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