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Tonight, a serial rapist terrorizes households in Utah
00:00:16
by night and across state lines.
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May 22nd, 2001, police in Clearfield, Utah
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are called to the scene of a horrific sex assault.
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TONY RAWLINGS: I don't think you could script a more diabolical,
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sinister, heinous act of crime perpetrated
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against humanity and individuals in a family
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than what our suspect did.
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NANCY GRACE (VOICEOVER): Using DNA from the crime scene,
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police matched the suspect to another sex
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attack the previous July.
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KYLE JEFFRIES: We know who the suspect is by DNA.
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We just couldn't put the DNA to the man.
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You know, you wish you could solve them immediately,
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like they do on "CSI."
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In an hour it's done.
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This is one of those cases that didn't work that way.
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NANCY GRACE (VOICEOVER): What unfolds
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next is shocking beyond belief.
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I don't know if anyone actually knows exactly how many
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victims there are, but at the very least,
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they had 10 cases with 11 victims.
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Sadistic.
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That guy has no conscience whatsoever.
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He is a true animal.
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NANCY GRACE (VOICEOVER): Police never give up hope, but fear
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they may never capture the man responsible,
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so they turn to a new science for help.
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BENJAMIN WILLOUGHBY: We were only fishing for results,
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and getting nothing.
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But in 2015, with the advances in DNA technology,
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we could begin to actively hunt him.
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NANCY GRACE (VOICEOVER): This is a story of how police, over 17
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years, and with the help of a new groundbreaking forensic
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technique, track down and capture
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a serial rapist responsible for destroying countless lives.
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I'm Nancy Grace.
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This is "Bloodline Detectives."
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It was the only thing that led us to this man.
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Now we've got the science catching up with the evidence.
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We need to pursue this.
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Now we were hopeful.
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[MUSIC PLAYING]
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NANCY GRACE (VOICEOVER): It's May 22nd, 2001.
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Clearfield Police in Utah get an urgent 911 call from a family
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there in the area.
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TIM ROBINSON: The victim was actually in bed
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with her husband at the time.
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The suspect ordered her to wake up her husband and bind him.
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She did that.
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And the suspect asked if there was anybody else in the house.
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The victim said my daughter is in the house,
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and I believe the victim's brother was in the house.
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He went throughout the home gathering up
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all of the occupants, the entire family, one by one,
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and tying them up as well.
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Then the suspect proceeded to rape one of the victims
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while forcing the other victims to watch,
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and then he proceeded to sexually assault
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the other victim as well.
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He mostly sexually assaulted the daughter.
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KYLE JEFFRIES: The uncle told me that while he was raping
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the victims, the suspected had brushed up against him,
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and that he thought he was next to be raped.
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I couldn't imagine the horror that went on in that room.
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TONY RAWLINGS: As you get into the facts
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and delve into what happened to these people
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and what he perpetrated against them,
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it is probably as diabolical of a crime
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as you can possibly imagine.
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TIM ROBINSON: Near the end of the event,
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the door opened and the son of the original victim
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came in through the door, home from work.
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He immediately had a gun put in his forehead,
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and he was bound and gagged as well.
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The son had to be restrained, and then
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had to sit and watch the suspect finish the perpetration
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of crimes against the rest of his family members,
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his mother and his sister.
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NANCY GRACE (VOICEOVER): Before the intruder flees the scene,
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he makes one last demand.
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After he commits a graphic of an act of criminality
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as you possibly can, the suspect then incredibly
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wanted money from the family.
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Uncle had $100.
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The suspect, at gunpoint, made one of our victims
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retrieve the $100 and give it to him.
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KYLE JEFFRIES: Kind of a strange way that he left that attack.
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He actually kissed one of the victims on the mouth
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and said goodbye and walked out the door,
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like he was a boyfriend.
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NANCY GRACE (VOICEOVER): Police arrive at the home
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and straight away begin a forensic examination
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of the scene.
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BENJAMIN WILLOUGHBY: When they arrived,
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they tried to cast a net.
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They scoured the area, went to neighbors, looking for, again,
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anybody who could have seen somebody coming or leaving,
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footprints, anybody who might have heard anything.
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KYLE JEFFRIES: We took everything from the house.
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There was boxes and boxes of evidence.
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We took the bedding.
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We took the ties that he used to tie up the victims.
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We took just about everything.
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There's pictures of everything.
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We had all kinds of evidence in the case.
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TIM ROBINSON: They would have taken
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both the victims in for sex crimes kits and collected DNA.
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I know the suspect would lick parts
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of the bodies of the victims, whether it be through oral sex
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or licking a breast or a cheek, or whatever.
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They would take swabs to collect DNA in that manner.
