Clearfield • Detectives found the man they suspect as a serial rapist by first using DNA to locate the defendant’s half brother, a Utah police chief said Thursday.
Finding that family pointed police to Mark Douglas Burns, the 69-year-old man arrested Wednesday in Ogden. Clearfield Police Chief Kelly Bennett said Burns was “calm” and asked why he was being arrested.
For now, Burns is charged in two rape cases in Clearfield, but investigators say Burns, a truck driver, is suspected of rapes in Layton and Ogden as well as in cities in Wyoming from 1991 to 2001.
“For that reason,” Bennett said, alluding to Burns’ occupation, “we do believe that Mr. Burns did not stop in 2001.”
Bennett asked other police forces across the West on Thursday to let investigators know about unsolved rapes similar to those in which Burns is accused and to upload DNA samples from those attacks into law enforcement’s national database.
Burns was convicted of rape in North Carolina in 1974, Utah court documents state, and served a “lengthy prison sentence” there before moving to Utah.
(Photo courtesy Davis County) Mark Douglas Burns, 69, was arrested Wednesday and charged with eight counts of aggravated sexual assault, six counts of aggravated kidnapping, two counts of aggravated burglary and one count of aggravated robbery.
In Utah, the Davis County attorney in 2003 charged a John Doe with felonies related to violent assaults in Clearfield. Tuesday, those charges were amended to specify Burns was the defendant. He faces 17 counts, including sexual assault, kidnapping, robbery and burglary.
In a July 29, 2000, assault, the updated court documents describe a suspect entering through a sliding-glass door. A nude man then woke up a woman living in the residence, He said not to say anything or he would cut her throat. He raped her and bound her wrists and feet before leaving.
A family was victimized May 22, 2001. Court documents say a woman heard her bedroom door open and thought it was her 20-year-old son coming home from work. Instead it was a man with a nylon stocking over his head and wearing gloves.
The suspect pointed a flashlight and a gun at the woman, waking her husband in the process. He then asked who else was in the home. Soon, the suspect had four members of the family bound in the bedroom. When the son did come home, he was bound, too.
The intruder raped the woman and sexually assaulted her 19-year-old daughter.
Bennett said his department plans to stay in contact with the victims in the two Clearfield episodes as well as the victims from the cases that have not yet been charged.
“It’s important to continue to have that relationship with the victims and law enforcement,” Bennett said. “We think that’s crucial with their healing process.”
The Wyoming cases include a Rock Springs assault in 1991 and one in Laramie in 1996. Those episodes, as well as the ones in Utah, showed a similar modus operandi, Bennett said.
The victims lived along trucking routes near industrial centers, the chief said. They usually resided in apartment complexes, and the perpetrator often entered through an unlocked sliding-glass door, the chief added.
In 2010, DNA helped link the multiple attacks, but a suspect remained elusive. The national law enforcement DNA database is mostly comprised of people who have already been convicted of a crime in the digital age.
Then, Bennett said, a genetic genealogist named Barbara Rae-Venter was able to find a “very distant relative” with DNA similar to the suspect’s. That relative led investigators to a man who turned out to be Burns’ half brother.
Bennett said the half brother was not necessarily a suspect, but investigators needed to know more about him and who else was in his family. That led the detective to Burns.
Detectives conducted surveillance on Burns’ home in Ogden, the chief said, collected his garbage and were able to get a DNA sample from it.
Police often try to corroborate DNA evidence by finding other proof a suspect was in the vicinity of where the crime happened, if only so defense attorneys can’t argue there was an error in processing the DNA. The updated court documents don’t say whether police have evidence Burns was in Clearfield on those dates in 2000 and 2001.
Davis County Attorney Troy Rawlings, who was a deputy in the office when the John Doe charges were filed in 2003, said Thursday the charges would not have been amended unless he was confident he could prove the case against Burns.
Clearfield and the other police forces who investigated Burns did an “excellent” job, Rawlings said.
Bennett acknowledged police still need to document where Burns lived and traveled over the year, both in Utah and Wyoming.
“That’s part of our investigation,” Bennett said. “We’d like to know where he’s been.”
Burns remained in the Davis County jail Thursday. As of Thursday afternoon, a court appearance had not yet been scheduled and no defense attorney was listed on a docket.
