up negative at the top of larrison's list was Michelle's old boyfriend Andy Sidell I think he was probably the main suspect from the very beginning of this case Andy Sidell had lived for 27 years with many in his hometown believing he was a killer I said listen Andy if you give us your DNA and it doesn't match then you're eliminated you're cleared so he voluntarily gave his DNA and he was eliminated but whoever ended Michelle's life left a different but lasting mark on Andy Michelle's parents both died before that DNA test exonerated him they likely went to their graves believing Andy was their daughter's killer I feel very bad about that Andy was a victim himself because many many fingers were pointing at Andy larison moved on classmates friends family searching for a match with that male DNA so you do 100 different people what comes back everybody's eliminated no matches it had been 10 frustrating years for detective Doug larrison I was kind of burned out so I went to my supervisors and I said hey I think you need to get somebody to replace me on this case one of these had the FBI profile in it 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 as lead detective they would tell you our computer records only go back to 1990 facts hadn't changed but DNA technology had once again Advanced further offering tantalizing possibilities we've got this DNA profile how can we get more information from it can we find out eye color hair color race denlinger reached across the country to Virginia's parabon nanolabs and they said yeah we know what you're trying to do and guess what we can make a picture of a potential suspect from that DNA sample did you think that that could be possible no no I had no good concept that that was possible um it sounded a little bit sci-fi but I was ready to try we had to do something the portrait was striking parabon called the technique snapshot it put a face on a fan what we learned from that is our suspect was probably a white male blonde hair blue eyes this first image I show you here and so we had a press conference investigators had narrowed down the suspect's genetics but they did not know his age or have a clue as to how he wore his hair so different sketches were created each with a different look a town hungry for justice searched its memory for a match do you get a lot of tip calls we got hundreds any of them pan out no it's every blond-haired blue-eyed guy that ever walked the face of the Earth and step foot in Iowa are you just confused I was really confused and I did not know where to go next that answer came from an Infamous but totally unrelated case California's so-called Golden State killer Joseph D'Angelo was arrested in 2018 charged with a decades long spree of Serial murder and rape that was big news that was big national news then I read the article and it talked about genetic genealogy and you went bingo I went Bingo genetic genealogy the charting of DNA from one family member to another a DNA family tree parabon was ready to test that same DNA one more time they said we'll use the sample you already gave us for the uh snapshot images I said let's do it parabon searched a public National Database called Jed match of people who submitted their own DNA voluntarily to trace their own personal family tree and in July of 2018 we got a report back from them they said good news we found a relative of your killer Brandy Jennings is our gal in Vancouver Washington she's the second cousin right once removed exactly Brandy Jennings an office manager and single mom was a distant relative to the male whose DNA was found on Michelle's bloody dress and in her car so you start with her we start with her denlinger spent months Building bry's Family Tree all the way back to her great great grandparents we used genealogical records birth records marriage records gravestone records anything we could find to fill in a bunch of these unknowns as more blood relatives of Brandy Jennings provided their DNA a genetic puzzle filled in and the detective reached out to parabon once again and they recalibrated things and said listen we think your best odds are these three brothers who live in Iowa Three Brothers all from Iowa all likely sharing some DNA with the blood found in Michelle Martino's car a 38-year trail was heading straight back home 20 minutes away I was pretty excited about this [Music] one should Police use genetic genealogy to help solve crimes for more on the investigation go to 48 [Music] hours.com [Music] by October of 2018 detective Matt dinger's painstaking ancestry searches had narrowed the suspects down to three brothers in Iowa and all of them were still alive we immediately started doing research on these three brothers were Donald Burns Kenneth Burns and Jerry Burns Dan linger and his team set up a plan they would collect DNA samples from the brothers to see if any were a match and they would do it without them knowing you think one of them is a suspect you can't tell any of the three not only can I not tell any of the three 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 lunch and grabbed his straw for the second a toothbrush was collected from his garbage and then the third brother Jerry we drove up to Manchester we had already established kind of a pattern or or some locations to try to find him after a couple of hours he spotted Jerry Burns at this pizza restaurant he drank at least two sodas out of a glass with a straw all three brothers samples were sent to the lab Don and Kenneth were not a match but the results showed Jerry Burns's DNA was an exact match for denlinger the message was clear I I was definitely speechless I'm almost speechless today thinking about it it turns out that parabon sketch of the