How a Plastic Straw Helped Solve a 40-Year-Old Cold Case
By: Harshi Baldota
Tags: Mystery, True Crime, Crime, Murder, History

How a Plastic Straw Helped Solve a 40-Year-Old Cold Case

Source: Wikipedia

Michelle Martinko was an 18-year-old high school student who was murdered on the night of 19th December 1979. Exactly 39 years later, her murderer was caught. But how?

Michelle Martinko was born on October 6, 1961, in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. She was the younger of the two daughters, her parents Albert and Janet had. She was a good-looking and talented girl interested in performing arts, and she participated in choir and theatre productions and was also a part of the twirling squad.

Michelle didn’t have many close friends and confidantes because it was speculated that they were jealous of her beauty and the guy she dated. She was a very ambitious girl having plans to study interior design at Iowa State University.

The day it happened

It was December 19, 1979, when Michelle attended an event of the Kennedy Concert Choir at Sheraton Inn in Cedar Rapids. She visited the concert with her twirling squad friend. They both went in Michelle’s family car — a 1972 Buick Electra.

As always, Michelle was looking amazing in her black jersey dress with a waist-length fur coat. She wore high heels and carried a brown leather purse.

Michelle wanted to purchase a new winter coat, so after the event, she asked her twirling squad teammate to join her on a shopping spree to the Westdale Mall, but her friend denied. Since there was no one to accompany her, she had to go all on her own. She carried $180 for the coat and some accessories she wanted to purchase.

The Mall was recently opened and was in demand at the time. The Mall had almost all the brands one tried to get his hands on. Michelle used to work in one of the shops in the mall. She hung out with her colleagues and friends after her usual working hours, which was 10 p.m.

And that day, it was hours past 10, but she wasn’t home yet. Her parents waited and waited. It was midnight but no signs of her. She hadn’t been out till so late and especially without informing. Things were getting tense as the clock ticked.

Finally, by 2 a.m., her father reported a missing report at the police station in their vicinity. The family started looking for her, as did the police force. She was last seen outside a jewelry shop in the mall around 8–9 pm.

The police were looking for Michelle for 2 hours straight when around 4 am they found the Martinko family’s tan and green 1972 Buick Electra in the mall’s parking lot. It was found in the northeast corner of the parking lot, which ironically used to be the most congested, but no one saw her.

What happened next was horrendous…

Michelle was found curled up in the passenger’s seat of the car. Collapsed and stabbed to death. Brutally and mercilessly. Body well covered in blood. According to forensic reports, she had been stabbed 29 times in her face, neck, and chest.

There was little to no blood outside the car, indicating she had been killed while being in the car itself. She also bore defensive wounds, which showed that she fought back against the murderer. She had been to self-defense classes, but the little girl was outpowered.

Since the cash was present in her purse even after the murder, police concluded the murder wasn’t a result of a robbery, neither was it an attempt of sexual assault or molestation since Michelle was fully dressed; she had all her clothes on.

Discarding both the possibilities behind the motive of the murder, the police were bewildered, as were Michelle’s parents. The Police found no weapons nor any fingerprints of the killer, which made the police believe that they might have worn gloves.

Looking at the location at which the murder had happened, and the number and places of stab wounds, police speculated that the murder was “personal” in nature.

Michelle was buried in the Cedar Memorial Park Cemetery. The funeral was attended by her family and also her friends.

It was Time for Investigation

The investigation began. The police spokesperson came out in public, asking people about any know-hows regarding the murder. Approximately more than 200 people responded to the detective’s appeals.

The public support was massive. Everyone wanted to know why a beautiful young woman is stabbed to death in a mall just randomly.

In the following weeks, detectives worked tirelessly, and a lot of people were enquired and cleared of suspicion.

A teenager found carrying a knife, a shopping mall employee who was infamous for following women and staring at them were some suspects but were ruled out in the murder case since there were no shreds of evidence to prove.

The investigation was on, but there were no leads.

On 19th June 1980, the police released a man's portrait believed to be the one who killed Michelle. The portrait was formed by the descriptions given by two witnesses under hypnosis. The image turned out to be of a white man in his late teens and early twenties with brown eyes and curly brown hair.

