place is safe anymore. we got the call about 6:00 in the morning, maybe 5:00 in the morning. janelle stonebreaker, michelle s parents broke the awful news to her through sobs and pleas. they were devastated. even then, she sensed her parents might never recovered, even though they wild here in this world. this is my mother and father s miracle baby. she s the child they had tried to have for all those years. a child to who grew up in 1960s and 70s in mid-town america, hanging out at the roller rink. a back brace for scoliosis turned her into a shy teen. by high school, she did a 180. when she got her braces off, she blossomed. they walked these same halls with michel, three close high school friends. all the time she spent not
with data. i taught fifth grade. i know how hard it is to teach somebody something. you have to repeat it over and over and over again. i m concerned about that. thank you. as it turned out, the jury reached a quick verdict. judge hoover read the decision aloud. we, the jury, find the defendant, jerry lynn burns, guilty of the charge of murder in the first degree. how did he take it, the verdict? i think he was shock, too. he was very much expecting to come home. don, you re in court, the verdict? i was surprised at the verdict. i had a hard time believing that the jury sat down and even reviewed the case. three hours. yeah. not even three. i couldn t believe they came back with the verdict they did. outside the court house, john and janelle were emotional. to finally have the closure on this and to actually know i wish my parents could be here to see this.
dress or on the gear shift could have come about by a transfer? yes, that s a distinct possibility. the defense s dna expert told the court burns might have left his dna at the mall innocently on a door or a bench. after all, he told investigators that he had visited the mall. jerry burns dna jerry burns, the defense argued, was a victim of coincidence and sloppy police work. ladies and gentlemen, the evidence has been submitted to you. after eight days of testimony, the jury got the case. when it goes out to the jury, what are you thinking? i mean, we re hoping for the best. if he wasn t guilty, great, we have dad home. if he was guilty it metropolitan more work, fighting for him. janelle was worried before a different reason. she knew the prosecution s case, the dna testing, the genetic genealogy was complicated, dense
in a pretrial hearing, the judge agreed, dealing a blow to the state s case. which boiled down to a single piece of evidence against jerry burns that dna match. good morning, ladies and gentlemen of the jury the trial began in february, 2020. michelle s sister janelle and her husband john traveled from their florida home to attend, determined to see it through to the end. every day. if the jury has there, we ll be there. you examined the drafts the prosecution put the detective on the stand to tell jurors the police followed sound practices when they handled michelle s clothing. we wore rubber gloves, for one thing. we tried not to disturb the clothing items, just get a quick look at them and then reinsert them back in their original packaging. dna analyst linda sauer, since retired, testified the dna collected from that evidence could only belong to one person. the probability of finding