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BENJAMIN WILLOUGHBY: It was absolutely necessary to get.
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They were very brave to cooperate
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and to go through all of these steps
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and attempt to find their attacker.
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NANCY GRACE (VOICEOVER): The son's
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able to give a sketchy description of the perp.
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KYLE JEFFRIES: He did catch a glimpse of him,
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but it was a very fast glimpse, and of course, he
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had a gun put in his face real quick,
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so he wasn't really focused on the suspect at that time.
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He was focused on the barrel of the gun.
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TONY RAWLINGS: Still, a rendering
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was done based upon the information he provided
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that did lead to a suspect composition drawing being done
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that actually that ended up in a newspaper article,
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as well, here in our area.
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Some of the leads that they were following
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up on based on the sketch, they would have immediately taken
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the DNA from those suspects.
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And these are very loose suspects.
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Somebody calls in and says that sketch looks
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like it might be so and so.
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None of that led to anything.
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It was a complete dead end.
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The family is law-abiding and well regarded
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in the Clearfield area.
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TONY RAWLINGS: This was a family living their lives,
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going about their business, minding their business,
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helping one another, productive in the community, liked
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in their neighborhood.
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And so this was your ultimate victim,
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in the sense of basically an innocent,
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naive, law-abiding family.
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They were just nice people.
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The father was a preacher.
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This was a religious family just doing their thing day-to-day,
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and you would never expect the horror
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that came into the house.
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I don't know how any of them still function today,
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and they're great people.
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NANCY GRACE (VOICEOVER): Clearfield Police
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are quick to expand their search outside the local jurisdiction.
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TONY RAWLINGS: There was a local focus, as well as
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an acknowledgment and a possibility that it might be
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somebody that comes and visits this area that doesn't
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necessarily live here, that has business
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here, that has associates here.
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And so you have to keep, I guess, your eye on the ball
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going both directions.
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We don't believe that any of the victims were targeted.
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He picked a home that had three grown males living inside
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of it, who were all home.
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It would be an incredibly unlikely target.
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But for someone who is just brazenly walking
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along townhomes, just trying to jiggle that door open,
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it seems to have been his MO.
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A disturbing sex attack and a suspect who baffles police,
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because he seems to strike at random without a pattern
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that investigators can identify.
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But as we see next on "Bloodline Detectives,"
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police get a forensic break in the case,
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and with it a window of opportunity
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to catch a predator.
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[MUSIC PLAYING]
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In 2001, police in Clearfield, Utah
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are investigating a savage attack on a local family.
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The perpetrator breaks into their home,
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gathers members of the household,
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and rapes the mother and daughter while the others
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are forced to listen.
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TIM ROBINSON: The suspect ended up finding all of them,
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and then he raped the mother and the daughter
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in front of the entire family.
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BENJAMIN WILLOUGHBY: After committing the sexual assaults,
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he stole money from the family, and then he
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just walked out of the home the way he had walked in.
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NANCY GRACE (VOICEOVER): After an extensive investigation,
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police are no closer to finding a suspect.
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We tried everything imaginable to try and find this guy,
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and we were not going to get him.
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NANCY GRACE (VOICEOVER): In May, 2002, nearly one year
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after the incident, police get information
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the DNA from the perpetrator matches DNA in another sex
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assault, July 2000.
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TIM ROBINSON: She woke up to a nude man straddling her.
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He held a knife to her, threatening to cut her throat.
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He had tore her shirt up, ripped it up with a knife,
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and used the clothing to blindfold
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her with and tie her up.
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He covered her eyes with tape, and then he
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proceeded to sexually assault her inside her own home.
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TONY RAWLINGS: He did it violently.
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He did it aggressively.
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He did it threateningly, and engaged
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in the most heinous types of deviant,
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sexual forcible assaultive behavior
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that one can possibly engage in.
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JOSH CARLSON: The victim had to unbind herself,
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and then eventually she called 911 and locked
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herself in her house.
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Police arrived, secured the scene, made sure
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that the suspect was not there, and proceeded
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to interview the victim and gather as much evidence
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as they could from the scene.
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She did receive a rape kit, and through that kit and all
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the evidence left at the scene, we
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did get DNA from the suspect.
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Once they were linked, we're still
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trying to find the suspect.
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We have the DNA, but we had to find something else to try
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and catch him, because we have the DNA
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and we don't have him yet.
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NANCY GRACE (VOICEOVER): Over the next 10 years,
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the DNA of the John Doe will be linked
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to many horrific sex assaults.
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TIM ROBINSON: Rock Springs; Clearfield; Laramie, Wyoming;
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Ogden, Utah; and Layton, Utah.
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BENJAMIN WILLOUGHBY: In all of these, the MO was the same.