After the release of the composite sketch, a lot of people were interviewed. Some were interviewed under hypnosis too. As the case started getting faded, a $10,000 reward was also announced for the one who helped find the culprit but in vain.

It Became a Cold Case

As time passed, the case grew cold. Michelle’s father, Albert, died in 1995. He took his last breath, trying to get his daughter justice. He also filed a case against the owners of Westdale Mall, claiming negligence on their part to ensure “reasonable safety” in the Mall. The case went to Iowa supreme court, but he lost.

Michelle’s mother, Janet, too, died in 1998. They didn’t get the closure they needed, nor their girl got the justice she deserved. But no one lost the hopes yet, neither her sister Janelle nor the police.

Over the years, there were new leads, investigators followed up, people were inquired, but none of these led to Michelle’s killer.

It was 2006, 27 years after the kill, when the case opened again. A new cold case investigator was working for the Cedar Rapids Police department when a piece of old evidence came to use. It was DNA. It was in the blood found on the back of Michelle’s dress and the gear stick of the car she has been murdered in.

The Police believed Michelle had the killer’s hand cut when she was defending herself. But at that time, due to a lack of technology, the DNA wasn’t of any use.

But now, things were different. From the DNA, the team was able to build a partial DNA profile. The DNA was entered in the Combined DNA Index System(CODIS), the DNA's national database, but no matches were found.

As the years passed, the DNA has been started given freely in genetic genealogical research to make partial profiles and trace ancestry.

Though it has led to the convictions of many deadly criminals, concerns have been raised about the invasion of privacy.

Years passed, but nothing related to Michelle’s case came to light.

Then, again in 2017, 38 years after the murder, a company specializing in DNA phenotyping created another picture based solely on the DNA obtained. The image was quite different from the composite sketch made earlier in 1980. The image was released in public, and the case once again became active.

In 2018, the same company took the data and entered it into GEDmatch, a genetic genealogy website, to build a family tree and trace the ancestry. The data came out to be of three male relatives living in Manchester, Iowa, a 45-minute route from Cedar Rapids.

Those were three brothers, which in turn were Michelles’s cousins. Based on the killer's likely image, created by the same company, two were discounted, and one was placed under secret surveillance.

The suspect was Jerry Lynn Burns. Burns would be 25 when Michelle was murdered. He was married at that time.

The police reached his house to collect his DNA, but Burns refused to voluntarily provide his DNA since he claimed it was his private property. The police had no other option but to track him down to obtain his DNA. Police started following him and noticing his actions.

Once when police were following Burns, they saw him entering a pizza restaurant. He was having a pizza and drank soda with a plastic straw. When Burns disposed of the glass and the straw in the bin, the police collected it, claiming defense that now it became public property after disposal, making it legal.

Burn’s DNA was checked with the DNA collected years ago, and Burn’s DNA matched the DNA of the killer!!!

Burns couldn’t provide any possible reason as to how and why his DNA matched the DNA found at the crime scene. The prosecution maintained that the odds of the DNA being false was “astronomical.”

The defense said that Michelle might have picked Burns’ DNA while browsing the mall, but it was not possible since Michelle have met so many friends that evening, but no one else’s DNA was found but Jerry’s.

The police also played the footage of Burns after his arrest, where he questioned he could have blocked out the memory of killing Michelle.

Murderer Behind Bars in 2020

The jury deliberated for another three hours after a two-week trial to finally announce Jerry Burns guilty of first-degree murder — on December 19, 2018, exactly 39 years later.

On August 7, 2020, he was given a sentence of Life Imprisonment without the possibility of Parole and restitution of $1,50,000 to be paid to Michelle’s Family.

He is imprisoned in Anamosa State Penitentiary currently.

What the mystery is why Burns had killed Michelle and, of all so ruthlessly.

Michelle’s sister Janelle Stonebreaker wished her parents could see her sister’s killer getting perished in jail.

Janelle’s husband said, “The defensive wounds on her hands show it. She fought so hard that she was able to deflect the killer’s knife so that he stabbed himself, leaving the blood that caught him. In a very real way, Michelle became her own best witness.’

Michelle’s case was a stark reminder that even after years of crime, there’s certainly no place to hide…