suspect was very similar to a young Jerry Burns but Burns wasn't an obvious suspect we are not finding any connection at all no connection to Michelle no connection to that car even more baffling Jerry Burns's resume was the opposite of a coldblooded killer he had no criminal record and was even a respected businessman with a wife and three kids denlinger picked a particular day to interview Burns at his business hello December 19th 2018 hey how are you today Jerry my name's Matt the Cedar Rapid Police Department exactly 39 years to the day after Michelle was murdered I wanted to Rattle him I wanted to bring that up during the interview and see I if that would do anything to him copy of the search using a hidden camera inside a coffee mug denlinger tried to get a confession the reality is we have your DNA at the crime scene and so we know you were there that night this happened how would we get your DNA at the crime scene there Jerry I don't know but Jerry acknowledged he had been to the mall with his family in the past did you go to Westdale Mall oh yeah we've gone to Westdale Mall although Jerry couldn't remember when when he was at the mall Dinger continued to press him Terry what happened that night I don't know despite Burns's denes the DNA was enough to arrest him for the murder of Michelle martinko anything you say can Will used to get you in a court of law on the ride back to Cedar Rapids a camera was rolling again this time in the police car and denlinger believes Jerry offered something revealing he said a few things about blocking stuff out traumatic events it's possible happen I'm sure something like that would be possible block things out your memories you're a homicide detective your gut tells you something what did your gut say my gut told me the second he refused to deny it or give me a plausible explanation that we had the right guy for Michelle's sister Janelle news of the DNA match and the arrest signaled hope and day she and her husband John thought would never come we were just hooping and hollering and we were just talking and talking we were just so excited but for the Burns family it all came as a complete shock Jerry's daughter Jennifer and his brother da could not believe the man they know and love could ever be capable of such a gruesome act we did not believe it this could not be our dad he couldn't have done it there was just no way I mean he was he was always there for his family circumstance that just made it highly improbable from our perspective first of all there was no connection between Jerry and Michelle martinko none Leon spe is Jerry Burn's attorney he believes his client's demeanor during the police interview wasn't out of the ordinary I challenge anybody to to predict how any person is going to react let alone react being caught out of the blue Within investigator trying to attribute them to a a horrible horrible crime he did not commit this murder in February of 2020 Michelle Martino's accused killer went on trial more than four decades after her murder due to the buzz surrounding the case in Cedar Rapids the judge granted a venue change to Davenport Iowa an hour away the evidence will show that Michelle martinko was murdered that night by the defendant Jerry Burns prosecutor Nick maybanks felt the weight of his hometown on his shoulders a lot of eyes on this case there are Generations that grew up with this story and the generation who lived through the horror and suspicion always seem to be a happy several of Michelle's friends were called to testify including Michelle's ex-boyfriend and once Prime Suspect Andy Sidell who says he and Michelle were on good terms the last time they saw each other there was no reason for us to to part ways in a bad way we just kind of grew apart as we evolved growing into adulthood do you swear or Mike wrick was also called and had to relive Michelle's murder all over again this trial was hard on me for a lot of us brought it all back into focus in a way that it hadn't been in Focus since those early early days this was a random act of violence committed by a stranger from the start prosecution faced a number of hurdles the case and the evidence were decades old trying to take 40 Years of investigation and condense it into a story and a lot of things about this suspect didn't make sense what's that like for you you have a suspect who has no criminal background that we're aware of mhm and this heinous crime that looks extremely personal right yeah you have no story I don't yeah and after he was interviewed we didn't have much of a story either a story the Burns family believes was problematic from the start they wanted an explanation of how his DNA got there well how is he supposed to know from 40 years ago you know I can't even remember what I did last week every day so would you say it's impossible that Jerry murdered Michelle I'd say it is there's absolutely no way it could have happened I don't think there's any way that my dad could have done this the prosecution case hinged on that one critical piece of evidence Jerry Burns DNA we got the science we got the guy there's a one in 100 billion chance that it could be somebody else's there's only 8 billion people or so in the world but Leon spe argues the DNA evidence isn't foolproof there are lots of misconceptions about DNA it's not the Silver Bullet that law enforcement often portrays it to [Music] be do you think Jerry Burn's comment and the the troll car was telling join the conversation on Facebook and Twitter as the state's case wound down prosecutor Nick maybanks had one last card to play he called a new witness Michael Allison a drug offender who had become friendly with Jerry Burns in jail yes I do I asked him directly if I asked