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The suspect would enter quietly in the middle of the night.
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He would jiggle screen doors.
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The glass sliding doors on patios,
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he would jiggle them until he could get one to open.
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He wouldn't break locks.
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He wouldn't break windows.
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He would just jiggle those screen doors.
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We think that's how he got in on all of the cases.
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We had the way he covered everybody's eyes,
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the way he bound everybody up, the weapons that he used.
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Initially, it was knives, and in the end, it was a gun.
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He progress throughout these rape cases in violence
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and duration of time.
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BENJAMIN WILLOUGHBY: Just the calculated coldness
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while he was doing this, the victims would comment how
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calculated, how calm he was.
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There were some comments made from the victims
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that kind of stuck out.
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For instance, one of the things that he said
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was, you have nice [AUDIO OUT] for a white woman.
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And the victim believed that he said
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that to give her the impression that he
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was some race other than white.
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She had been able to see him and knew that it was a white male.
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NANCY GRACE (VOICEOVER): In 2015, investigators
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are approached by the makers of the TV series "Cold Justice."
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TIM ROBINSON: Their MO is to put a focus on these type of cases,
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basically to bring to light what's going on,
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the efforts of law enforcement, and try to, I guess,
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raise public awareness, to a degree.
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We've got these victims who have not had justice yet.
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They haven't had their day in court.
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In this particular situation, though, strategically,
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we felt like that this program might
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benefit the investigation.
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BENJAMIN WILLOUGHBY: Many of the victims, all of the detectives
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who were still working took part in that.
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All of the resources that the Clearfield Police
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Department could put towards it participated
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in running down leads.
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It was a massive operation.
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The hope was that if this story is done,
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it's going to trigger memories.
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It might get more public awareness out there.
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Maybe we have additional victims come forward.
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The best way to put it, we use it
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as an investigative technique.
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NANCY GRACE (VOICEOVER): This links the suspect's DNA
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to another shocking crime.
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There was a girl who was asleep inside her own home.
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It was hot, and she was sleeping in the main living area, where
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the couch and the TV would be.
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It was so warm.
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Probably about 10, 11 o'clock at night, I was so hot.
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I moved my blanket down onto the floor
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and I moved my pillow onto the floor,
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and I fell back to sleep because the floor was so much
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cooler than being on my bed.
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And next thing I remember is something woke me up.
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I wasn't sure what it was.
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I looked up and I saw an outline of a man
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against the sliding glass door.
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And then the person spoke to me, and I
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didn't recognize the voice, and told
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me to roll onto my stomach.
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So I did.
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I did exactly as I was told.
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I didn't know what to do.
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As I was there, I heard my parents' bedroom
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door open and someone went into the kitchen,
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opened up the fridge.
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I could see the lights on.
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And the person whispered into my ear, don't make a sound,
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and put the knife next to my neck.
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And I can still feel where that knife was,
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very smooth against my neck.
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And part of me was praying that whoever that was
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would look around the corner, and part of me
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was hoping that they wouldn't because I didn't know
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if this man was going to kill me and then kill them
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or what would happen.
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He put duct tape on my eyes, and he led me
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through the sliding glass door.
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He took me across the small parking lot,
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so I was able to describe exactly where I was
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and where the car was parked.
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He pulled out of the apartment.
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And as we pulled out of the apartments and he turned left,
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he pushed me down onto the floor,
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and he had his hand on my back.
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He pulled into what was then a Park 'N Ride for buses.
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He told me to get into the back seat of the car.
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And he began to [AUDIO OUT].
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It hurt so bad.
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I didn't know what he was doing.
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I was not experienced with sex.
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I was 11 years old.
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No experience at all.
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After he was done, he had me get back in the front seat.
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He drove me home.
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He parked in front of my apartments,
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told me to exit the car, and he told me to count to 10.
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If I thought that I had seen him or his vehicle, him,
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or if I called the police, he would come back and kill me.
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So we realized that we're dealing with one serial rapist
00:16:36
and a child rapist, an individual who
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is sexually assaulting, it appears, victims
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almost indiscriminate of age.
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That is just sadistic.
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That guy has no conscience whatsoever.
00:16:50
He is a true animal.
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It is such a change in who I am.
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I'm not the same person I was.
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[MUSIC PLAYING]
00:17:03
NANCY GRACE (VOICEOVER): Investigators
00:17:04
start to pool all their resources
00:17:07
from different locations to try and catch the suspect.
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KYLE JEFFRIES: We put the task force together
00:17:14
in 2015, when we were able to get everybody
00:17:17
together in the same room and go through everybody else's cases.
00:17:22
I knew there were other cases, but I
00:17:23
didn't know the details until we got that task force together.
00:17:28
In total, we would have 14 victims and 11 attacks.
