VANCOUVER, Wash. (KOIN) — A community in Iowa has been waiting for closure for nearly 40 years and now, finally, they have it thanks to a woman living halfway across the country.
In June of 2018, Brandy Jennings of Vancouver decided to try out a genealogy website called GEDmatch in the hopes of learning more about her father.
She uploaded her DNA to the company — and forgot all about the site until last week when the messages started pouring in.
“Several messages in one day for somebody I never even heard of and he told me why,” said Jennings. “He said ‘you just helped solve a 39-year-old mystery that everybody in this town has been trying to figure out.'”
It turned out, Jennings’ DNA helped lead to an arrest in the murder of 18-year-old Michelle Martinko.
Martinko was stabbed to death at a mall on Dec. 19, 1979. Thirty-nine years later to the day, police in Cedar Rapids arrested 64-year-old Jerry Lynn Burns and charged him with murder.
It wasn’t until last week that Jennings learned it was her DNA that helped investigators make that arrest.
According to KGAN, cold case investigators were able to lift the suspected killer’s DNA off crime scene evidence in 2006 and upload it to the Combined DNA Index System (CODIS) but a match never came through.
Jennings explained that her own DNA was a partial match to Burns, who is a distant relative she’s never met.
Jennings said knowing that she had a part to play in helping bring about an arrest.
“It feels really good,” she said. “I would encourage anyone who has the opportunity to do something like this to do it. Imagine how many unsolved crimes could be solved.”
Jennings said she wished closure could have come sooner for Marinko’s parents.
“They went to the grave not knowing why or who,” said Jennings. “I just can’t even imagine. I’m a mom myself — if anything like that would happen to my daughter it would devastate me, too. I just wish I could’ve given them closure, too.”
Martinko’s mother said in an interview 8 years after her daughter’s death that she thought justice would never come for her daughter’s death.
“Well, it’s been so long and I think the longer it lasts, the less chances. I can’t say that — I thought at the beginning it would be, but not anymore,” Janet Martinko told KGAN in Cedar Rapids.
“Well it’s been so long and I think the longer it lasts, the less chances. 00:48 I can’t say that – I thought at the beginning it would, be but not anymore.
As for Burns, he’s currently behind bars, awaiting trial.