him Jerry did you do do the crime and he said I can't talk about this but Burns did say something curious he feels like uh no matter what happens in this case that he he wins because he had had the opportunity to be out there with his family all these years Allison said Jerry later made another comment while they were playing cards that Disturbed him so much he volunt here to testify he had told me if I keep beating him in PE knuckle he was going to have to take me to the mall it disgusted me in his defense case Leon Spees calls only one witness Dr Michael Spence a mular biologist he says while there is no doubt the DNA and Michelle's car belong to Jerry Burns how it got there was another matter is it Dr Spence Applause explanation that the DNA of Jerry Burns could have come about by a transfer yes that's a distinct possibility every time you come into contact with something you're shedding DNA you're leaving a biological trail of yourself 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 may have sat at but how did Jerry's DNA end up on the Buick's gear shift Jerry's Brother Don Burns believes there could be an innocent explanation he worked in a dealership that sold Buick cars so there is a possibility that if if records show that that car went through that dealership his DNA could be in that car but detective Matt denlinger isn't buying it my question for them would be did the dress go to the Buick dealership too this is this fantasy World common sense says that that's not the case impossible impossible ladies and gentlemen of the jury good morning in his final arguments prosecutor maybanks tells the jury there was only one way Jerry Burns's DNA got into that car there was no chance of outside contamination on this dress we know how it happened and we know who did it in his closing argument spe attacks the Integrity of the investigation you can consider not only the evidence but also the lack or the failure of evidence produced by the prosecution and he tells jurors to consider how unlikely it is that a man like Jerry could commit a crime like this the state 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 armed with a knife armed with rubber gloves goes to Westdale Mall on the chance that he's going to encounter Michelle Maro designs to kill her and then leaves and drives back home splattered with blood presumably with a knife wound in his hand that's the scenario the government wants you to believe the jury begins deliberations on a Monday afternoon remember you are the judges of The Facts nerves are on edge I was not thinking slam dunk all it takes is one juror to have a hung jury but just 3 hours later I said we have a verdict so we rush into the courtroom sit down and we [Music] wait thank you we the the jury find the defendant Jerry Lynn Burns guilty of the charge of Murder in the First Degree guilty the courtroom was silent we almost couldn't breathe it was just amazing it was fabulous we were aware of how quiet was on Jerry's side and that there was no reaction unfair I'd say I was stunned the verdict came back so fast I don't know if the jury really took time to look at the facts what do you feel in that moment extreme relief the weight of the world was off my shoulders now Harvey denlinger the investigator who was there at the beginning of the case 40 years earlier saw his son help end it I'm proud as hecko of them I really am proud to to get an answer you know while he can he can still appreciate it he said today how proud he is of you well all right we're going to take a break finally there was an answer to the question that had haunted Cedar Rapids for so long but there is a lingering question was Michelle martinko Jerry's only victim I just seen something about jod hen tro recently in his interview with denlinger Burns randomly mentioned the name of Jody hen Tru you are watching news channel 3 day break she was a blonde news anchor kidnapped near her car in a parking lot in 1995 and never found she worked in Mason City Iowa 2 hours from where Burns lived though there is no evidence he knew her do you suspect that Jerry Burns was involved in other crimes I don't know the answer to that my gut tells me there's probably something else out there Mason City police will not disclose whether they are investigating Burns in The Who and TR disappearance and his DNA is not connected to any other cases but in Michelle Martino's case she played a unique role in revealing her killer she fought so hard that she caused the murderer to cut himself he left his DNA and so Michelle helped solve her own murder four decades after Michelle's death her friends family and generations of investigators gather to celebrate her memory this case wasn't isn't just about her death it's about her life Nick maybanks worded it the best I mean he said it's not about how she died it's about how she lived you can't help but wonder where life would have led her her name will be forever etched in local history as part of Cedar Rapids most haunting crime you've been a prosecutor for 20 years is this the biggest case you've ever had yeah every case you want justice but a case like this touched so many people over so many years there'll never be another one like [Music] it [Music] she killed her partner I don't believe Chris ever abused her she was a very good actress murder or self-defense there were many people who saw her with black eyes with bruises she was afraid for her life 48 Hours next on CBS

Channel: 48 Hours

Views: 2,134,786

Keywords: 48 hours, cbs news, michelle martinko, christmas, 1979, stabbing death, westdale mall cedar rapids, murder, Jerry Lynn Burns, true crime, full epsiodes

Id: tTHzQa2wrbY

Length: 41min 1sec (2461 seconds)

Published: Tue Dec 19 2023