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We had no leads.
00:17:36
We have the DNA.
00:17:37
We had nothing else to work with.
00:17:38
So the idea was to stir the pot again.
00:17:41
KYLE JEFFRIES: The first thing we did was pull every case
00:17:43
and find the commonalities in the cases,
00:17:47
and go through every bit of evidence that we still had.
00:17:51
Some evidence had been destroyed from back in the day,
00:17:55
but what evidence we still had and what good evidence
00:17:57
we had to find any other links that would help us
00:18:00
find a suspect.
00:18:02
TIM ROBINSON: But because so many of the cases
00:18:03
were centralized in the Salt Lake area,
00:18:06
we figured that he probably had a home here
00:18:08
or some type of a home base.
00:18:10
This was where he was centralized.
00:18:13
And so we just kept looking for leads in all the cases,
00:18:17
hoping that something would pop up that should have been
00:18:20
obvious that we just missed.
00:18:21
After two decades of nothing and waiting for DNA to hit,
00:18:27
this is our first good opportunity to go looking.
00:18:30
NANCY GRACE (VOICEOVER): 14 victims,
00:18:32
including an 11-year-old girl, 11 attacks.
00:18:37
They began with the intruder opening a screen
00:18:40
or sliding glass door.
00:18:42
Detectives have the DNA of the John Doe,
00:18:46
but will it be the link that identifies him?
00:18:50
That's next on "Bloodline Detectives."
00:18:59
[MUSIC PLAYING]
00:19:01
In 2015, Clearfield Utah Police reopen the case of a savage sex
00:19:07
attack on a local family back in 2001, an attack that links DNA
00:19:12
from the scene to a string of assaults across 14 victims,
00:19:18
dating as far back as 1991.
00:19:23
We have 11 victims with DNA matches,
00:19:26
but my guess is there's still many more out there
00:19:28
that we haven't uncovered.
00:19:30
He may not have specifically targeted
00:19:34
me or any of the rest of us, but he was searching for someone,
00:19:38
and he knew what he was going to do.
00:19:39
NANCY GRACE (VOICEOVER): In 2015, the crime series
00:19:42
"Cold Justice" airs an episode about the crimes that helps
00:19:46
investigators in their search.
00:19:48
Our hope was to generate new victims.
00:19:50
Not that we wanted to be victims,
00:19:52
but we wanted new evidence.
00:19:53
We wanted new leads.
00:19:55
And we hoped if we could find new victims,
00:19:57
we would get that information.
00:20:00
TIM ROBINSON: For the next three or four days,
00:20:01
hundreds and hundreds of phone calls.
00:20:04
It's my brother.
00:20:05
It's my dad. It's my uncle.
00:20:06
It's my cousin.
00:20:07
It's this guy that I used to date.
00:20:09
KYLE JEFFRIES: We went through every single lead
00:20:11
and broke them down and listened to rape case
00:20:15
after rape case that just would blow your mind.
00:20:20
They got a lot of new leads.
00:20:22
They doggedly chased every one of them.
00:20:25
Again, no lead led to our suspect.
00:20:29
TIM ROBINSON: We thought there was a good possibility that he
00:20:31
had died and that we would never know
00:20:33
who he was, because the cases essentially stopped in 2000.
00:20:37
There were no new DNA hits.
00:20:39
We also thought there was a possibility that he'd
00:20:41
gone to jail or prison for some type of crime,
00:20:44
that DNA wasn't collected and sent to the FBI for CODIS hits.
00:20:53
NANCY GRACE (VOICEOVER): Now police
00:20:55
start to use a new science that builds
00:20:57
a picture of the suspect.
00:21:00
I knew we had DNA.
00:21:01
You would think as a normal person, as a cop,
00:21:04
I thought, gee, we got the DNA.
00:21:06
It's going to be out there.
00:21:08
TONY RAWLINGS: As I indicated back in 2003,
00:21:10
my distinct thinking was someday the science will catch up
00:21:14
with the evidence, and so let's don't let the law
00:21:17
and the statute of limitations inhibit that and blow it.
00:21:20
We're now aware of some potential availability
00:21:23
of some different types of DNA, particularly
00:21:26
tracing and tracking.
00:21:28
The male Y chromosome is one of the things
00:21:30
that was initially done.
00:21:31
Now that science is available, let's use it.
00:21:35
Let's see where it goes.
00:21:36
Let's see what is the result.
00:21:38
NANCY GRACE (VOICEOVER): 2017, police decide to capitalize
00:21:42
on advances in DNA science.
00:21:44
They enlist Parabon NanoLabs to develop a phenotype.
00:21:49
Parabon was able to give us an ethnicity, kind
00:21:54
of a region to where the suspect had come from,
00:21:57
so we had some identifiers there.
00:22:01
So Parabon NanoLabs was able to produce a sketch of how
00:22:06
the suspect would have appeared in his 20s, 30s, 40s,
00:22:11
and so on just based off of his DNA.
00:22:15
They said that his eyes would be blue or green,
00:22:18
his complexion would be clear.
00:22:20
We didn't anticipate him to have freckles.
00:22:23
Amazing scientific work that you could tell us that.
00:22:27
Still not a lot to go on.
00:22:29
NANCY GRACE (VOICEOVER): After conducting analysis of the DNA
00:22:31
sample, Parabon provides detectives with the name
00:22:35
of a potential suspect.
00:22:37
Burn was the last name I was given,
00:22:39
and variations of that name.
00:22:42
So of course, as soon as I got that information,
00:22:44
I went back through all these leads
00:22:46
that we had had and tried to find
00:22:48
a last name that would match.
00:22:50
And I did get one of a person local, and everything matched.
00:22:57
And I did do a warrant on that guy,
00:22:59
and turned out not to be the guy.
00:23:02
Once again, I thought we had our guy.
00:23:04
He looked like the profile.
00:23:05
He looked like the picture, and turned out it wasn't him.
00:23:10
TONY RAWLINGS: It created an increased energy
00:23:12
and it created some thinking and some thought processes
00:23:15
and some outreach of new and unique ways
00:23:17
to look at DNA, possibilities, things that
00:23:19
could be done at this point.
00:23:21
TIM ROBINSON: And there was a lot of different stuff
00:23:23
that went into it, nothing that gave us a this is your guy.
00:23:26
But what it also did is, ultimately, that process
00:23:31
went on to Dr. Venter.
00:23:35
If we're going to spend this money and do this,
00:23:37
we want to make sure that it's scientifically
00:23:39
sound to the degree we think it would be admissible in court.
00:23:42
So we dotted our I's, crossed our T's, vetted it.
00:23:45
And we came to the conclusion that, again, now we've
00:23:48
got the science catching up with the evidence,
00:23:50
we need to pursue this.
00:23:51
Now we were hopeful.
00:23:53
NANCY GRACE (VOICEOVER): Parabon's work
00:23:55
is impressive, but failed to generate any substantive lead.
00:23:59
Next, they send their suspect's DNA to Dr. Barbara Rae-Venter,
00:24:03
a genetic genealogy consultant who is contracted
00:24:07
to help ID the rapist.
00:24:09
The hope is to find a DNA link to a family
00:24:12
member in an ancestry database.
00:24:18
I spent several weeks trying to get a hold of Barbara,
00:24:21
and once I did and let her know what was going on,
00:24:24
she volunteered to take on the task.
00:24:29
I was able to give her the DNA profile fairly quickly,
00:24:33
and then I was also able to get her a sample of DNA
00:24:40
from one of the victim's cases.
00:24:43
She again developed a profile that she
00:24:46
was able to use to put into her system
00:24:50
to start mining for data.
00:24:52
The difference between what we're asking her to do in 2017
00:24:56
versus what we had been trying to do for two decades,
00:25:00
it took us from waiting for his DNA to come into the CODIS
00:25:03
database to being able to actively hunt him out
00:25:08
by looking for and triangulating any relatives who might be
00:25:11
in a commercial DNA database.
00:25:15
TONY RAWLINGS: We were very hopeful,
00:25:16
because if anything was going to take us
00:25:18
in a direction of that DNA profile we filed charges
00:25:22
on and saw the warrant on in 2003,
00:25:24
this was probably our best hope to date.
00:25:28
It was 2018.
00:25:30
Dr. Venter reported back that she had found a man who
00:25:37
was likely our suspect's second cousin,
00:25:40
and that he was living in Ohio, and that
00:25:43
was our first active break.
00:25:46
For the Bloodline Detectives, a stunning new forensic science
00:25:49
called genetic genealogy may finally be the key
00:25:54
to identify a serial rapist.
00:25:57
But as we see next, investigators
00:25:59
must first climb a family tree to track down a suspect.
00:26:11
[MUSIC PLAYING]
00:26:13
It's now 2018.
00:26:15
Investigators in Clearfield, Utah
00:26:17
are using a new forensic science called genetic genealogy
00:26:21
to identify a serial rapist who's been terrorizing families
00:26:26
and communities for years.
00:26:30
Detectives are about to close in on a suspect by navigating
00:26:34
some complicated branches of a family tree.
00:26:37
We got the information that she had found a second cousin
00:26:41
to the suspect, and we started looking into those leads,
00:26:46
and eventually we found out that the mother of the suspect
00:26:51
was adopted.
00:26:53
We were then able to petition to the probate court in Ohio
00:26:57
to have the adoption and name change unsealed.
00:27:02
So once the court granted it in Ohio,
00:27:04
what that gave us was a piece of paper
00:27:06
from the adoptive parents.
00:27:08
That paper included a reference that her biological name
00:27:15
was Burns, her last name.
00:27:18
Once we found out who the mother's real name was and were
00:27:21
able to get the information, find out who the second cousin,
00:27:25
we finally got down to a stepbrother.
00:27:31
While they were able to track him down,
00:27:32
they got an actual DNA sample from him, covertly.
00:27:37
Sent it off.
00:27:37
Turned out it wasn't the guy, but it was a half sibling
00:27:42
to our actual known suspect.
00:27:45
So they went and they interviewed him,
00:27:46
and they found out that he had a half brother by the name
00:27:50
of Mark Douglas Burns, and that Mark Douglas Burns had been
00:27:54
convicted of rape in North Carolina in the '70s,
00:27:58
and that he was currently living still in the Salt Lake area.
00:28:01
Everybody on the team would have
00:28:03
been just ecstatic about that, because after two decades
00:28:08
of nothing and waiting for DNA to hit,
00:28:12
this is our first good opportunity to go looking.
00:28:16
It was the only thing that led us to this man.
00:28:19
If we would not have had the ability to track him
00:28:24
through family members, there's no evidence
00:28:28
that I'm aware of that any of the agencies have right now,
00:28:32
evidence or information, that would have led to him.
00:28:36
NANCY GRACE (VOICEOVER): Police now
00:28:37
began surveillance of the suspect, Mark Douglas Burns.
00:28:42
The detectives ran his criminal history
00:28:44
and found that Mark Burns had been convicted of rape in 1974
00:28:49
in North Carolina.
00:28:50
In fact, had been sentenced to death row.
00:28:54
ADAM HERBETS: So Mark Burns, in 1974, was in the military.
00:28:57
He was stationed in North Carolina.
00:28:59
The case he was arrested for was a rape inside
00:29:03
of a McDonald's bathroom.
00:29:04
The victim in that case was an 18-year-old woman.
00:29:09
TIM ROBINSON: He was charged and ultimately convicted of rape
00:29:12
and sentenced to the death penalty.
00:29:14
At that time, North Carolina had the death penalty.
00:29:17
He was in prison for a year, year and a half,
00:29:19
and then the North Carolina law changed to where you couldn't
00:29:22
put somebody to death for sexual assault.
00:29:25
And so his sentence was commuted to I believe it was 25 years.
00:29:30
And he spent the next 12 or 13 years
00:29:32
in a North Carolina prison.
00:29:34
It's a terrible, scary story, and it's worse
00:29:37
when you hear about the fact that he, A, got out;
00:29:40
B, was supposed to die; and C, did it again
00:29:44
to so many more people in Utah.
00:29:48
We then learned, in about 1987, 1988,
00:29:52
that Mark Burns was again convicted
00:29:54
of being a peeping Tom.
00:29:57
He was caught looking into the window of a woman's apartment.
00:30:02
They don't revoke his parole.
00:30:03
And another year later, the same thing.
00:30:06
He goes and starts looking at windows.
00:30:08
And so he gets arrested again.
00:30:09
I think he does about a year, year and a half in jail,
00:30:11
and then he's released in I believe late 1989.
00:30:16
From then he moved back to Salt Lake City.
00:30:20
The process of surveilling him led then
00:30:23
to a retrieval from trash, from garbage,
00:30:27
which is perfectly legal and acceptable
00:30:29
in the United States.
00:30:30
When a person abandons things in the garbage
00:30:32
and they put it out in the trash and wheel it out
00:30:35
for public pickup, they no longer have an expectation
00:30:37
of privacy in those items.
00:30:40
They got a couple of soda cans and bottles,
00:30:44
and they were able to test those and get DNA.
00:30:48
I believe it was September 20th of 2019 when the lab up
00:30:53
in Wyoming reported back that the DNA from the garbage we had
00:30:57
obtained had a single male profile,
00:31:00
and that it was our suspect.
00:31:04
NANCY GRACE (VOICEOVER): On September 25th, 2013,
00:31:07
Mark Douglas Burns is arrested by police.
00:31:12
At that point, Mark Burns was a truck driver.
00:31:15
He was working out of Brigham City, Utah.
00:31:18
He was residing in North Ogden, Utah.
00:31:20
And from what it appeared, he was single,
00:31:23
living alone, and just working.
00:31:25
TIM ROBINSON: Clearfield came up with a plan to make an arrest.
00:31:29
So the arrest team basically just decided the easiest way
00:31:31
to do it would just be go up to the front door
00:31:33
and knock on the door.
00:31:34
- Mark? - Yes.
00:31:35
Hey, Detective Swanson.
00:31:36
How are you doing?
00:31:37
MARK DOUGLAS BURNS: I'm well, yourself?
00:31:38
Good.
00:31:38
Hey, I need you to come out and talk to me for a minute.
00:31:40
Sure.
00:31:44
We need to take you up to the office with us.
00:31:46
Had some questions for you.
00:31:48
Have another investigator that wants to talk to you.
00:31:50
About what?
00:31:51
You know, I have no idea right now.
00:31:52
I'm just an investigator.
00:31:53
Asked us to swing by.
00:31:54
Said, hey, stop by.
00:31:56
If Mark is here, pick him up.
00:31:58
He didn't see it coming when they arrested him
00:32:00
and it went down smoothly.
00:32:01
I mean, clearly, from the detective standpoint,
00:32:04
they're just trying to keep him comfortable.
00:32:06
They want him to be a little bit chatty
00:32:08
when they bring him in for questioning
00:32:09
to talk about the actual case.
00:32:11
Do you have anything on you I ought to be concerned about?
00:32:13
No.
00:32:14
Mind if I check?
00:32:15
The day he was arrested, obviously we're trying to get
00:32:18
all the information we can.
00:32:19
And the first thing we do is we go to his house
00:32:21
and we start talking to neighbors, people
00:32:22
who might have known him.
00:32:24
And he had a very good relationship
00:32:26
with his next door neighbor.
00:32:27
And the things that they were saying,
00:32:29
it didn't really seem to fit the type of person
00:32:32
you imagine when you think of a serial rapist.
00:32:35
You know, he looked like any guy you'd see on the street.
00:32:38
I mean, he didn't look like a monster.
00:32:39
He just looked like an early 60s man who was
00:32:43
being contacted by the police.
00:32:44
It was a nice home, middle class neighborhood.
00:32:49
Just looked like a normal Joe.
00:32:53
He didn't seem guarded or anything.
00:32:55
He provided information freely.
00:32:56
But then as soon as I started talking
00:32:58
about the rapes and sexual assaults, he shut down.
00:33:01
NANCY GRACE (VOICEOVER): An arrest
00:33:02
is finally made by Bloodline Detectives,
00:33:04
but their work is not done.
00:33:06
Investigators need to know the horrible details
00:33:10
of the many sex assaults their suspect, Mark Douglas Burns,
00:33:15
may have committed over three decades.
00:33:18
His interrogation is next on "Bloodline Detectives."
00:33:30
[MUSIC PLAYING]
00:33:32
In 2019, Mark Douglas Burns, the primary suspect
00:33:37
in a series of sex attacks, is now under arrest
00:33:41
in Clearfield, Utah.
00:33:42
His DNA linked to nine incidents,
00:33:46
dating as far back as 1991.
00:33:50
That is just sadistic.
00:33:52
That guy has no conscience whatsoever.
00:33:56
He is a true animal.
00:33:57
TONY RAWLINGS: I don't think you could script a more diabolical,
00:34:01
sinister, heinous act of crime perpetrated
00:34:04
against humanity and individuals in a family
00:34:07
than what our suspect did.
00:34:08
NANCY GRACE (VOICEOVER): Now in custody,
00:34:10
police began to question Burns.
00:34:16
He wants to know, why am I here?
00:34:18
What are you asking me these questions for?
00:34:30
Detective Carlson finally told him we're
00:34:32
investigating a rape case.
00:34:34
And when he did that, Mr. Burns was visibly upset.
00:34:50
He says, fuck.
00:34:52
And he continued talking for a while.
00:34:55
I started to confront him, saying
00:34:57
we had linked DNA to him, and it wasn't just one case.
00:35:01
It was multiple cases.
00:35:13
He didn't seem guarded or anything.
00:35:15
He provided information freely.
00:35:17
But then as soon as I started talking
00:35:19
about the rapes and sexual assaults, he shut down.
00:35:38
Mr. Burns invoked his right to counsel.
00:35:41
Once that's done, we can't ask any more questions.
00:36:23
NANCY GRACE (VOICEOVER): On the day his trial set to start,
00:36:26
Mark Douglas Burns does something police never expect.
00:36:31
TONY RAWLINGS: His attorney came in.
00:36:32
Along the lines had made a pretrial negotiation
00:36:35
to us of a potential plea that would have involved
00:36:38
five counts, him pleading guilty to five of the 17.
00:36:40
We said, no, that's not going to happen.
00:36:43
He showed up to argue a motion,
00:36:47
and leaned over to the defense to ask if they were ready,
00:36:53
and learned that he had come to court
00:36:55
said that very day, prepared to plead guilty as charged.
00:36:59
I was expecting that we would at least have further hearings,
00:37:05
and I was surprised to find out that he decided he's
00:37:08
just going to plead guilty.
00:37:09
That's all.
00:37:11
I'm guilty, we're done, and I'll admit to it.
00:37:15
NANCY GRACE (VOICEOVER): But Mark
00:37:16
Douglas Burns is not finished confessing to terrible crimes.
00:37:21
He now tells investigators that he
00:37:23
also committed three murders.
00:37:27
In addition to those rape charges that he's already
00:37:30
facing and wants to plead guilty to,
00:37:33
he's now confessing to homicides, one of them in Utah,
00:37:37
one of them in Arizona, and one of them in Oregon.
00:37:41
TONY RAWLINGS: How can anybody do this to another human being?
00:37:44
How? How depraved?
00:37:45
How does a person get to the point
00:37:47
where they can conduct themselves
00:37:49
in such a dastardly manner and ruin other people's
00:37:53
lives in significant ways?
00:37:55
But experiencing Mark Burns, there
00:37:57
was nothing genuine about him.
00:37:58
There was nothing sincere.
00:37:59
There was nothing contrite.
00:38:00
It was a game to Mark Burns.
00:38:03
NANCY GRACE (VOICEOVER): Finally,
00:38:04
the victims of Mark Douglas Burns
00:38:06
get the justice they deserve.
00:38:09
BENJAMIN WILLOUGHBY: One of his last acts
00:38:10
before the judge sent him to prison for the rest of his life
00:38:13
was to attempt to silence that 11-year-old girl, who
00:38:17
is now a grown woman and wanted to address the court.
00:38:20
How can you do that and also claim that you have remorse
00:38:24
or that you feel sorry for her?
00:38:27
I said, I want you to remember that you told
00:38:28
me not to bother to tell anyone, that you would never be caught.
00:38:32
I did it anyway, because I'm stronger than you.
00:38:35
It may have taken 28 years, but we are here today.
00:38:40
You were wrong and Detective Peterson was right.
00:38:43
It was not a matter of if, it was a matter of when.
00:38:48
NANCY GRACE (VOICEOVER): Mark Douglas Burns
00:38:49
is sentenced for his crimes.
00:38:52
The judge sentenced him to the maximum, 16
00:38:55
to life on the 14 counts where he could, and six years
00:38:58
to life on the other three counts,
00:39:00
and ran them all consecutive.
00:39:02
I hope it eats at him.
00:39:03
I hope it eats at him every day, because it eats at me,
00:39:06
and eats at every one of the survivors.
00:39:10
BENJAMIN WILLOUGHBY: He expressed some very
00:39:12
shallow remorse to the victims.
00:39:15
One single tear, and then the minute he was done,
00:39:19
he was cold again.
00:39:22
NANCY GRACE (VOICEOVER): If not for the advances
00:39:23
in genetic genealogy, the terrible crimes
00:39:26
committed by Mark Douglas Burns would have gone unpunished.
00:39:33
BENJAMIN WILLOUGHBY: If we did not
00:39:35
have the genetic genealogy on this case,
00:39:38
he would still be living in our community.
00:39:41
We would have no justice.
00:39:43
We wouldn't.
00:39:44
I don't see any other way that we could have found him.
00:39:47
NICHOLE EYRE: At the end of the trial,
00:39:49
I really did put it away.
00:39:52
I told my husband that I was going to watch and see
00:39:55
what happened with the Wyoming cases, and to be very honest,
00:39:58
I haven't checked once.
00:40:00
I just haven't thought about it.
00:40:05
It's completely-- I need to live my life.
00:40:11
NANCY GRACE (VOICEOVER): Mark Douglas Burns hid
00:40:13
in plain sight as a friendly neighbor, no one ever
00:40:18
suspecting he's raped over a dozen women, including
00:40:23
an 11-year-old little girl, and that he would then
00:40:26
confess to multiple murders.
00:40:30
In 2020, Burns was sentenced to at least 242 years in prison.
00:40:38
But the miracle of the Bloodline Detectives
00:40:41
isn't only their ability to solve crimes that occur today,
00:40:45
but the ability to reach back for decades,
00:40:49
bringing criminals to justice and finding
00:40:52
some sense of closure for victims and their families.
00:40:56
As forensic science continues to evolve,
00:41:00
their work will continue to expand,
00:41:03
making communities a little safer for all of us,
00:41:07
and bringing criminals hiding in the shadows out into the light.
00:41:13
I'm Nancy Grace.
00:41:14
Thanks for being with us on "Bloodline Detectives."
00:41:25
[MUSIC PLAYING]
